Targets of Opportunity (2010) is the last of the Delta Green sourcebooks for Call of Cthulhu. The 2016 Delta Green is its own (CoC-based) stand alone system and is cool in its own right — I’ll get to it at some point.

Targets presents the Canadian equivalent to Delta Green, a family of New Orleans-based ghouls, a worm cult, a very elaborate cult of Nyarlathotep and Black Cod Island, an Innsmouth-like island in the Pacific northwest. There is still great stuff here (I love that the main deep one/Cthulhu avatar at Black Cod Island is named He-Who-Swims-With-Corpses, for instance) but there is also stuff here the feels a like edginess was favored over being well thought out. It’s my least favorite of the four books.

Still, it is another example of how Delta Green does a cool thing: it removes a hurdle for players. Call of Cthulhu treats the supernatural as a revelation that occurs for characters in the course of play, and while that is often interesting and fun, it overlooks the fact that chances are, players of a Cthulhu-centric game have probably read some Lovecraft. This can present a challenge when it comes to playing characters who do not know the secret truth of the universe. In Delta Green, though, the knowledge the players have of Lovecraft’s stories — vague recollections of strangeness, gleaned from dusty pulp fiction pages — is often equal to what the characters know — vague recollections of strangeness, gleaned from dusty after-action reports.

Again, not big on the digital art interiors in this one.