Delta Green this week, so lets have a quick start with the quick start rules, Need to Know (2016). I posted about the full Delta Green rules last October, so you already know that I love them. No need to rehash that here. Need to Know gives you the bare minimum needed to play. It includes an introductory scenario “Last Things Last,” which is what I want to talk about.

It’s really a perfect little self-contained Delta Green operation (my lone criticism is that it assumes the characters are already part of the conspiracy, which I think contextualizes this a more of a one-shot than the gateway to an ongoing campaign, but this is nitpicking). It gets at everything you want out of this sort of story: dark secret, human costs, terrible horror. The set-up is easy: a Delta Green agent has died, so the player investigators have been activated to clean up any keepsakes he might have from his days in the field. This being the game it is, of course he broke protocol and kept some things, of course they led him to a lapse in judgment and a shameful secret. Of course player investigators are going to pay for his weakness with their lives and their sanity. It’s a real thematic chef’s kiss for the money.