Delta Green: Need to Know

by Shane Ivey, Bret Kramer

WELCOME TO THE APOCALYPSE

Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day—but often at a shattering personal cost.

In Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, you are one of those agents. You’re the one they call when unnatural horrors seep into the world. You fight to keep cosmic evil from claiming human lives and sanity. You conspire to cover it all up so no one else must see what you’ve seen—or learn the terrible truths you’ve discovered.

The quickstart rulebook of DELTA GREEN: NEED TO KNOW includes everything you need to play Delta Green.

Complete rules for conducting investigations, overcoming crises, fighting for your life, and watching your sanity slip away.
Complete rules for character creation.
Six characters, ready to play.
A Delta Green operation, “Last Things Last,” ready for the Handler (the game moderator) to introduce your team to Delta Green tonight.
The physical edition of Delta Green: Need to Know also comes with a sturdy, four-panel screen loaded with data to help the Handler run a fast-paced, suspenseful game—and sinister wraparound art to keep the players terrified.

This is only the beginning. Deeper terrors can be found in Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and its sourcebooks, available from Arc Dream Publishing.

Short description of "Last Things Last" for convention games: A long-retired agent died four days ago. Delta Green has tasked your team to make sure he didn't leave any deadly secrets behind.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Horror, Cthulhu Mythos

53 pages, Paperback

Published February 26, 2016

About the author

Managing editor and president of Arc Dream Publishing, www.arcdream.com.

Editor-in-chief of The Unspeakable Oath, www.theunspeakableoath.com.

Editor of Delta Green, www.delta-green.com.

Reviews

[Mikael Cerbing · Rating 4 out of 5]

This looks very promising. The changes they done from CoC seems to be mostly for the better. Skill mechanics, sanity and heavy wepons jumps out as improvements.
The adventure in the back is nice thst they included, but its really simple. Might be grand if you never played a skill based system before, but if you played CoC, this wont help you much. Still gonna play it doe.
Rule book and some adventures are in the post, so I am looking forward to dig deeper into Delta Green. And then torture my players in the years to come.

[Taddow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a set of quick-start rules for the Delta Green Role-playing game. In addition to simplified versions of the rules (including character creation), it includes six sample Player Characters and a decent scenario, “Last Things Last,” to play, which I felt was a better scenario than the one presented in the Delta Green Handler’s Guide. The size of this book feels just right for its intentions and it’s information is presented in an easy to understand format (I had some slight confusion concerning the explanation for skill selection in the character creation section, but since I have the core rulebook I understood what it was trying to say).

[Ben Gutteridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good little quickstart. Is missing a couple things that a quickstart ought to have —e.g. a plain-English explanation of what the attributes and skills mean (POW especially) — but you can absolutely run a first session with this, and absolutely should. The intro scenario, Last Things Last, might look a little linear and lightweight on a first pass, but even as a pretty experienced GM it was good to have something easy to follow for running a brand new system, and my players loved it. Marlene is deeply creepy and creates a proper moral quandary for new players. 


One outcome the book doesn't prepare you for is if the players (who in my case had been recruited to DG the previous day) leave Marlene behind to report to their handler. I handled this by having their handler panic at their meeting the following day, chew the players out, and then speed back to the cabin with the players in tow. On arrival they find Clyde Baughman's daughter and granddaughter dead in their car, still belted into passengers seats. Marlene's unharmed body lies beside the open septic tank hatch. Clyde's son-in-law has vanished. The players and handler dispose of the car, burn the bodies in the tank, and go their separate ways, hardened, and fully aware of the consequences of a DG agent prevaricating.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid quick-start manual for the system. Skimmed this prior to playing a one-shot (not the one from this book, but another one) with my gaming group, used a pre-generated character sheet, and felt ready to play with minimal preparation time required. I like this d100 and sanity system a little better than Call of Cthulhu (even though they share a lot in common). If we end up playing more in future I'll probably move on to reading the Delta Green: Agent's Handbook but for a single game as a player, the Need to Know is more than sufficient.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

****1/2: extremely impressed with Delta Green: Need To Know. The quick-start rules are well-detailed and organized for easy adoption by players and GMs alike. A simple, effective scenario is included. What really sets Delta Green apart from the various other CoC variants I’ve perused is the seamless integration of the Cthulhu mythos into an X-Files like governmental conspiracy thriller. Makes me want to read not just the rest of their gaming line but their fiction line as well.

[Luke Costin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Delta Green quick start rules are perfect for people new to the game and evoke the feeling of playing desperate agents grappling with the unknowable incredibly well

However I feel like this adventure is a little bare for a new handler. It’s not bad but it requires a bit of extra work to make it sing which might be tough for someone who’s new to the game

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent referee screen in the correct configuration (ie, each panel is in landscape orientation), plus a good quickstart/quick-reference booklet. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...

[Leonardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear cut introduction to the world and system.
Starting adventure could have been a little more fleshed out.