Shotgun Scenario Review: Good Intentions

This entry in my scenario review series is about Good Intentions by Bret Kramer, written for the 2008 Shotgun Scenario Contest. I ran this scenario with some modifications, which are listed below.

Yibb-Tstll

In this scenario the Agents have to investigate a break-in into a Green Box. The culprit is anti-government activist Garret Duncan, who somehow became aware of a Delta Green cell. He broke into their Green Box and stole some artifacts, among them the Amulet of Yibb-Tstll. However, the amulet has a negative effect on anyone who touches it, which Duncan learns the hard way.

A Green Box that is exposed or at least at the risk of exposure is a pretty common concept for a Delta Green scenario. E.g. similar things happen in Lover in the Ice or Operation STOP REPO. If you or your players have played any of these scenarios before, then the hook of Good Intentions might not be exciting enough for you.

However, the scenario has other things going for it. It is very easy to insert the schism between Program and Outlaws as a plot point, which is what I did. This was not originally my idea, all credit goes to Andrew!

In my version of the scenario the Agents were sent to investigate the break-in of this old Green Box after the Program became aware of it due to a police report. What they did not know is that this Green Box was still actively used by the Outlaws, who sent their own team to investigate. The original scenario is pretty simple, so adding this potential for a confrontation with the Outlaws was a nice way to spice it up.

As written the Green Box contains only mundane things (which are not even listed in the scenario text) and since the break-in is investigated by the police it wouldn't make sense if the Green Box was full of weapons and weird stuff. But half the fun of a Green Box is all the strange artifacts that the Agents can discover and play with. For this reason I added additional Green Box storage units in the same facility. These weren't broken into, but nevertheless the Agents had the mission to relocate the contents. This was another good way to add some more content to this otherwise short scenario.

One more cool thing about this scenario is that the artifact at the center is connected to Yibb-Tstll, a less well-known Mythos entity. I hadn't even heard about it before reading this scenario. The hypergeometric effect of the amulet is also pretty interesting. However, it is maybe a bit too easy to handle, cautious Agents will surely avoid touching the amulet with all the context clues about the negative effect in Duncan's apartment.

Overall, this a simple but nice scenario that does not need a lot of preparation. But if you need some more content for your session it is easy to extend.