Shotgun Scenario Review: GEMINI

In this post I review GEMINI, a 2018 shotgun scenario by Helena. The Agents are sent to investigate the murder of two unidentified children, whose corpses appear almost identical. Meanwhile, three children have gone missing in a nearby town, but the physical characteristics of the found bodies do not match the identities of the missing children.

Layla Johnson

In truth, the bodies do correspond to the missing children, but they have been changed through the body warping ritual to look like Layla Johnson. Layla is the daughter of Karen Johnson, who suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Karen is poisoning her own daughter in order to gain attention. Whenever Layla dies due to the abuse, Karen kidnaps another child and transforms it into a new "Layla", using the body warping ritual.

The subject matter of this scenario is quite dark and probably not for everyone, which makes it perfect for the kind of Delta Green game that I like. But you should probably check with your group if child murder is a topic they are comfortable with.

GEMINI is not a hard scenario to solve and can be over pretty quick if the Agents meet Karen Johnson early. E.g., the friendship bracelets that are found on the bodies alone are enough to make any competent Agent suspicious of Johnson. When I ran this scenario it took us only a little over two hours to resolve.

As written, the scenario is also not very dangerous for the Agents. Karen does not seem to be much of a fighter and the body warping spell is the only ritual she knows. The strong points of the scenario are the atmosphere of the decrepit town and the overall horribleness of the situation. And at the end the Agents are presented with a moral dilemma: what do they do with "Layla", who is actually another child in a transformed body? Do they kill them or do they try to transform them back using the ritual, at the cost of their own SAN?

When I ran GEMINI, I connected it to the shotgun scenario Jessica's Bodies (which I reviewed here). Jessica's Bodies also features the body warping ritual and the antagonist of that scenario can be used as a possible source from which Karen Johnson has learned the spell.

GEMINI is a cool scenario and I recommend it if you want to run a shorter session, that is more investigation- and less action-focused. I think it would also be suitable to be run with only one or two Agents.