My Submissions to the 2023 Shotgun Scenario Contest

It's a new year, which means that the 2023 Shotgun Scenario Contest has concluded. This year's winning scenario was Apoptosis by Dragoleaf, with runner-up Ideasthesia by Erik Ahlin. The people's choice award goes to Operation CHOLLIMA BLACK by Agent HOPKINS. Congrats to the winners! There were 71 submissions this year, so the 2020 record of 75 scenarios was almost broken. You can check out all the entries here.

In this post I'm covering my own two entries to this deluge of scenarios, Terminal Lucidity and Subliminal. I also wrote reviews for all the other scenarios, which you can find here.

William Thornton and the Trader

Terminal Lucidity

The first of my scenarios takes place in a haunted hospice. The inspiration for this one came when I read about the real world concept of terminal lucidity. I thought that would be a great title for a scenario. And the concept itself is also very interesting. Sometimes people that have suffered from a prolonged neurological condition have a phase of mental clarity shortly before their death. I thought, what if people that are about to die somehow gain knowledge of the Unnatural. And that's how the hook and setting of this scenario came about.

I decided to make the Unnatural vector a creature that possesses another patient. The idea that the entity was connected to the Dreamlands came only later on, because it gave me the opportunity to add dream manifestations that make the hospice feel haunted. So the "lucidity" in the title did not actually have anything to do with the dream theme of the scenario, it's just  a lucky coincidence.

I have not playtested this scenario, because I only finished it on the day of the submission deadline. I am quite satisfied with how the scenario turned out and now I just have to hope that it plays well.

Subliminal

This scenario is based on a real world thing called subliminals. These are audio or video files with embedded subliminal messages. Some people (mainly teenagers and young adults) believe that listening to subliminals can have powerful effects and can influence the listeners behavior, appearance, even their luck. Most of these claims are quite dubious, but for this scenario I thought it would be fun if, through some unnatural meddling, a subliminal would actually have the ascribed effects.

The scenario is centered around a bunch of NPCs and the changes they are going through, thanks to their use of the unnatural subliminal. The scenario doesn't give any scenes or locations, so the Handler has a lot of freedom to decide what happens when and where. This might be the biggest drawback of this scenario, because the Handler has to come up with these things. But due to the nature of the NPCs (three of them are teenagers) it is likely that the Agents will visit their families and their school.

Carlie Dotson, teenage witch, with her magical mirror

When I ran this scenario for my friends, the operation turned into a huge clusterfuck. After having to run from an angry mob that was infatuated with one of the NPCs, the Agents fell victim to a series of minor and major misfortunes, thanks to the reality-bending aura of another NPC. And finally they had to confront a sassy goth teenager with actual magic powers. It was a chaotic mission for the Agents, but a lot of fun for the players, I think. I am pretty happy with how this scenario turned out.