The end of the year also means the conclusion of the annual Shotgun Scenario Contest. This time there were a total of 81 submissions. You can read them all here.
I only submitted one entry this year, Ovoid. It's basically a weird Christian cult recreating the The Dunwich Horror. It is a pretty basic investigation with a monster at the end, but I tried to make it interesting by adding psychic vampire eggs. Not my best scenario, but it was still fun when I ran it. Go check it out and tell me what you think!
This year, I didn't bother writing reviews for all the scenarios. My complaints for the not-so-good ones are always the same anyway: Where is the Handler summary? And why doesn't this scenario cater to my specific tastes??
So this year I am only highlighting some scenarios that caught my interest and gave them a mini-review. Here they are, in order of submission:
The Dog by Lalonde
The Agents have to transport an unnatural dog from A to B. The scenario gives us three different options for what could be wrong with the dog. It could be a Spawn of Mordiggian, a lesser child of Shub-Niggurath, or a splinter Tulzscha.
I like the Tulzscha option the best and I think it would have been better to focus on just that one. I am not aware of any other Tulzscha scenario, so for that reason alone this would have been a stand-out scenario. I also like that this option gives the dog a clear goal: seek out fuel to consume.
While Mordiggian is also a lesser used Great Old One, this option seems to lack interactivity, as the dog is unconscious until the Spawn emerges from it. The Shub dog seems more interesting, but Shub is overused and it is stated that the dog only grows if it is given opportunities to feed. But what does it eat? Normal dog food? And what happens if it isn't given such an opportunity?
Overall, I like the road trip setup and I can see myself running this with some modifications as a short side mission between longer operations. But in general my recommendation to any shotgun scenario author would be: give me one good fleshed-out idea instead of multiple mutually exclusive ideas with less detail.
Totentanz; or The Modern Lazarus by Hobocop
A revived corpse is searching for its organs. The premise reminds me of one of my own scenarios from last year (Mellification), which in turn was inspired by the 1999 film The Mummy. But instead of a museum this scenario takes place in Vienna. A very unusual and interesting choice, though it might be difficult to integrate a typical group of Agents into this scenario.
Overall, this scenario has a lot of interesting elements: the Vatican commission with its various NPCs, the paparazzo as a complication, the revived Rudolf II himself, and the Félicie agents as opposing faction.
Because the author put so many elements into a shotgun format, there is not a lot of guidance on how to fit them all together, so a little additional prep is needed before running this. But it's cool and I am always a fan of international operations.
Out of Time by boomforeal
Like last year's winner, this scenario is about March Tech experimenting with time travel. This time the Agents are on the hunt for three escaped time travelers. These NPCs are all very different and seem fun to interact with.
I had a bit of trouble to find out why DG gets involved in this, turns out that the hook is somewhat hidden in the briefing section on page three. I would put this as part of the Handler Summary in the beginning. But otherwise the structure of the scenarios is very good and focuses on game-relevant stuff only.
The scenario is a bit unserious at times, especially the Future Men are a bit of a meme (Kill-o-Zap gun, really?). I would change them to be extremely weird freaks. But this slight criticism doesn't take away from the scenario being really good.
C:/AZATOTA>AGAINSTDAEMONCOURT.EXE by Tairbaz
It's nice to have a scenario about a piece of media, a video game in this case, that is not about the King in Yellow. Why this video game is cursed by Azathoth isn't really explained, but it doesn't really matter.
The scenario's strength is the large amount of thematically fitting manifestations and the fact that it ends with a classic dungeon crawl, something we don't get a lot of in DG. In fact, it would be cool to have an extended version of this scenario with a full dungeon map.
My biggest criticism of this scenario is that it is slightly hard to read. Not because of the formatting, which is fine. Rather it needed another editing pass. There are a lot of run-on sentences and some awkward sentence constructions that could be simplified.
The Grey Who Loved Me by Michael 'JR' Reid
A human transplanted into a Grey body by the Mi-Go falls in love with a Deep One hybrid. I am not a fan of Mythos mash-ups and this one is particularly silly and not in line with what I personally like in a Delta Green scenario.
So, I would probably never run this. But I still wanted to highlight this scenario, because I like how it is structured. For most investigative scenarios we have a chain or network of clues that lead from A to B to C.
Instead, this scenario is mostly a list of factions, including their wants, their means, what they know and their relation to other factions. This gives the Handler a lot of options for how they want to run this and multiple runs could go wildly different.
The flip side is, of course, that it requires more prep or improvisation compared to a more linear scenario. But it's still a cool structure for the right kind of scenario and I might try and write something similar in the future.
The Beast with Two Backs by Joe Campo
I liked this scenario mostly for its writing. The seedy atmosphere is conveyed very well. Unfortunately, all the words spent on description and scene-setting mean that the investigation is really basic and bare-bones.
I also find it weird how the unnatural incursion just happened randomly while a VHS was being copied. With the setup I was really expecting some Y'golonac shenanigans. I'm not disappointed that it is not Y'golonac, but I would have liked something.
Despite these weaknesses I liked it and with some modifications and added interactivity I would run this.
The Loving Earth by Hobocop
I'm not sure if I would ever run a "Puritan Delta Green" game, but this doesn't take away from the fact that this is a cool scenario. It has everything you need to pick it up and run it, including fitting profession packages in the linked document.
It's also nice that it is a Nyogtha scenario, we don't see him often. Most of the time it's Shub that is responsible for tainted crops, so it's cool to have something different this time.
Dead Man Walking by Loluan/Lukas
There have been a few Wendigo scenarios this year, but I think this one is the best. The hook is very good, the intact church amid the tornado's destruction is a cool image. I also like the additional options besides rolling firearms that are given for the final action set piece.
We are not given much info about the Itla-Shua cult, so it's kind of cookie-cutter. There is the connections to the Fate, but the Agents will probably never learn about that. But of course it is difficult to do more with the limited word count in this contest and the scenario is still perfectly runnable.
Slaughterhouse by Flore
A classic "March Tech experiment goes wrong" scenario. In this, the Agents have to hunt researchers that have turned into monstrous animal hybrids (one of them is even named Morrow, I see what you did there).
The hybrids are cool and horrific, but I wish that the resonant core would also pose a danger to the Agents somehow. You could really increase the body horror with a random mutations table or something similar.
Overall, a good scenario and also structured in a way that makes it easy to run.
Died Suddenly; OPERATION PARROT DELILAH by MyNephew
In this scenario the Agents do not confront the unnatural. Rather the threat is perfectly mundane, but still dangerous to Delta Green. This is a good way to write a mundane scenario, because the Agents will still be interested in resolving the situation. In that respect the scenario reminds me of Who killed the Case Officer?, another good mundane scenario.
I like the idea that field-retired agents are used for disinformation purposes. In fact, this would be a good scenario to introduce one of the canon NPCs from the Handler's Guide, Charlie Bostick.
I would have liked if Eve was a bigger threat and more focused on the Delta Green targets. Instead of continuing to attack random members of this online conspiracy group every week, she should have figured out that ABC are somehow responsible. And if she notices that the Agents are investigating, she should target them and their Bonds as well. This makes it more personal, while still retaining the interesting backstory.
The Exterminator is Late by Sarah Cole
I like the ideas in this scenario much more than I like the execution. I love scenarios about haunted buildings and crawling through the walls to stumble upon stairs that lead into a different world is very creepy. This creepiness is further supported by the mostly good writing (itching teeth sound horrible).
However, the text is not structured in a way that makes running this very easy. E.g. it is mentioned that the Agents won't hear the rats unless they fail a SAN roll, but sources and magnitudes of SAN loss are left for the Handler to decide. The scenario doesn't help at all with stuff like that.
As written, the scenario is also kind of a railroad. It just assumes that the Agents would crawl into the walls to look for the disappeared child. Once the Agents arrive in the other world/dimension they have no chance to explore or do anything there. They either retreat or die fighting the seemingly indestructible entities there.
Overall, it's a good read for inspiration, but turning it into something fun and runnable would require some work. But it might be worth it.