Shotgun Scenario Review: Whereabouts Unknown

Usually, I am a Handler when it comes to Delta Green, but recently I had the chance to join a game as a player. The scenario was Whereabouts Unknown, the winner of the 2006 Shotgun Scenario Contest. It was written by Bret Kramer, of Last Things Last fame. I also previously wrote a review of Good Intentions by the same author, which you can find here.

In Whereabouts Unknown the Agents are tasked with finding a Friendly that has gone missing. In the course of the investigation the Agents find out that this Friendly, a professor of mathematics, has read the wrong books and has figured out a way to open a gate to some other dimension. 

The scenario is pretty straight-forward. There are only two major locations: the motel room where the Friendly has been holed up the last few days and a spot in the woods where she opened the gate. Both locations are described in great detail and offer interesting clues. Besides the missing Friendly there is only one other named NPC, the guy running the motel.

The investigative part of the scenario has all the necessary details that you need to run this and hardly anything needs to be fleshed out by the Handler. My biggest criticism concerns the finale or rather the lack thereof. The Friendly is gone and cannot be found and the spot where the gate was opened poses no real danger. It's all a bit anticlimactic.

In fairness, the scenario suggests complications. Either something like a Dimensional Shambler could have come through the gate or the Friendly comes back, possibly somehow mutated. These are fine complications, but they lack the amount of detail that the rest of the scenario has. I think some of the location descriptions could have been shortened in exchange for a proper finale.

When I played this, the Handler did add the Dimensional Shambler and had it attack the nearby town. I think it would also be interesting if the gate itself posed some kind of danger or an obstacle that would require creative problem solving by the Agents and their players.

All in all, this is a fine scenario. It's nothing too special but it is well executed and can be run with minimal prep. It would fit well into a campaign that deals with dimensional gates and some of the clues give Agents with Computer Science of Science (Mathematics) a chance to flex their skills.