|
|
|
 |
| Other comments left for this publisher: |
|
|
|
|
|
My favorite RPG is Call of Cthulhu. This supplement gives the GM amazing background to run the players through one of most interesting cities of Lovecraft's New England. While I still love the older version of CoC, the d20 version is a great way to get players, including younger players, introduced to a unique RPG. Dunwich should be part of anyone's CoC game. Even if you don not play CoC, but love to read Lovecraft or play other games, you should pick this up. Gives you nice atmosphere!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Oh dear, this does try to capture the feel of its inspirations - films such as A Boy and His Dog, Mad Max, etc - but really...
The layout is terrible. I had a bad feeling when the page marked 'contents' was entirely blank. There are sections that appear in odd places, including a section for character generation that appears in the index. Did anyone proof read this?
The art ranges from quite acceptable to the really awful - the latter being some of the character sketches that look like they were culled from an old character sheet.
The content is at best weak. There are a few additional skills, although I don't plan on making use of the rules for use of farming skills any time soon. There are stats for robots which were simply too brief.
It all could and should have been so much better. As an example of a simple premise done well you only have to go as far as AFMBE. Ignoring the (excellent) rules, you get ideas for survivors and the worlds they live in, background discussions of the gentre and fiction - all of which makes me want to dive straight in.
Chaosium has got some excellent monographs. I'm a big fan of their Dark Ages line. R&R was based on fiction from the 1980's. It really does feel like an rpg product from that time too.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
This product was extremely underwhelming in such a way that makes me regret purchasing it at all. I suppose the name is true, but it's more creatures than it is monsters. If I'm buying a BRP book focusing on fantasy and such, shouldn't it have iconic creatures like goblins? As it is, I'd say that the base BRP book has a better and more useful supply of creatures.
Additionally, having monsters and animals separated would probably have been a good idea.
All in all, I don't recommend this book.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Outpost 19 is an updating of the original Worlds of Wonder setting "Future World" (which can be found here
http://basicrps.narod.ru/index-wow.html). At the time it was called "a poor-man's Traveller" by review Rick Swan in his "The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games", but many people saw the incredible similarities to the Stargate film and television series (you travel world to world through gates as starship travel takes many years). In the update, despite the protections taken in the original setting where no gate would ever link to the core worlds, somehow one did and unleased a nanotechnological plague. Mankind has abandoned the core worlds and living in a ring of worlds now cut off from old earth. The gate workers became wardens and clamped down on technology, explorating and discover has come to a near-stop. On Outpost 19, some of that nano-plague exists, and you have to stop it. An interesting update and a difficult adventure with the promise of more in the fracture rim of humanity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Long before I met Oscar Rios at I-CON, I was a fan of his work. The very first monograph I purchased was Ripples from Carcosa, and Oscar's prolific writing positions him at the forefront of the latest generation of Call of Cthulhu authors. Ripples from Carcosa is awesome. The Roman and Dark Ages scenarios are really evocative.
ADVENTUS REGIS
I pulled out all the stops for this adventure: cardboard props, music from Requiem for a Dream, chocolate coins, Mega Miniatures’ Town Folk (I used them in groups of eight) and liberal use of my Battle Box from Fiery Dragon Productions. Did I mention I love my Battle Box?
I didn’t tell the players that this was a Call of Cthulhu adventure, but it didn’t take long for them to become completely freaked out. I should point out that this adventure is fairly disturbing, which helped put our PCs in some moral quandaries. As my brother is fond of putting it, “this is SO Resident Evil.”
I tried a bunch of different writing styles with this story hour. There are references to several of Campbell’s King in Yellow stories (specifically, what happens to Cal and Kham). The descriptions of the byakhee are straight from Lovecraft’s “The Festival.” And of course, there are the verses from Blish’s “More Light” version of the play. It’s a bit difficult to understand what’s going on without the context of the play itself. After all, this adventure kicks off a horrible inevitability—the birth of the King in Yellow, a play that drives to madness all who witness it.
The end fight was a tough battle, but perfectly balanced…a rarity. Fortunately, they did not take on the Avatar of Has--I mean the Unspeakable One. But then, any day when you can put down two byakhee (two very large, advanced byakhee) is a good day indeed.
HERALD OF THE YELLOW KING
This adventure was originally created for Call of Cthulhu, so it's always an interesting exercise in converting it over to a D20 system. For one, Call of Cthulhu has plenty of combat (at least as much if not more so than Dungeons & Dragons), but doesn't deal with any details. So when insane villagers attack, they're just assumed to attack from nowhere. When the monster fights the PCs on a bridge, you have no idea how wide the bridge is, etc. To rectify this, I built the various villages from the ground up with paper miniatures. This helped tremendously, especially in the first encounter.
What's so refreshing about Call of Cthulhu adventures is that they're not afraid of putting characters into dire moral quandaries, often with no means of getting out of it. There is no "right" choice in many cases.
I did a lot to beef up this module for a party of 4th through 7th-level characters. Wolves became winter wolves, villagers became 2nd-level commoners with the maniac template (from D20 Modern), and the Spawnling of Hastur became a Chuul (which nearly ate the entire party).
Isolated, with almost no healing magic, no means of reequipping themselves, and alone in the wilderness, we learned very quickly that our party isn't just bad in dungeons--they can barely survive in the wilderness. With a relentless snowstorm dogging their every step, in a frozen land where losing your horse can be a death sentence, the party suddenly realized why it's so important to have a warm fire and a roof over your head. In that regard, I think the adventure was definitely a success.
HEIR TO CARCOSA
This scenario is innovative and reminiscent of Stephen King's It. I plan to play it when we shift the campaign to D20 Future.
That said, Ripples from Carcosa is in dire need of an edit, and the artwork is uneven, but that's standard for monographs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
I run a Living Arcanis campaign, which also contains Freeport. With a wealth of material at my disposal, I decided to pick up Tatters of the King (TOK) to see how I could fit it into my campaign. I should point out that this is a long playtest review that contains spoilers galore. To help clarify what I did differently in my campaign, I will use a PLAYTEST tag.
Tatters of the King is a massive Call of Cthulhu adventure that details the invasion of Hastur on Earth. It's Hastur's grand oeuvre, presenting him as a Cthulhu-like entity, as the King in Yellow, and as a husband deity to Shub-Niggurath. Four cultists, each participating in a different path to bring about Hastur, attempt to contact him, only to go their separate ways. It's up to the player characters (PCs) to stop them.
Montague Edwards and Lawrence Bacon made an Unspeakable Oath with Hastur. Edwards regenerates, Bacon never sleeps. Alexander Roby is inexorably tied to Carcosa and the Yellow Sign, and only he can summon it to Earth. Malcom Quarrie is the most dangerous and the most committed to bringing the King in Yellow to Earth. The four unknowingly have a rival cultist in their mist, one Wilfred Gresty, who worships Shub-Niggurath and doesn't buy any of this "bride of Hastur" stuff.
The adventure begins with an opening night of the play, The King in Yellow, that drives people mad who witness it. There’s an after-party held in celebration of the success of the event, wherein the PCs get to meet the author, Talbot Estus, and his players. A great introduction to the insanity to follow.
PLAYTEST: I placed the events in Freeport. Two of the PCs were present and ultimately escaped the madness that ensued. They returned in time to attend the opening night reception. There, one PC (Sebastian the sorcerer) decided Talbot Estus, was too dangerous to live and murdered him in cold blood.
In the mean time, the PCs are tasked with getting their friend, Alexander Roby, out of an insane asylum at the behest of Doctor Trollope. There were murders in the prison blamed on Roby, although how he committed them is impossible to tell. In reality, Edwards, who posed as a guard in the prison, committed the murders. The PCs are encouraged to interview Roby, who provides a telling prophecy both for the end of the campaign and of Doctor Trollope’s death.
PLAYTEST: I changed Doctor Trollpe to be Kham the psychic warrior/rogue’s father. I made Roby a childhood friend of Kham to provide more relevance. I also inserted a few adventures here involving finding Kham's father and a side jaunt into a "The Thing"-like adventure. The PCs witnessed a strange summoning involving nine monoliths and were attacked by byakhee. It also started to snow, unheard of in tropical Freeport. I made it a point of having an incarnation of the King in Yellow tell Kham that "he was the key."
With Trollope knowing too much, Edwards' chief henchman, Michael Coombs, assassinates him. The PCs receive a posthumous note from Trollope indicating that Roby predicted his death with a spell. Wilfred Gresty, a rival cultist of Shub-Niggurath, slips one of the PCs a note about Lawrence Bacon's whereabouts with the intent of catching him in the act of draining the homeless of their lifeofce.
PLAYTEST: Having Trollope be Kham’s dad infused the adventure with a lot of emotional energy. Once he connected Bacon to his father’s murderer, Kham tracked down the cultist and a showdown ensued, resulting in Bacon falling off a bridge into icy water. One cultist down, three to go!
A subsequent search of Bacon’s home reveals a group of ghoul living in Bacon's basement.
PLAYTEST: In my campaign, ghouls were created through an addictive drug called ghoul juice. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to make Bacon a dealer in both antiquities and drugs. Kham barely escaped with his life.
Determined to summon Hastur, Edwards breaks Roby out of prison. The next connection is an obituary for Bacon, written by none other than Aleister Crowley. The PCs are expected to visit Crowley and wheedle information out of him about Montague Edwards.
PLAYTEST: As a real-life analogue, Crowley had no place in Arcanis. So I went all out, turning him into the front man for a sadistic cult. They kidnapped one of the female PCs. This culminated in a battle in Crowley’s basement. Crowley eventually gave up the information they sought but escaped penalty through his political connections.
Hot on the trail of Edwards, the PCs journey north only to discover that Roby succeeded: Carcosa has been summoned to Earth. Coombs plays a cat-and-mouse game with the PCs until they finally kill him. They then track down Roby and Edwards just in time to see Edwards summon thousands of byakhee and Hastur himself.
PLAYTEST: Kham killed Edwards easily, but was unable to stop the summoning. There are several ways to stop it, but I went for the dramatic approach. Roby demanded Kham throw him a pistol in self-defense—in reality, Roby knew he was the key to closing Carcosa. So he shoots himself. Ilmare and Kham barely escaped with their lives. The town left behind was utterly obliterated by Carcosa and Hastur's appearance. Three cultists down, one to go!
Time passes. The PCs meet Gresty, presumably when he’s in prison. He reveals information about Shug-Niggurath and its rivalry with the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign. He also provides a link to events happening at Nug’s Farm.
There, Hillary Quarrie, the wife of Malcolm, is in fact the heir-apparent to the Shub-Niggurath priesthood. Only Gresty lusts for her power, creating an inevitable showdown. This is the single-most exciting part of the campaign, with the PCs going toe-to-toe with a Dark Young. Only a ritual cast by Hillary saves them.
Using information gleaned from Hillary, the PCs travel to Milan. There, they met up with Thomas Villiers, who ultimately betrays them with another byakhee. This in turn reveals where Malcolm disappeared to: Drakmar, in Tibet.
PLAYTEST: Fortunately, Arcanis has portals that span the planet, so I skipped what I consider to be the most boring part of the adventure: long overland travel. The PCs resumed the adventure at the Monastery at Te, wherein they met Carlo Schippone, a crack shot. They made short work of him and journeyed onward to meet the Horror from the Hills.
And that horror is Chaugnar Faugn. The PCs didn't do anything stupid, although the adventure makes much of what happens if they do. Surrounded by Tcho-Tchos, the PCs were dutifully ushered past Chaugnar Faugn into the Plateau of Leng, where they met Malcolm Quarrie at last.
Only Quarrie is a pacifist. Bound and determined to summon the King in Yellow, Sebastian convinced Quarrie that they are aligned in their goals. This worked for a little while until Shantaks attack. That's when Sebastian used the opportunity to kill Quarrie in cold blood. See a pattern here?
Finally, the PCs meet the King in Yellow. He simply asks who will lead him to Earth. PCs who hesitate…DIE.
PLAYTEST: Kham, convinced that this was his burden to bear, agreed at first...then changed his mind. The King slit his throat (so much for my prophecy that Kham was the key). Sebastian was up next. He planned to lead the King astray. And so he did, leading him back to Carcosa and taking Sebastian (at least temporarily) out of play. The adventure left the PCs feeling like they had lost even though they had saved the world.
TOK is an excellent series of adventures, marred occasionally by the usual Cthulhu foils: assuming investigators will be naive or helpless (these days, most investigators carry guns and in my D&D game, they carry really heavy firepower in the form of spells), spending way too much time on overland travel, and an overemphasis on how PCs can avoid going insane by closing their eyes...a decidedly unheroic thing to do that shouldn't work anyway.
But when TOK hits its mark, it really makes for memorable sessions. The moral quandaries that the PCs regularly faced made for exciting play, and the fever pitch of the Dark Young showdown is magnificent...unfortunately it has very little to do with the main plot (it's essentially internecine squabbling with a completely unrelated cult).
There are plenty of notes and props, all of them useful. Especially intriguing are the nightmares that the PCs experience and the means of conveying the King in Yellow's telepathy (it involves cue cards). All of this made for evocative scenes that kept my PCs guessing.
Best of all, TOK plays for keeps. While the sacrifice of two PCs was a serious blow, it FELT like the conclusion to a series. And given the grand tour of Hastur and his ilk, we all appreciated the ending.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Twilight Memories is a monograph that is as much a prop as it is Call of Cthuhu supplement. It consists of three sections: The Journal of Henry Radcliff, The Research Log of the Kenning Expedition, and The Diary of Helen Dubois.
The first section, The Journal of Henry Radcliff, is no less than 14 pages of a handwritten font about...well, see for yourself:
"If it were not for that single moment, in which the slightest misjudgment entered my mind, I would not be here now, with a dead mother, tormented by a nocturnal orator."
The prose is a bit purple. In essence, a Mi-Go known as the Crimson Angel has started its own cult in the 1920s. Henry Radcliff stumbles upon a book dedicated to the cult and is slowly seduced by it, killing the supervisor he loathes, hiding out in his dead mother's house, and convincing a man named Richard Garland to join him. There's really very little here to go on -- we know the Crimson Angel is a Mi-Go but not enough for a Keeper to build a plot out of. It's more likely the investigation would revolve around Radcliff and the disappearance of himself and his victims. What's odd is that the journal doesn't provide any clues as to the Angel's motivations -- we are told that it is "starting its own cult" but there's nothing in the journal to suggest this is anything other than a typical Mi-Go abduction. The additional material explaining the scenario hooks and background by the cult is much more informative, but it doesn't justify 14 pages of nothing happening that will actually propel the plot. Also, the artwork is terrible. 2 out of 5 stars.
The second section, The Research Log of the Kenning Expedition, is about an archaeological expedition to a mysterious island in 1920s Caribbean. It's a 16 page journal. It details the decimation of a group of explorers, stalked one by one by a giant snake. If you guessed that Yig is behind this, then you're probably like every other investigator who will instantly assume the same at the mention of the word snake. This hook isn't bad so much as there's no surprises here. There's snakes, and Yig cultists, and more snakes. There are no stats for these snakes, and oddly stats are provided for characters that are likely deceased. Wouldn't it make more sense to stat out the monsters and cultists, like in the previous section? The artwork is markedly improved but there are considerably fewer hooks. 3 out of 5 stars.
The third section is the Diary of Helen Dubois, a modern tale of a young woman who lost her husband and child in a car accident. Driven mad, Helen encounters a creature named Aylith that promises a rebirth of sorts -- a resurrection of her lost husband and child through her own impregnation. Obsessed, Helen sits at Aylith's feet to learn spells that will charm men to her will. The diary ends with Helen's success, with plans to birth many, many more children.
Unlike the other two rambling journals, the diary is just five pages long. Most investigators are not going to sit and read the entire journal, if only due to time constraints. Also, some of the fonts are particularly hard to read -- the Diary is in a large, legible font. Where the other two journals are a historical account cramped by 1920s-style writing, Helen's diary is both sad and a frightening insight into her state of mind. It's a genuinely interesting read that's creepy to boot. There's just two pieces of artwork -- black and white photos of Helen and Aylith -- but they perfectly suit the mood of the piece. Aylith's cult is active and Helen is still prowling about, so there's plenty of great reasons for investigators to use the diary as a starting point for an investigation. 5 out of 5 stars.
This is an ambitious book that seeks to fill a specific need -- exhaustive props for Keepers. But less is more, and the third section's brief entry easily outpaces the other sections that are heavy on prose and light on scenario hooks Keepers can actually use.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
PLEASE NOTE: This review by necessity contains a lot of spoilers.
You might have heard of the phrase "Mythos Hoedown." It's used to denote a situation in which Mythos beings, rather than being cast as uniquely frightening creatures, are used collectively without rhyme or reason as to why they are all in the scenario. Hillgrove Horror, the first scenario in this collection, features a Mythos Hoedown. The opening paragraph references a Shub-Niggurath cult, Mi-go, and ghouls.
To be fair, in the early days of Call of Cthulhu Mythos beasts were treated like D&D monsters and it wouldn't be unusual to find them all jumbled together. Hillgrove Horror features no less than six dark young, which weren't nearly as deadly in the old days as they are now. The scenario also features an insidious communicable disease that is quite frightening. Still, if you're not fond of too many Mythos beings in one scenario, this one's not for you. Two out of five.
Rolthin Abbey takes an entirely different tack, being an open-ended description of a serpent man cult. The cult hides behind a new age spa dedicated to screening the genetic compatibility of certain humans and "ascending" them into serpent people. It's useful for a modern era game, as some of the ideas about genetics and health are decidedly modern. Useful stuff, but it could use more narrative to give busy Keepers advice as how to use the scenario. Four out of five.
The Moon of the Hunger scenario actually begins with statistic blocks for its villains on page 54, before the scenario proper on page 51. It features an eye-bleeding full page of introductory text that ends with no call to action. Two pages later the mission is explained: retrieve a ring. This ring allows Eman the mad sorcerer to enter the waking world from the Dreamlands. He takes on the form of the Hunter and his hounds, which is something of a cliché. The investigators have to find the ring and sever the connection before the Hunter catches up with them. For a Dark Ages scenario it seems surprisingly lethal – there's no dynamite or shotguns here. Three out of five.
A Woodland Tale takes place during the English Civil War. It involves a sorcerer, a monstrous wood, and a hot blonde corpse named Martha who tries to seduce the investigators. The entire scenario hinges on the success of a dubious seduction – Martha's tactic is to drop her nightgown and slip into bed next to the investigator. This is simply poor plotting; if the investigator role-plays his character (who, as the scenario states, "has been in the field for a long time") he shouldn't hesitate. But suspicious players should, because no good comes from easy women in role-playing games. Worse, the Keeper has the option of simply having the investigator make a POW roll against Martha's APP. A successful seduction means death. This is the ONLY way the villain gets his power, and if investigators are subdued "they will be trussed up so they cannot resist and Martha will force herself on them." Raped, in other words. One out of five.
Returning to the King takes place in the 60s and has nothing to do with the King in Yellow. It does have to do with a fantasy-obsessed geek named Oswald who is drawn into the Dreamlands in his quest to find King Arthur. He comes under the wing of sorcerer Mhae-Yrn (Merlin, get it?) who follows him back to our world with a rock guitar and a plan to summon Yog-Sothoth through rock music. If this scenario was set ten years later Oswald could easily be a Dungeons & Dragons gamer. In fact, this scenario is quite similar to the Cthulhu Now classic scenario The Evil Stars, which took place in the 80s, complete with dangerous roadies and otherworldly rock music. That doesn't diminish the fun though. Five out of five stars.
The investigators take on the role of a Chinese Tong in pursuit of Genghis Khan's stone horse. Why? The scenario doesn't really explain other than that Tong boss Rong (that's Rong the Tong, if you're paying attention) believing that "it will help him consolidate all the Tongs in Peking under his leadership." Uh, okay. So the Tong are off on a cross-country journey to find an ancient temple. Along the way they meet a witch, ghouls, and British officers. Within the temple is a new Lesser God, Aiueb Gnshal, who has a really interesting ritual that involves animated skins…and unfortunately has little to do with the scenario. Still, this is a fun, interesting scenario if a little sparse in places. Four out of five.
Overall, this is a surprisingly uneven collection. Some of the other scenarios are obviously meant as one-shots due to the unique investigator backgrounds or the high likelihood of death. Of all the scenarios, Rolthin Abbey is the easiest to use out of the box, and Returning to the King is certainly the most innovative.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Gatsby and the Great Race is an interesting if somewhat peculiar scenario that's really only suitable for a convention game. To give you an idea of its scope, it's built for up to 32 people; although there are rules for as few as six players and a Keeper. Inspired by the Great Gatsby, this scenario's plot features Julian Gatsby at an afternoon garden party. Finding a time-traveling spell in his grandfather's journal, Julian decides to make some money by jumping backwards in time. The time jump is only an hour, but it's enough for Julian's purposes.
With the death of Julian's grandfather, he now owns a grand home with little money to support it. Julian's brilliant idea is to gamble on a horse race, which just happens to be the same day as the housewarming party. Julian's plight is that he's stuck in a time loop. Once this becomes apparent, the scenario slowly devolves into a Groundhog Day plot, with the characters aware of the time shift slowly becoming unhinged with each repetition. The key to restoring the time distortion is a disc, pieces of which have broken and are scattered throughout the house.
This is a time travel scenario with three different scenes. Each time jump, the house changes subtly. The scenario, with its multitude of characters, plays more like a LARP or a dinner mystery. Because it's a party, you could easily stage an actual party as a grand role-playing game, which might be a lot of fun.
To make the scenario even more crazy, multiple Keepers can each run a different table. In this case, each table represents an alternate reality, each with their own piece of the disc. Through a "possession" technique, different players playing the same character are reinserted into different tables, so that there is literally a new person in the same role. To really confuse people the players who are switching places can be blindfolded, although this seems like an unnecessary step. They can even switch characters entirely between tables, making for a hilariously confusing but entertaining evening.
The level of complexity staging such a scenario is tremendous – it's on the scale of hosting your own True Dungeon, complete with a "Limbo" room for players between events, multiple Keepers playing various NPCs, and a coordinated schedule that requires them all to work together. You don't just run a game like this on a whim.
Most Keepers will be interested in Chapter Three, the single game option. In comparison, Gatsby and the Great Race just doesn't seem as much fun. And in case you're wondering, the reference to the Great Race has nothing to do with the Great Race of Yith. This is about the horse race and time travel.
If there's a problem with this scenario it's that it has little to do with Lovecraftian Mythos. There's really no ending advice on the conclusion of the scenario, other than that the partygoers are threatened by something large moving from room to room just before they return to normal time. There's no statistics for whatever this is – recommendations include a dimensional shambler or an avatar of Nyarlathotep. "Whatever you choose, it should give the players a run for their money – some may die, and they will not come back to life this time!"
Well that's great, but Keepers might want more advice as to how to wrap the scenario up. It's clear Gatsby and the Great Race's primary utility is as a convention scenario. It's more Gatsby than Great Race.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
King of Chicago is actually two adventures in one, both crime related. The first is set in Gangland Chicago and the second is set in the French city of Marseilles. In addition to the basic scenarios, there are two articles of interest, included to lend depth to the Keeper's understanding of underlying events. The first is a discussion of Prohibition and how it fostered black marketeering and organized crime, and the second is a discussion of the same aspects of international weapons smuggling. Both are well written and provide an excellent overview of their subjects. The two adventures themselves are complex and well written, and have the added advantage of providing at least some information on the two cities they are set in; which are otherwise not addressed in any guidebooks. Speaking of which, I hope that some day Chaosium reproduces the Cairo and London Guidebooks, and nice additions would include Chicago and Marseilles too! At any rate, I don't want to go into too much detail on the adventures, other than to note that there are plenty of opportunities for research, and, somewhat more unusually in CoC adventures, a much increased likelihood of gunplay and fisticuffs, courtesy of the organized crime elements in each story. In classic CoC, this makes both adventures deadly indeed, though if your campaign is more "pulpish" than most, it should simply increase the excitement. In each case, the eldritch horror behind the criminal elements is difficult though not impossible to defeat, and the rewards for doing so are commensurate. Overall, these are two excellent scenarios, and alas, very difficult to find for CoC players that didn't buy them back in the day -- at least until now. Thanks, RPGNow, for bringing them back to the light of day!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
The Thing at the Threshold is a well written mini-campaign with an excellent back-story that is loosely based on the short story by HPL of the same name. The villain is insane and guilty of the goriest crimes against both his own loved ones and against reality as we know it. In the end, perhaps only the intrepid investigators can save the world from his mad machinations. Threshold contains three tightly woven chapters unfolding events that lead to the bizarre conclusion. In typical Chaosium fashion, it is filled with sidebars and player aids that will go far towards helping the players build the atmosphere the Keeper desires in the game. The bad "guys" are challenging, indeed perhaps even life threatening and should suffice to keep the players on their toes throughout the scenario, especially given that they are not even sure who the villain of the piece is for quite some time. Enjoy! This one reflects Chaosium at their best!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
This supplement provides a series of adventures for use throughout the "Lovecraft Country" setting that Chaosium was publishing back in the '90's. The scenarios are wide ranging and scattered throughout the Miskatonic Valley (thus ensuring the Lovecraft Country supplements get used), with a variety of settings and mysteries for the players to engage in. While generally not useful in terms of a campaign, they would make nice interludes or one-shots between major campaign themes. Individually the scenarios are well written and intriguing enough to make them worth playing, though in one or two cases they are overly linear and one at least is a cliche used by another supplement.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
This is a collection of blank documents relating to sanitariums and mad-houses in general and include admission forms, records of treatment, dispositions and prescriptions and discharge forms among others. Originally published more as a "novelty" item than anything else, they are quite well done, and could prove of use to Keeper's whose Players like to have documents to shuffle and hold during the game.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
This is an old school core rulebook, scanned to PDF with no bookmarks. It is basically indistinguishable from Call of Cthulhu 5th edition in style and substance. It has the crunchy game system section with the endless weapons/equipment tables and pointless movement rules that wouldn't look out of place in D&D 3rd edition . The skill set is both smaller and more useful than the Call of Cthulhu, which is a big plus for anyone who ever tried to create a character in BRP. It has a rather slim but highly useful setting chapter, which gives you the flavor of the period for those of us that slept through history lessons. Basically it all boils down to this: Dark Ages were called that for a reason – it was full of desperately poor and ignorant people living short and brutish lives under soul crushing oppression. A perfect setting for cosmic horror, I am sure you'll agree.
Next comes the Magic and Bestiary chapters, both are surprisingly good, or at least better than their Call of Cthulhu equivalents. The concept of limbo is introduced in the magic chapter, non-mythos magic is also discussed and of course there is the obligatory spell list, which is mercifully short and to the point. There are some new monsters and deities in the bestiary chapter. They tend to be less on tentacle rape and more eat your soul side. Each has roughly one page description and an illustration.
Last but not least is “The Tomb” scenario. Except for lack of clear reason for investigators to get involved, it is a solid adventure with lots of mystery, exploration and gratuitous violence. Typically for old school, a TPK is likely half-way through the plot and virtually guaranteed at the end, but it is still a fun scenario to play none the less.
Overall it is a passable rulebook for those nostalgic for the good old days, whether it is worth the price for the rest of us, is another matter entirely. Barely grade C from me.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Although written for Call of Cthulhu, this is a fantastic resource for any historical game set during the Victorian era (including the Wild West). I had spent a bit of time researching similar info for my own games but I'm thrilled that Chaosium has made this available -- It's so much more extensive and complete!
In addition to lists of items and prices theres also valuable info on the years certain things were invented. This makes it a good resource for world building and campaign design in general.
While it has a simple design and layout the book more than makes up for this in information and utility. If a book of "Victorian Era Equipment" for an RPG sounds like something you could use in your game - this will make you very happy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 0 items |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Log In 
