The juggernaut of Cthulhu Eternal scenarios continues … with today’s release of “Spoiled Milk” by Jo Kreil. This is the fourth title in our Miskatonic Mysteries line and, like the others, can be played with the Jazz Age version of the Cthulhu Eternal SRD (which we’ve bundled in with the download on DTRPG).
The set up is simple: a sudden rise in the number of residents falling ill after consuming spoiled milk has put the town of Arkham on high alert. People are questioning the quality of the product coming from the three main dairies supplying locals with their daily deliveries. Some have even taken to blaming bleary-eyed milkmen for the spate of illness. Arkham seems on the brink of a milk-related uproar!
Of course things are not as simple as they would appear … and there are certain strange and unusual aspects to the milk-related illnesses and hospitalizations. Can the Protagonists discover the true cause of these weird happenings … and fix the situation?
This scenario is a short self-contained mystery that will take a group of plucky Protagonists from the hustle and bustle of downtown Arkham out into the rural districts which surround it. We’ve handily just drawn an all-new map of these environs, so you can take your investigations out into the peculiar countryside.
It’s worth noting that, like the previous Miskatonic Mysteries, the core of this adventure has been released previously as a supporting scenario to Dateline: Lovecraft. This version converts everything across to Cthulhu Eternal, puts it all into a fresh new layout, and compiles all the digital handouts into a VTT-friendly format.
We have chosen to release this PDF at a lower price-point than others in the Miskatonic Mysteries line, not because it’s shorter or less-polished (it’s neither of those) but because we thought it would be good to have a cheaper way for people to see the production values we put into these products.
So … pack your shotguns into the Packard. We’re going out to visit the dairy. What could go wrong?
Five months ago (to the very day, in fact) we unleashed the first batch of our OGL System Reference Documents for the Cthulhu Eternal RPG. Little did we think that just a short time later we would be announcing that 5,000 copies of Cthulhu Eternal SRDs have been sold (counting those originals and the additional era that we released later).
We are incredibly thankful to everyone who has grabbed some or all of those PDFs … and even more grateful to people who have used them to power their own game sessions, or who are already hard at work strip-mining our rules to become part of new games of their own creation. We created Cthulhu Eternal from the outset to be a community resource … and the fact that it has spread far and wide, and so quickly, really does warm the cockles of our Eldritch hearts.
While DTRPG is set up in a way that means free and Pay-What-You-Want products seldom get “Best Seller” metal allocated to them … if we were able to earn such titles for our SRDs based on sales numbers, here’s how they’d look:
Thanks to everyone for your support … Go forth and create. You know it’s what Great Cthulhu wants!
We are delighted to announce the publication of the third in our popular Miskatonic Mysteries series of scenarios playable using the Cthulhu Eternal Jazz Age SRD. This one is titled “Smoke Green” and written by the super-talented Noah Lloyd — you can grab it right now over on DriveThruRPG.
This Arkham-based scenario is one of my personal favourites, in part because I have run it LOADS of times at different gaming conventions around the world (and elsewhere). It was one of our featured games at Necronomicon 2019 in Providence, and also memorably run as part of the Yog-Sothoth.com online convention in 2020.
Smoke Green presents protagonists with an intriguing mystery. Something odd is going on in Arkham. The founder and president of Reinhart Cigarettes, a popular brand that recently opened a curious pyramid-shaped factory/HQ down by the Arkham docks, has been murdered!
Reinharts have a curious selling point: the smoke from them has a curious green color. The manufacturers are famously secretive about what makes their cigarettes unique. Could it be that a rival tobacco has gone to the extraordinary length of murdering the company president … just to find the formula? Or is this somehow tied to the strong support Reinhart’s head honcho has been giving to one of the candidates in Arkham’s bitterly-fought Mayoral race?
The protagonists are hired by the current Mayor to clear him of any involvement … but is there more going on here than anyone imagines? Is there something … uncanny … at work? Something with a Mythos flavor? Only by investigating this most baffling of cases, will the truth be uncovered.
Reinhart Cigarettes: the only cigarette with an emerald smoke
The scenario is available right now over on DriveThruRPG. As with all of our Miskatonic Mysteries, the adventure is written in a way that offers the GM three possible Mythos backstories, each with additional clues and a thrilling conclusion. Pick the one you like … or run the scenario multiple times using different options.
Recently we saw an online post from an advertising manager at a well-known game publisher reminding people that any use of the well-known (Kevin Ross designed) depiction of the Robert Chambers “Yellow Sign” is subject to Intellectual Property constraints. They own the rights to said symbol.
We cannot argue that what those marketing people are saying is true … except that is only PART of the story. It neglects to mention that more recently, a far more benevolent publisher (the ever-amazing Pelgrane Press) commissioned a re-designed version of the Yellow Sign for their super-classy “Yellow King” TTRPG … and true to their community-minded nature, THEY decided to release their version of the foul sigil into the Public Domain.
So … yes … if you’re looking to publish something based on Robert Chamber’s vision you COULD pay a game company for the right to use a well-known version of The Yellow Sign … but honestly why would you when there is a perfectly good alternate version that you can get for free?
We are delighted to announce that today we’ve released yet another PDF scenario supplement for the Cthulhu Eternal RPG, this time a “Lost Masterpiece” — two scenarios written by industry-titan Kevin Ross in the 1980s, but never before published.
In “A Night on Bald Mountain” (actually the very first Lovecraftian adventure Kevin ever wrote), the action revolves around a missing relative of one of the protagonists. Has the reclusive Uncle Ben simply abandoned his rural farmhouse … or is his disappearance something to do with old stories of dark sorceries? Or visitors from beyond the human sphere? Or both?
“Reclamation Project” is set in a major university (it could be Miskatonic U, or something that works better in your campaign). A weird and secretive project has been launched in the basement of the Med building, drawing in some of the shrewdest minds from several faculties. What are they so intrigued by? And does it relate in any way with the sudden rise in break-in attempts and prowlers reported around campus at night?
Both scenarios have a decidedly “Old School” vibe to them, their basic structure unchanged from the original 1980s text. We have brushed up the statistics and rules to make them fully compatible with either the Jazz Age or Modern Day versions of Cthulhu Eternal.
Dive into the past and go head-to-head with the Mi-Go … but be warned, those Fungi are mean buggers.
With the Cthulhu Eternal “Jazz Age” SRD now out in the wild, we have the opportunity to take some of the nifty scenarios we’ve released in unstatted form and re-release them as ready-to-play Cthulhu Eternal games. We are calling this series of scenarios the “Miskatonic Mysteries.”
We’ve decided to start by converting the Dateline LovecraftEXTRA scenarios (which, BTW, you can still download with CoC 7e stats on the downloads page of this site).
So far we’ve released two of these with Cthulhu Eternal stats: “To Touch the Untouchable” and “Help Wanted”. If your gaming group likes a bit of old-school investigative horror on the weird streets of Arkham, these scenarios are probably right up your alley. Unlike the previous versions, these rebooted PDFs have no reliance on Dateline Lovecraft, and contain every handout you need to play the scenario in full.
More Miskatonic Mysteries will emerge in coming months . . .
The scenario centres upon a new production of Oscar Wilde’s Decadent play Salome, being prepared in London West End theatre. Persistent rumours of curious happenings have attached themselves to the majestically-staged production. And Oscar Wilde — usually the most gregarious of souls — has become sullen and withdrawn. The playwright’s close friend Bosie approaches the Protagonists to try to understand the strange pall that seems to have settled over Oscar and the forthcoming play.
This scenario has quite a long history of its own. I first encountered it in January 1996 — back in the pre-WWW era, when Lovecraftian gamers used to gather conspiratorially in USENET newsgroups and on subscription-only email lists. In the latter category, one of my favourites was the “Chaosium Digest”, a list where fans of every RPG currently supported by Chaosium could be freel share house-rules or new skills ideas or anything else for the whole community to enjoy.
Simon Lee posted a convention scenario to the Chaosium Digest, something truly inspired that he had written for a South African con in 1995. It was called “Prophecy” … and that free text-only scenario forms the basic core of the adventure we’ve just released. On its 25+ year journey from then-to-now a lot of complexity has been added to create a whole world of intriguing Aesthete NPCs and offer a more detailed long-form clue trail. The end result is something that I truly believe is one of the most intriguing Victorian Cthulhu scenarios to have been published for any game system.
Doing the in-depth research to flesh out this scenario was one of the most enjoyable tasks I’ve had for a game project, since it gave me an excuse to read an enormous amount about the Aesthete and Decadent movements in 1890s English art. Or, more to the point, read about the outlandish, scurrilous and flamboyant artists who populated that particular “school” of subversive counterculture. Where most game depictions of the Victorian Era focus on the “derring do” and “stiff upper lip” central to the vast Imperial achievements of Britain, there is an whole parallel strata of the late Victorian world that is far more concerned with foppery, indolence, and “art for art’s sake.” Oscar Wilde is the most famous of its scions (in England anyway, there is a whole separate Decadent tradition in fin de siècle France), but he is but one of many adherents. And many of them were extraordinary and outlandish individuals — and proudly so.
The NPCs I picked to use to bolster the backdrop of Simon’s scenario are all exemplars in this regard. They are pieces of real-world history that I could never invent as fictional elements … because, frankly, people would label them too OTT … I challenge anyone to read the biography of Count Eric Stenbock (writer of the incredible short tale “The True Story of a Vampire”) and not think he was someone’s elaborate literary creation.
We really hope that people enjoy this gem of a Lovecraftian scenario, and gaming tables everywhere can revel in the “Yellow” antics of the Aesthetes even as they recoil in horror from the terrors that seem to lurk behind the artwork they are bringing into existence. You have tickets for opening night … do you dare to take your seats?
This blog post wraps up the serialization of the CthuReview 2020, first published in the pages of Bayt al Azif Issue 4. Kind thanks to the editorial staff at that fine game magazine for allowing me to reproduce it here.
Lovecraft-Inspired Games Further Afield
The releases described so far (mostly) represent titles for games that have grown from the traditional “roots” of the Cthulhu Mythos RPG scene. Increasingly, though, the influences of Lovecraft’s world view and monstrous creations have seeped into many other games as well. The list of 2020-released games and supplements which follows is certainly not intended to be exhaustive but provides a glimpse of some of the more obvious influences beyond the normal sphere.
Achtung! Cthulhu 2D20 Quickstart (Modiphiüs)
It’s been known for some time that the roleplaying arm of Modiphiüs’ much-loved Achtung! Cthulhu line of World War II games wouldn’t be continuing as a licensed Call of Cthulhu property. In 2020, the publisher announced that Achtung! would be rebooted as an independent game utilizing the 2D20 system Modiphiüs has developed for its Conan and Star Trek RPGs.
While the core Keeper and Investigator books for this new system didn’t quite make it out in 2020 (they’ve since emerged in the first half of 2021), the Quickstart did just scrape into the period considered for this review. The 48-page Quickstart manages to cram a lot in. There’s a brief overview of the main factions in the Achtung! Cthulhu universe, a cutdown set of playable rules including a combat and magic system, five pre-generated and a 15-page mission involving occult tomes and nefarious German cultists. As a free PDF introduction to the new system, this is a great way to get a taste of what Achtung! Cthulhu (and its new system) is all about.
The Cthulhu Hack and other OSR Games
The Cthulhu Hack was created in 2016 by Paul Baldowski as a light-weight game for Lovecraftian investigation, loosely based on vintage D&D rules. Since then he, and several other folks, have created supplements for the game. In 2020 there were three substantial releases for The Cthulhu Hack:“Forgotten Duty” (a modern-day investigation featuring Roman ruins below the streets of Pamplona, Spain), “Threads” (a lengthy 2-part scenario featuring creepy clowns, spiders and the Dreamlands), and “Valkyrie Nine” (a shorter investigation set in the near future mining base on the moon).
As well as The Cthulhu Hack, there are a lot of other “Hacks” of the old-school D&D rules. Another one of them, The Jack Hack also has had a Lovecraft-based scenario released for it – Ripper Fhatagn. The Jack Hack is focused on the Gaslight-era murders of Jack the Ripper; this supplement adds Lovecraftian elements to that grim world.
While not in the family of “Hacks”, three other OSR titles with Mythos (or Mythos-adjacent) themes were also released in 2020:
Lost Carcosa (not to be confused with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess book titled simply Carcosa),
Dark Horrors & Hidden Places RPG (a re-release by Precis Intermedia of an older Steampunk Horror RPG, converting it to OSR rules), and
Four Against Darkness (published by Ganesha Games) is a solitaire fantasy RPG of dungeon exploration which has become quite popular in recent years. The basic premise is that the solo player controls four characters who step through a GM-less delve through a procedurally generated dungeon, hoping to complete a quest. It’s not strictly a roleplaying experience, nor is it a prose “choose-your-own” kind of reading experience. It’s something in between. In 2020, the publisher adapted this basic concept to the Lovecraftian horror sub-genre.
Instead of exploring a dungeon, the plucky group of investigators is charged with travelling around different locations in 1930s America trying to foil a nefarious Mythos plot before time runs out. There are several different endgame scenarios, each of which brings the characters face-to-face with one of Lovecraft’s nastiest creations. While designed primarily for solo play, the book does also suggest it could be run as a multi-player GM-less cooperative “RPG-lite” game with each player controlling one investigator.
Grey Cells is an RPG from Dapper Fish Designs that is solely dedicated to recreating crime-solving stories. It’s all about investigation and piecing together clues (and in that regard its intentions mirror GUMSHOE, albeit more leaning to the Hercule Poirot end of things). All good investigation games need a Cthulhu add-on, and thus was “Mythos Mysteries” created for Grey Cells.
It’s a sizeable supplement (92 pages) which aims to support a few different sub-genres of Lovecraftian investigation – it defines a “Cosmic Horror” mode and a “Pulp Lovecraft” mode. It introduces rules for madness, tomes, and the like … but the real strength of this supplement is the way in which it tries to capture the quintessence of what goes into a great Lovecraft mystery yarn and suggest ways to structure games to emulate it.
Cthulhu Deep Green
I described Cthulhu Deep Green in the CthuReview for 2019 – it is a super-light system that adapts Graham Walmsley’s excellent Cthulhu Dark RPG to a modern-day conspiracy-horror setting a la Delta Green. In 2020, a new scenario was released for the system: “The Linear Men” (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/324744/The-Linear-Men). This 2-part scenario is interesting because it is based not only on CDG but another offshoot of Cthulhu Dark, Trophy (Hedgemaze Press).
While we’re on the subject of super-rules-light RPGs which have released Lovecraft-themed supplements, it’s probably worth mentioning a few others.
One Page Cthulhu is a lightweight solo game by Noah Patterson. Like Four Against Darkness, described above, this game involves an exploration where the specific placement of areas and adversaries are determined by die rolls. In this game there’s just one investigator character that is controlled by the player, and their ultimate goal is to defeat a “Boss Monster”. Each turn, the player picks a direction to go, then rolls to add a certain shape of map addition, rolls again to populate it with some kind of adversary.
If overcome, it yields a certain number of clue points – when enough have been collected, the “Boss” can feasibly be defeated. If the game doesn’t sound very Lovecraftian, it isn’t really – but the scenarios which frame the adventures do namedrop HPL’s creations. There are three volumes in the One Page Cthulhu’s Herbert West Trilogy: “Miskatonic Tunnels”, “The Black Caverns”, and “Night in Arkham Woods”.
Another similar effort is Bob McGough’s series of “Tales from Bob” adventures. The simplest is “Mythos Mishaps” which is a single page PDF describing a series of possible mysteries, adversaries, and creepy locations and allowing some random rolls or picks to make a combination of these which could form the basis for a Mythos-fueled adventure (where the GM fills in all the other details). The other titles in the series seem to each be based around a specific Lovecraft short story and provide some possible situations and challenges that could place the investigator into the world depicted by the stories – either by random dice rolls or GM picks. There are three such one-page scenario skeletons:
Another tiny rules-light game of Lovecraftian horror, Writers in the Dark is played between two people, each of whom writes letter to the other describing the horrific secrets that they have uncovered, and their fears for their very safety and sanity. Another take on the same epistolic horror concept is The Innsmouth Papers by Malcolm Harbrow.
I was fortunate enough to hear about this little gem of a (system agnostic) supplement when it was being Kickstarted; otherwise I probably would never have known it to exist. Campo de Mitos is an oddly specific campaign setting, but perhaps all the more intriguing because of it. It describes a rural region of Southern Spain – the area surrounding the Rock of Gibraltar – in the 1920s. The writer, Paco Garcia Jaén, does a great job describing (in English, perhaps not her native language) a really warm and evocative society of people blighted by the occasional presence of Mythos beliefs or entities.
There are also some nice elements of inclusivity in its depictions of a very different era of social mores.
While perhaps not an obvious locale to set your Lovecraftian games, if you’re up for a change of pace you could do a lot worse than send your investigators to this haunted version of Campo de Gibraltar.
Other D&D 5e
While I’ve already described the substantial volume of material produced by Petersen Games for its D&D 5th Edition setting, that is not the only D&D-fueled Lovecraftian content to come out on 2020. There are (at least) a couple of other publishers also actively releasing such material.
Whispers in the Dark (Saturday Morning Scenarios)
Unlike the Petersen Games’ Lovecraftian content, Whispers in the Dark steers clear of the heroic fantasy genre and instead adapts familiar rules to allow players to pursue investigative horror scenarios. Thus, the game style that Whispers seeks to evoke is not terribly far from Call of Cthulhu, even if the game mechanics are founded in very different roots.
To date the ruleset only exists in a Quickstart edition – a 78-page book that offers the basics around character creation, equipment, damage & combat, Mythos magic, and Madness & Sanity. Also included is a full scenario (complete with pre-generate characters) set in 1920s New Orleans.
In addition to the Quickstart, Saturday Morning Scenarios also released a number of support books for the game: an Investigator’s Companion (short player guide), Invitation Only (a scenario following on from the adventure in the Quickstart, Horror in the Windy City (an extensive setting sourcebook for 19th Century Chicago), Spring Heeled Jack (a brief game summary of the eponymous Gaslight legend) and She Who Rules The Sea (a brief description of an invitation-only spiritualist society).
This one-shot Lovecraftian mystery adventure is set in a generic fantasy setting that can easily be slotted into an existing game world (or tweaked to fit). Unusually for a fantasy scenario, the DM has the option of allowing for characters to “win” the scenario purely through puzzling out the mystery with no hack-and-slash involved. Of course, it also supports a more conventional play style with combat-oriented resolutions to encounters. Although relatively short, the scenario – which revolves around tracking down a missing person – is rendered using surprisingly good production values for an indy published title.
Almost half of the book is devoted to “The Great Old One Compendium” – Lovecraft-inspired elements to add color to the fantasy world, things like cults, secret societies, curses, and rituals, and of course a selection of new monstrosities. ()
This chunky RPG – two hardback volumes, each around 300 pages – is set in an alternative version of our own history. Things diverged at some point in World War I when a bizarre mist known as “the Miasma” manifested and began transforming living things into monstrosities; corrupt biological mutations. The current year is 1984, but the world is very, very different to our eighties – gone are New Romantics and fluoro legwarmers, replaced by a world filled with warring factions corrupted by alien influences and dubious new technologies. The game describes its setting as an intersection of science-fiction, steampunk, dieselpunk, and cosmic horror.
Technically Eldritch Century is written for a tweaked version of D&D 5e which is known as the “Draco System” but there is also support for running the material with the established default rules. Book 1 (Expeditions) focusses on character creation, special abilities, equipment, combat, and vehicles. Book 2 (Almanac) is about the Wounded Earth setting, describing factions and communities as well as a bestiary of monstrosities which characters might encounter.
The books are sold together as a bundle and hardcopy versions may be available through the Backerkit set up to support folks who funded this game via Kickstarter.
Cthulhu Parlour’s “Hotel Lovecraft”
This Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendphotography/the-storymasters-tales-hotel-lovecraft/description), was successfully funded in 2020 (and which has since delivered). Billing itself as a light roleplaying game, the main focus is on delivering an immersive audiovisual choose-your-own type of narrative. The game is set in a haunted house with some 54 locations, each of which has a tale associated with it – which is partly described written form, and partly delivered through recorded theatrical narrations over evocative soundscapes. After the GM has read out the text from the book and played the audio file, the rest of the players must choose between a handful of options of places to explore or things to do in the room. There are also some nice physical props – metal keys – that come along with the game. Is it really an RPG? I guess it depends on how you define the term: to me this feels more like a “Fighting Fantasy” type book brought to life with audio and props.
Future Horrors: New Kickstarters
In addition to looking backwards at what’s already been released, it’s sometimes interesting to look into the crystal ball (or maybe Shining Trapezohedron?) and get a sense of what is coming next. One of the best ways of doing that is to take a look at Kickstarter campaigns for Lovecraftian RPG projects that have funded but haven’t yet delivered their final rewards. In 2020 there were only two such new Kickstarter campaigns, significantly fewer than have been run in recent years.
In April 2020, this Kickstarter successfully funded a new sourcebook for the Cthulhu Invictus setting. Promising to provide a game depiction of the British Isles during the era of Roman occupation (1st and 2nd Centuries CE). It’s a mysterious place on the very periphery of the Roman Empire, home to a diverse collection of peoples and cultures.
This book was originally slated to be ready for release in November 2020 but hit some snags, mostly due to the departure of one of the main writers. The project has recruited a replacement but has been significantly delayed; by current estimates the book will arrive about a year later than planned.
[Update, March 2022 — this campaign has still yet to deliver any rewards to backers.]
After successfully delivering a sizeable 1920s Shanghai sourcebook and scenario set in 2019, Sons of the Singularity ran a Kickstarter campaign to create a similar volume for a different part of Asia – Indochina (French Colonial Vietnam). Their campaign funded in July with an estimated delivery of December 2020. They didn’t quite make that goal, but the books and PDFs did reach backers around the middle of 2021.
[Update, March 2022 — this campaign has successfully delivered both PDF and print copies of two books.]
Conclusion
While it’s true that the COVID-19 pandemic did stop one part of the gaming world, it really hasn’t significantly slowed the volume of new games and supplements that are being brought to market. Of course, some (if not all) of the products described in this review were probably started well before 2020 and mostly already done when lockdowns and shipping slowdowns really hit. So, perhaps the true impacts of those things will be reflected more in the gaming industry’s output for 2021?
Overall, the strong support for Lovecraftian content in the gaming community certainly continues. What is even more encouraging is its diversity and spread – where there was once just a single family of closely-connected Cthulhu-themed RPGs, there are now a broad range of different options for Lovecraft-inspired gaming. This is great for gamers; if you don’t like the particular flavor of one game, chances are you can test-drive four or five other games which have taken the same source ideas and developed them in different ways. It is always worth experimenting in this way, because finding the system that best suits the idiosyncrasies and preferences of your gaming group can elevate a great gaming experience to a truly awesome one.
We continue our serialization of the “year in review” article I wrote for Bayt al Azif Issue 4, summing up everything released for Lovecraftian RPGs in the calendar year 2020.
Petersen Games (D&D 5e)
Since 2017, Petersen Games have been publishing fantasy roleplaying games under the (inaccurately titled) “Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos” (SPCM) product line. In recent times, these have all been designed for D&D 5th Edition. Throughout 2020, a frantic publication schedule churned out some sixteen books. The majority of these were episodes in multi-book campaigns – fans purchased these as subscriptions, and a new title arrived each month. The campaigns published to date have all featured 4 chapters each. The campaigns released in 2020 were Yig Snake Granddaddy, Dark Worlds, and The Big Sleep. In addition to these, Petersen Games also released five standalone scenarios.
If Chaosium’s Cthulhu Dark Ages (mentioned above) is intended as a somewhat historical version of a medieval setting, SPCM is the opposite. It’s very much the kind of typical fantasy world most gamers would recognize from other D&D and Pathfinder lines, but with an added overlay of Cthulhu Mythos themes and monstrosities. Judging from online communities, there are a lot of people who enjoy that combination.
Yig Snake Granddaddy
This campaign is made up of four books: “A Land Out of Time”, “Against the Serpentfolk”, “The Prehistory War”, and “The Ancient Ages Again.” There are fourteen episodes of campaign chapters spread across those books. The campaign isn’t specifically set in any pre-defined fantasy RPG world but instead in a generic locale (a wilderness region with a nearby ancient frontier city). The intention is that a DM could slot this into whichever game world he or she liked.
The campaign features four or five Cthulhu Mythos races and entities aligned into a series of factions. Yig and the serpentfolk are a persistent presence, but there are also Elder Things, Yithians and a cameo appearance by Bastet, Egyptian goddess of cats. All of these elements are worked into a lengthy plot with a number of twists and turns.
Starting with an expedition into the wilderness, the player characters soon discover that creatures from the far distant past – dinosaurs – are being pulled into the current era. After being betrayed, they find themselves briefly captives of the serpentfolk but soon rescued by an unlikely ally. The serpentfolks are hell-bent on bringing more and more civilizations from the past back into existence in the present, creating general havoc which the player characters must try to undo. A jaunt into the Dreamlands is a key part of an audacious plan that also features a brief stint being mind-swapped into Yithian cone bodies. It all ends with a mass battle in which allies assembled by the player characters go head-to-head against a group intent on sacrificing an entire city in order to summon Yig to the world with Apocalyptic intent.
Dark Worlds
The Dark Worlds campaign comprises four chapters or “acts” – “The Ritual”, “Nithon”, “The Zepzeg Cycle”, and “The Green Pyramid”. Unlike previous SPCM campaigns, this one is largely set on an alien world – Yuggoth – and has some mildly Science Fiction elements mixed in among the standard fantasy tropes.
The campaign begins on a traditional fantasy world (of the DM’s choice). The player characters get embroiled in the schemes of a mad ruler and his court vizier, machinations that include meddling with Cthulhu Mythos rituals. As a result, the characters find themselves whisked off to Yuggoth where they must track down someone who can help them return home. Along the way they draw the attention of the mi-go.
The alien planet has its fair share of hazards, which the characters survive as they make their way to the mi-go city of Nithon. Along the way they see an ancient green pyramid awaken with mystic energies, watch a terrible battle between armies, and eventually come to the attention of a mysterious benefactor – a member of the curious Zepzeg race who share the planet Yuggoth. After a brief diplomatic mission to help a colony of gnorri, the characters come into contact with a lloigor and learn of a weapon of unheard-of power. The campaign ends with an epic battle as the characters and their allies take the fight to the mi-go.
The Big Sleep
This campaign is made up of four acts, the last of which technically came out in early 2021. The chapters are titled “The Sleeper Rising”, “The Doomed World”, “The Fate of the Empire”, and “Lullaby”. The general structure of this scenario adds a certain amount of Post-Apocalypse survival horror to the traditional fantasy experience. Instead of the big Mythos manifestation occurring at the culmination of the campaign, here the “big bad” – in this case Tsathoggua – manifests at the end of the first act and succeeds in wrecking the world. The remaining acts feature the player characters’ efforts to return the world to its former state.
The campaign begins a little like a traditional Call of Cthulhu scenario, albeit one transported to a fantasy city. The player characters are recruited to track down a hidden group of cultists who have some degree of secret influence at the royal court. Just as the culprits are unmasked by the investigating characters, Tsathoggua himself bursts through the palace walls bringing an army of eldritch horrors in tow. Assuming the player characters survive this onslaught, they are forced to flee – but there are opportunities to shadow the cultists and find some of the secrets of their order.
They then have some encounters with voormis on their way to plead for help from other realms and kingdoms. The rulers of the adjacent states all want something from the player characters before committing their resources to overthrowing the Mythos usurper. As the last act of the campaign, the characters descend into the ancient subterranean realms from whence Tsathoggua emerged, eventually arriving in lightless N’kai. The key to foiling the Mythos god rests in these stygian vaults … but Tsathoggua won’t go without a showdown!
Standalone Scenarios
In addition to the three chunky campaigns for SPCM, Petersen games also released a few smaller standalone adventures for the line: “The Lone Lighthouse”, “The Ghoul Who Saved Christmas”, “An Omen of the Stars”, “Night of the Brine”, and “The Pale Shepherd”.
Smaller Publishers
In addition to the established publishers mentioned above, each of whom released a sizeable amount of new Lovecraftian RPG content in 2020, there were other smaller publishers who also unleashed new titles.
Sentinel Hill Press
Best known for publishing the Arkham Gazette gaming magazine (which sadly had no issues released in 2020), SHP is also responsible for releasing one of the most fun Kickstarted CoC scenarios in recent history. That scenario is The Dare, a nifty little scenario set in the 1980s. The players take on the roles of teenagers who have been dared to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house. Of course, it being Call of Cthulhu, the “haunting” turns out to be much more sinister than your typical Scooby-Doo villain. First published back in 1996 (in the Triad anthology Dwellers in Shadow), Kevin Ross’ scenario perfectly captures the eighties horror vibe – think “Stranger Things” – but is also just a great, fun scenario.
Sentinel Hill ran a successful Kickstarter back 2017 to reboot this scenario, updating it for 7th Edition plus expanding it out a bit. The result is gorgeous and highly evocative of an era which many of us look back on with nostalgia. Full disclosure, I was responsible for a small number of graphical details for this book including a handout and the Atari-inspired 1980s CoC character sheets (which you can also download for free from my blog, Cthulhu Reborn).
Less flashy than The Dare, but equally as invaluable, Sentinel Hill Press also published a well-researched PDF which summarizes each and every Call of Cthulhu scenario that is set in and around the Miskatonic Valley. This “Miskatonic Country Scenario Guide” would be very helpful to anyone planning an extended campaign based around Arkham or Kingsport. I had a little bit to do with its researching, but it was almost single-handedly the work of the highly knowledgeable Bret Kramer. I did do the PDF layout, though.
A Time For Sacrifice (New Comet Games)
Rounding out the releases by formal Call of Cthulhu licensees, it’s worth mentioning A Time for Sacrifice by New Comet Games. Late in 2019, this book was the subject of a successful Kickstarter campaign – in 2020 it was delivered, pretty much on schedule (a rarity for Kickstarters of all sizes). This hard cover, full-color book consists of five scenarios all of which have a connection to Mayan culture or ruins found in the Yucatan or Central Mexico. Three of the scenarios (“Egg Out of Time”, “Space Between Time”, and “Doorway of the Gods”) were written by New Comet founded Ben Burns. Other scenarios are contributed by Brian Courtemanche (“Pyramid Scheme”) and Jonathan Bagelman (“Thirteenth Bak’tun”).
Cthulhu Reborn
I usually try to avoid talking in these articles about my own humble efforts at small-scale publishing under the Cthulhu Reborn imprint. After all, it feels like an abuse of the privileged role of reviewer to promote one’s own products. But 2020 was a massive year for Cthulhu Reborn with the release of the APOCTHULHU RPG in both Quickstart and core rule editions. So, I will break with my usual silence and describe what the new game is about – as to whether it’s any good, you can find several independent online reviews that will offer opinions on that subject.
Put simply, APOCTHULHU is a set of rules tailored to Post-Apocalyptic gaming in versions of our world where the insidious forces of the Cthulhu Mythos have somehow usurped mankind’s rule of the planet. Rather than picking any one form of “Lovecraftian Apocalypse” the game aims to support an endless variety of different “end of the world” scenarios. Included in the 73-page free Quickstart is a sample Apocalypse setting (and associated ready-to-run scenario) featuring Shub-Niggurath. The 330-page APOCTHULHU core rulebook has nine or ten different Post-Apocalyptic settings as well as detailed scenarios set in two of them.
One of the settings showcased in the core book is a version of William Hope Hodgson’s Night Land adapted for gaming by the grandmaster Kevin Ross.
Mechanically, APOCTHULHU uses a d100 system that will be very familiar to folks who have played recent games published by Arc Dream. It is released under the Wizards OGL and recycles some awesome previous rulesets that have similarly been published under properly open licenses.
As well as unleashing this new RPG on an unsuspecting gaming public, Cthulhu Reborn also continued supporting its older Dateline: Lovecraft and Convicts & Cthulhu lines with new Pay-What-You-Want PDF scenarios and, for Convicts, a campaign.
Magazines
Once upon a time there were multiple gaming magazines printing a wealth of Lovecraftian RPG content; these days there are just a handful.
Bayt al Azif, Issue 3
In 2020, Bayt al Azif released its third issue, which included a range of great scenarios, interviews and general articles about the Lovecraft gaming hobby.
Other Zines
While Bayt al Azif was the only professionally published magazine to exclusively focus on Lovecraftian RPGs in 2020, there were a few isolated articles in a few other mags (we know of one in Parallel Worlds, Issue 1 and another in Tabletops & Tentacles #1). There were also a few amateur “zine” publications released in 2020 with significant Cthulhu content. In the latter category, The Necronomizine (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/328314/The-Necronomizine) bills itself as a compilation of mostly system-free material including a couple of scenarios; it also has a scenario for Evil Hat’s Fate of Cthulhu.
Another interesting-looking zine is The Eldritch Inquirer #1 (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/299160/The-Eldritch-Inquirer-1), which provides supplemental material for the OSR Eldritch Tales White Box, by Raven God Games. The premiere issue has a strong focus on the 1920s and New England locales (both real and Lovecraft-invented) – there’s even a scenario in the remote wilderness of New Hampshire. Much of the content in this issue is described as system-neutral and possible to run with other game systems.
The Miskatonic Repository
Chaosium runs an online community publishing portal called the Miskatonic Repository aimed at providing an easy way for “fan-made” products to be made available to customers of DriveThruRPG (either free, Pay-What-You-Want, or for a fee). In 2020, there were 106 English-language titles released through the Miskatonic Repository (98 for a fee, 8 PWYW, and zero free).
While 106 Miskatonic Repository titles is clearly way too many to even list, let alone try to summarize, I’d like to nonetheless draw attention to a half-dozen noteworthy monographs that were released in 2020:
Full Fathom Five by Paul Fricker: Written by a well-known Call of Cthulhu writer (famous for his quirky scenarios), this attractively illustrated MiskRepo title puts players in the roles of a whaling crew in the 1840s. This particular voyage, however, the hardy sailors will pursue a lot more than their own “white whale” – they’ll come face-to-face with one of the most renowned creations of Lovecraft’s fevered imagination. They might even get rescued by yet another. It’s a fun change of pace one-shot scenario. It’s also been translated into a few other languages.
Highway of Blood by Alex Guillotte, et al: Set in West Texas during the 1970s, the vibe of this scenario can probably best be described as “grindhouse-y”, an appellation that is seldom applied to Lovecraft-related stories or scenarios. While out driving along a lonely stretch of highway, the player characters turn into an out-of-the-way nigh-ghost town for some gas or food … little do they realize they’re wandering into territory claimed by a bunch of inbred types with some very ancient beliefs.
Monophobia by Peter Rubin-Burgess: The idea of “solo” RPGs – ones that you play without a GM, on your own – have a certain appeal as a convenient way of stay gaming even when schedules or other circumstances (like, say, a pandemic) make it hard to gather a gaming group. This product is a simple set of tables and guidelines which aims to provide a framework for taking pre-existing non-solo scenarios – say, those from most published books – and running it in solo mode. It’s kind of like a dice-driven “Keeper emulator”. It’s a fun idea, albeit one that still requires some work and creative interpretation on the part of the player. Peter has written similar solo rulesets for a great many other games, too.
Time of the Serpent by Michael Diamond: This lengthy scenario is set in 1920s Chicago and represents a classic type of Call of Cthulhu investigation. The PDF is also nicely illustrated (mostly with period photos), but what really sets this release apart from any other MiskRepo title is the set of ten “Audio Handouts”. These MP3s aren’t sound effects but rather spoken clues that are narrated by some professional-sounding voice actors, some with ambient sound effects thrown in to establish the setting.
Cthulhu Dreadfuls Presents … by Brian Brethauer: There were actually two “Cthulhu Dreadful Presents …” titles released in close succession in 2020. The first was “#0: The Wystdovja Vale Gazetteer”. This 40-page PDF describes a new setting for Lovecraftian scenarios, a fictitious Eastern European village in the 1890s. The setting literally screams Hammer Horror classics, and if you’ve ever dreamed of running a game with that kind of aesthetic, you could do a lot worse than using this nicely defined rural setting. Released about the same time was “Cthulhu Dreadfuls Presents #1: Kiss of Blood” which is a 70-page adventure set in the Wystdovja Valley. Investigators are recruited by a local solicitor to track down a missing woman, whose late-night trysts in the countryside have brought her to the attention of some decidedly unsavory creatures of the night.
A Tableau of Red by Helen Yau: This modern-day scenario is set in Barcelona, Spain. A friend of the investigators is a teacher at a prestigious art school; during a visit to the charming Spanish city, curious events at the art school draw them into an investigation of the unnatural. As well as featuring an interesting and fresh location for Lovecraftian mysteries, this PDF is nicely illustrated throughout.
We’re getting to the end of our 2020 review, but still have one more part. Join us tomorrow as we describe a range of diverse games released in 2020 that show clear Lovecraft inspiration but aren’t from the “traditional” family tree of such games.
We continue our serialization of CthuReview 2020, the “year in review” article I wrote for the incredible Bayt al Azif Issue #4 — a Lovecraftian RPG magazine well worth your consideration. This content is reprinted by kind permission of the generous Bayt editors.
Chaosium / Moon Design, part II
In the previous blog posting we tackled the biggest of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu releases for 2020 (Cthulhu Dark Ages 3rd Edition, Malleus Monstrorum 2nd Edition, Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition Vol 1 and Children of Fear). That’s not all they released, however …
Harlem Unbound, 2nd Edition
In 2017, Chris Spivey burst onto the Lovecraftian RPG scene with his first self-published book, Harlem Unbound. That book, a warts-and-all depiction of the hard lives led by Black Americans in 1920s Harlem NY, went on to win awards as well as many accolades. Not long after its release, Chaosium announced that it had commissioned a second edition of the book to be released as part of the in-house Call of Cthulhu game line. That new edition made it to market in 2020.
Generally, the second edition of Harlem Unbound has all the content that made the first edition great, expanded out and augmented with extra scenarios. The one thing that this version doesn’t have is game statistics for Trail of Cthulhu / Gumshoe (the original book was dual statted for both CoC and ToC). For most gamers this won’t be a big deal, but if you’re especially keen to run a Harlem-based scenario or two using Gumshoe mechanics you would do well to track down the original version from Chris’ Darker Hue Studios.
As well as expanding on the sourcebook material from the original book, Harlem Unbound 2nd Edition incorporates four brand new scenarios to go alongside three of the original four scenarios (“Harlem (K)nights” from the first edition wasn’t included).
This is a great book, made all the more compelling by the heartfelt writing and willingness to tackle difficult – frequently distasteful – topics that a lot of authors would shy away from.
Does Love Forgive?
This slim softcover book is an oddity, to be sure. It includes two short classic era scenarios (“Love You To Death” and “Mask of Desire”) that are intended to be played with just one player and the Keeper. Both scenarios have strong thematic elements centering upon love and romance – between the player’s character and NPCs. This is unlike anything that Chaosium has previously published for Call of Cthulhu.
The two scenarios actually feel a lot more like magazine scenario, especially those translated from European publications like Worlds of Cthulhu. Indeed, the pair of adventures in Does Love Forgive actually do have a European lineage, coming from a Polish supplement released for Valentine’s Day 2020. Chaosium’s translated edition emerged much later in the year. The format of these scenarios, while innovative, does present some challenges – especially if the Keeper and player don’t know each other particularly well, or aren’t comfortable roleplaying romantic exchanges or interpersonal conflict with a romantic element.
Alone Against the Tide
Ever since Chaosium was bought out by its new management, there has been a healthy rebirth of a book format that had remained dormant for decades, namely the solo Call of Cthulhu scenario. These books don’t require a Keeper –the reader plays through them a little bit like a “choose your own” game book, but with Call of Cthulhu game rules and character sheets used for resolving key conflicts and encounters. Alone Against the Tide began life as a 2018 Miskatonic Repository title, but has been overhauled and given a more professional (albeit black-and-white interior) treatment for this main range release.
Stygian Fox
In previous year-in-review articles (see earlier issues of Bayt al Azif), I’ve talked about some of the circumstances that have forced Call of Cthulhu licensee Stygian Fox into a curious situation. With a backlog of Kickstarter campaigns to finalize and fulfill, they are reliant on a steady output of new supplements for their Patreon backers. These are released monthly to those patrons and made generally available via DriveThruRPG a little later. Some of the titles are also set up as Print on Demand titles.
In 2020, Stygian Fox released seven of these Patreon/DriveThru titles – which is a sizeable output for a small press. The profits from these books also allowed them to finally deliver one of their most anticipated Kickstarter campaigns.
New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, 2nd Edition (see CthuReview 2019)
The major milestone achieved by Stygian in 2020 was the fulfilment of the print release of this book. I already talked about this book, and its general brilliance, in CthuReview 2019 (in Bayt al Azif, Issue 3), so I won’t repeat that description here. Suffice it to say, it is a classic title which is great to have back in print.
Set in England during World War II, the eighth entry into the Fox Country series is a substantial scenario that weighs in at 84 pages (including NPC photos, handouts, and maps). A relative of one of the investigators – a rich maiden aunt – has abandoned the turmoil of wartime London and arranged a stay at a tiny island in Essex, known as Foulness Island. Her letters to the Investigator have painted a vivid picture of the serene and quiet life on the sparsely populated island, with all its quaint old country trappings and Roman ruins.
But when her letters unexpectedly and abruptly stop, the related Investigator begins to fear for her safety. Their investigations confirm Aunt Lydia has, indeed, gone missing. Locals also talk about unexplained lights in the sky, seen close to the ancient ruins.
As they learn more, it becomes apparent that there is much more to Foulness Island than just its quintessentially English village and ostensibly polite community. To get to the bottom of Aunt Lydia’s vanishing – and indeed numerous other disappearances – investigators will need to unravel a mystery that is both insidious and decidedly unnatural.
This short scenario is set in a remote rural town in North Dakota in 1921. A deadly disease has broken out across this tiny community — its cause a mystery. People fear that it may be a resurgence of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The investigators are brought into the snow-shrouded town to try to find how and why the disease took hold, and determine how to stop its spread. Of course, this being a Call of Cthulhu scenario, the sickness that is engulfing the town has origins that are decided unnatural. Dreams and other supernatural visitations point the way towards the true source of the outbreak, and a deeper personal tragedy that set it in train.
Set in the recent-historical era of the late 1990s, this scenario plays out in the east of England. A New Age cult called “Voice of the Machine” has been attracting lots of new recruits with its promises of heightened awareness through a combination of hallucinogens and meditation. One of the investigators has a friend whose daughter has been swept up in the cult. Wracked with worry, the friend asks the investigator to travel to Eaglescar and look into the strange counter-culture hippies that live in this remote town. Of course, the truth is much weirder than anyone would expect.
This book describes a science fiction “micro setting” for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, one in which humanity has explored much of our solar system and is preparing to look at mysterious places still further afield. Indeed, the investigators are among the crew of a space vehicle known as the Tryphena which is on a mission of exploration beyond our Solar System – but one which is destined to be much weirder than anyone could have predicted.
The first sign of space oddity comes when the Tryphena encounters a second vessel which seems to be an exact copy of their own ship. This doppelganger is found orbiting a lone planet in deep space, utterly abandoned by its crew. What strange events transpired that led to this bizarre situation? And what is down on the planetoid below?
Fox Country #12: The Strange Case of the Shadow Traveller
This Gaslight-era scenario revolves around the London Spiritualist Society, of which the investigators are either members or somehow associated. The manager of the society, Lord Henry Walters, has come to believe that some among the group have designs to summon up a malevolent entity – and that if successful, the society’s reputation will be ruined. Of course, he approaches the investigators to look into these grave concerns. The truth, as is often the case, proves to be something much stranger and more multi-faceted than anyone expects. The scenario plays out over two “acts” – the first is largely investigative, but the second takes investigators to a “haunted” locale and puts them in deadly peril.
This short modern-day scenario is set in a small town of Milo, Maine, where all the investigators grew up and went to school. A high school reunion brings them all back to Milo. During that event they come to learn that Alicia Thorne – one of the most popular girls from their childhood – vanished a year ago, under mysterious circumstances. Drawn into an investigation of the final days before Alicia went missing, characters might initially suspect Ben, her boyfriend. But there is much more to the situation than meets the eye.
When they finally get the bottom of the mystery investigators may find themselves facing a difficult moral decision. The scenario especially notes that its plot has elements involving suicide, and recommends gamers discuss their comfort level with adjacent subject-matter before starting.
This scenario represents another shortish WWII investigation occurring far from the front lines. In this case, the investigators become embroiled in a most bizarre situation where a German U-Boat mysteriously appears in the middle of an inland loch in a remote part of Scotland. A station has been set up to look into this unexplained phenomenon; by the time the investigation crew arrive the commander of that facility already lies dead, possibly at his own hand. Weird runestones found close to the lake only add to the weirdness and amplify feelings that the situation most definitely isn’t contained.
I had the extreme good fortune to play in a session of this scenario – run by author Rachael Randolph, no less – at NecronomiCon 2019, so can vouch for its general creepiness. The adversary which is slowly revealed as the scenario progresses is both original and subtle. In the session I played in, we were happy to have made it out alive after finally learning the horrible truth. Recommended.
Zennor, A Guide to a Village of Secrets
This short PDF describes a Gaslight-era setting loosely tied to Stygian’s Hudson & Brand franchise. In this booklet is described a creepy village perched on cliffs on the Cornwall coastline. It is an ancient place, full of secrets.
Golden Goblin Press
GGP, the other mainstay of the Call of Cthulhu licensee scene, put out two titles in 2020. These were both outputs of Kickstarter campaigns from previous years. The publisher also ran a brand-new Kickstarter in 2020 (for a project due to fulfil in 2021, see later in this article).
An Inner Darkness
The stated goal for this book was to create an anthology of 1920s Lovecraftian RPG scenarios which showcased not only the darkness of the Cthulhu Mythos but also the (sadly all too common) evils brought on by human prejudice, greed, and hate. It’s a tough topic to try to wrangle in a game book – depending on how one builds the depiction of human iniquity into the game narrative, things could get very dark, or alternatively underplay the massive impact this particular form of social ill might have personally had on the reader.
The six scenarios in An Inner Darkness all chart their own course in this regard. Some put the disgusting human trait front-and-center as a way of educating readers/players, while others keep human and Mythos ills quite separate in different parallel plot lines. This diversity of approach will probably mean that readers will like some scenarios more than others in this collection.
The six scenarios and their associated human “darknesses” are: “Dreams of Silk” (terrible workplace safety and exploitative child labor laws) by Christopher Smith Adair, “When This Lousy War is Over” (prejudice against disfigured Great War veterans) by Brian Sammons, “A Fresh Coat of White Paint” (detention and forced deportation of Mexican people in the Great Depression) by Jeff Moeller, “A Family Way” (sexual assault, torture, imprisonment and abortion-related discrimination) by Oscar Rios, “Fire Without Light” (racism and the Tulsa Massacre of 1921) by Helen Gould, and “They Are From Far Away” (the Ku Klux Klan in Maine) by Charles Gerard.
Eldritch New England Holiday Collection
This volume could just as easily be called “Oscar Rios Rendered in Book Format,” so great is the Golden Goblin founder’s influence on this book. It contains four scenarios – two old, two brand-new – all written by Oscar, and all linked (loosely) by two things. The first is the protagonists (player characters) who are all children from an extended family that is scattered over Lovecraft Country – some living in Arkham, some in Kingsport, and even one or two in Dunwich. The other thing that links the scenarios is the thematic association of each with one of the seasonal American holidays.
Such celebrations represent opportunities for extended family to all come together and spend time in each other’s company – and be adolescent Mythos investigators when the opportunity presents. Two of the scenarios in this collection were published in Miskatonic University Library Association Monographs, Chaosium’s earlier (print-only) experiment with community-created content. “Halloween in Dunwich” was featured in the 2005 monograph Halloween Horror while “Christmas in Kingsport” appeared in the 2006 monograph of the same name.
Both of these scenarios have been overhauled for the new anthology and updated to Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. Two new scenarios round out both the four seasons and the full-range of Miskatonic region fictional towns – “Easter in Arkham” and “Innsmouth Independence Day.” The style of all four is idiosyncratically Oscar Rios, the newer scenarios even moreso than the reprints. One point that should be stressed is that the structure of the scenarios means that they really only work with the pre-generated adolescent characters (“the cousins”) – the stories are built around their families and their background, and its assumed that all six participate in each game.
CthuReview 2020 will return … tomorrow
We still have more 2020-released Lovecraft goodness to discuss, so join us tomorrow when we delve into titles released by Petersen Games (for their SPCM RPG), Magazines and Fanzines, as well as titles published through Chaosium’s community program (the Miskatonic Repository).
Cthulhu Reborn 