By evening's Dead Light

After the underdeveloped and uninteresting Canis Mysterium: A Scenario with Bite, the good news is that the second entry in the ‘one night of horror’ series of scenarios from Chaosium, Inc. combines Call of Cthulhu with survival horror to deliver both an ominous sense of the unknown and shocks and scares aplenty. Dead Light: Surviving One Night Outside Of Arkham can be run as a one-shot and is playable in an evening or single session, or it can be easily slotted into an ongoing campaign as a short side-track adventure. Further, and notably, it is written for use with the forthcoming Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, so can be used as a taster for the new mechanics, but like all Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition titles, Dead Light is relatively easy to convert back to previous versions of Call of Cthulhu. It can also be used as an introduction to Call of Cthulhu and to horror roleplaying in general, as the threat faced in Dead Light is something other than the traditional creatures and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos. Does this mean that Dead Light is not a Call of Cthulhu scenario? Of course not, for the tone, sense of desperation, and the fact that the ‘investigators’ can be still be driven mad all firmly place it within Lovecraftian investigative horror.

Written to be played by between three and six player characters—who may or may not yet be investigators—Deadlight opens with them on the road out of Arkham, heading for the town Ipswich. The weather has drawn in and the car has been forced to slow in the face of the heavy storm. Coming to the rescue of a dishevelled and bewildered girl on the road the travellers take refuge at the roadside Orchard Run Gas and Diner. Here they find succour and shelter as well as another mystery in addition to where the girl came from. What caused a local farmer to swerve his truck so leaving the road all but blocked and left him incoherent with shock? What follows should be a nasty night and in nasty weather, the threat revealing itself as it comes hunting for those trapped in the cafe by the storm, ratcheting up the tension between the investigators and the NPCs as their lives are threatened.

Where a traditional horror scenario might have achieved this with vampires, zombies, or serial killers, Dead Light does it with something unknowable and unworldly, even ineffable. The threat almost has a Science Fiction feel to it and that is perfectly in keeping with the nature of Cosmic horror. Even its origins are horribly rational and thoroughly in keeping with the wider miscegenation found in Lovecraft Country.

Whilst Dead Light is essentially a survival horror scenario, mechanically it is quite survivable. There are relatively few dice rolls to be made throughout the scenario and it is not particularly heavy in terms of investigation or the need to make investigative rolls. What this means is that the investigators still have their supply of Luck to spend when it really matters—encountering the threat in the woods! This does not mean that Dead Light is no less deadly or lethal, indeed the threat the investigators face is not just implacable, it is all but unstoppable by conventional means. Thus investigator who attempts to use brute force to stop it is going to end up sorely disappointed and quite possibly dead. What this means is that the investigators will need to look for the means to stop the threat—and doing so will reveal the origins of the threat and perhaps the human folly that led to its release.

The issue with survival horror and with a threat as deadly as that in Dead Light is that it is too easy to kill the investigators. Whilst the thing is hunting them and everyone at the cafe, the Keeper needs to pace the scenario and not have it hunt down and kill everyone. This does not mean that he should be lenient should a player have his investigator act foolishly, but with plenty of NPCs around to show how the monster works, the Keeper should sacrifice them and so hint at the thing’s lethality and give time for the investigators to uncover what is really going on. The danger here is that in the hands of an inexperienced Keeper, Dead Light has the potential to result in the death of everyone at the Orchard Run Gas and Diner—including the investigators. A more experienced Keeper will know to play and draw the events of the scenario and the deaths of everyone present out over the course of the evening.

Although ostensibly set in the early 1920s and in Lovecraft Country, Dead Light is not location or time specific. It would work in any period from the 1900s onwards. Likewise, it can easily be relocated to almost any country. All it needs is a stretch of road that runs through heavy woods alongside which stands a petrol station and a roadside cafe. The NPCs may well need some adjusting here or there so that they are not American, but such adjustments are minor and they are well drawn enough to fit any other desired location.

Included with Dead Light is a four page guide to using it with earlier versions of Call of Cthulhu. That said, even the possession of the rules for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is unnecessary to run Dead Light as it could be run using the Quick-Start Rules available from Chaosium. Further, Dead Light could easily be run before or after the investigators’ strange experiences in the classic scenario, ‘The Haunting’.

Unfortunately, what Dead Light lacks is a set of pre-generated investigators. Their inclusion would have provided a ready reason for the player characters to be on the road to Ipswich and with the inclusion of integrated backgrounds, it could have added an extra degree of tension and interplay between the travellers that would come into play as events of the scenario play out. Possible ideas might be a family visiting relatives, college students returning home, mobsters on a job, and so on. This would bind the investigators together and make use of the guidelines on organisations to be found in the Investigator Handbook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It would alleviate the need to come up with reasons why newly-created random characters—an antiquarian, a dilettante, a doctor, and a private detective—know each other and are on the road together. Of course, this is not an issue for experienced role-players or when using previously played characters.

Physically, Dead Light is well presented. An edit is needed here and there, but the scenario is well written, the NPCs decently done, and the threat clearly explained. The maps are also good and much of the artwork can also serve as good hand-outs. If there is an issue with Dead Light physically, it is that the cover does not fit its threat as it is supposed to. It feels all too solid, too defined, whereas the descriptions given of the threat feel otherwise…

Although not quite suitable for an inexperienced Keeper, Dead Light is more than suitable for new players, whilst experienced players will enjoy an evening’s play up against something other than a traditional threat, whether drawn from traditional horror or that of the Cthulhu Mythos. Containing (almost) everything necessary to play an evening of survival horror tinged with Cosmic Horror, Dead Light: Surviving One Night Outside Of Arkham is a solid scenario and the best title released by Chaosium in years.

A case of the 'Curse of  Chaosium' crack’d…?

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Monograph Misfire I

Since 2003, the Miskatonic University Library Association series of monographs has been Chaosium, Inc.’s way of making other works available to players of both Call of Cthulhu and Basic RolePlay. Bar the printing, each monograph’s author is responsible for the writing, the editing, and the layout, so far the quality of entries in the series have varied widely and has led to some dreadful releases. Fortunately, Return of the Ripper: An 1890s Scenario for Call of Cthulhu and Cthulhu By Gaslight is far from dreadful in terms of both editing and layout, and potentially far from dreadful in terms of storytelling and writing.

Supplements for Cthulhu by Gaslight are rare, either as titles available via standard distribution channels or as Monographs, but the truth is that in coming to Return of the Ripper, I bring a personal prejudice. The truth is that I dislike bringing Sherlock Holmes into my Victorian era roleplaying and I dislike bringing in Jack the Ripper into my Victorian era roleplaying, and I particularly dislike bringing in either into my Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying set in the Victorian era. I have no issue against Sherlock Holmes, enjoying both the fiction and the adaptations, particularly the radio versions starring Clive Merrison, Michael Williams, and Andrew Sachs, but Holmes is such a towering force of intellect and deduction that for him not to have deduced the existence of the Mythos, let alone determine the identity of the Ripper, seems absurd. Holmes is also so singular a figure and so synonymous with the period that the players are likely to obsess over him, their wanting to gain an audience with him and potentially his insight in-game. Further, he is a fictional character, and there are invariably enough fictional elements in my Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying and those elements are Lovecraft’s. Lastly, he is too easy a device to use to denote that it is the late Victorian era such that his use as a device is lazy writing. Basically though, his inclusion in Victorian era roleplaying is anything other than obligatory.

As to Jack the Ripper, his use suffers from many of the same problems as Sherlock Holmes, but the tendency of roleplaying writing is to present the Ripper killings as a mystery to be solved. This runs counter to the nature of the crimes and their inexplicable nature – there is no explanation to them 125 years after they occurred and their perpetrator likewise remains unknown. In presenting the Ripper killings as a mystery to be solved, the answer in Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying is always somehow related to the Cthulhu Mythos. It is rarely done well and it invariably detracts from the horror of the killings themselves.

Fundamentally though, the use of either Sherlock Holmes or Jack the Ripper in Victorian era roleplaying is a cliché. The use of both is just plain boring.

And so to Return of the Ripper, which as the title suggests, is about Jack the Ripper and being written for use with Call of Cthulhu, does involve Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. With those black marks already against it, the monograph brings with it an awful lot of baggage of its very own. The author of the Return of the Ripper is William Barton and he also happened to write Cthulhu by Gaslight. As the author of the latter, Barton originally intended to include Return of the Ripper in the original 1986 Cthulhu by Gaslight boxed set as a counterpart to the scenario, ‘The Yorkshire Horrors’, but it was deemed too long and unsuitable as it provided a ‘supernatural’ or Mythos explanation to the Ripper killings. Of course, as the author points out, Chaosium would go on to publish a scenario that gave a Mythos explanation to the predations of the Ripper – ‘Signs Writ in Scarlet’ from the 1993 anthology, Sacraments of Evil. Slip forward fifteen years and Chaosium’s Monograph programme enabled the author to bring what would have otherwise have been a lost scenario to print.

Return of the Ripper is set in the London of 1893. As it opens, there has been a brutal slaying of a prostitute in Whitechapel. This is only five years after the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the last of the victims of the most infamous murderer in history, Jack the Ripper, was discovered. Never caught, has ‘Saucy Jack’ returned to enact his bloody killings once again?

Designed for a group of between four and eight investigators, one of whom should have some experience with the Mythos and possibly know the spell, Elder Sign, it is also suggested that such a group consist primarily of inquiry agents and journalists. Indeed, a group of merchants will directly approach a player character inquiry agent to gain his aid in ridding the East End of London of this foul threat. Alternative hooks are given for journalists, scholarly experts, and so on. Once they decide to probe the killings, the investigators must negotiate with the police; question the inhabitants of the notorious slums; search for information ahead of rival sleuths, and more… The Ripper though, is not the only outré threat that stalks the fogbound, ill lit streets of the heart of empire. Determining the nature of both these threats and the identity of the Ripper will be difficult and not just because the investigation process is difficult, but also because presenting the Return of the Ripper is equally as difficult.

It is telling that the author of the Return of the Ripper states up front that the scenario “…is less linear than many CoC scenarios.” for the Return of the Ripper is anything other than linear in structure. Which is odd given the linearity of the author’s most well-known scenario, ‘The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn’ from Curse of the Chthonians: Four Odysseys Into Deadly Intrigue, but what the Return of the Ripper actually is, is a toolkit to create an investigation into a second series of Ripper killings. Along with hooks to get the investigators involved, the Monograph includes details of their enemies and allies, places of interest, clues and rumours, extensive encounters, and more. Indeed, there is everything here and more from which the Keeper can draw to help him craft a solid scenario, except that is, any sense of narrative structure, and worse, the ‘more’ of Return of the Ripper is a serious impediment to the Keeper in constructing that narrative.

The ‘more’ of Return of the Ripper is that it is ferociously overwritten and it suffers from the repetition of detail after detail, especially with regard to villains of the piece. It is easy to see how the original manuscript ballooned from sixty to over three hundred pages, because simply it is all here. Every possible encounter, every little detail, all are covered, and whilst this admirable, it makes the Monograph hard to read, let alone digest and begin to put together as an adventure.

Putting aside the scenario’s use of the Ripper Mythos, Return of the Ripper also makes extensive use of the Holmes Mythos, the Cthulhu Mythos, and to a much lesser extent, the Dracula Mythos. Of these, the use of the Ripper Mythos and the Cthulhu Mythos are to be expected, but the use of the Holmes Mythos is jarring, with various characters turning up and references being made, one of which is made into Ripper’s minion. As for the man himself, Return of the Ripper is set in 1893, so as far as anyone knows, he died at the Reichenbach Falls the previous year, so at least he cannot appear to break the scenario. Brought all together and the Mythos mix feels as if the author is over-egging the pudding. As does naming one of the villains of the piece, Macabre, which as surname is about as subtle being hit over the head with a sign that reads, “My name is Lord Villainy Villainous McVillain, High-Chief Villain of the Clan McVillain and you can tell that I am a villain by the way I twirl my facial hair.” How are the players expected to take such a name seriously?

In addition, the author makes use of a number of skills that are not part of the Call of Cthulhu, Sixth Edition or earlier edition rules. They are at least explained in an appendix, rather than the Keeper being expected to refer to either The Gaslight Companion or A Cthulhian Miscellany. The first of these Monographs is yet to see print, although the second one, also by the author of Return of the Ripper, is in print. None of the use of the skills listed in the appendix is obligatory, and indeed, it could be argued that some of them are redundant. For example, ‘Observation’ is more Sherlock Holmes than Call of Cthulhu and does little more than Spot Hidden does; ‘Deduction’ is equally more Sherlock Holmes than Call of Cthulhu and does little more than an Idea roll does; and ‘Seduction’ is just a variation upon the Persuade skill.

Physically, Return of the Ripper is reasonably produced for a Monograph. Some art is used to break up what is mostly dense text, but it is not always as clear as it could be. Similarly, the maps are not always as clear, and there could have been more maps of the scenario’s various locations.

Return of the Ripper certainly makes demands of the Keeper to run and present, hampered as it is by the absence of a narrative structure upon which he could hang the elements given in the Monograph. Further, it demands that he and his players accept the idea that there is a Mythos explanation behind the Ripper killings and that Sherlock Holmes actually exists, which for some may be too big a pair of hurdles to overcome. If they can, then there is material enough to support an investigation into the Mythos activities of the Ripper, but it will be hard work.

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Curse of Chaosium V

I begin this review with a confession. As much as I love reading and reviewing titles for Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and other RPGs of Lovecraftian investigative horror, I have become loathe to review titles released by the premier publisher for Call of Cthulhu, such that I have two outstanding titles to review – The House of R'lyeh and Atomic Age Cthulhu. The issue is that with each of the previous four titles I reviewed – Curse of the Chthonians: Four Odysseys Into Deadly Intrigue, the Call of Cthulhu Sixth Edition’s Keeper’s Screen, the Cthulhu Invictus Companion, and Terror from the Skies: A Race to Save Humanity from a Dark Future – have warranted a singular label, ‘Curse of Chaosium’. In each and every case of these reviews, the titles have been flawed, mishandled, and ill judged, issues that in each and every case can solely be placed at Chaosium’s door. Having to write reviews of such books – books from a publisher whose previous titles I hold in high esteem – is a thrillingly unpleasant exercise in pedantry. Not only do you have to tell the reader that such a book is dreadful and anything other than worthwhile purchase, but you have to catalogue exactly why. To do otherwise, would be a disservice to anyone reading the review.

Thus the ground is laid for me to review the very latest scenario to be released by Chaosium, Inc. for Call of Cthulhu. I approached the prospect of reviewing Canis Mysterium: A Scenario With Bite, which at just thirty-two pages, is perhaps the shortest single scenario ever published, with a certain weariness for Call of Cthulhu. After all, how bad could it be? It certainly could be no worse than the execrable Terror from the Skies, a book so incompetently handled that Chaosium owes an apology to the campaign’s authors. On the other hand, it might surprise me and be as joyously rife with potential as say, the Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep or Tatters of the King. Sadly, Canis Mysterium is nowhere as good as either of those, but then neither is it as appallingly awful as Terror from the Skies. In truth, it is something else, something that we have seen before.

Canis Mysterium is the first scenario to be published by Chaosium in over a decade that visits Lovecraft Country during the Jazz Age, though very late in the Jazz Age, being set in late 1930. True, there have been visits paid by scenarios in Chaosium’s Miskatonic University Library Association Monograph series, though none of those have reached the shelves of your local friendly gaming store; and true, the soon to be lamented Miskatonic River Press has published two excellent books set there – New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley and More Adventures in Arkham Country. Still, Canis Mysterium is the first scenario to be published by Chaosium in over a decade that visits Lovecraft Country during the Jazz Age. It also takes the Keeper and his players to a wholly new part of Lovecraft Country.

Coldwater Falls lies to the lies west of Arkham on the Aylesbury Pike road and Miskatonic River between Dean’s Corners and Dunwich. Primarily a farming town with a textile mill, there is little to distinguish it from its often dark, dismal, and dangerous neighbours. That is until the investigators are summoned to the offices of the University President of Miskatonic University. They are members of the university’s School of Biology, specifically the Department of Psychology, who are asked by the University President to visit Coldwater Falls where the local constable wants help in dealing with a madman who has murdered and partially eaten a young girl.

What the investigators discover is a madman, one who is suffering from the delusion that he is a wolf! The mystery and direction of the investigation in Canis Mysterium concern themselves with how the madman came to suffer his delusion. Discovering this information will require their talking to a few of the inhabitants of the town. For the most part, this is fairly straightforward process apart from getting to one NPC, though this addressed somewhat bluntly towards the scenario’s end.

Canis Mysterium is not a subtle affair. True it foregoes much of Call of Cthulhu’s traditional investigative process, with little in the way of books or newspapers for the characters to peruse, instead opting for a more interactive means of gathering clues. Yet these all but matter not, for in the penultimate scene an NPC that has been pointedly kept away from the investigators, simply turns up and hands them the clue they need. Then in the scenario’s dénouement, the only means presented of the investigators defeating the threat is through violence. Given that in the default set-up for the scenario, the investigators are meant to be students and doctors at Miskatonic University’s Department of Biology, they are very probably ill-suited to such a situation. A situation that is deadly and likely to result in fatalities.

Not that the villain of the piece, or his Ghoul ally – and that is not a spoiler, it appears on the cover – and their plan for revenge on Coldwater Falls are particularly interesting or subtle either. In fact, the plan is straight off of page one of the horror villain’s book of revenge plans. What is vaguely interesting is that if the Keeper wants the investigators to experience this revenge being brought to fruition, he will have to do it all by himself. There are no notes included as to how to do it. That said, if the investigators do bypass the showdown with the villain, then the epilogue at least sees them suffer the consequences of their inaction, though even that is underwritten.

Another problem with Canis Mysterium is Coldwater Falls. It is barely sketched out and leaves little for the Keeper to work with. This raises the question as to why the town is located in Lovecraft Country. It has no bearing upon the scenario such that its plot could be moved to any other town without any changes whatsoever and the investigators could simply work at or be studying at a university other than Miskatonic. 

Physically, the problems with Canis Mysterium start with the cover. It is not a bad cover per se, nor a particularly good cover, it simply gives the scenario away. Inside, the book is neatly and cleanly laid out, though let down by oppressively unsubtle internal illustrations and inexpertly applied editing. Further, the scenario completely lacks maps. There is no plan of the town and there is no floor plan of any of the locations that the investigators will visit. Now the Keeper can get away with running the scenario without any maps, and if it helps, he could just point to the book’s front cover and say to his players, “Your investigators are fighting here!” at the dénouement of Canis Mysterium. Yet if the Keeper wants his investigators to visit Coldwater Falls again, and the means are provided with the scenario seeds included at the back of the book, it would have been useful to have had maps included.

In tone and feel, Canis Mysterium wants to be a Purist affair, but its plot and antagonists are Pulp. It also has the feel of something else, that of a scenario to be found in one of Chaosium’s Miskatonic University Library Association Monographs. Which is not necessarily a sign of quality. Had  Canis Mysterium appeared in a Monograph, then the scenario would not have really stood out from the others in such a volume. Releasing it as a single scenario means it is placed centre stage where its flaws can nothing but stand out. Canis Mysterium: A Scenario With Bite is underdeveloped in terms of support and it underwhelms as a whole, failing to stand out from the pack and more gums at you than bites.

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Curse of Chaosium III

Were it not the fact that more than one publisher releases titles for Call of Cthulhu, it would have been a truly terrible year for the game’s fans in 2011. The reason being that Chaosium, Inc. released exactly one new title in the course of that year that was not either a reprint or an ill-thought through translation that actually turned out to be quite serviceable despite its many flaws. Further, if you take into account the fact that two thirds of that book previously appeared in a Miskatonic University Library Association Monograph, then Chaosium, Inc. published exactly one new scenario in 2011. Even then, if you consider that new scenario was not for its core game, but another setting, the only conclusion is that Chaosium, Inc. published nothing new for what is its core game, Call of Cthulhu, in 2011.
The book in question is the Cthulhu Invictus Companion, a supplement for the publisher’s popular setting, Cthulhu Invictus, that sends the reach of the Mythos into Ancient Rome. It is the first official support for the setting, bar the previous monographs Malam Umbra and Extrico Tabula, and Miskatonic River Press’ excellent campaign, The Legacy of Arrius Lurco. A slim sixty-eight page volume, the Cthulhu Invictus Companion contains three scenarios and descriptions of three new cults. Although all of this material will be new to the shelves of local friendly gaming shop, two of the scenarios are not actually new. Both “Chuma Invictus!” and “Morituri Te Salutamus” previously appeared in the original Cthulhu Invictus monograph (and they have been tightened up here and there for this reprint) , which means that if you already own a copy of said monograph, the Cthulhu Invictus Companion is not a worthwhile purchase. Though if you are a completest, it is another matter…

The supplement opens with “Chuma Invictus!”, set in A.D. 47 during the reign of the emperor, Claudius. The player characters are not investigators in the traditional sense, but legionaries, assigned as part of a trade envoy’s bodyguard. They are to accompany beyond the border of the Empire, South of Egypt to the Kingdom of Kush. This is a lucrative trade, but whilst both sides benefit, Kush is envious of its northern neighbour and Rome has a stationed a legion on the border. The journey involves a trip up the Nile, punctuated by ambushes by bandits and crocodiles, before reaching the capital of Kush, where a game of cat and mouse ensues. This is over a set of scrolls desired by both the envoy – actually a member of a secret society dedicated to collecting lost or rare tomes, and an Egyptian sorcerer, who wants to use the contents of the scrolls to his own ends. That is, bringing his god to the Earth, or rather both his god and his god’s home to Earth.
When I first reviewed this back in 2004 – for that was when the Cthulhu Invictus monograph was originally released – I was not impressed. That was as much because this was the first scenario for the setting, that the setting itself felt undeveloped, and that it took the game away from the Roman Empire, which was after all, where the game was meant to be set. Reading “Chuma Invictus!” now reveals it to be a well-paced and engaging one-shot that hints at Rome’s attitudes towards its neighbours. With there being more support available for the setting, it does not feel quite so out of place. Of course, it is still a one-shot and a set of pre-generated legionary characters to play would have been a nice touch.
Where as a travel log adventure, “Chuma Invictus!” is not the most traditional of adventures for Call of Cthulhu or Cthulhu Invictus, the second scenario and the second reprint in the Cthulhu Invictus Companion is certainly so. In fact, “Morituri Te Salutamus” is not only that, but it is also much more of an introductory scenario. It opens after a day at the races, with the characters coming across the attempted abduction of a woman of Equestrian status. In return for thwarting the kidnapping, the investigators receive both a reward and a request to investigate both this attempt and the disappearance of a number of other women across Rome. It feels pulpy in places, and its climax is probably a little difficult considering that the introductory nature of the scenario. Otherwise, this probably the easiest scenario in the supplement to integrate into an on-going campaign because it at least starts in Rome.
The third scenario, “Bacchanalia,” is the only new scenario in the volume and takes place at the other end of the Empire in a newly rebuilt Carthage. It begins almost Alien-like in a very dramatic fashion with the investigators as guests at a dinner party. This is the first move by a cult native to the city to reassert itself, one that involves – much like “Morituri Te Salutamus” – mass sacrifice. This is a shorter, much more focused affair, but one that is awkward to bring into a campaign given the scenario’s location.
Interspersed between the three scenarios are a set of short articles that describe five different cults particular to Cthulhu Invictus. They include an Egyptian avatar of Yog-Sothoth, the Wild Hunt that rides across Gaul and Germania, and a Black Wind that scours North Africa. Although interesting enough, their inclusion has no bearing upon the supplement’s scenarios and only contributes to the disparate feeling to Cthulhu Invictus Companion.
Putting aside the fact that so little of the Cthulhu Invictus Companion is new, its real problem is that it does feel disparate and it does feel desperate. It feels disparate because the supplement lacks focus, and feels desperate because the disparate nature of the content makes it feel as if the publisher has put it together from bits it had lying around on hard drives rather than by design or intent. Lastly, and arguably, a Companion supplement to a setting’s core source or rule book should be full of indispensable, useful information. The content in the Cthulhu Invictus Companion can certainly be made to be useful with some effort upon the part of the Keeper, but the last thing that this supplement is, is indispensable, and ultimately, the Cthulhu Invictus Companion does give Cthulhu Invictus the support it warrants.

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Curse of Chaosium IV

After a lacklustre 2011, Chaosium, Inc. surprised everyone by publishing not one, but two titles in 2012 for its flagship RPG, Call of Cthulhu. The first was the much lauded Cthulhu by Gaslight, marking the welcome return of the Mythos to the Victorian Era of the 1890s. The second was the surprise. Terror from the Skies: A Race to Save Humanity from a Dark Future presented an all new campaign for Call of Cthulhu, the first from Chaosium since Tatters of the King, published in 2006.  Like that highly regarded campaign, Terror from the Skies takes place during the RPG’s classic period of the 1920s and is primarily set in England, although events will take the investigators much further afield.

Like its forebears, Terror from the Skies is a world-spanning campaign, albeit one that is on a much smaller scale. It begins small, with a single scenario set in the South East of England where the investigators are to attend a wedding. If the villagers are to believed, the wedding and subsequent marriage will not be a happy one; but is this mere superstition or do the lack of weddings held at the local church lend credence to their claims? This is an engaging little affair with an array of detailed NPCs that is designed primarily to introduce the investigators to the NPC who will get them involved in the main part of the campaign. 

From Kent, the campaign moves onto the North-East where most of it is set. Lured by a letter from the NPC and by reports of vampire attacks in the Yorkshire town of Whitby, the player characters are asked to aid a friend who has been investigating certain mysteries of an outré nature. This being Whitby, the first thoughts upon the players’ minds should be Bram Stoker’s most famous creation, but thankfully the author avoids such clichés, the threat being more in keeping with the game. That said, there are some notable parallels between Dracula and the campaign’s true villains, which will slowly become apparent as the investigation takes the player characters first across the North Yorkshire Moors and then further north to the cities of Durham and Newcastle. Eventually enough will be hinted at to suggest to the investigators that various persons are co-operating with an intelligence to engineer a very dark threat.

For its antagonists Terror from the Skies chooses a foe ill-used outside of Delta Green – the insect-like, interstellar refugees known as the Shan. For the most part they are well used, their plot being woven around a very tight schedule in the summer of 1929. A major aspect of their role as protagonists is that once they become aware of the investigators’ interest in their plan, the Shan will come after them, not only looking into their activities, but at times, also moving directly against them. This is one of the campaign’s strengths, along with both the aforementioned tight schedule which will force the investigators to keep moving and the concept behind the campaign itself.

Although initially the campaign has a Purist feel, as it progresses, Terror From The Skies takes on an increasingly Pulpy feel. This is particularly evident where combat is involved, a subject that the author does not address directly, despite the fact that it being set mostly in England will influence the role and effect of combat in the campaign. In other words, the laws regarding combat and firearms in the United Kingdom are different, as is the selection of available weaponry, but none of this is addressed. All it would have required is a side box addressing the issue. It is also evident in certain sequences that possess not the structure of an investigative scenario, but a big puzzle box, one that is almost Dungeons & Dragons-like. Some of these sequences also suffer from a bloat of dice rolling at odds with the simplicity of the Call of Cthulhu mechanics.

If much of this sounds good in concept, then it is. There is the makings of a pulp action campaign in Terror from the Skies. The villains and their plans are interesting, and they are for the most part, reasonably well handled. Unfortunately, the execution does not so much leave much to be desired, as it does leave everything to be desired. The first hint at this comes when the campaign’s introduction wanders randomly into its prequel scenario. The second comes in the opaque nature of the link between this prequel and the bulk of the campaign. The third comes in elements and parts of the campaign being mentioned in one chapter without any accompanying explanation, the Keeper being at a loss until he finds said explanation, an NPC’s name, and so on, in the next chapter. All too quickly, reading Terror from the Skies becomes an exercise in frustration as not enough is explained in the text when it should be and this just gives it a discordant feel.

Cartographically, Terror from the Skies also presents the Keeper with nothing but consternation. Not by the quality of the maps included in the book, but by the absence of maps. In the course of the campaign, the investigators visit at least eight towns and villages, not in passing, but in the course of active investigation. There is not a single map of any one of these places in the book. The text does describe the routes that the investigators will take from one place to the next within these locations, which is essentially providing a narrative for Keeper and players alike, but a narrative without a reference. Without that reference it is almost as if the author is directing Keeper and players alike rather than allowing either the agency to run or play campaign as they see fit and move around within the campaign. Worse still, the investigators are required to visit numerous locations and undertake various actions at each. For example, the act of burglary is a frequently discussed option that the investigators can undertake, but again, not a single map has been provided of these locations where it is suggested as an option. 

Worse, the culmination of the campaign takes place on an airship, but no plans are provided of the airship in question. In the case of this airship, the events aboard which the author devotes the best part of two chapters to, there is not even a description of its deck plans. Or its crew – let alone their game stats.

It has to be asked, but why is this campaign missing so many of its important maps?

As mentioned, the campaign does not provide game stats for the crew of the airship. Sadly this is only an omission amongst many, for once past the introductory scenario, not one of the campaign’s many minor NPCs – NPCs that the investigators are expected to interact with, even fight – is given their set of game stats. There is a set of minimal stats for some cultists, plus advice to reuse them, but this not only leaves more effort on the part of the Keeper to undertake, it also depersonalises the NPCs. Many of the NPCs who are given stats and write-ups are overdone, sometimes ludicrously so when it comes to the Cthulhu Mythos.

The campaign does come with plenty of hand outs. With many of them, an effort has been made to make them look authentic and there is some artistry on show here. Unfortunately the newspaper articles will never look like newspaper articles because they are printed over a newspaper background rather than as newspaper articles, and the hand outs that attempt to look handwritten still look as they have been done onscreen because of the cursive typefaces employed. In addition, some of the hand outs are too dark to read clearly and many of the later hand outs amount to little more than printouts. As to the suggestion that some of them might have been written in an alien script, this falls flat unless there is some new mystery to Times New Roman.

Besides the missing maps and NPC stats, Terror from the Skies is also all too often missing the small details that matter – the details that add verisimilitude and the details that support elements within the campaign. For example, the investigators at one location might find a newspaper belonging to an NPC that he brought with him from his home country, but this newspaper is not named. It would be a simple matter to give the name of a newspaper and so add to the reality of the game. Similarly, the investigators are visiting another country and are presented with gifts – what are these gifts? In either instance the players will ask what their characters have found or been given. Not having this information ready for the Keeper the campaign dismisses the investigators’ actions.

In terms of layout, Terror from the Skies looks to be clean and tidy. Yet that is only upon a cursory glance, as it quickly apparent that physically there is no finesse to the book or its layout. This is only exacerbated by the editing, which completely fails to address any of the issues with the campaign – where the various elements of a chapter should go, where the explanations should go, the Call of Cthulhu format, inserting lists of the campaign’s clues and the parts of the plot that they link to, the small details that that enhance the campaign, and so on. All of which is in addition to spelling and format errors that litter the book.

The truth is that Terror from the Skies was never going to be a great campaign. It could have been, however, a solid campaign, one that was ready to play with relatively little preparation. It is even possible to imagine this as a starter campaign, though of course, it is set rather late in Call of Cthulhu’s Classic period of the 1920s for that. The accompanying truth is that Terror from the Skies was never going to be that solid a campaign. Not with these editors. Not with this layout artist. Not with Chaosium.

The terrible truth to Terror from the Skies is twofold. Terror from the Skies feels like an unfinished book and Terror from the Skies feels like a publisher’s first book. In this, Terror from the Skies is also a frustrating book. Frustrating because it leaves so much for the Keeper to do in preparing the campaign for play. Frustrating because in the hands of competent editors and developers, so many of its issues could have been addressed, if not to make it perfect, but to make it much, much better.

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