A Cthulhu Collectanea IV

As its title suggests Bayt al Azif – A magazine for Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games is a magazine dedicated to roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Published by Bayt al Azif it includes content for both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition from Chaosium, Inc. and Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press, which means that its content can also be used with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and The Fall of DELTA GREEN. Published in March, 2022, Bayt al Azif Issue #04 does not include any content for use with the latter two roleplaying games, but instead specifically includes three scenarios—stated for both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and Trail of Cthulhu (and therefore would actually work with The Fall of DELTA GREEN if the Keeper made the adjustments necessary), discussion of various aspects of Lovecraftian investigative horror, interviews, an introduction to Call of Cthulhu in Finland, an overview of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying in 2020, and more. All of which, once again, comes packaged in a solid, full colour, Print On Demand book.

Bayt al Azif Issue #04 opens with editorial, ‘Houses of the Unholy’, which celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Call of Cthulhu in 2021 and its influences, before diving into ‘Sacrifices’, the letters pages. The inclusion of a letters pages lifts Bayt al Azif above being just a supplement, and whilst the letters are most congratulatory, they continue the role begun in Bayt al Azif Issue #03, that of beginning to create and build a community. The more fulsome content gets underway with ‘Cthulhu in 2020: A Retrospective’. Witten by Dean Engelhardt of CthulhuReborn.com—publisher of Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia and The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, this covers the releases, major and minor, through the year, from each of the various publishers, beginning with Chaosium, Inc., before moving on to Stygian Fox, Golden Goblin Press, and Sons of the Singularity. Amateur publications and magazines are not ignored, including Bayt al Azif, and the author also covers Trail of Cthulhu from Pelgrane Press and Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game from Arc Dream Publishing, plus numerous other Cthulhu horror-themed roleplaying games, such as the Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos series from Sandy Petersen Games, Campo De Mitos: A Campaign Setting of Lovecraftian Mythology Based in El Campo De Gibraltar from Mindscape Publishing, and Whispers in the Dark for use with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition from Saturday Morning Scenarios. It does touch upon a handful of titles available on the Miskatonic Repository, which to be fair, the magazine could never hope to cope with given the number released each year. It covers a lot of smaller, non-Call of Cthulhu titles too, before examining a few then forthcoming titles awaiting fulfilment on Kickstarter. At the time of publication, there were surprising few of them. Each of the various entries is accompanied by a thumbnail description, enough detail to spur the reader’s interest, but not really a review—although the author does offer an opinion in places. As with Bayt al Azif Issue #03, it dispenses with the references to individual reviews on Reviews from R’lyeh included in previous entries in the series, which to be fair saves spaces as more and more titles are covered. That said, there is scope in Bayt al Azif for reviews, even reviews of titles taken from the Miskatonic Repository if it was highly curated and a mix of the best and the most interesting reviewed. Otherwise, as in previous issues, ‘Cthulhu in 2020: A Retrospective’ is an extensive overview, which again nicely chronicles the year keeps us abreast of anything that the reader may have missed or forgotten, especially for the smaller titles.

Bayt al Azif Issue #04 continues to reprint scenarios originally published in German in the magazine, Cthulhus Rus. This time, there is only one of these though ,the mini scenario, ‘Ultima Ratio’. Meaning ‘Final Argument’, this is set in the nineteen thirties and inspired as so many scenarios are for Call of Cthulhu by a certain airship of the period. Written by Carsten Pohl, it is a one-shot designed for three players to be played in a hour or so. It begins en media res, with the Investigators awakening to find themselves in a strange situation with no idea of quite how they got there or what they are doing. It is an intense little situation which the Keeper will need to study carefully, but for the Keeper one of the pleasures of the scenario is what is an extensive set of playtest notes given the length of ‘Ultima Ratio’. This do help with the staging and explore some of the possible outcomes given its brevity.

 

The second scenario in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 is French. ‘They Are Real’ originally appeared in the magazine, Di6dent #7, as ‘Ils sont réels’. Written by Guillaume Agostini, this is a time-hopping, puzzle box of a scenario which takes the Investigators from the scene of a suicide in an apartment in Toulouse in 1931 back and forth across southwest France to places far beyond their imagination and then beyond that! It has a very M.C. Escher-like quality and makes for an intriguing, if linear one-shot. It does require some development in places upon the part of the Keeper to expand upon certain scenes and so is not ready to run as is.

 

The third scenario is ‘The Box of Sathla’ and is Finnish, originally appearing in Seikkalija #8 as ‘Sathlan Kuutio’ in 1991. This is actually the companion piece to Teppo Toivonen’s ‘Never-Ending Darkness: The History of Cthulhu in Finland’, a short but illuminating examination of both roleplaying and the growth of Call of Cthulhu in Finland.This coninued exploration of how Call of Cthulhu has travelled and been played outside of the English speaking hobby is one of more fascianting strands in Bayt al Azif, and hopefully there will be more of them in future issues (including Korea). In the meantime, the article highlights how it took a few years for Call of Cthulhu to arrive in a Finland and the effect of this delay can be seen in ‘The Box of Sathla’, it not being as sophisticated a scenario as was being published by Chaosium by the early nineties. This is not to say that ‘The Box of Sathla’ is bad scenario, but rather that it does does show its age in terms of plotting and the more muscular foes to be faced by the Investigators.

 

Although originally appearing in Finnish, ‘The Box of Sathla’ takes place in New England and potentially into Lovecraft County. A Boston bookstore owner comes to the Investigators with a strange box which he wants to find out more information about. The box is very strange indeed, seeming to have ties to Ancient Egypt and the Salem witch trials. When asked, the bookstore owner reveals that the box belongs to his good for nothing brother who is conspiring with several strange disreputables, and that the strange history of the box confirms his suspicions. He asks the Investigators to look into his brother and his friends, and when the box is stolen under odd circumstances—though not so odd for Call of Cthulhu—the Investigators must relocate the box and determine exactly what the brother is up. This reveals some dark doings in the woods near Salem and a confrontation with powerful forces of the Mythos. ‘The Box of Sathla’ is overpowered and slightly over-the-top, but not without its charm. It would certainly be easy enough for the Keeper to adjust the potency of its antagonists if necessary.

The fortieth anniversary of Call of Cthulhu is celebrated in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 with a pleasing pair of articles. One is ‘All About Spooky Stories’, an interview with Mike Mason, the Creative Director of Call of Cthulhu which looks at the whole of his gaming hobby and his career. Although there is much that will be familiar here—Mike has been interviewed more than once!—this is an entertaining interview which should assure the reader that the long-running roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror is in good hands. Also entertaining is ‘Forty Years of Memories – Anecdotes from playing Call of Cthulhu’, a collection of stories and memories from the roleplaying game’s fans drawn from their experiences playing it. Some of the fun is identifying particular scenarios from the anecdotes, their titles being hidden in the footnotes.

The magazine is also beginning to build a sense of community too, and in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 this shows in a number of ways. One is the inclusion of ‘Blair Reynolds: In Memorium’ by Adam Scott Glancy, Dennis Detwiller, Shane Ivey, and John Scott Tynes, a fitting, often funny tribute to the late author and artist, Blair Reynolds, long part of Pagan Publishing whose striking contributions to titles such as Walker in the Wastes, Realm of Shadows, and Delta Green helped to make them stand out. Having this is in print—and similarly, the interview with Mike Mason—gives a sense of place and permanence.

That sense of community continues with ‘Bloodcurdling Screams: A Roundtable with London Carlisle, Rina Haenze, and Virgina’, which is a roundtable with the three hosts and Keepers of Call of Cthulhu who record and stream their games. Together they discuss the nature and challenges involved in recording streaming roleplaying sessions. There are pointers here too and advice for anyone who wants to try it and of course, links to streamed and recorded games. The article shows how gaming is changing and has been forced to change as a result of COVID-19.

Elsewhere, Andrew Smith examines ‘One of the Most Influential Scenarios’ by looking at Games Workshop’s Trail of the Loathsome Slime and comes to the same conclusions as Reviews from R’lyeh did in 2013, whilst in ‘The Mythos and Modernity: Deep Ones at the DMV’, Tyler Omichinski looks at how the Mythos and its entities can exist and continue to survive in the modern world. Ultimately, the author points to potential peripheries where the Mythos can survive in the face of society’s cultural indifference, but really does not develop its ideas very far and is thus disappointing. The article is all too short. ‘Clues of Cultists: 100 Discoveries’ by Joseph Janda, Bridgett Jeffries, and Jared Smith is a big table of ideas and elements to flesh out a Keeper’s cultists, such as connections to persons in power or what they might know about the Investigators themselves. The article is a serviceable addition which a Keeper can refer to for inspiration. Lastly, Evan Johnston continues his enjoyable comic strip, ‘Grave Spirits’.

Physically, with the fourth issue, Bayt al Azif keeps getting better and better in terms of production values and look. It is clean and tidy, its layout ordinary rather than interesting, 

and though it might need an edit in places, the main issue is still that some of the artwork veers toward being cartoon-like.

 

With Bayt al Azif Issue #03 found its voice and format by offering longer articles and a more diverse range of voices. This continues in Bayt al Azif Issue #04 with content not just from Germany as before, but from France and Finland as well, bringing to light content which would otherwise be inaccessible to the predominately English-speaking community. This is bolstered by the genuinely  interesting history of Call of Cthulhu in another country with ‘Never-Ending Darkness: The History of Cthulhu in Finland’, whilst with ‘Bloodcurdling Screams: A Roundtable with London Carlisle, Rina Haenze, and Virgina’ the magazine looks at the state of how Call of Cthulhu is played in the here and now, and likely into the future too. None of the three scenarios stand out as being great, but they are nevertheless serviceable one-shots or interesting snapshots from the past.

Overall, Bayt al Azif Issue #04 continues the magazine’s solid support for, and about, Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. In this issue, the articles, the history, and the sense of community standout more than the scenarios, but is no less the welcome for it.