Home Front Horror

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Seventh-Inning Slaughter! is a short, but very different adventure for the roleplaying game. It takes place on the fourth of July, 1943—America’s Independence Day!—and far away from the war in Europe. Inspired by films such as A League of Their Own, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams, it takes place at a baseball match at Beyer Stadium in Rockford, Illinois, between the Rockford Peaches, one of the four original professional teams making up the new All-American Girls Baseball League, and the Kinosha Comets. Not only that, but the president, Franklin Roosevelt, is there to watch the game as well! Unfortunately, so is Jörg Becker, a Nazi sorcerer, determined to prove both himself a capable agent to his Black Sun masters and thus get promoted, and that no-one is safe from the reach of Nazi Germany, not even thousands of miles away on American home soil. In addition to a period flyer for the baseball game itself, the scenario does come with four pre-generated Player Characters. Two of these are baseball players on the Rockford Peaches roster, so that they can be involved in the game as it is played and the scenario progresses. This enables some of the Player Characters to be involved in on-field events whilst the others can get involved in off-field events. That said, the progress of the game is given from one innings to the next so that it can be tracked even as the Player Characters investigate elsewhere in the stadium. What it does mean though, is that Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Seventh-Inning Slaughter! can either be played as a one-shot or as an introduction to Achtung! Cthulhu with its events serving as the Player Characters’ first encounter with the Mythos, in addition to being played as part of an ongoing campaign. The latter is the most difficult option to work, primarily because the Game Master will need to explain why agents of Section M, Majestic, and the Resistance are in the USA in 1942 rather then in Europe. Members of Majestic would be easier to explain, but several options are suggested, such as being debriefed by Majestic or undergoing training close by.

The scenario is staged over the course of the game’s seven innings, with stranger and stranger and deadlier things happening as the game progresses from one innings to the next. Food turns rotten and writing with worms, a foul ball inflicts an injury on someone in the crowd, a lightning storm gathers and a dog turns insane, a player suddenly begins to vomit, and more… The events get nastier and bloodier as the scenario progresses. In response, the Player Characters are likely to finds themselves chasing strange occurrences and horrible events back and forth across the stadium, the one constant being that the same man—or someone like him—keeps appearing again and again. Of course, this is no coincidence, Jörg Becker, using versions of himself to spread uncertainty and horror around the stadium until he is ready to bring his plan to fruition. This is to summon up something ghastly and take Nazi Germany’s revenge upon the USA for entering the war by striking directly at the president! Preventing this, though, will be a challenge for the Player Characters. This will either because they have little to no experience with the Mythos or they have come for a relaxing day out and so are not as fully equipped as they would be if they were on a mission to fight the Secret War against the enemy’s occult agents. That said, the pre-generated Player Characters do have access to some weapons—if not immediately to hand, then close by—and they do include an occult scholar capable of casting a spell or two.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Seventh-Inning Slaughter! is cleanly and tidily laid out, and comes with a map of a baseball stadium. It does not have any artwork beyond the flyer for the baseball game.

Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Seventh-Inning Slaughter! is different, an initially unassuming and undemanding affair that grows increasingly fraught and frightful as the full powers of its antagonist are realised. There is not much that the Player Characters can really do to stop Jörg Becker’s plans until it is almost too late, but they will be kept busy until then doing a lot of clean-ups of the ‘little’ horrors he sows into the stadium, and hopefully by then, they will armed and ready. Overall, Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Seventh-Inning Slaughter! is an entertaining change of locale and circumstances combined with a swirling morass of Mythos events leading to the big finale as you would expect.