No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror is the sequel. It is again designed to be used with either the Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition full rules or the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and again, it contains three scenarios. However, each is more expansive and plays out in a larger area than the single locations to be found in the scenarios for Gateways to Terror. Consequently, the three scenarios in No Time to Scream are longer, intended to be played in two hours rather than the one, That said, they can each be played in an hour and each comes with a rough timeline for such a playing length. Whether played in an hour or two hours any of the three scenarios works as as evening’s entertainment, or as a demonstration or convention scenario. All three are suitable for players new to Call of Cthulhu, whilst still offering an enjoyable experience for veteran players.
The anthology begins with an overview of its three scenarios and an extensive introduction—or reintroduction—to the core rules of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This is to help the Keeper introduce the rules herself to her fellow players, whether sat round the table at home, playing online, or at a convention. In turn it discusses the investigator sheet, using Luck, skill rolls, bonus and penalty dice, combat, and of course, Sanity. Included here are references to both the Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Rulebook and the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set with pertinent points marked. The only thing not included here that perhaps might have been useful is a list of these references, possibly at the end of the section. It notes too, that the scenarios contain text to be read aloud to the players and two types of clues. ‘Obvious’ clues are meant to be found as part of the investigative as they are vital to its progression and they do not require any skill check to be found, whereas ‘Obscure’ add further detail and background, but are not vital to the completion of the scenario. They are typically discovered following a skill check. If an ‘Obvious’ clue does require a skill check, it is typically to see how it took the Investigator to find and to see if there are any complications from finding it. Otherwise this is all very useful, if not as a reminder, then at least as a means of the Keeper having to avoid flipping through another book.
Each of the three scenarios is tightly structured and follows the same format. This starts with advice on the scenario’s structure, specifically the timings if the Keeper is running it as a one-hour game. Then it discusses each of the four investigators for the scenario, including their notable traits and roleplaying hooks, what to do if there are fewer than four players, and what if there are more than four, before delving into the meat of the scenario itself. All three are very nicely presented, clear and easy to read off the page in terms of what skill rolls are needed and what the investigators learn from them. As well as decent maps, each scenario comes with a sheaf of handouts, suggestions as to how each of its four investigators react when they go insane, which includes possible Involuntary Actions and Bouts of Madness, and lastly, details of the four investigators. These are not done on the standard Investigator sheets for Call of Cthulhu, but those and the handouts are available to download.
The first scenario is ‘A Lonely Thread’, which takes place at the well-appointed country cabin of an elderly Professor of Archaeology who teaches part-time at Miskatonic University. A learned and avuncular man, he regularly invites guests to stay at his home, and this time that includes the Investigators. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that the professor is unwell, is he acting oddly, and seems forgetful. Is that because he is ill, or is there something else going on here? Striking the right note of oddness takes some roleplaying skill upon the part of the Keeper and the players using what their Investigators know about him as given and suggested on the Investigator sheets. Just how soon the players and their Investigators notice and just how soon they act will greatly influence the outcome of the scenario.
The professor is definitely not himself, having become possessed by an alien wire-like entity, which he was investigating as part of his research into the Mythos and inadvertently set free. The creature has also threaded itself through the body of his housekeeper and is quietly gestating its new form in the wood cellar below the house (so, this scenario does prove that is something in woodshed). Once the Investigators have worked out that something is wrong, confronted the professor, fought and discovered his situation, then they will have the whole house to explore as well as his workshop. There is the opportunity to gain some clues before doing so, but the scenario’s time limit is reached when the creature-that-was-once-the-professor’s-housekeeper completes its transition and begins to stalk the Investigators through his house.
The ending is likely to be quite physical in nature, though the option is given for fleeing, as is setting fire to the professor’s cabin and workshop. This is actually covered in some detail and mechanically uses a Luck roll to determine if the Investigators are successful. Overall, this is a decent scenario and straightforward to run.
The second scenario, ‘Bits & Pieces’, moves the action to Arkham itself and the city’s morgue. This is where the Investigators will find themselves in 1927 after they receive a telephone call from a disgraced physician in which he mutters about cultists, resurrection, and the need for cleansing fire. The call brings a disparate group of people together, first at his apartment and then at the morgue, where once they have broken in (because it is closed for the night), they find the doctor almost dead, his final words being, “Don’t’ let them out.” So, whomever stabbed him in the neck with a scalpel is still in the morgue and not only that, but the corpse that the doctor was obviously working on, is not on the slab. So where has that gone? Once the Investigators start looking, they do not find anyone. However… what they do find are parts of a body and every single part wants to fight back.
‘Bits & Pieces’ feels very much inspired by the film Reanimator, because these body parts are animated and not only do want to get back together, they prepared to fight to do so. This scenario is huge, silly fun. It manages to combine both horror and what is effectively, slapstick. Plus, the body parts all do different things to the Investigators. The arms will lay traps and stab them, the legs kick them and run away, the torso barges them, and best all, the head not only bites them, it actually calls the police to try and get ride of the Investigators! The aim for Investigators is to grab all of the body parts and get them to the furnace to burn all of the evidence—if they can work out how to operate it. The time limit on the scenario is when the morgue opens up in the morning. This is a brilliantly fun scenario, very physical, and is going to be highly memorable one to play and run.
The third and last scenario is ‘Aurora Blue’. This is the most mature and complex of the three scenarios in terms of its themes and tone. This is because it sees a clash of the marginalised. It takes place in late winter, 1932 and the Investigators are agents if the Bureau of prohibition, marginalised because their backgrounds and their assignment. The Investigators consist of an African American, of mixed African American and Inuit heritage, an older African American, and a woman. Consequently, given the attitudes the Bureau of Prohibition, their careers have found them marginalised to the backwater of Alaska, at the time a U.S. territory rather than a state. This is because after first believing that a new source of very popular bootleg alcohol was Canada, their bosses want to blame the delay in actually investigating and dealing with the source, a farm in the Chugach Mountains, Alaska, and anything that might go wrong, squarely on the Investigators. ‘Aurora Blue’ helpfully includes a sidebar with advice on the portrayal of the marginalised quartet and the attitudes towards them, but also suggests that the Keeper refer to ‘Realism: Reality and the Game’ from Harlem Unbound.
In addition, the scenario also includes a ‘Memory’ for each of the Investigators, triggered by a scene or encounter, in which they each have the opportunity to recall a similar moment in which they were faced with the prejudices against them and what happened as a result. These flashbacks are a moment to highlight and personalise their status and for each player to roleplay his or her Investigator.
The scenario also suggests that the Keeper refer to the Color Out of Space—both the short story by H.P. Lovecraft and the film from 2019—for the look and style of ‘Aurora Blue’, as this is the threat at the heart of the scenario. Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu that involve a Color Out of Space tend to be quite traditional, the alien creature landing near a farm and its poisonous aura first causing unparalleled fecundity and change before a rot sets in that renders everything into a grey infertility. The difference between them is the set-up and who the Investigators are, and in this case, the Investigators are agents of the Bureau of Prohibition, and the set-up focuses on the clash between their desperation in being given a bad, possibility career-ending assignment and the economic desperation of the farm that is producing Aurora Blue, the brand of the bootleg alcohol which the Agents have been sent to investigate.
In many ways, ‘Aurora Blue’ is not a subtle affair, its horror on show from the start and its mutated fecundity and hints of its barren blight to come pervading the scenario throughout. The main opportunity for roleplaying is with the farmer’s daughter, ill-treated and then rendered mute by the effects of the Color Out of Space, with only crayons and paper as her only means of communication and with her drawings serving as clues that the players have to interpret. The scenario is also more sophisticated in terms of its outcomes. The Agents can succeed in completing their assignment and they can potentially defeat the Color Out of Space, but this is optional—fleeing the farm without destroying the Color Out of Space is an acceptable option. It may also be possible to get away with the farmer’s daughter, but the scenario does not really make clear to the Agents and their players the strength of the connection between her and the Color Out of Space and how, if possible, it can be broken. Consequently, the optimum outcome of ‘Aurora Blue’ is not as clear as perhaps it should be for a scenario that is as short as this and for a scenario that is designed in part to demonstrate the roleplaying game.
The book is rounded out with two appendices and a set of indices. The first of the appendices contains the handouts for all three scenarios,, whilst the second has the bibliographies of the authors. The indices consist of four—a general index and then one for each of the three scenarios.
Physically, No Time to Scream is very well presented, with decently done maps and a great deal of the artwork can be used to show the players during play. The handouts are also well done, the crayon drawings for the farmer’s daughter from ‘Aurora Blue’ standing out for being singularly different. Lastly, it should be noted that the running length of all three scenarios makes them fairly easy to prepare and have ready to run.
No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror is good sequel to Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror. The three scenarios in this new anthology get better and more interesting as they go along. ‘Bits & Pieces’ stands out as a very rare combination for Call of Cthulhu—slapstick and horror—whilst ‘Aurora Blue’ is an excellent combination of back woods horror and poisoned hope with the need of the Investigators to prove themselves. As a collection of one-shots, demonstration scenarios, and convention scenarios, No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror delivers three more, short doses of horror and does so in an engaging, well designed, and multi-functional fashion.
No comments:
Post a Comment