Miskatonic Monday #443: Resonance Cascade

Much like the Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Companions of Arthur for material set in Greg Stafford’s masterpiece of Arthurian legend and romance, Pendragon, the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition is a curated platform for user-made content. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.

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Name: Resonance Cascade

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Florian Krates

Setting: An underground facility, 9:00 AM, May 16th, 2005

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Twenty page, 1.07 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Call of Cthulhu meets Half Life.

Plot Hook: Warning. This is not a test. Warning. This is not a test. Warning. This is not a test. Warning. This is not a test. Warning. This is not a test... Warning. The test starts now.
Plot Support: Staging advice, no pre-generated Player Character employees, five NPCs, and five Mythos entities and monsters.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# Half Life survival horror where death or escape are the only options

# Third-person dungeoneering in a doomed laboratory

# Helminthophobia

# Cleithrophobia

# Atelophobia

Cons

# No maps

# Locations, but no sense of the overall facility

# What if a Player Character employee dies? Can he respawn?

# Really, really needs pre-generated Player Character employees

# Half Life survival horror where death or escape are the only options

Conclusion

# A linear narrative plus no map makes progress challenging to describe

# Multiple Gordon Freemans without pre-generated Player Character employees