I Got The Altered Morphology Blues II

A decade ago, on January 12th, a plague struck the world. A flu-like plague which seemed resistant to the then available treatments. Fortunately nobody died, but eleven days later, on January 23rd, all of the symptoms vanished and everyone recovered. Only later did people realise the significance of what became known as ‘Ghost Flu’ as months later, sufferers began exhibiting powers and abilities only found in mankind’s wildest imaginings and biggest cinema screen franchise. The ability to fly, phase through walls, read the minds of others, control gravity, flatten or enhance the emotions of others, and read or even enter dreams. Literally, people had superpowers. This manifestation becomes known as the ‘Sudden Mutation Event’ or ‘SME’, and in the next ten years approximately one percent of the population will manifest SME. In response, there was no rash of costumed heroes or villains, though a few tried. The most photogenic of SME suffers became celebrities, sportsmen, television and film stars, or politicians, others found jobs related to their newly gained powers, for example, a firefighter who control flames or oxygen, a transmuter who could literally turn lead into (industrial) gold, or a healer who work as a medic or doctor, and the most popular sports found ways of incorporating them into their play. Some though turned to crime, and of course, there were criminals who exhibited SME, and whilst the Heightened as they became known were mostly assimilated into society, they could still be victims of crime and they were also victims of a prejudice all their very own. For example, the Neutral Parity League campaigns against ‘Chromes’ (from ‘Chromosome’) as the Heightened are nicknamed, often violently, whilst organisations like the Heightened Information Alliance campaigns for the protection of their rights. In general, the Heightened have become one of society’s accepted minorities and most just get on with their lives.

When one of the Heightened is involved in crime—whether as victim or perpetrator—the police will investigate and handle the matter just as they would any other crime. However, most big city police forces have established a unit to specifically deal with such cases. This is the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit (HCIU), staffed by Heightened members of the police force and tasked with investigating and solving SME related crimes, whether committed by or against SME sufferers. The HCIU also serves as a combination liaison/bulwark between the mutants and ordinary folk. The law has also adapted to take account of the prevalence of Heightened abilities. Thus investigative powers such as Observe Dreams and Read Minds require consent or a legal warrant, the use of X-Ray Vision ability must follow strict health and safety guidelines as its emits radiation and can cause cancer, the wrongful use of Impersonate is fraud, and several powers, including Radiation Projection, Invisibility, and Read Minds are deemed inherently dangerous. Such powers fall under Article 18 which regulates their use and may even see their users being monitored. The study of superpowers and SME expressives is known as Anamorphology, while members of the HCIU are trained in Forensic Anamorphology.

This is the set-up for Mutant City Blues, a super powered investigative roleplaying game, originally designed by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane Press in 2009. It uses the author and publisher’s GUMSHOE System, designed to play investigative games which emphasise the interpretation of clues rather than their discovery, and which has been used with another genre in a number of roleplaying games from the publisher, including horror in The Esoterrorists, cosmic horror in Trail of Cthulhu, space opera in Ashen Stars, and time travel in Timewatch. In Mutant City Blues the other genre is the classic police procedural of Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, and NYPD Blue. The combination though is specific. The Player Characters are police officers with powers, not superheroes who are cops. So not DC Comics’ Gotham Central or the Special Crimes Unit from Superman’s hometown, Metropolis, or indeed, Wildstorm’s Top 10. This is very much not a ‘Four Colour’ superheroes setting. The action and the investigation of Mutant City Blues also takes place in a real city, whether New York or Toronto, or a city the Game Moderator is familiar with. Although Mutant City Blues has the feel of a setting that is North America, it would be easy to set a campaign elsewhere, and there are notes on adapting it to the United Kingdom.

To help the Game Moderator adapt Mutant City Blues to the city of her choice, the roleplaying game comes with a number of elements which mapped onto that city. This includes a future timeline which runs from the outbreak of Ghost Flu to the present day, a guide to the future city’s politics and leading figures, as well as its new institutes and businesses. First and foremost amongst them is The Quade Institute, the world’s foremost Anamorphological research centre, run by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade. The Quade Institute is also where members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit are trained in Forensic Anamorphology. A complete Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is described, ready for the Player Characters to be slotted into. Lastly, there is a ready-to-play scenario, ‘Food Chain’, which introduces the history of the Mutant City Blues setting as well as providing a case for the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit to investigate.

In actuality that is the set-up for Mutant City Blues as published in 2009. In 2020, Pelgrane Press published a second edition, this time by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Robin D. Laws. Mutant City Blues still retains the same set-up and flexibility in terms of where it can be set, but it also introduces a number of changes, not least of which is a new scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’. The majority of these changes have been implemented to make the game faster and easier to both set up and play.

As with other GUMSHOE System games, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues are defined by various abilities, either Investigative or General. Investigative Abilities are further divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. As a superhero roleplaying game, Player Characters in Mutant City Blues also have superpowers or Mutant Powers, which are again split between Investigative and General Powers. What defines the split between Investigative and General Abilities and Powers is how they are used. In the first edition of Mutant City Blues both Investigative and General abilities are represented by ratings or pool of points. For Investigative abilities, if the Player Character has the ability, he can always use it to gain core clues during an investigation, and his player could always spend more points from the Investigative ability pool to gain more information. For General abilities, such as Health, Infiltration, and Preparedness, a player expends points from the relevant pool and uses them as a modifier to a die roll to beat a particular difficulty. This is on a six-sided die and a typical difficulty is four, but can go as high as four. In the second edition of Mutant City Blues, a Player Character still has pools of points for his General abilities, including mutant powers, but not for Investigative abilities and powers. Instead of ratings, a Player Character either has the Investigative ability or power, or he does not. During an investigation, a Player Character will always pick up a clue related to an Investigative ability. If a Player Character wants more information, he can Push.

The Push is the major rule change in the second edition of Mutant City Blues. Replacing ratings for Investigative abilities, a Push is primarily used to gain more information or overcome obstacles preventing progress in an investigation. For example, it might be used to speed up the investigative process, such as getting the results back from the laboratory quicker than usual for Forensic Anthropology or Ballistics, to add an expert in the field as a friend using Art History or Occult Studies, or even use Cop Talk to impress the media or a Player Character’s superiors. A Push can also be used to sidestep or lower the difficulty of a General ability test. However a Push is used, a player only has two to expend per session, and they cannot be saved between sessions.

To create a member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, a player receives three pools of points to spend on his character. These are standard for both General abilities and Mutant Powers, but will vary for Investigative abilities, the value depending upon the number of players. To ease the creation process, the second edition of Mutant City Blues includes templates that model particular police departments, such as the Forensic Science Division, Gang and Narcotic, Robbery, and Special Weapons & Training. Each template has a cost in points, with any excess being used to purchase other Investigative abilities and purchase and increase General abilities.

Whilst choosing Investigative and General abilities is relatively straightforward, selecting Investigative and General Powers is more involved. In standard superhero roleplaying games, a player is free to choose what powers he likes, in any combination, often to model particular superheroes from the comic books and films. Now that option is possible in Mutant City Blues, but that diverges from Mutant City Blues as written. Mutant powers in Mutant City Blues are clustered together genetically, so that if a Heightened has the Transmutation power, he is also likely to have the Disintegration, Phase, Touch, Reduce Temperature, and Ice Blast powers. He may also have the Wind Control, Healing, Radiation Projection, and Self-Detonation powers, but not Pain Immunity or Gravity Control. All this is mapped out on the Quade Diagram—as devised by the renowned geneticist, Lucius Quade of The Quade Institute—and in addition to using it to select powers during the character creation, the Quade Diagram serves as a forensic tool in the game. HCIU officers can use it to determine the powers used at a crime scene, as many of them leave some form of residue. It can determine the involvement of one Mutant if the residue is clustered, more if there are several clusters. The point here is that mutant powers are known quantities and do not vary, and in addition, where in the comics, a superhero will often tweak or adjust his powers from one issue to the next, this is very difficult to do in Mutant City Blues.

Our sample member of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit is newly appointed Grace Bruckner who transferred across from Robbery where she specialised in art theft. She has become adept at identifying forgeries from merely touch alone. Her tendency towards Disassociation means she has few friends on the force, her colleagues seeing her as cold and unfriendly. This is despite the fact they know her genetics.

Detective Grace Bruckner, 1st Grade
General Abilities: Athletics 4, Composure 10, Driving 2, Filch 2, Health 10, Infiltration 4, Mechanics 2, Preparedness 5, Scuffling 5, Sense Trouble 5, Shooting 4, Surveillance 6
Investigative Abilities: Architecture, Art History, Bureaucracy, Bullshit Detector, Charm, Document Analysis, Evidence Collection, Fingerprinting, Forensic Accounting, Forensic Anthropology, Languages, Law, Negotiation, Photography, Research, Streetwise
Investigative Powers: Touch
General Powers: Disintegration 1, Healing 3, Phase 5, Transmutation 3
Defects: Disassociation

Certain powers and clusters, however, also have ‘Genetic Risk Factors’ associated with them. For example, Heightened with the Night Vision and Thermal Vision powers have tendency for Watcher Syndrome, whilst those with Telekinesis and Force Field, suffer from Sensory Overload. As she has both Phase and Disintegration, Detective Grace Bruckner can suffer from Disassociation, which means that she has a tendency to emotionally withdraw from people, and if the condition worsens, to see the world and her actions as unreal. Genetic Risk Factors need not come into play though, but it all depends upon the mode in which the gaming group has decided to play Mutant City Blues. The roleplaying game has two modes. In Safety Mode, Genetic Risk Factors are seen as potential risks to the Player Characters and may occasionally be topics of conversation, but in the main do not enter play except when they might affect Heightened criminals. In Gritty Mode, Genetic Risk Factors can express themselves in the members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, and in play, are one source of Subplots.

Subplots are plots extra to the main investigation, the ‘B’ plot to the ‘A’ plot, and are typically personal or tied to another case. The players are encouraged to suggest them and the Game Moderator can add them, but in Gritty Mode they can also take the form of a personal Crisis which will affect a particular Player Character, and they can be triggered by the expression of a Genetic Risk Factor or an event which occurs in the line of duty. The latter can affect all police officers, not just members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, but those triggered by a Genetic Risk Factor is specific to the Heightened. Mechanically, a Crisis requires a test and if failed, earns the Player Character a Stress Card. Similarly, if a Player Character exhausts the points from a power, but manages to refresh it by testing his Genetic Risk Factor (done against its resistance ability, which is different for each Genetic Risk Factor), he also gains a Stress Card due to the strain. Mutant City Blues lists over fifty, each with a tag like Addiction or Home Life, and Deactivation or Discard conditions, these being ways a Player Character effectively forestall the effects of a Stress Card or get rid of it completely. Should a Player Character acquire three or Stress Cards, then he is forced to quit or is fired from the force due to stress and his consequent actions.

Crises and Stress Cards are obviously storytelling and roleplaying tools, but they are also ways of enforcing the conventions of Mutant City Blues’ genre. In effect, Crises and Stress Cards are a way of handling a Player Character’s story arc over the course of a campaign. Just as in the television shows which inspire it, characters in Mutant City Blues leave, resign, take a new assignment, or are killed. Similarly, the use of the two modes—Safe and Gritty—model the two types of police procedural. Safe Mode represents a police procedural which focuses on the powers and the cases, and less on the personal and home lives of the Player Characters, whereas the grimmer Gritty Mode brings into play the personal and home lives of the Player Characters as well as the dangers of using their mutant powers. Of the two, the Gritty Mode more strongly enforces its genre than the Safe Mode. And this is in addition to the grind of dealing with the bureaucracy of the job, the Player Characters’ superiors, the media, and the criminals.

The two genres for Mutant City Blues—police procedural and superheroes—will be familiar to most, but not necessarily together. The roleplaying game’s authors provide plenty of advice to that end. The rules and advice cover collecting clues and using Pushes and their benefits, action at non-lethal, lethal, and superpowered levels, including combat, shootouts, chases, and more. There is a lengthy discussion of how the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit operates, including an orientation manual (with annotations from a member giving an explanation and opinion on how things are actually done), handling interrogations and court scenes, how the presence of the Heightened has changed the law, and running cases of the week and big plots. Plus there is a guide to the future world of Mutant City Blues, its politics, cultures, sports, and notable figures that the Game Moderator can map onto the city of her choice. Plus that mapping need not be onto a city in the near future, but could be the here and now, and there is advice for doing that too. The players are not left out here with advice on selecting their characters’ watch commander, using subplots, and suggesting some interview techniques, since after all, few of the players are going to be trained police officers. Lastly, there is an adventure, ‘Blue on Blue’ which does a good job of introducing the setting of Mutant City Blues and its various elements as they are affected by the Heightened, and takes the story of SME all the way back to the beginning. That said, it very much has the feel of a North American city and the Game Moderator will need to make some adjustments to set it elsewhere.

Throughout the pages of Mutant City Blues, there is another option discussed. That is instead of the Player Characters as members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, they are Private Investigators. This gives the players and their characters greater flexibility in terms of how they approach investigations, as well as less responsibility and also less authority. However, they are still private citizens and they will need to be equally as careful, if not more so, in their use of their powers than members of the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit. Rather than the set-up and organisation provided by the Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit, the players and their characters will need to work out the details of their agency ahead of time. The scenario, ‘Blue on Blue’ does have notes to enable it to be run using private investigators, but it is really written to be played using Heightened Crimes Investigation Unit officers.

Physically, for a book published in 2020,Mutant City Blues is surprisingly done in black and white. In some ways, that is thematic, and to be fair, it does not detract from the book in any way. In general, the artwork is excellent, the book is well written, and the layout clean and tidy, and best of all, easy to read.

If there are any issues with Mutant City Blues, it is in tone and setting. Some players may well find its strongly implied setting to be too North American, but the police procedural is very much a North American television staple, which for others it is that its superpowers are too low powered, to be not quite Four Colour enough. Yet even the roleplaying game’s Safe Mode is not Four Colour, although it is much closer than Gritty Mode, and after all, it is written to be a police procedural with superpowers, rather than it is a superpowered police procedural.

The GUMSHOE System was always designed to ease the process of playing investigative roleplaying games, but its iteration here in the second edition of Mutant City Blues has gone even further, switching from the previous edition’s pools of points to a simple binary yes/no for its Investigative abilities. Combined with the equally as simple Push mechanics and Mutant City Bluesmakes investigations even easier, shifting any prior complexity to the game’s action when General abilities—mundane and mutant come into play. And really, they are not that complex.

Inspired by two genres—police procedural and superheroes—Mutant City Blues still remains underpowered for handling either separately, but merged together, the result is an appealing combination of familiar genres that are consequently easy to roleplay. And that is made even easier by the streamlining of the GUMSHOE System and the cleaner presentation in this new edition. Mutant City Blues does what it says on the badge, present police procedural and investigative roleplaying in a near future that is almost like our own world, and make it accessible and engaging. The combination is very specific, but there can be no doubt that Mutant City Blues does it very well.

A Wilderness Expanded

All good RPGs need a campaign—and none more so than The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild, the Middle Earth-set RPG from Cubicle Seven Entertainment. After all, this is the RPG set between the events described in The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a known time line and thus a framework for a campaign. So we want to see how the ‘events’ of the future after the Battle of the Five Armies play out. Now The Heart of the Wild is not that campaign, but it is a companion to The Darkening of Mirkwood, which is that campaign. It is also a standalone supplement that details two thirds of the wilderland that is the focus for The One Ring—the Vales of Anduin along the banks of the Great River and the trackless forest of Mirkwood.

In detailing such a vast area, it expands upon the information given for the Loremaster in The One Ring, particularly the lands of the Elves of Mirkwood, the lands of the Woodmen, and the lands of the Beornings. As well as detailing the homes of the cultural origins open to player characters, they are also potential Sanctuaries for all player characters. Thankfully they are not the only ones described in The Heart of the Wild. Conversely, the supplement also describes some of the worst places in Middle Earth, none no worse of course—in Mirkwood at least—than Dol Guldur, the ‘Hill of Sorcery’ that for centuries was the refuge for the Necromancer. The supplement also includes an expanded bestiary and several new options for player characters.

After giving a history and an overview of the region, The Heart of the Wild takes the reader through the regions of the Vales of Anduin one by one and then it does the same for Mirkwood. For each region it gives a more detailed overview, a description of its typical wildlife, some notable characters, presents its notable places, and lastly presents various supplementary facts and relevant game information in sidebars.  So for the Vales of Gundabad where the waters of the Anduin rise, we are told that it is home to goats, rabbits, wild horses, and cattle—all hunted by hungry goblins when the heavy fogs roll in; the sparsely populated region is primarily home to goblins and orcs underground, and to wildly savage Hill-men of Gundabad above ground; and it is also home to trappers like Amfossa whilst with the death of Bolg, son of Azog, there is at last a new Orc prince—Gorgol, son of Bolg. The notable places in the region include the City of the Éothéod, the most northern outpost of the ancestors of the Rohirrm, now hollow ruins occupied by Orcs and Trolls; a secret outpost of the Dwarves, Hidden House, originally built to spy on  the Éothéod, but still used as a waystation by the Dwarves; and the Hill of Skulls, a lonely mound surrounded by stakes upon which rest the skulls of Orcs and Wargs, Dwarves and Men, and others, though no-one knows why… Sidebars cover the Hill-men of Gundabad and their sorcery, a Fellowship Phase undertaking, and the origins of the grudge that led to the construction of the Hidden House. From this, the Loremaster can draw out details as well as adventure and encounter ideas. 

Naturally, more attention is paid the settled areas around the Halls of Thranduil, the house of Beorn, and the three Woodmen settlements in the eaves of Mirkwood as well as to a certain extent, Dol Guldur. Notably, the Loremaster is directed to the core rules for more information on Beorn and whilst some may find this irksome, there really is no need for the repetition of information from the core rules. The book does suffer a little from repetition from one region to another, mostly in terms of the mundane details—the wildlife and the weather. This though is more of an issue if you read the book from start to finish, when really The Heart of the Wild is a reference work meant to be dipped into as needed. Such as for example when preparing to run and then running The Darkening of Mirkwood.

In terms of character options, The Heart of the Wild offers variations upon existing Cultures rather than new Cultures. This makes sense, since there are few Cultures and few Races in Middle Earth, at least in terms of those that can be played. The two Cultural variants are  the Wild Hobbits of the Anduin Vales and the Woodmen of Mountain Hall, both of which feel somewhat underwritten. The Wild Hobbits in particular probably could have warranted with their own Backgrounds as the ones given in the core rules are rather bucolic and cozy which is at odds with the reserved and secretive nature of the Wild Hobbits—Sméagol was after all a Wild Hobbit. For the Woodmen there is the Cultural Virtue of ‘River-blooded’, meaning that they have River Maiden ancestry, whilst ‘The Call of Mirkwood’ is for those Elves who have taken a greater joy in life and in doing so have accepted that they will fade rather than go into the West.

Rounding out The Heart of the Wild is a short bestiary. This adds new foes that are particular to areas presented in the supplement—Basilisks, Forest Goblins, Grim Hawks, Hunter Spiders, and so on. It also includes the stats and short write-ups for the individual foes described earlier in the text.These include Gorgol, Son of Bolg, Maghaz, Orc-Captain, the New Great Goblin, and the Children of Shelob. These are all useful additions to a game and setting that really does not need much in the way of monsters. After all, slaying monsters is rarely the point of The One Ring.

Physically, The Heart of the Wild is well presented. Just like the core rules for The One Ring, this supplement is done in earthy tones, both the graphical design and the illustrations that do much to capture the feel of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The maps are decent, being mostly simple affairs. The map of Dol Guldur though is done as an illustration and has a pleasing air of menace to it.

The Heart of the Wild is of course the companion to The Darkening of Mirkwood and throughout the supplement references are made to the campaign. These are not overdone, though doubtless there may be more information contained within the campaign’s pages about specific locations. Yet it is also a companion to Tales from Wilderland, the anthology of scenarios for The One Ring, since The Heart of the Wild covers much the same area.

Whilst The Heart of the Wild is disappointing in one place—in its treatment of its new character options—it is a well written supplement. Where another publisher might have overwritten this and swamped the reader with unnecessary details, The Heart of the Wild feels appropriately sparse and light. After all,  it has to cover swathes of wilderness where there is little in way of civilisation or notable features, and this The Heart of the Wild does well. 

Medical Malpractice

Invasive Procedures is a scenario written for use with Fear Itself, Pelgrane Press’ RPG that pitches ordinary folk into a disturbing contemporary world of madness and violence. Like the majority of the titles published by Pelgrane Press, it uses the Gumshoe System, and so is compatible with its other two horror RPGs, Trail of Cthulhu and Esoterrorists. More particularly, Invasive Procedures includes notes that the GM can use to adapt the scenario so that it can be run specifically for Trail of Cthulhu. What helps with this is the fact that the scenario can easily be set during any period within the last one hundred years or so such that it could be run in the contemporary here and now of Delta Green, the 1890s of Cthulhu by Gaslight, the 1920s for classic Call of Cthulhu, the 1930s for Trail of Cthulhu, or indeed, any when in between. The scenario itself makes use of a foe first described in the publisher’s excellent supplement, The Book of Unremitting Horror, the details of which are included in Invasive Procedures. In the version that Pelgrane Press was kind enough to provide for the purpose of this review, the foe is described in a nine-page booklet that comes in an envelope glued inside the back cover. Later printings of scenario will have the description and motivation of this foe written in as part of the book.

Invasive Procedures works best as either a one-shot or as the opening chapter of a campaign. Its set-up is very specific, making it difficult to run as part of an on-going campaign. A quintet of pre-generated characters/investigators is included, and these can either be used as is, or as the models for characters of the players’ own creation. Using the provided characters as models is necessary, not because the characters are in any way special, but because of both how and where they are.

As the scenario opens, the player characters find themselves in hospital. They are each patients who have been moved from a county hospital to older facility where they are to recover from recent surgery. Our Lady’s Hospital was meant to have been closed down years ago, but despite its crumbling façade and obsolete infrastructure, it has been kept open in order to handle patients who need rest and observation rather than actual treatment. Thus freeing up much needed beds at the more modern hospital nearby.

The medical condition of the investigators has a marked effect upon the scenario and just what they can get up to. For much of the scenario, they will be restricted to their beds by the nurses, as they are expected to rest after all. This does not mean that the investigators cannot conduct any actual investigation, but rather that they will have to have to work hard to get around the nurses. When they do though, their efforts will be hampered by the state of their health. In game terms, an investigator literally must expend points from his Health Ability in order to conduct certain actions, points that can only be restored through bed rest. In effect in Invasive Procedures, each investigator’s Health Ability has a reduced and more temporary feel to it, and this, combined with the reduced number of points assigned to all of the investigators’ Abilities, places an emphasis on the resource aspect of playing a Gumshoe game.

This might be frustrating for some players, as might the fact that escaping Our Lady’s Hospital is intentionally difficult. Not just due to their investigators’ weakened health, but also later in the scenario as the forces they face isolate the facility. Nevertheless, this is intentional; Invasive Procedures is all about isolation and claustrophobia, as much as it is about medical malpractice and the classic duality of the medical practitioner. Despite the constraints placed on the investigators by their status and their situation, they do have room to manoeuvre and explore their environment, the nature of which changes between night and day. These elements are actually tools to help the GM run what is not necessarily an easy scenario to run if he is to both maintain its atmosphere and handle the flow of clues.

The difficulty that a GM might have in running Invasive Procedures is not helped by the pre-generated investigators, which feel underwritten; the lack of a timeline that could help him handle its flow of effects; and a simple map that could help him visualise Our Lady’s Hospital quickly and easily – both for himself and for his players. That aside, the scenario is nicely produced, and the writing excellent. Pasqual Quidalt’s illustrations are all suitably dark and makes for a moody change over the art usually seen in Pelgrane Press’ titles.

Lastly, there is the matter of Invasive Procedures and Trail of Cthulhu. The scenario is clearly written for Fear Itself, which shows in its choice of true foe and its feel as more a traditional horror scenario than a Lovecraftian investigative horror one. Mechanically, there is little that a Keeper needs to do in order to adapt Invasive Procedures from Fear Itself to Trail of Cthulhu. Thematically, he needs to work elements of the Mythos threat into the body of the scenario, the suggested threats being the Mi-go or Elder Things, the former being more appropriate and easier to work in than the latter. This, like the running of the actual scenario, is best done by an experienced GM or Keeper.

As a one-shot horror adventure, Invasive Procedures is a close, claustrophobic, and challenging affair. The challenge rises exponentially for the GM or Keeper if he wants to run this scenario as part of a campaign, though it would make for an atmospheric and scary start for a campaign.