Miskatonic Monday #332: Heart of Horror

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.

—oOo—

Name: Heart of Horror

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Wojciech J. Szpytma

Setting: Congo, 1890s

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-one page, 111.54 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Plot Hook: A missing shipment means going up river... into the ‘heart of darkness’.

Plot Support: Staging advice, four (five) pre-generated Investigators, two handouts, two NPCs, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu

# Pre-generated Investigators with decent motivations

# Xylophobia

# Teraphobia

# Thalassophobia

Cons

# Adapts Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Call of Cthulhu

# Sanity losses high

# No stats for the actual villain of the piece

# Linear

# Ignores the horrors of the Congo

# Underdeveloped conclusion
# No Sanity rewards

# Needs an edit

Conclusion

# Serviceable if linear adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

# Lots of trigger warnings, but ignores the horror of the Congo