Miskatonic Monday #387: Shadow & Illusion

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: Shadow & Illusion

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: John Almack

Setting: Jazz Age Chicago

Product: One-shot
What You Get: Twenty-four page, 2.70 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Some dummies are no fools

Plot Hook: What’s the trick when a magician dies performing a magic trick?

Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, seventeen NPCs, two handouts, one map, and one ‘Mythos’ monster.

Production Values: Serviceable

Pros

# Magic murder mystery?

# Easy to adjust to other settings or time periods

# Magic and the Mob don’t mix

# Detailed staging for some scenes

# Option for running as a more mundane scenario

# Chance for some Investigators to shine on stage

# Rhabdophobia

# Automatonophobia

# Stagefright

Cons

# No Mythos

# No real introduction for the Investigators
# A lot of NPCs to keep track of

# Underwritten Investigators

# Needed more creepy venting

Conclusion

# The perils of performing in a tale of murder and magic

# Tonight’s performance is not going to go off like clockwork, it going to go like hackwork!