Miskatonic Monday #399: Strange Carol

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: Strange Carol

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Konstantinos Kotsaridis

Setting: Arkham, 1926

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-one page, 12.35 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The circus is evil, because circuses are evil…

Plot Hook: What are a mistrusted academic’s ties to the circus?

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, twenty-two NPCs, five handouts, one map, and one Mythos monster.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# Can be tied with a Miskatonic University campaign

# Easy to adapt to other university cities and time frames

# Twists the classic circus as you would expect
# Cacophobia

# Algophobia

# Anomalophobia

Cons

# Muddled background & set-up
# Needs a slight edit

Conclusion

# The circus is a show, the scenario is a show

# Leads the Investigators on a clue trail without much agency