Miskatonic Monday #400: Rewind – A 1980s Anthology

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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With a trade dress that is a nod to the Blockbuster chain of home video rental shops, the Keeper and her players are going to know where they with Rewind – A 1980s Anthology. This is a collection of connected scenarios that throws them back into the nostalgia of the eighties, Reagan’s America, and the films to rent from the local video library. It consists of five individual scenarios, plus a prequel that can also be played as a flashback, each of which is inspired by a particular set of films from the period. They take place in and around the fictional Butcher Creek, a wholly unremarkable town that has been absorbed by a nearby larger city and had what was its major employer for decades shut down its operations. As a consequence, like so many towns and cities in Reagan’s America, it is suffering from a post-industrial combination of malaise, decline, and loss of identity. This lends its scenarios a certain sense of scuzzy desperation as cults take advantage of the townsfolks’ desperation and hopelessness to bring their plans to fruition and entities from beyond infiltrate the town.

All six scenarios are quite short, designed to be played in approximately two hours—equal to the running time of a video cassette—though some have scope for a longer playing time. Although there are suggestions as to adjust to a lower number of players, the ideal number for all six scenarios is five players. Each scenario is inspired by a different series of films released on video during the period and as a consequence, each has a both a different theme and a different cast of pre-generated Investigators. This gives Rewind – A 1980s Anthology a portmanteau structure and a disparate nature, so that there is no one strong hook that a standard campaign for Call of Cthulhu would have. Rather than be run as a traditional, dedicated campaign, Rewind – A 1980s Anthology might instead be run as what are initially one-off scenarios, in any order, set in the same place with the players making connections with elements of the previous scenarios as they roleplay through them. In addition, none of the scenarios conclude in a satisfactory conclusion or with questions answered. Only the finale does.

The anthology opens with the prequel, ‘I Can’t Stand It’. Inspired by Hillstreet Blues, it is actually set in the late seventies, and casts the Player Characters as ‘cowboy cops’ who act first and complain about the paperwork afterwards. A routine callout to a notoriously seedy motel leads to a late night hostage situation, followed by a car chase and deadly motor vehicle collision, and a revelation that will have repercussions in later scenarios. The film Repo Man is the inspiration for the first part of the campaign, ‘Best Damn Car in the Yard’, in which a rough team of repo men who are given the emergency task of recovering a stolen bright green 1970 Plymouth Barracuda with black graphics. Their hunt for the missing vehicle leads them into a confrontation with local mobsters and probable arrest, at which point one of the surviving cops from ‘I Can’t Stand It’ might tell them about the events back in 1978 and so allow the Keeper to run the prequel as a flashback.

‘Insert Coin for Credit’ is inspired by Tron and Weird Science. The Investigators are teenagers who like to hang out at Butcher Creek’s Sure Shot arcade and get to try their hands at a few arcade classics before the mystery begins. This is around a strange game that two other teenagers are obsessed with—and increasingly so, becoming violent in their attempts to play it. At the same time, the Investigators begin to suffer strange dreams and become obsessed themselves. When the arcade game disappears can they track it down and discover what it really is? The Investigators are employees of Trajan’s Pizza in the third scenario, ‘Special Delivery’, which is inspired by Terminator, Alien, and other slasher/stalker films. First, one of their number begins to suffer seizures and then they all do. As they occur again and again, investigating that evening’s pizza deliveries leads to death, mystery, and indications that something not of this Earth is stalking them.

Karate Kid/Cobra Kai and Kung-Fu Hustle are the inspiration for ‘Dojo Nights’ which casts the Investigators as students at the town’s dojo. This is the most combative of the scenarios in Rewind – A 1980s Anthology as the students face off against each other several times in the course of the scenario. Their sensei is desperate to recover some books taken from him to repay a debt, a process which could get them into trouble, and definitely will when they return the books and he becomes obsessed and wants to control all of his students. The ‘Finale – Gotta Die of Something, Kid’ potentially brings all of the survivors from the previous five scenarios together, giving the player multiple options as who they might roleplay for the climax of Rewind – A 1980s Anthology. Also returning are the remaining foes from the previous scenarios so the players could also roleplay the Investigators in those scenarios too, the Keeper keeping the action going by switching back and forth between the different groups and foes. As the townsfolk rise in a brainwashed stupor, the surviving Investigators need to stop each of their foes’ final plans before a showdown with the source of the threat for everything that has been happening in Butcher Creek.

Physically, what is striking about Rewind – A 1980s Anthology is the use of different trade dresses. Most obviously, its cover is a reference to the Blockbuster chain, but inside the guide to Butcher Creek is done as an insert to Yellow Pages, the commercial telephone directory, and the scenario backgrounds are themed. ‘Fight to Live’ takes place in and around a dojo, so is decorated with dragons and Chinese Hanzi script, ‘Special Delivery’ is a done as an Italian pizzeria, and so on. It is very cheesy, but it does not always work. The Yellow Pages guide is a bit too vibrant and uses a lot of different fonts that make it difficult to read. In addition, the NPC stat blocks, done as Blockbuster-style membership cards are slightly too small to read with ease and the anthology also needs a good edit.

Rewind – A 1980s Anthology is ambitious, but unlike a traditional campaign for Call of Cthulhu, there is insufficient scope for the players, let alone the Investigators in the individual scenarios, to really gain any idea of what is going on or to really affect what is going on until the finale of the campaign. The Investigators do not come to fully realise who or what the antagonist is and what they are trying to do, and there are no real ways of their finding this out. There is even an organisation in the campaign which probably does know, appearing as it does at the end of several of the scenarios, to offer to help by cleaning up after the Investigators’ activities. It is not explained who they and they certainly do not explain to the Investigators what is going on either. Individually, the scenarios are thematically engaging and pack a decent amount of action and social interaction within their two-hour running times, but as a whole, Rewind – A 1980s Anthology leaves much of the mystery out of the grasp of Investigators and their players.