Miskatonic Monday #406: Kaidan – Great Service

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: Kaidan – Great Service

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Warped Plots

Setting: 1980s Japan

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirteen page, 9.11 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.” – Elinor Wylie

Plot Hook: Guess who’s going to dinner? meets the Samurai Gourmet

Plot Support: Staging advice, one floorplan, and three non-Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Reasonable

Pros

# Non-Mythos scenario in 1980s Tokyo

# Easy to adapt to other post World War II-eras

# Japanese folklore horror scenario
# The folklore could be a façade

# Could be condensed down to a one-session one-shot

# Easy to prepare with most options and outcomes covered

# Vorarephobia

# Daemonophobia

# Chrematophobia

Cons

# Non-Mythos scenario

# The full horror really only comes with saying yes

# Fifty-two bodies a year for seven decades, and nobody noticed? Now that’s magic.

Conclusion

# Hell’s kitchen and nary a Gordon Ramsey in sight

# Claustrophobic Japanese folklore horror scenario about inheritance