Miskatonic Monday #429: Crappy Detour

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: Crappy Detour

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Phanzar

Setting: USA, Modern Day

Product: One shot
What You Get: Seventeen-page, 8.22 BB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds meets Call of Cthulhu

Plot Hook: A forced detour confronts the Investigators with a shitty situation

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, five handouts, one map, four Mythos spells, one Mythos tome, and three Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Decent

Pros

# A terrible pun rather than a case of nominative determinism

# Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds writ large

# Decent map

# Easy to prepare

# Easy to adjust to other times and places

# Customisable Investigators

# Ornithophobia

# Coprophobia

# Pteronophobia

Cons

# A terrible pun rather than a case of nominative determinism

# Needs an edit

# No floorplans

# Sadly, no phobia of Afred Hitchcock

Conclusion

# Obvious pastiche that is not as bad as it sounds

# Decent one-shot that rises above nominative determinism