Gear & Teeth

To date, Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos, Chaosium, Inc’s supplement of Pulp action set during the nineteen thirties for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition has been supported by not one, but two campaigns. The better known of these is The Two-Headed Serpent: An Epic Action-Packed and Globe-Spanning Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, a campaign in the traditional sense of Lovecraftian investigative horror. It presented a world-spanning conspiracy, which took the heroic investigators from Bolivia, New York, Borneo, and Oklahoma to the Belgian Congo, Iceland, and Brazil—and beyond! The other campaign is A Cold Fire Within: A Mind-Bending Campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, which although like The Two-Headed Serpent is based in New York and takes place in the nineteen thirties, is very different in tone and scope. Inspired by both ‘The Mound’, the horror/science fiction novella ghost-written by H. P. Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop, and Sinclair Lewis’ alternate history satire, It Can’t Happen Here, it combines fringe science or ‘Science!’ with the fringe politics of the period for a campaign that is as much Science Fiction as it is horror. Thus, it has been a while since there has been support for Pulp Cthulhu.

Tooth & Claw: Two Scenarios for Pulp Cthulhu presents two scenarios set in New England in the Desperate Decade—‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ and ‘Wolf Among the Flock’. Whilst both scenarios are written for use with Pulp Cthulhu and use classic elements of the Mythos, they vary in tone and application of the Mythos. ‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ is the more straightforward of the two, combining ‘Science!’ with traditional elements of both the Mythos and Jewish mythology in traditional Pulp detective narrative, whilst ‘Wolf Among the Flock’ gives the use of traditional Mythos creature a pleasing twist and sets the whole affair in an enclosed, sweaty, hothouse affair. Both scenarios can be played in two or three sessions and both scenarios are easy to add to a campaign. Neither scenario has any specific requirements, but ‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ will play better if an Investigator understands Yiddish and/or German and has a good working knowledge of ‘Science!’, whilst ‘Wolf Among the Flock’ will play well if the Investigators have points in the Science (Biology) and Science (Zoology) skills as well as, surprisingly, Other Language (American Sign Language). The ‘Animal Companion’ Talent may prove to be fun addition and a Big Game Hunter Investigator would work very well with ‘Wolf Among the Flock’.

‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ is set in Boston and opens in 1933  the Investigators being hired by the director of the city’s Museum of Fine Arts to investigate a break-in and theft. Several priceless artefacts have been stolen from the museum’s Judaica Exhibition, the exhibition arranged to show solidarity with the city’s Jewish community. The leads point to the nightwatchman, beaten up during the robbery, but who is yet to come into work again and the nature of the stolen Hebrew artefacts. Threads lead into the city’s Jewish and antiquarian communities and also into its criminal underworld, much reduced in influence and power in the wake of the lifting of Prohibition, before reaching the Boston Futurist Society, whose members are made up of freethinkers and radicals.

This is not a complex investigation and that is entirely in keeping with Pulp Cthulhu. As is the presence of the police, also investigating the break-in at the museum and who may be played as an ally or an enemy, and a squad of heavies led by a severe-looking woman wearing an eyepatch (she must be evil, she is wearing an eyepatch), again also ‘investigating’ the break-in at the museum. There is room for a punch-up or two or a chase with heavies, whilst working with those that can help the Investigators is a little harder.

Ultimately, ‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ will probably end with a break-in of the Investigators’ own devising, a confrontation with a misguided techno-millionaire, and a bruising attempt to prevent a nasty summoning. ‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ is a well written scenario which combines the Mythos and supreme ambition with its inspiration, The Golem: How He Came into the World, the 1920 German silent horror film. In fact, there is a chance in game that the Investigators will actually remember having seen the film. The result is a scenario that is a bit too familiar and more experienced players may work out what is going on early on and then need to play against their knowledge until it becomes obvious to their Investigators.

‘Wolf Among the Flock’ begins with the Investigators receiving notices of and invitations to the memorial service for Michael and Rachael Durney, famed explorers and collectors who travelled the world and built a private zoo at their family home between Boston and Arkham, and recently killed by a bear in their menagerie. This requires some set-up, perhaps in previous scenario (there is a connection given to the Boston Futurist Society, though the Durneys were members, not cultists), to really make its story be more tragic. In the wake of their deaths, the Durneys’ daughter, Naomi, has become a recluse, taken to her room, and decided to dissolve the zoo and sell off its animals.

As the first guests at the estate, the Investigators are given a grand tour and quickly realise that the house, the grounds, and the zoo are beginning to go to seed as the dissolution proceeds. There are fewer staff, fewer animals, and the animals that remain are nervous and disquieted. The Investigators are free to roam the grounds as they like, but there are couple of set pieces—nasty set pieces at that—and later, they will also be communicate, in limited fashion, with another victim of an animal attack on the  zoo grounds. Whilst the story is explicitly light on the Mythos, it is suffused with paranoia right through to the very end when the Mythos breaks out and runs rampant!

In terms of plotting, ‘Wolf Among the Flock’ is not as direct as ‘Of Clockwork & Clay’ and so the Investigators have more freedom as where to they go and what they do. This can work against the scenario—its only weakness—if the Investigators decide to follow certain clues to their conclusions. The Keeper is advised to forestall this from happening, which begs the question, why allow it at all? Otherwise, ‘Wolf Among the Flock’ is the better of the two scenarios in Clockwork & Claws. This is because it takes a familiar Mythos entity and does something different with it, shifting the weirdness and the horror into, “Though Nature, red in tooth and claw” as well as an unexpected direction in terms of rebirth and transcendance. Which gives what is a scenario for Pulp Cthulhu a subtler feel through most of its play than the Keeper and her players might otherwise expect.

Physically, Clockwork & Claws is well appointed. The maps and handouts are all decently done, and even if the artwork varies a little in quality, the art direction is very good. Time is taken to illustrate numerous scenes and artefacts which the Keeper can then show to her players. The cartography feels a little tight in places, but is otherwise very good. There is also content in the book which can be used beyond its pages, such as that on Boston, perhaps point to the usefulness of a Boston sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu.

Tooth & Claw: Two Scenarios for Pulp Cthulhu is not without its issues—the familiarity of Mythos and its application and that there only two scenarios here, rather than three or four, the latter disappointing because there is not really very much support for Pulp Cthulhu. Nevertheless, the two scenarios in Tooth & Claw: Two Scenarios for Pulp Cthulhu support the setting with two scenarios that are entertaining and playable, one of which is creepy and freaky in its final revelations.