Miskatonic Monday #442: The Drowned Thorn

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: The Drowned Thorn

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Stuart McNair

Setting: Lancashire Coast, 1926

Product: Scenario

What You Get: Ninety-Four page, 107.00 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: The secrets of the sands, fear of the foreshore.

Plot Hook: A missing rifleman on the shifting shore.
Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, 

sixteen NPCs, six handouts, three maps,  and three Mythos entities and monsters.

Production Values: Good

Pros

# Littoral horror where the intertidal edge keeps shifting

# Brilliantly nebulous

# Well worked through conclusion that presents the players and Investigators with concrete options

# Useful set of extra locations

# Decent handouts

# Thalassophobia

# Ammosophobia

# Epistemophobia

Cons

# Annoyingly repetitious in its use of NPC descriptors

# Needs an edit

# Brilliantly nebulous

Conclusion

# Challengingly off-kilter and nebulous environmental scenario whose sparseness may be difficult to impart

# The investigators will have to supply the emotion and thus the contrast

Miskatonic Monday #438: Abracadabra!

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: Abracadabra!

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Steven Hernandez

Setting: New Jersey, 1926

Product: One-shot

What You Get: Thirty-eight page, 40.94 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: “Never try to fool children, they expect nothing, and therefore see everything.” – Harry Houdini

Plot Hook: There should be nothing magical about a missing boy
Plot Support: Staging advice, four pre-generated Investigators, five NPCs, five handouts, one map, one Mythos tome, one Mythos monster, and one boiled cabbage recipe.

Production Values: Good

Pros

# Solid double crime investigation

# Strong on investigation and interaction

# Horror of the Mythos versus horror of a distraught gangster father

# Easily adapted to other periods, especially Cthulhu by Gaslight

# Easily adapted to other cities

# Excitingly weird, but pacy finale

# Tycophobia

# Scelerophobia

# Rhabdophobia

Cons

# Needs a slight edit

# Not every location is mapped

# Finale needs careful study and staging

Conclusion

# Solid set-up leads to strong investigation and a race to the finish

# Police procedural which proves that Mythos and magic should never mix…

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

Miskatonic Monday #330: Missing in the Rocky Mountains

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: Missing in the Rocky Mountains

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Derek Zimmer

Setting: Rocky Mountain National Park, 1926

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Forty-five page, 23.80 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: ‘Inland Innsmouth Incursion’

Plot Hook: Missing persons and misdirection

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, seven handouts, eight NPCs, three maps, and two Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# Nicely detailed investigation

# Challenging investigation
# Not a sasquatch hunt (but it could be)

# Part of ‘Cthulhu in the Parks’ series
# Easy to adapt to other periods for Call of Cthulhu

# Easy to adapt to other similar mountain ranges

# Could be updated as an introductory scenario for a Park Ranger scenario for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game

# Decent handouts

# Good Keeper advice

# Batrachophobia

# Orophobia

# Teraphobia

Cons

# Needs a slight edit
# Likely to end in a shootout

# Challenging investigation

Conclusion

# Good mix of investigation and action with solid Keeper support

# Short, but challenging investigation

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Miskatonic Monday #324: Lost and Found

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: Lost and Found: A Railway Scenario for Call of Cthulhu

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: SR Sellens

Setting: Great Britain, 1926

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Sixty-eight page, 66.47 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Classic railway murder mystery meets the Mythos

Plot Hook: “There’s an unexpected item in the baggage area!”

Plot Support: Staging advice, six pre-generated Investigators, ten handouts, one map and one train plan, ten NPCs, one cat, three Mythos artefacts, one Mythos tome, one Mythos spell, and two Mythos monsters.

Production Values: Ferroequinologically excellent

Pros

# Richly detailed scenario

# Wonderfully thematic layout
# Easy to adapt to Cthulhu by Gaslight or other periods with trains

# Easy to insert into a campaign

# Bonus histories

# Has notes on adapting it to The Children of Fear, Horror on the Orient Express, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Tatters of the King, The Day of the Beast, and The Two Headed Serpent

# Ferroequinology!

# Cleithrophobia

# Teraphobia

# Siderodromophobia

Cons

# Ferroequinology!

# Warranted a bibliography

# Classic trapped with an unstoppable monster scenario

Conclusion

# Classic cosy railway murder gets trapped by the Mythos in a richly detailed and thematically presented scenario

# Highly flexible and adaptable to multiple periods and actual Call of Cthulhu campaigns!

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends