Miskatonic Monday #381: The Bride of Pendle

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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Contrary to what the title might suggest, The Bride of Pendle has nothing to do with witches or the Pendle Witch Trails of 1612. Rather, it is a scenario set during the Jazz Age, the classic period for Call of Cthulhu, which takes place around, in, and on Pendle Hill in the county of Lancashire in the north of England. The year is 1922 and a group of friends are attending the wedding of their friend, Thomas Byrne, to Mary Osegawa, whom he met as an Embassy Clerk whilst posted to Japan during the Great War. They all met whilst studying at University College London following the war. This sounds like the start of a classic country house murder a la Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers, and whilst it has a little of the schemes and rivalries of that subgenre of detective fiction, it is far from that. The Bride of Pendle combines what would be a joyous event and local folklore with horror and revenge that have been brewing for centuries, and which will explode in the bloodiest of massacres since the Red Wedding on the day before coming to a climax on the magnificent, windswept Pendle Hill.

The Bride of Pendle: 1920s Folk Horror in Rural Lancashire is divided into three substantial sections. The first gives the background to the scenario, describing in some detail the NPCs and then in even greater detail, the scenario’s various locations. The maps of each are excellent, but the standout being that of Pendle Hill, imparting its sense of scale and bleakness, and how it imposes itself upon the landscape, whilst the scenario rips open the hillside to reveal its secrets hidden under layers of peaty morass. There is a lot of information that the Keeper will need to work through as part of her preparation to run the scenario.

The plot to the scenario itself concerns the long gestating plans of the daughter of a local cunning woman who turned to black magic when she fell under the influence of and began worshipping Selfæta, the ‘Self-eater’, a god of gluttony and narcissism, trapped behind a gate below Pendle Hill, and whose presence in local folklore is that of a boar god due to his appearance and a reaper of the Autumn Harvest. Every three centuries, at the Autumn Equinox, The Veil Between Worlds weakens enough that his cult can open the gate and allow him into our world to let him feast. She failed to bring this about the first time she tried and now is trying again—and of course, in 1922, a certain wedding takes places on the Autumn Equinox. Backed up by her cultists, she will trigger events that nobody will forget and potentially involve the loss of many lives.

The scenario plays out over the course of the Friday and Saturday of the wedding weekend. The Investigators arrive in the village of Downham below Pendle Hill where Tom Byrne and his brother have family. The events of the weekend are unsurprisingly tightly scheduled, but there is room in the schedule for the Investigators to look into the strangeness that pervades the village. The stampede by a herd of bedraggled sheep, the surreptitious manner of their host’s daughter, the unsettling outburst of the vicar, and so on, perhaps combined with a bracing walk up Pendle Hill or undertaking some light ecclesiastical research at the village church. Nevertheless, the Keeper will need to maintain an eye on timing as the Investigators are expected to be at certain places at certain times. That is, up until the scenario’s penultimate scene, the very strange, quite macabre events at the wedding. After that, the Investigators are free of the timetable, but will have a greater urgency to act.

The Keeper is ably supported throughout. Sections advise the Keeper on what to do if the cultists’ plot does not go to plan through the efforts of the Investigators and there are notes too, if the Keeper wants to run the scenario using Pulp Cthulhu: Two-fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos. In the third part of the scenario though, there are stats and names for generic NPCs as well as the named ones and the Mythos entities, as well as table for ‘Bouts of Madness’, descriptions of the various Mythos tomes, artefacts, and spells. There are versions of the maps for both the Keeper and her players, and six pre-generated Investigators, all friends of the groom, and representing a good mix of character types and origins.

Physically, can be no doubt that The Bride of Pendle is exceedingly well appointed. It is an attractive looking affair with a stylish layout and judicious use of period photographs. The few pieces of artwork are reasonable, but the handouts are also particularly good, but what really stands out are the maps of the various locations for the scenario. These are of near professional quality, barring the lack of lavatories at the town’s public house and inn!

If there is quibble with The Bride of Pendle, then it is that the Sanity loss for the bloody wedding scene is low given how shocking it is. If there is an issue with The Bride of Pendle, it is that is almost overly detailed which gives a lot for the Keeper to study and prepare in order to run the scenario. Also, as written it suggests that it is a one-shot scenario, but it is long for a one-shot, likely taking four or so sessions to complete. One thing that the scenario does not address is the aftermath, that is, what happens as a consequence of the Investigators’ actions. Depending upon the group, this can be explored on a player-by-player basis, but some suggestions in the scenario would not have gone amiss.

The Bride of Pendle: 1920s Folk Horror in Rural Lancashire is a richly detailed, very well appointed scenario. Although that detail does require a high degree of preparation and it is tightly scripted in places—as befitting the event at its heart, The Bride of Pendle serves up a weekend of rural oddity and genteel propriety and joy, undone by the squealing horror of the boar from beyond!

Dangerous Diaspora

When Malcolm Donnaughy, an aspiring Boston politician with links to Irish nationalism is found decapitated in his back yard, followed by Michael Cyr, a New York journalist who wrote about the Irish War for Independence, hoping for a peaceful resolution, and then, Corinna Franz, a German immigrant in Boston, questions are asked. In the fractious and often hot tempered debate has ardent nationalism turned into a bloody vendetta for one faction against all others? Or is there something else going on. It is set in late 1920 in Boston and New York, and points between, as the USA stands on the brink of tremendous change in the aftermath of the Great War. As a result of their contributions to the war effort, women have already received the vote following the passing of the 19th Amendment, but many other groups campaign, raise funds, and foment for radical change. None more so than amongst the Irish diaspora in North America. As the Irish War of Independence rages on the other side of the Atlantic, the disparate groups amongst the Irish nationalists cannot agree on what they want exactly, even though they may share a common cause.

This is the set-up for The Wild Hunt: A Race Across the North-Eastern U.S. to Confound an Ancient Imported Evil, a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, published by Stygian Fox Publishing. It is set against a backdrop of radical change and often radical activism that the scenario takes the time to explain, not just for the benefit of the Keeper, but also for the player as several of the pre-generated Investigators are activists—radical and otherwise. Further, these activist roles are represented by some of the new Occupations included in The Wild Hunt, whilst others, no less political, represent the establishment. The political Occupations include the Activist, the Political Animal, and the Political Machine Lieutenant. The more mundane Occupations consist of the Bootlegger, the Knocker-Upper, literally someone who goes round the city waking people up by knocking on their windows, the Messenger/Runner, the Performer, the Pinkerton Agent, Prohibition Agent, and Travelling Salesman. The only outré Occupation is the Occultist. Some of these are new, others are variations upon those found in Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.

Setting up the scenario in terms of the Investigators requires some decisions to be made by the Keeper. Some of the pre-generated Investigators are members of law enforcement, some are activists or political operators, others are journalists or connected to the book trade. Each is connected to the investigation in some way and the ten are equally divided between Boston and New York. Some care is required to get them involved and working together, especially if they come from different cities.

Once set up, the scenario proper begins with the discovery of Corrine Franz’s dead body, perhaps even by one of the Investigators. After this, the investigation begins to clip-clop along in a timely fashion, Corrine’s ex-student, turned book thief, toy boy boyfriend (and likely thief from the bookshop owned by one of the pre-generated Investigators) providing the first clues, leading to the dirtiest speakeasy ever (really, it is under a coke plant) and onto New York’s Book Row. Key to continuing the investigation is learning the names of one or more activists connected to what turns out to be an extreme wing of the Clan na Gael, a fundraising organisation dedicated to the establishment of an Irish free state. Once the names are known, the investigation can swing into high gear and multiple lines of inquiry open up. This includes tracking their activities before and after the Great War, its members having been very busy in the last two years. The Investigators may even have the aid of other Irish nationalists embarrassed at quite what these extremists are doing in the name of the cause.

Ultimately, the Investigators will have enough information to have some idea of what the Irish nationalists-turned-cultists have been trying to do and what they might have unleashed. It is possible for the Investigators to stumble into the final scenes, which will involve a confrontation with the cultists and then what they have summoned, but hopefully by the time they do so in the back woods of Massachusetts, they will have at least learned enough information to have a good idea what is going on. And what is going on, as the title of the scenario suggests, is that the cultists are attempting to summon and harness something out of Celtic myth as a means to aid the Irish nationalist. Of course, this being a Call of Cthulhu scenario, this has not gone well and now, the cultists are suffering the consequences, scared, almost mad, but coherent. Facing the summoned threat is challenging, again, dedicated research should be enough to forewarn and perhaps, even forearm the Investigators.

The scenario is very well supported. The clues and links are made clear, the NPCs are nicely detailed, and there are lengthy sections devoted to library research in both Boston and New York, and there are detailed write-ups of the Mythos tomes that appear in the scenario. There is also a handful of new Mythos spells too. The various handouts are very well done and do include a puzzle that the players may have to work out.

The Wild Hunt is not a Mythos scenario per se, but rather that its monstrous antagonists are a Mythos interpretation of Celtic myth, one that the scenario’s human antagonists believe too much in and fall foul of. This is then layered out over the American north-east of New York and New England, taking in a little of Lovecraft Country along the way, from the heights of academia to the lows of the dirtiest dives imaginable, and then out into the swamps. Around this is built a rich, meaty investigation that will be really enjoyable to conduct with numerous interesting NPCs for the Keeper to portray—even the minor ones. The jazz trio of Black American NPC investigators deserve not just a mention, but scenarios of their own, suggesting a link to Harlem Unbound, whilst there are links to Masks of Nyarlathotep in the scenario, and thematically at least to Cthulhu Ireland. The scenario is not dissimilar to The Order of the Stone: A Horror Mystery in Three Parts, which could even be run as a thematic sequel to The Wild Hunt.

Physically, The Wild Hunt is pleasantly presented. The layout is clean and attractive, though it could be tighter in places, and the maps are well done. What stands out is much of the artwork, done in pastels that gives it a distinctive look reminiscent of Edward Hopper.

The Wild Hunt: A Race Across the North-Eastern U.S. to Confound an Ancient Imported Evil explores a side of its default period rarely explored in Call of Cthulhu. Its presentation of activism and especially Irish nationalism is maturely handled, though warrants the ‘For Mature Gamers’ label on the cover. This is a mature scenario, with a strong emphasis on the investigation before the horror is confronted, mixed with an enjoyably unhealthy dose of politics.

Miskatonic Monday #345: Under The Chalk

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: Under the Chalk

Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Author: Z.V. Cretney

Setting: Dorset, 1976

Product: Scenario
What You Get: Thirty-five page, 32.58 MB Full Colour PDF
Elevator Pitch: Five Go Mad in Dorset
Plot Hook: What’s a folk festival without fear and folly?

Plot Support: Staging advice, five pre-generated Investigators, eight NPCs, eleven handouts, one map, and one Folk monster.

Production Values: Excellent

Pros

# Atmospheric period piece

# Folkloric horror a la Nigel Neale

# Feels as if it was made by ITV

# Decent handouts

# Calxophobia

# Chorophobia

# Hemophobia

Cons

# Needs an edit

# Layout needs a good tidy up

# No actual phobia of Morris Dancing

# Just a little too arch

# The University of Rural Dorset. UNFORGIVABLE.

Conclusion

# Fear and loathing in West Dorset

# Pleasing pastoral oddness that ramps up into bloody rustic horror

# Reviews from R’lyeh Recommends

Seeking an RPG

The year is 1765. King George III is mad. In France, hunters not only tracked down and discovered the Beast of Gevaudan, but found the region infested with pagan cults. Both London and Paris have walled off great sections of their cities into which are quarantined all those found to be suffering from the Plague. This plague, is not one of buboes and fever—though the authorities would say it is and would even go as far as to put the city of London to the torch in 1666, but of madness, madness which is exacerbated by the monthly rise of the Blood Moon that has cast its baleful light upon the world for centuries. Whilst there is madness within the cities, there are horrors outside it that drive the peasants into worshipping them or fleeing into the towns and cities. All this has arisen since the Templars broke into the tomb of Abd al Hazred under the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in 1136—against the Akhua Brotherhood, a religious sect dedicated to protecting the tomb—and took the only copy of his dread work, the Al Azif, so allowing true knowledge of the universe into the world, and perhaps something worse... In the centuries since, the Akhua Brotherhood has slipped into the shadows, funding both scientific research across Europe and a front, a semi-secret organisation with halls in London, Paris, Berlin, the Colonies, and elsewhere, dedicated to hunting down and destroying the monsters that have arisen under the Blood Red Moon and from the Plague. This organisation is known as the League of Seekers.

This is the set-up for a British roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror and action in which the player characters are members of the League of Seekers or Seekers. They are members of the peasantry, the middle classes, and gentry who answer the call in their very blood to join. Some of the middle classes may actually be members of the Akhua Brotherhood, whilst some of the gentry are actually Vampyrs. Characters are defined by nine attributes—Arcane, Conflict, Eloquence, Fitness, Investigate, Learned, Mind, Occult, and Subterfuge—each of which is associated with five percentile skills. 

To create a character, a player rolls for his (social) Class. This determines his base Attribute values and what skill values can be assigned as well the life path the character will follow during creation. The Lifepath determines their birthplace, upbringing, and early career, which give further adjustments to the character’s attributes and skills. Every character is randomly assigned the start of a tale which describes their encounter with the horrors of the world which his player must finish and the player also gets to choose a statement which grants the player character a bonus under certain circumstances. For example, ‘I am likeable’, which grants a +10% bonus when the character attempts to convince or charm someone. A character also receives an Awakening Power as a result of his Tale of Horror, and lastly receives some equipment from the League of Seekers, including a special gift, such as a Tincture of Healing or the Lamp of Guiding Light.

Standard character generation is straightforward enough. Creating a character who is a member of the Akhua Brotherhood is more complex and includes a player choosing between four sects: Bahith—keepers of knowledge, Hamia—protectors of sacred sites and warriors, Masernam—Sleepwalkers who guard the realms of dream and spirit, and Al-Hashishan—the secret of assassins. The creation of Vampyrs is similarly complex with attributes, skills, powers, weaknesses, and so on, all depending upon what generation the Vampyr is.

Name: Guillaume Martin
Birthplace: Village Upbringing: Basic Living
Background Career: Hunter
Class: Peasant Age: 24 Gender: Male
My Tale: I had hunted wolves before, but none as big as this… [As it cut down my fellow hunters I stood in fear, yet it did not notice me. Knowing that it would strike at nearby villages, I fled to find help.]
Your Statement: I am one with nature (+10% to tasks in the fields or forest)
Experience Dice: d4

Arcane
Alchemy 00%, Lore 00%, Magick 00%, Ritual 00%, Sigil 00%

Fitness 4
Acrobatics 00%, Athletics 20%, Resistance 10%, Toughness 30%, Travel 20%

Mind 2
Cunning 20%, Dream 00%, Logic 00%, Memory 10%, Willpower 30%

Conflict 5
Explosives 00%, Melee 00%, Ranged 50%, Thrown 00%, Unarmed 00%

Investigate 3
Detect 10%, Notice 40%, Research 00%, Search 20%, Track 60%

Occult 2
Cults 00%, Demonology 00%, Divination 00%, Folk Tales 00%, Xenology 00%

Eloquence 4
Commerce 10%, Deceive 00%, Diplomacy 00%, Etiquette 00%, Languages 00%

Learned 2
Academia 00%, History 00%, Medical 00%, Mythology 05%, Theology 05%

Subterfuge 4
Disguise 00%, Forgery 00%, Stealth 50%, Steal 00%, Tinker 00%

Insanity 12 Insight 0 Reason 3
Dark Knowledge 04% 
Wounds 12 Injury 3
Damage Bonus: d6

Talents: Bruiser
Traits: Invisible
Awakened Powers: Blend Focus: 40%

Equipment: Hunter’s Carbine, Repeating Crossbow, Blade of St. Bartol, Seeker’s Raiments, three sedatives, bedroll, satchel, flint & steel, rope, lantern, £5

One issue with character generation is that eighty percent of the player characters are likely to be peasants, and that does limit what character types a campaign may end up with. It also limits access to certain skills. Much of this is understandable, given the social constraints of the time, but for example, any character with an interest in the skills which fall under the Occult attribute will really need to be of the middle classes or the gentry to pursue them. So it is not possible to play a witch-type or wise woman-type character with any ease. Another is that the rules do not tell you if the base skill points are assigned to the five skills under each attribute or spread between the various skills.

The roleplaying game includes an extensive equipment list with a particular emphasis on the esoteric. For example, both armour and weapons can be embossed with Runes, such as Aegishhjalmur: Protection, which increases the armour value of any armour won by one, or Iibead: Banish, which when etched into a blade or bolt will banish the magical effects protecting a target and inflict extra damage on magical beings. There are several specialised weapons too. They include the chain sword, used either as a sword or a whip, the Leyden mine which unleashes a blast of stunning electricity, and the Hunters Carbine, which can fire solid slugs and hold seven rounds. None of these are illustrated and in the case of the latter, no explanation of how they work is given.

Mechanically, the roleplaying game uses a percentile system. Rolls under a skill value count as a success, difficult challenges halving the skill and hard challenges quartering it. Gear bonuses can improve a skill. A Roll under the associated attribute of a skill count as a critical and rolls of 99% or higher as fumbles. So for Guillame, a roll of six or less when his player rolls against any Investigative skill counts as a success. A critical grants a bonus to a subsequent skill check, a true answer to a relevant question asked of the Game Master, extra information, or a Blessing. A fumble means that the character has triggered a trap or alarm, learned false information, suffers a penalty a subsequent skill check, or loses a Blessing. A Blessing is a simple, randomly determined percentage value that can be used as a bonus to a roll, a penalty on an opponent’s roll, change an outcome, and have a Vision Quest (if the character has the talent). Alternatively, a Blessing can be used to flip a roll, re-roll a roll, or passed to another character. Rolling a critical or a fumble also enables a player to roll his character’s Experience die and add the result to the skill the critical was rolled on. This happens as soon as the critical is rolled. 

Combat allows for differences in the weight of the melee weapons in blocking damage, for achieving dominance over opponents by surprise, weapon length, opponent fumbles, mobbing them, or pinning them against a wall, and critical rolls. Dominance grants an extra attack, double damage, disarms an opponent, pins them, and so on, depending on the circumstances. Every player character has the same maximum number of Wounds—twelve. The more Wounds he suffers, the greater the penalty he suffers on all of his actions, until he has taken his twelfth Wound and dies. Whenever damage suffered exceeds a player character’s Injury level, he suffers a wound. So for Guillame, any roll of four or more for damage which thus exceeds his Injury level inflicts a Wound. Since even cudgels and daggers inflict one to six points of damage, the chances of a player character receiving a Wound in combat is fairly high. When Wounds are healed, the more Wounds a character has suffered the harder it is to heal them. 

Similarly, all characters have a maximum Insanity total of twelve. Whenever a character encounters a situation or a creature which would cause fear, the Game Master rolls the Insanity factor for that situation or creature. This will be either a six-, eight-, or ten-sided die, depending upon the Fear Level of the situation or creature, with the ten-sided die reserved for those rare encounters with cosmic gods. If the roll exceeds a character’s Reason value, then he gains a point of Insanity. Where Wounds impose a penalty upon a character’s actions, greater Insanity will inflict paranoia, paranoid delusions, aggressive paranoia, and finally catatonia on a character. In addition, such encounters can inflict Dark Knowledge. For example, Guillaume encounters a Werewolf, for which the Fear Level is two. The Game Master rolls an eight-sided die for the Insanity factor and gets five, higher than Guillaume’s Reason, so he gains a point of Insanity. The Game Master also has to roll a four-sided die for the potential Dark Knowledge gain, in this being two points.

For every ten points of Dark Knowledge a character possesses, he gains a point of Insight and each point of Insight reduces his Reason. This not only reduces his capacity to withstand fear, but it inflicts certain symptoms on him. For example, hearing whispers or the sound of a distant flute, being able to see a red aura around the infected, or gaining a greater understanding of the language of the Elder Gods. Some of these ongoing effects inflict Insanity themselves. Insight can be reduced by a character defeating cosmic horrors, destroying cults, eradicating the plague and its effects, even entering an asylum, whilst Insanity can be reduced by using sedatives or entering an asylum. Insight though, can be put to positive use, such as seeing the Hidden or even mentally reconstructing a scene or ritual, though such a reconstruction increases a character’s Insight.

The Mysteries in this roleplaying game cover alchemy, divination, and tomes—both occult and Mythos, as well as three schools of magic—arcane, ritual, and talismanic. They all have their spell lists with individual spells being drawn from particular tomes and most inflicting further Dark Knowledge on the caster. The section on magic feels all too brief in comparison to the roleplaying game’s ‘Atlas’, which details the range of areas where the League of Seekers operate. This includes Europe, with particular attention paid to London and Paris with their walled-off Quarantine zones, the Colonies of North America, and even out into the Dreamlands. Unfortunately, not all of this is very interesting, or even gameable. The London and Paris sections are serviceable, although both could have done with actual threats to the League of Seekers rather than just allies, but the description of the North American colonies is nothing more than a stodgy wodge of early colonial history. By comparison, the section on the Dreamlands is well written and gameable, though likely to be the most familiar section to players of other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. It is a pity that one of the most gameable sections in the roleplaying game describes a region that the player characters are least likely to visit.

It is not until over two hundred pages into this roleplaying game that it actually tells the reader what it is about, what the Akhua Brotherhood and the League of Seekers are and what they do. Even then, they are barely given half a page each, which is inarguably inadequate given that both are the organisations which the player characters belong to. Several enemy cults are also described, often given more information in the form of notable members than that given to either Akhua Brotherhood or the League of Seekers. In terms of monsters, the roleplaying game gives several types, being either folk tale creatures like Baba Yaga or the Beast of Gévaudan, cosmic horror entities like Byakhee or Deep Ones, or threats like the Infected. The latter have been infected by the Blood Plague—also known as the Blood Rage—and as the Blood Moon rises, their bestial, aggressive urges manifest, a threat to good society. Wiping out the scourge of the Infected is the League of Seeker’s primary task.

Lastly, the roleplaying game includes a scenario, ‘Beast of Dunwich’. This is not set in the blighted town of Lovecraft Country, but the sea sodden, wave wrenched town in Suffolk. Following a rash of deaths in the town, the League of Seekers sends the characters to investigate. The journey is not without incident, but the mystery itself in the town will take relatively little effort to uncover and probably end in a confrontation or two. The scenario can probably be played in a single session.

Physically, this roleplaying game is neat and tidy, with some reasonable if oppressive artwork and solid cartography. Unfortunately it lacks an index, but that is not the very least of its problems. Similarly, the lack of editing—the roleplaying game genuinely reads like raw text—is also the very least of its problems. 

To identify what those problems are, it is necessary to explain what this roleplaying game wants to be and that is Brotherhood of the Wolf meets the Mythos, the Age of Enlightenment fights evil. Which is a laudable aim and puts it into the same niche as other roleplaying games such as Paradigm Concepts’ Hunter: The Invisible World and Cakebread & Walton’s Dark Streets, but unfortunately is not in the same league as either. From the outset, it is clear what both of those are about and what the player characters are supposed to be doing. Not so this roleplaying game, for at no time does the author ever give an elevator pitch for the roleplaying game—there is no ‘Brotherhood of the Wolf meets the Mythos’ or the ‘Age of Enlightenment fights’ evil—anywhere in the roleplaying game. Not on the back cover blurb, not in the introduction, not anywhere… Even the descriptions of the Akhu Brotherhood and the League of Seekers deep into the book do not feel adequate to the task. Indeed, the very summary at the top of this review was not so much written as assembled from bits and pieces throughout the roleplaying game. Essentially, the author completely fails to sell the roleplaying game on its own merits. There is no cool incentive for the prospective Game Master to buy this roleplaying game or the prospective player to want to play it.

Then there is the roleplaying game’s lack of development. There is a fair amount of background here—certainly in terms of geography—but it either lacks much of the context to be playable or simply reads like a history lesson. Turning this into something gameable would take an unnecessary effort upon the part of the Game Master. It also feels as if the roleplaying game over-eggs its pudding in terms of its horror, almost as if there is too much for the Game Master to choose from, whether it is the Cosmic Horror of the Mythos, the Folktale horror of werewolves and the like, or the threats of the Infected. Arguably, this roleplaying game could have lost the Cosmic Horror aspect and it would have still worked, the Infected under the Blood Moon and the Folktale horrors not only being enough of a threat, but also elements strong to carry the roleplaying game by itself and give it the hook that the author unfortunately fails to do.

Ultimately, this is a roleplaying game which fails to fulfill the author’s ambitions. This is a roleplaying game which needed the input of more than the author, primarily in terms of asking questions and developing gameable content and what the player characters are meant to be doing. It feels too much like a ‘homebrew’ roleplaying game pushed towards a level of professionalism that it is simply not ready for. Yet there is a kernel of something here, and perhaps in the hands of a good and patient Game Master, there is a playable game to be drawn from its pages—if that Game Master is looking for a ‘fixer-upper’. Unfortunately, getting to that roleplaying game and making into something playable would be a challenge for anyone but the designer. 

Up until this point, this review has not mentioned the name of the roleplaying game nor its publisher. The name the of publisher is Feral Gamers, Inc. and the roleplaying game is League of Seekers. 

Free RPG Day 2018: Scritch Scratch

Now in its eleventh year, Saturday, June 16th is Free RPG Day and with it comes an array of new and interesting little releases. Invariably they are tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Like the support for Free RPG Day in 2016, The Derelict: A Tall of Terror for Call of Cthulhu, this year’s entry from Chaosium, Inc., is a scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. The scenario is Scritch Scratch: A Modern-Day Call of Cthulhu Scenario for Two to Six Players. which asks the question, “What Terror Lurks Within the Gloomy Woodlands Surrounding a Sleepy English Village?”.

Designed to be run using either Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Quick-Start Rules—free to download here—Scritch Scratch is a one-shot scenario set in a valley in the north of England, but which is relatively easy to set elsewhere as long it is just off the beaten track and very close to extensive woodland. It can be played in a single four-hour session, so is suitable as a convention or demonstration scenario. Six pre-generated investigators are included, but suggestions are given if a Keeper and her players wants to run the scenario with a different set of investigators. These six are divided into two distinct groups. The first consists of professional cleaners hired by the local council to clean a house in the out of the way village of Muscoby. The second consists of a film crew accompanying the cleaners to make documentary about them. The council is paying the cleaning crew a generous fee for undertaking the job and the film crew are there as a bonus.

The scenario is designed as a mini-sandbox. The cleaning crew, accompanied by the film crew, arrive in Muscoby to do the job on the house. There they will find not only evidence of the owner’s strange occupation (he is currently in hospital), but also of the village’s equally strange history. What they learn at the house may warrant further investigations with both villagers and ex-villagers—the latter residing in a nearby town. Eventually, as they come to realise what the nature is of the weird secrets in Muscoby, those secrets will reveal themselves… The scenario allows for both confrontation with that secret or simply running away.

Throughout the scenario there are snippets of advice based on the experience of the author and others playtesting it, including how to avoid misinterpretations of the term ‘cleaning crew’ and the council’s motives. This is in addition to various pieces of supplementary information. There are some fun NPCs for the Keeper to roleplay too and whilst these play upon the cliché of the country bumpkin, they do go beyond this just enough for them to be more fully rounded out creations. As to the Mythos in Scritch Scratch, it is present, but very much in the background. Instead, what the investigators and their players will be confronting is a manifestation of widespread folklore. What this means is that Scritch Scratch can be run as a horror scenario using the Call of Cthulhu rules rather than something obviously to do with the Cthulhu Mythos. The horror in the adventure is kept quite low key, the mix of weird occurrences and discoveries laying the groundwork for the Keeper to deliver some short, short shocks at the appropriate time.

Scritch Scratch lacks two things. One is advice for running it with fewer than the six pre-generated investigators, though if that is the case, then the clean-up crew are probably more pertinent to the scenario than the film crew. The other is an introduction for the players and their investigators, so whilst the scenario explains the set-up for the Keeper, it does not do so for the players. This may well be an issue for the Keeper coming to Call of Cthulhu afresh or with relatively little experience as a Game Master. For an experienced Keeper, such an introduction is relatively easy to create, but it should have been included anyway to help the Keeper set both the scene and relationship up between the cleaning crew and the film crew as well as adding a degree of verisimilitude from the off.

Barring the aforementioned lack of introduction, Scritch Scratch is well written and organised, and nicely illustrated. The latter are going to look good in colour whenever the scenario is collected in full anthology—as The Derelict was in Petersen’s Abominations: Five Epic Tales of Modern Horror—and do serve to illustrate certain locations and possible events in the scenario. In fact, the Keeper might like to use them as illustrative handouts at the appropriate time.

Of course, being a release for Free RPG Day, devotees of Call of Cthulhu are going to want a copy of Scritch Scratch, however good it is. Fortunately, Scritch Scratch: A Modern-Day Call of Cthulhu Scenario for Two to Six Players is a pleasingly low key one-shot of bucolic mystery and horror.