Cthulhoid Choices: The Rats in the Walls

H.P. Lovecraft’s 1923 short story, ‘The Rats in the Walls’, tells of an American, Delapore, the last descendant of the De la Poer family, inherits the family estate of Exham Priory in England following the Great War and much to the dismay of local residents, decides to restore the estate. Once they have moved in, both Delapore and his cat are plagued by the sounds of the eponymous ‘rats in the walls’. Together with several friends, including the comrade of his son who died in the war, Delapore investigates the source of the sounds and following a series of dreams discovers the terrible history of his family. That they were cannibals, feeding on a herd of ‘human cattle’ raised and maintained in an underground below the house for centuries. Enraged by the loss of his son and maddened by the revelations about his family, Delapore snaps and gives into his filial urges, attacking and feeding upon his companions, before being captured and condemned to an insane asylum.

This story has now been adapted to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Published by Dungeon Matters , the ‘R’lyeh Rising Adventure Series’ adapts classic cosmic horror and pulp fiction into adventures for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Of course, links between cosmic horror and the Cthulhu Mythos and Dungeons & Dragons are not new. They go all the way back to the original version of the Deities & Demigods, the pantheon guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The connection would come to the fore at the end of the millennium with Death in Freeport from Green Ronin Publishing. It moved back and forth with Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord and other retroclones and with adventures like Carrion Hill for Pathfinder, before coming up to date with a supplement and set of campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition with Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen and its sequels, written and published by Sandy Petersen, the designer of Call of Cthulhu no less!

The ‘R’lyeh Rising Adventure Series’ does not consist of classic fantasy adventures, but instead of Lovecraftian investigative horror set in the early twentieth century. The series does provide a guide to ‘Running Lovecraftian Horror in 5e’ which gives an overview of the line and the setting—primarily Arkham and Innsmouth; the themes and elements including the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods, mad cultists and forbidden knowledge, insanity and madness, and so on; and of course, new rules. It suggests the Cleric, Fighter, Monk, and Warlock as possible Classes, and suggests Naval Veteran, Occult Investigator, Prohibition Agent, and Spiritualist as possible Backgrounds. There are rules too for firearms, vehicles and vehicle chases. The setting overview is broad, whilst the rules are serviceable, tending towards Pulp horror feel rather than a Purist tone.

Given that the line is an adaptation of Lovecraftian investigative horror, it should be no surprise that there are rules for madness and the effects of being exposed to the cosmic horror of the Mythos. Saving throws against Madness are a Wisdom check and the type of Madness can either be short-term, suffered after a minor shock, long-term, gained after accumulated horror exposure, or indefinite, due to reading forbidden tomes or seeing cosmic entities, or suffering long-term madness three or more times. The actual effects for each type are determined randomly. It is possible to cure madness through the Lesser Restoration, Remove Curse, Dispel Evil, and Greater Restoration spells. Overall, there is a brusqueness to both overview of the setting and the rules, but they are workable.

R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is the first in the series. It is designed for four First Level Player Characters who are engaged to investigate the activities of Lord Arthur de la Poer at Exham Priory. This might be because a friend or colleague is concerned about him, because a local mother is worried about the disappearance of her son, or simply because the Player Characters met the mad Lord Arthur de la Poer in the street. The Player Characters can conduct some investigation and ask a few questions in and around the village of Anchester, near Exham Priory. They will definitely be able to confirm that something odd is going on at the house and may be able to discern some hints as to what it is. Then they can make their way to Exham Priory, perhaps with an ally or not, discovering further signs of Lord Arthur de la Poer’s madness, before descending into the caves below the house. This is linear in nature rather than the expansive city which the original story suggested, but along the way, the Player Characters can find the means that will help them defeat the evil thing below the priory and so end the curse that has beset the de la Poer family.

One nice touch is that the thing, the ‘Feaster’, “A hulking mass of mouths and flesh, embodying hunger and madness itself.” will offer the Player Characters a bargain. It is a very nasty bargain, but its bonuses are decent if a player decides that his character will give in! Instead of magical items, there are ‘Special Items’, including a helpful tome bound in human flesh and the vile, Ceremonial Knife of the Feast. Whether through combat or dismissal, the Player Characters should be able to defeat the ‘Feaster’. This will gain them a new Level.

The scenario includes advice on adjusting to lower or higher player counts, a suggested timeline, and the NPC and monster stats. There are no pre-generated Player Characters, which would have been useful given the change in genre.

Physically, R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is a plain affair. It is lightly illustrated and some of the illustrations are good. The cartography is decent, if a little dark.

R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls is not a sophisticated affair. There is some scope for roleplaying early on, but once the Player Characters enter Exham Priory, the scenario is more dungeon-like, and the scenario is very much going to end in a fight. Veteran players of roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror will not find much here to engage them and will very likely have read the story that it is based on anyway. For players of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition who want to try some Lovecraftian investigative horror, R’lyeh Rising #1: The Rats in the Walls offers a straightforward opportunity with a short taster that can be played in a single session.

Friday Fantasy: The People of the Pit

On the edge of the pit, stands a great iron pole from chains hang, some broken, some not. This is the sacrificial bluff at which the great tentacular pit-beast would rise from roiling mists that filled the one hundred feet wide and some say a thousand-foot-deep pit to drag away the young and unfortunate virgins offered as sacrifices to dissuade it from attacking the surrounding countryside as it had done for thousands of years. Thus, it has been centuries, the local villages offering up their young as sacrifices once a decade, the widespread devouring of the countryside prevented following the intervention of a warrior-priest and the agreement he reached with the creature, an agreement that resulted in his being dishonoured. More recently, with the practice having fallen by the wayside and it being a decade since the last set of sacrifices, the tentacles of the pit-beast have been reaching up out of the ravine in search of offerings capable of sating its hunger. Worse, the tentacles have been accompanied by strange, grey-robed men with no faces and long, sinewy arms. So far, the predations of both have been avoided by the local peasantry banding together and driving them off, mob-fashion. That though cannot last, for the tentacles and the faceless grey men are certain to return—and in greater numbers. Thus, brave adventurers have set out to investigate the pit, find out who or what is behind the marauding pit-beast and the people of the pit, and put a stop to them, and of course, go in search of mystery, adventure, riches, and fame.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is the second scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed for a group of eight to ten First Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for two reasons. One is that it is written by the publisher, Joseph Goodman, and the other is that it is the second scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the first to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level. The previous adventure, Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea was not only the first, but it was a Character Funnel, the signature set-up and play style of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game in which players control not one, but several Zero Level characters, each a serf or peasant looking beyond a life tied to the fields and the seasons or the forge and the hammer to prove themselves and perhaps progress enough to become a skilled adventurer and eventually make a name for themselves. In other words, to advance from Zero Level to First Level. Of course, the Player Characters at the start of Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit are presumed to have done that or the Judge could actually run Dungeon Crawl Classics #67: Sailors on the Starless Sea before this scenario and its survivors, having reached First Level, now play it as a standard Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure.

The adventure is not so much a descent into the pit—although ultimately, the Player Characters will reach its bottom—but a descent through the caves and tunnels carved into the walls of the pit by the great tentacular beast and its faceless, blubbery, grey cultists. Here what the Player Characters discover is a working, living dungeon complex, a temple dedicated to the blind idiot god whose name they will learn is Palimdybis, its cultists conduct ceremonies to their master, make sacrifices to him, and prepare the strange powders and concoctions, made from the suckers, eyeballs, and skin scoured off their master’s tentacles, that they use to transform initiates into the inhuman state of full cultist. Even the descent to this complex is dangerous enough with its cracked and slippery stone steps which wind their way around the side of the pit, the possibility being that the Player Characters lose their footing and plummet to their deaths. Once inside the complex, Palimdybis’ influence can be found everywhere. His tentacles seem to reach everywhere, most notably in a ravine where they can reach up to attack intruders or pull down a drawbridge that will allow people to cross, the Octo-masses which burst out of the bellies of cultists once they are slain, and in the tentacle transport which can be ridden up and down the complex by clutching the rope ladder and rigging the cultists have attached to it. This only hints at the ability of the cultists to command and control the tentacles, each of them learning to summon and direct the tentacles once initiated. This is a group endeavour and requires at least three cultists. It is also possible for Player Characters to learn the spell Control Tentacle and so gain the same abilities—at least within the temple and the pit. This tentacle transport is not the only means of traversing the complex. For example, mazes serve as mediative puzzles—almost like the Pattern from Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber—that the crimson-robed middle-ranking cultists, yellow-robed senior cultists, and blue-robed cult leader—use to transport themselves between the levels of the temple. These mazes are given as actual handouts that the players must solve using pen and paper in order to proceed further into the temple!

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is a dangerous affair, especially once the cultists begin summoning tentacles. There are also many features which work like traps, like the meditative mazes, but are not traps in the classic sense, plus, the processes necessary for the initiates to become full-blown cultists are dangerous as well. The monsters are nasty too, like the mineral-horned mountain basilisk, a variant of the traditional basilisk whose gaze takes longer to turn its victims to stone, but whose solid gold horn is bound to attract the attention of the greedy Player Character. Lastly, the final confrontation and climax of the dungeon is a nasty fight that the players will feel lucky to have their characters survive.

One aspect of Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit to note is that it is low in terms of reward or treasure. There is no real discussion of what happens beyond the adventure itself and little in terms of monetary reward to be found. There are three magical items of note to be found. One is a very fragile wand that enhances and grants detection spells, another is a short sword that can be thrown at goblins with unerring accuracy and cripples those who interfere, whilst a third is a simple +1 Mace. Of course, after reading the descriptions of the first two, why is the mace so very, very plain?

Originally, Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit consisted of just the four levels of the temple complex, but later printings include ‘Assassins of the Pit’, an additional area that can be added to the pit. There are suggestions as to where this could be, one being that the Player Characters follow an Octo-Mass, not yet killed, as it flees down the side of the pit to this new area. The twelve-room complex nicely expands upon the original dungeon, providing the means for the Player Characters to learn more about the cult and its history that cannot be found elsewhere in the temple, and it also sort of puts a face to the cultists found here. Or rather multiple faces, since these purple or black robe-wearing cultists are not so much cultists or transformed humans, but Octo-Masses that have escaped their former hosts and become assassins with the ability to take on the faces of others. Nicely creepy and in true weird fantasy style, they are led by a ‘Grandfather of Assassins’.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit is as solidly produced as you would expect for a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. The maps for the core scenario are appropriately tight and twisty for the tentacular nature of the scenario, though those for ‘Assassins of the Pit’ are plainer and not as interesting.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit set the tone for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game scenarios that were to follow—grim and weird and challenging. Its weirdness comes from the Lovecraftian tentacular theme threading, quite literally, through its dungeon halls, its grimness comes from the fate of both cultists and victims, and the challenge from it just simply being a tough dungeon crawl. If their characters survive Dungeon Crawl Classics #68: The People of the Pit then your players are really going to feel they achieved something and their characters are truly worthy of getting to Second Level.

Friday Fantasy: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen

It is a year to celebrate. The Queen’s Onyx Jubilee is about to begin, marking the ninety-fifth year of the merciful monarch’s glorious reign. Queen Yoros has the good fortune to be so long-lived and so youthful still, and her people rejoice at her fortune and the beneficence of her reign. She is even gracious enough to invite subjects from all levels of society, including the peasantry. For them, this is a chance to see the queen, to enjoy her hospitality, to pay their respects, and to make memories that they will tell their grandchildren. Unfortunately, only one of these facts is actually true. Whilst the queen is holding a celebration—of a sort—and does want the peasants to attend, hence the invitations, this is not necessarily to their good fortune, although it might be the making of them… They awake to find themselves in an opulent palace, a bitter taste in their mouths and bestial death cultists looming over them. Where are they? How did they get there? How do they get out? These are questions to be answered in Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is, as the title suggests, the one-hundred-and-first title in the ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics’ line from Goodman Games. Befitting the fact that it has passed that milestone, Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a Character Funnel. This is a feature of Dungeon Crawl Classics, a scenario specifically designed for Zero Level Player Characters in which initially, a player is expected to roll up three or four Level Zero characters and have them play through a generally nasty, deadly adventure, which surviving will prove a challenge. Those that do survive receive enough Experience Points to advance to First Level and gain all of the advantages of their Class. Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen certainly is tough, a great mausoleum turned fouled fane, crawling with savage cultists, sepulchers marked with vicious traps, the smell of death and decay unavoidable, all the while something monstrous lurks in the upper halls ready to vomit flesh-burrowing grave worms at intruders, and a mellifluous voice urges intruders to come to her rescue… Inspired by the short stories ‘The Charnel God’ by Clark Ashton Smith and ‘Imprisoned with the Pharaohs’ by H.P. Lovecraft—and surprisingly—Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. The whole complex has been turned into a temple to Mordiggian, a god of death, and it combines a slightly eerie feel with a Lovecraftian undertone and a sense of dread and uncertainty, all punctuated with screams of terror and death…

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen begins en media res. The Player Characters awake to find themselves lying on the floor amidst rows of bodies. Cultists pick over the corpses. It is a wonderfully creepy opening. Once the Player Characters have dealt with the cultists—as is typical for a Dungeon Crawl Classics Character Funnel—with a mass brawl relying on luck rather than skill, because after all, they are intentionally incompetent, they can begin to explore. There is a lovely scale and grandeur to what is the royal funerary complex, dwarfing the Player Characters, its opulence, let alone the persistent and pervading stench of the grave, constantly serving to remind them that they are out of place.

The Player Characters have two objectives. One is to find out where they are, the other is to get out of wherever they are. To do that they are pulled onwards by the mysterious voice into the first of several funeral vaults. These are the last resting places of various royal personages, holding not just the bodies of kings and queens, but items that are necessary for the Player Characters’ survival in helping them defeat the ghastly threats they are likely to face towards the end of the scenario. They are also the opportunity for the author to have some fun with the Judge in presenting puzzles and traps for the players and their characters to overcome and/or survive. They often include a great table of random (or appear to be random) events that can befall the Player Characters, either killing them in interesting ways or changing them radically in true Dungeon Crawl Classics fashion. If the Player Characters can overcome these nicely detailed set pieces, they have the means to defeat the threats they will later face. Wielding these means also hints at possible roles or Classes that the survivors can take after completing the scenario, that is, Cleric, Thief, Warrior, and Wizard.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen being a Character Funnel means that there is a possibility of a Total Party Kill. Fortunately, the scenario offsets that by providing a ready supply of bodies, some of which like the original Player Characters, may not actually be dead. These can readily replace the original Player Characters, so that a player could easily play through the scenario and complete it with a completely different set of Player Characters. Given the deadliness of the scenario in places, this is a distinct possibility, as is the chance that the Player Characters make an attempt to escape the funeral palace, totally unprepared, get killed, and almost have to start again, looking for the means to defeat the foul foes that killed their forbears and successfully gain their freedom.

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is very well presented. If the frontispiece looks a little goofy, the rest of the artwork is decent and the cartography is excellent, nicely depicting the scale of the funeral complex. The scenario also includes four handouts and these are nicely done.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a really nicely done Character Funnel with lots of atmosphere and dread, but it does leave the Judge and her players wanting at the end. The issue is that in escaping the funeral palace and in the process, both discovering quite why Queen Yoros has managed both to stay so young and achieve the ninety-fifth year of her glorious reign and ending that reign, their actions have potentially calamitous consequences for her kingdom. The question is, what happens next? What happens to the kingdom which has just lost its (evil) queen? What are the consequences for the Player Characters? Of course, this is entirely up to the Judge to develop, but the idea of having inadvertently brought down a kingdom is such a delicious idea that you wish that Goodman Games would actually publish a sequel exploring what happens next.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #101: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen is a richly detailed and enjoyably thematic Character Funnel. It gets the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game’s second century of scenarios off to a delightfully grand and morbid start.

—oOo—

Goodman Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Friday Fantasy: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef

Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is upfront about its inspiration—H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’. Roleplaying game fantasy is no stranger to the Cthulhu Mythos, the Great Old One and others having appeared in the pages of the first edition of the Deities & Demigods supplement for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition back in 1980. It moved back and forth with Realms of Crawling Chaos for Labyrinth Lord and other retroclones and with adventures like Carrion Hill for Pathfinder, before coming up to date more recently with a supplement and set of campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition written and published by Sandy Petersen, the designer of Call of Cthulhu no less! This began with Ghoul Island Act 1: Voyage to Farzeen, the first part of a four-part campaign for use with Sandy Petersen’s Cthulhu Mythos. Given that its inspiration has always been ‘Appendix N’ of the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, it should be no surprise that Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game has flirted with Cosmic Horror over the years, and equally, it should be no surprise that the author of Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is by Jon Hook, who has authored several titles in the publisher’s Age of Cthulhu line.

Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is designed to be played by four to six Player Characters of First level, but could easily be run as Character Funnel in which each player takes a quartet of Zero Level Player Characters and hopes to have at least one of them survive the scenario to gain sufficient Experience Points to rise to First Level and gain all the benefits of a Class. The scenario opens in Black Sand Port, a coastal backwater best known for the deadly ring of jagged coral known as Devil’s Reef surrounding the island of Devil’s Horn and which has been the cause of many a shipwreck and many a sailor’s death. In the past few days, the coast, Devil’s Reef, and Devil’s Horn have been wracked with severe thunderstorms and it is these which are believed to have delayed the arrival of The Royal Dawn, a vessel carrying Princess Kaeko of the Golden Sun, daughter of Lord Tkkeh-Luum, the Eternal Emperor of Fu-Lamia. The princess is betrothed to a local prince and the marriage will seal an alliance. Unfortunately, when the crew of The Royal Dawn begin being washed ashore it quickly becomes clear that the vessel, let alone the princess, having been driven onto the hull slashing Devil’s Reef, is never going to arrive. Worse, it quickly becomes clear that the survivors are suffering from something worse than being shipwrecked—something seems to be affecting their minds! Nevertheless, this does not stop the local burgomaster from assembling a party to go and rescue the princess. After all, there will surely be rich rewards for the men who do. The Player Characters also see this as an opportunity to make their fortune and after ‘borrowing’ a longboat and armed with a rumour or two about Devil’s Reef and Devil’s Horn, row out to rescue the princess.

From the start, there are one or two issues with the scenario, primarily to do with the placement of the wreck of The Royal Dawn. This is on the other side of the Devil’s Reef, away from Black Sand Port, which makes the idea of the surviving crew being washed ashore at Black Sand Port incongruous. Ideally, the Player Characters are meant to explore The Royal Dawn, but placing it on the other side of Devil’s Reef away from Black Sand Port means that the Player Characters have to row around the reef to get to it and there is no obvious incentive for them to do so. The Royal Dawn is also the obvious source of treasure for the Player Characters, but their very presence aboard, let alone attempts to plunder the wreck with its broken back will result in the statue of a six-armed, female demon in the bow of the ship animating and casting Animate Dead. The problem is that the Player Characters really do need to get aboard the ship, although they do not know it. What they need to retrieve from the ship it not the treasure, but Princess Kaeko’s pet psi-spider which is bonded with her. However, even once the Player Characters have got past the dead crewman and soldiers animated by the six-armed, female demon statue, they have to deal with a confused psi-spider whose actual attempts at telepathic contact will inflict damage. Which could end badly if the Player Characters think the psi-spider is attacking them… What the Player Characters really need is someone trained as an Animal Trainer.

The reason why the Player Characters need the pet psi-spider is because it can identify Princess Kaeko, for there is another danger inherent to the island and its eldritch occupants and that is that it transforms anyone on its coral shale shores into Deep One Hybrids. In fact, there are no Deep Ones on the island—they are all Hybrids!

Even getting to the island is problem in terms of the narrative. Of course, the Player Characters are going to have to row through Devil’s Reef with its razor-sharp coral, relying on the Thief’s ability to Disable Traps to determine a route. If this—or three Luck rolls—fails, the hull of the longboat takes damage. However, there are no actual stats for the boat! Then, once on the island, what the Player Characters also need is a Wizard who can cast Comprehend Languages or Knock. Several other occupations may also prove useful, whether the Wizard has either of those spells or not. Comprehend Languages or Knock will be useful because there are couple of doors which can only be opened by having their puzzles solved, rather than having a Thief do it. In both cases, the doors have a pair of dials which need to be turned to particular positions for the doors to open. Yet there are no real clues as to what the solutions are to either puzzle and unless the Wizard can cast Comprehend Languages or Knock, the only other option is going through all of the possible combinations and taking damage each time. A solution can be found elsewhere, but even that means suffering the loss of Hit Points.

Behind the first door—located in a coral pillar at the centre of Devil’s Island—is a small dungeon. Here the Player Characters will encounter more Deep One Hybrids, a potentially injured Shoggoth, several Elder Things, and more. All in quick succession. The dungeon, which is actually a laboratory operated by the Elder Things who are conducting an eons’ long experiment, is linear. The Player Characters are forced into it because beyond the entrance is a slide-like passageway. How do they get out if they have no rope? Ultimately, the scenario will end with a confrontation with the Elder Things in their laboratory and the Player Characters will either accidentally kill the Deep Hybrid that was Princess Kaeko, or if they are lucky, rescue her. If they manage the latter, the reward gained turns out to be particularly paltry...

Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is impressive. The cover is creepy, the artwork inside excellent, and the maps decently done. However, illustrations of the two doors with their dial locks and traps are completely absent.

As written, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef appears to want to nothing more than punish the Player Characters for information they simply lack. The two sets of doors are an exercise in frustration and the inclusion of the psi-spider without any sign that it might be important only seems to reward the most avaricious Player Character willing to fight past the undead crew. Ideally, The Royal Dawn could be shifted to face the post of Black Sand Port, to make it an obvious destination, one of its surviving crew inform the Player Characters about the importance of the princess’ pet psi-spider, or the pet psi-spider’s telepathic cries be heard across the wreck of the ship. Perhaps a scroll of either Comprehend Languages or Knock be found aboard or an illustration of both doors be given. Or at least have the second door rely upon another means of being opened, one that requires a Thief rather than a Wizard? Much of which could be fixed with the inclusion or preparation of suitable pre-generated Player Characters.

Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef looks like a great adventure with its decent maps and artwork, but it does not live up to either. It needs the input of the Judge to fix its issues and make it something that she might want to play and her players roleplay. Even then, Dungeon Crawl Classics 2017 Halloween Module: Shadow Under Devil’s Reef is a pulpy, eldritch-themed scenario rather than a horror scenario since there is no element of fear written in.

Halloween Horror II.II

The very latest title for Call of Cthulhu, Chaosium, Inc.’s RPG of Lovecraftian investigative horror, is strange for several reasons and quite possibly the strangest release for the game for some time. Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is strange because it has been released not by one of the usual suspects – Chaosium, Inc., Pagan Publishing, Goodman Games, Miskatonic River Press, Super Genius Games, Cubicle Seven Entertainment, or even Pelgrane Press, but by Open Design, LLC. Which is a publisher better known for publishing Kobold Quarterly and various supplements for Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition, especially for the Midgard Campaign Setting and its Free City of Zobeck. Second, it is strange because this experience with the Dungeons & Dragons format informs the feel and style of Red Eye of Azathoth throughout. Third, it is strange because although Red Eye of Azathoth adheres to the traditional onionskin format so beloved of the Call of Cthulhu campaign, it does not arrange its slivers of onionskin location by location, but time period by time period. Fourth, each of the five scenarios that comprise Red Eye of Azathoth can each be played through in order as a campaign, or as a series of one-shots in any order. Fifth, Red Eye of Azathoth is strange because it is only available as a PDF, physical copies only being available to patrons of the project at Open Design that eventually became Red Eye of Azathoth.

The five parts of Red Eye of Azathoth are in turn set in Dark Ages England, early Medieval Japan, Renaissance Spain, the New World, and the Wild West. What these disparate times and places have in common are the effects of the garish, gaudy glow of a ruddy comet the passing of which leaves in its wake, death, destruction, madness, and chaos. In each of these times, the adventurers find themselves confronted with strange situations and presented with mysteries, each of which takes a series of flashbacks to understand, the number of flashbacks growing as the campaign progresses. It is these flashbacks and the information and skills that they impart that together make up the campaign’s primary clues. Thus by the end of the fifth and final chapter, the adventurers will have learned what is really going on.

Not only are all five of the scenarios in Red Eye of Azathoth written for use with pre-generated characters, they are also written to be played with four participants. In some cases, the scenarios suggest how another player could be added, but not always. Further, the issue of creating new characters is not really addressed as part of the campaign, though new skills are explained. This necessary because this quintet is set entirely outside of the time frames discussed in Call of Cthulhu. In fact, the two sources that Red Eye of Azathoth draws from for its rules are actually out of print and unavailable, being the otherwise disappointing Cthulhu: Dark Ages and still the best treatment of its subject, “The Good, the Bad, and the Utterly Insane: Call of Cthulhu in the Wild West,” which appeared in Pegasus Press’ Worlds of Cthulhu #2.

Red Eye of Azathoth opens with a bloody bang, in media res, with “That Which is Dead Shall Refuse to Lie.” It is Walpurgis Night, Sunday April 30th, 887 AD on the tidal island of Lindisfarne, Northumbria, and the famed monastery has been stormed by a Viking raiding party. Under a blood red sky and before rising seas, the four adventurers – two Viking pagans and two enslaved Christian monks, must overcome their natural mistrust of each other to face a sorcerer that they can all see on top of the monastery’s tower. This is bloody affair, gorier than most Call of Cthulhu scenarios, the need to enter and explore the monastery to get to the final showdown and the number of combat encounters, make it all read very much like a dungeon. Apart from the dangers present in the scenario itself, the initial danger is that the Viking characters will overplay the master-slave relationship that the scenario opens with, possibly hampering the investigation later on. Still, this gets the campaign off to a start with a bang.

It is followed by “The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain,” which is set in Japan in 1287 AD. This places the investigators in the pre-samurai era with their being sent to study the marvellous village of Iwaizumi, which come war, famine, or typhoon has always been able to pay its tribute to the emperor, and this without petitioning the throne on any matter in return. The curious reputation of the village is exacerbated by the curious nature of villagers, everyone one of them silent and illiterate. This sets up what could be a stumbling block to the easy running and playing of the scenario in that the villagers communicate through the use of sketched pictograms. The Keeper is encouraged to act this out between the player characters and the NPCs, a process that could grow wearisome all too quickly. Fortunately, the scenario does feel that long, but again, like the scenario before it, “The Silence of Thousands Shall Quell the Refrain” is a combat orientated adventure.

This is not to say that there is no investigation involved, but the real issue with the scenario is that unlike its predecessor, it really does feel like a generic Dungeons & Dragons scenario, one that could be set elsewhere, let alone early medieval Japan. Effectively that of there being a village under threat and the adventurers must deal with the threat, though the twist at the beginning is that the village of Iwaizumi is at least initially mysterious rather than obviously dangerous.

The middle scenario though, is more interesting, at least historically. “Fires of Hatred Defile the Sky” takes place in Valencia, Spain in 1487 AD at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. The descent of three angels upon the city has been taken as a blessing by the “Grace of Valencia,” Bishop Esteban del Cassandro, to root out every non-believer and heretic in the city. As the scenario opens, each adventurer finds himself gagged and hooded, under arrest and held by the Inquisition. The adventure involves the characters finding allies and avoiding being subject to inquisitive torture, their escaping the prison, all already with a good idea as to who the scenario’s antagonist is. Proving it is not just another matter, but also the point of the scenario. Doing so, involves a chase sequence before breaking into the antagonist’s quarters.

If there is an element in “Fires of Hatred Defile the Sky” that feels at odds with Lovecraftian investigative horror, it is the inclusion of magic that feels more Euclidean. For example, one investigator knows how to construct a golem whilst another can command snakes and even transform himself into a snake. Lovecraftian Purists are unlikely to appreciate this, and Dungeons & Dragons players will probably be dismayed at the lack of spells. Ultimately, their inclusion does feel out of place providing as they do too easy a solution to some of the situations presented in the scenario.

The lost colony of Roanoke is no stranger to Call of Cthulhu, having previously been visited in “Whispers from the Abyss” in the Theatre of the Mind Enterprises’ anthology, Whispers from the Abyss and Other Tales – pleasingly acknowledged in the text of the fourth scenario. Set in 1587 AD, “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain” finds the adventurers crossing the Atlantic to join in the colonisation efforts spearheaded by Sir Walter Raleigh in the New World. Upon arrival, they and their fellow colonists find the existing settlement abandoned, which sets up the scenario’s first mystery and first problem. That is, what happened to the former inhabitants and was it something to do with the indigenous peoples native to the region; and how will they survive the all too imminent winter? At least looking into the first problem will bring the newly arrived colonists into contact with the natives, and here the scenario’s tension lies – dealing with one or more peoples whose relationships with new colonists’ predecessors threaten their own relationship with the native. This is all the whilst both the colonists and the natives are haunted by creature out of legends of the New World.

Unlike the previous scenarios, “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain” is a more event driven adventure and by setting it on the edge of the New World, it also feels less confined than the previous adventures. There is also less of a reliance upon the format and play style of the Dungeons & Dragons scenario, it is less combative in nature, and ultimately, less linearity.

Red Eye of Azathoth comes to a close in the “Weird West” of the Arizona Territory of 1887 AD. “And Madness Shall Rise to Devour the West” opens with such a shuddering bang, it behoves me not to spoil it for any potential player. Once the scenario gets moving, the investigators must make their into the isolated township of Desperation to find its inhabitants harrowed by hunger and the perpetual sandstorm that rings the town, and the town itself under the control of several fierce Marshals with a tough approach to law enforcement. After the more traditional feel of a Call of Cthulhu scenario in “Lost Shall Be Those Bearing Souls Split in Twain,” this scenario reverts to the pattern by the first three adventures and is more combative and explorative in nature. Given the modern era of the setting, it would seem natural that this combative aspect would involve firearms, and indeed the scenario does. Yet there is an effect within the scenario that prevents their working, forcing the investigators to rely upon their comparatively weak melee skills. It seems so odds at the setting to remove something so intrinsic to it. Another issue with “And Madness Shall Rise to Devour the West” is its change of tone compared to the earlier scenarios; it is inherently pulpy with super competent investigators two of whom possess several spells.

The influence of the Dungeons & Dragons format on the feel and style of Red Eye of Azathoth shows most obviously in the characters and the campaign’s physicality. It is important to stress the difference between the characters of Red Eye of Azathoth and the investigators of Call of Cthulhu. In Call of Cthulhu, the investigators are ordinary men and women of varying degrees of competence though rarely what might be called super competence, especially when it comes to combat. Whereas the “investigators” of Red Eye of Azathoth owe more to high level adventurers of Dungeons & Dragons in terms of skills and combat expertise, rather than arcane or divine abilities, although several of the pre-generated adventurers possess both spells and knowledge of the Mythos. Their skills are thus high – though this often matched by the capability of the antagonists – which when combined with the lack of traditional investigative processes, makes the “investigators” of Red Eye of Azathoth more like adventurers. Further, without those traditional investigative processes, the means of resolving the five scenarios takes on a more physical, more combative nature.

It should be noted that the structure of the campaign and its use of different adventurers in each time period also impacts on the campaign in interesting ways. In the traditional onionskin campaign, an investigator’s Sanity is whittled down as the events of the campaign progress, such that there is often a loss of player characters due to deleterious effects of encountering the Mythos. In Red Eye of Azathoth, this is avoided because essentially, the characters are refreshed from one scenario to the next. Though to an extent, the traditional Sanity whittling is countered with some quite strong Sanity losses within the scenarios themselves. Red Eye of Azathoth also avoids the loss of knowledge common to other Call of Cthulhu campaigns that would come with the death of investigators with the flashback mechanic, though they still begin each scenario unaware of who the campaign’s villain is and of course, who he will be in each scenario.

The structure of the campaign also expects a little more of the Keeper. Naturally, the protagonist is working to achieve certain objectives, but in each scenario, the adventurers have the opportunity to curtail certain elements of these. So a Keeper needs to maintain a track of what the adventurers have done or not done in one adventure, as this not only has an effect during the subsequent adventures, but also on the campaign’s finale. Essentially, by campaign’s end, the Keeper will have assembled a check list in which he needs to have checked off what the investigators have done and determine how well they will have done overall.

Physically, Red Eye of Azathoth is a clean and tidy looking book. Oddly, it is actually better for a Keeper to own the PDF version of the book, rather than the printed version. This is because the PDF makes use of colour, making it easier to read, especially the maps. In the printed book, they are sometimes too dark to read. If there is an issue with the book, it is that it needs another edit just to tidy it up.

Ultimately, it is difficult not to read Red Eye of Azathoth as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign written with the drier, less forgiving set of rules in Call of Cthulhu. There should be no criticism inherent to such a concept, but in the execution as evidenced by this mini-campaign, the result is not wholly satisfying. The individual scenarios themselves feel too short and often too linear; the antagonist too fleeting a figure until the climax of each scenario when the investigators get a chance to beat him up; and the campaign often a little too fantastic in the way that the characters are designed. This is not to deny the interest that lies in exploring the settings and period of at least the first four scenarios or in the way in which the first four scenarios are set up. Similarly, the means of passing information from previous scenarios to the latest is interesting and well done, helping to get past the issue of dealing with player knowledge (though to help work against player knowledge, I would suggest that initially they only be told that they are playing one-shots rather than a campaign).

For some players, Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is just going to be too different a campaign for them to play, whether they normally play Call of Cthulhu or Dungeons & Dragons in their classic styles. For Call of Cthulhu, it is too pulpy and too reliant on combat to deal with its threats, whilst for Dungeons & Dragons, the investigators are probably too weak and the settings not quite fantastic enough. Given the campaign’s source, it is no surprise that its influences are worn so readily, and if both players and Keeper can embrace both these influences and the campaign’s structure, then there is an interesting experience to be gained from playing through the campaign. Whilst those influences and its structure is always going to make it a stranger when compared to other campaigns, Red Eye of Azathoth: Unspeakable Adventures Straddling a Millennium is nevertheless a brave attempt to do something different with the classic Call of Cthulhu campaign.