Cthulhu Campaigns - Run Times and Thoughts

Every once in while, someone asks what campaign to run. I did what a lot of other people did which was to do a google search and look at posts in Yog-sototh. Now, I've been running and playing in scenarios since 2011. I have to keep a spreadsheet of games I've run and played in because I've actually made the mistake of playing in a scenario I've already played in. I've run 98 scenarios/campaigns and I've played in 209 scenarios/campaigns.

Below I'll list campaigns (that are in print) that I've run or played in, with how many sessions it took to finish and commentary with spoilers hidden for GMs who want to know about a campaign before purchasing or running it.

Most of my gaming sessions are 3 hours long. Some groups play faster than others, so your mileage my vary, but you can use it as a yardstick for your own group.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.

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Long Campaigns - For dedicated Players willing to play for a year or longer and are ok with rolling up replacement characters.
1. Eternal Lies - 27 sessions
2. Masks of Nyarlathotep - 21 to 34 sessions
3. Horror on the Orient Express - 42 sessions
4. Beyond the Mountains of Madness - 20 sessions

Purist Campaigns
1. A Time to Harvest - 11 to 20 sessions
2. The Children of Fear - 7 to 10 sessions
3. Impossible Landscapes - 9 sessions
4. Tatters of the King - 15 sessions
5. Shadows of Yog-Sothoth - 15 sessions
6. Horror's Heart - 8 sessions
7. Unseen Masters - 6+ sessions

Pulp Campaigns
1. The Two-Headed Serpent - 11 to 14 sessions
2. A Cold Fire Within - 6 sessions
3. Shadows Over Stillwater - 5 sessions + 2 other scenarios
4. Terror From the Skies - 11 sessions

Collections (individual unlinked scenarios)

1. Keeper Rulebook - 2 scenarios set in 1920s
2. Doors to Darkness - 5 scenarios set in 1920s
3. Mansions of Madness: Vol 1 - 5 scenarios set in 1920s
4. Pulp Cthulhu - 4 scenarios set in 1930s

5. Petersen's Abominations - 5 modern scenarios

6. CoC Starter Set - 3 scenarios set in 1920s + 1 solo adventure

7. Missed Dues and Blackwater Creek - 2 scenarios set in 1920s included with the GM Screen.

Click on links to jump to comments on that campaign.

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A Cold Fire Within (2019)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Pulp Cthulhu
1935 - New York and Beyond
176 pages
Run twice: 6 sessions each time

PCs start in NYC looking for a missing person.

There's some interesting setting source material that can be used for other homebrew scenarios (the Beyond part).

Otherwise, not much bang for your buck though. I'm surprised that both runs of this only took six sessions.

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PCs start in New York City looking for a missing person, go to the Catskill Mountains, and enter the Hollow Earth. Various people have just left their lives and vanished. The PCs find that this has something to do with past life regression and track it down to a psychic institute and then follow these people inside the earth. Of course, these people are really reincarnated K'n-yanians who want to return their people to their former glory by harnessing the power of the Great Old Ones, Nug and Yeb. The PCs go and stop them.

There's extensive background material for further adventures in the Hollow Earth and Astral travel to Dream Lomar (the K'n-yan version of Atlantis).

If the PCs spend time exploring K'n-yan, then I can see this running way longer than 6 sessions.

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A Time to Harvest (2021)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Purist
1929 - Vermont, Miskatonic University, and Elsewhere
336 pages
Run twice: 20 & 11 sessions

You start off as students of Miskatonic University (MU) on a field trip to Vermont. What could go wrong?

I ran this when it was released as a monthly organized play. Each chapter was released monthly to create interest in CoC 7th edition. The first time I ran this, it took 20 sessions.

Maps of MU campus and floor plans of various school buildings are included.

I've used MU as home base for a series of scenarios, merging the info from this campaign and info from the Miskatonic University book. The scenario Crimson Letters (p.364 Keeper Rulebook) is also a good starting point for a MU series.

This is a nice solid campaign.

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The campaign starts with MU students on a folklore and geology field trip to the Vermont hills near a town called Cobb's Corners. The setup is designed to split the PCs up. Hopefully, some will pick folklore and some geology. The first chapter ends in tragedy as one group will be killed (A great twist as no one will expect this, but maybe a bit off putting for those who died). PCs flee and return to MU.

If for some reason all of the PCs picked the same group, come up with some explanation as to why one PC is forced to be in a different group temporarily. For example, the other group needs a driver (geology group) or is known to be more friendly with the locals (so is more useful to the folklore group). If all of the PCs are in the tragedy group (TPK), then the game is hampered when fresh PCs come in to investigate. If all the PCs are in the survival group, then you miss a major horror scene and there's less incentive to investigate. I actually recommend that you play out the demise of the tragedy group in front of all the Players, whether they're in the scene or not, so it's clear something bad has happened. 

At MU, after reporting the horrible incident, the dead PCs return to MU (as NPCs), to the chagrin of the group that had returned early. Things happen on campus and the PCs are recruited into work for the company that had help fund the field trip. The company sends the PCs back to Cobb's Corners to investigate more and to end the evil there.

There's an optional scenario that requires going through a gate and going to the Moon. Highly recommended that you run this scenario. Lots of cool scenes and discoveries.

One small issue is that the material for MU and the Moon look like they came from earlier publications. So, it's not completely fresh material.

You can also use the company's HQ as a base for further scenarios for an extended campaign. You may want to run a few other scenarios before sending the PCs back to Cobb's Corners or run them after the end of this campaign arc.

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Beyond the Mountain of Madness (1999/2020)

Call of Cthulhu 6th - Purist
1933 - Antarctica
444 pages
Played once: 20 sessions

The PCs are planning and launching an expedition into Antarctica.

Originally published in 1999, republished in 2020, but still using CoC 6th edition rules. It hasn't been converted to CoC 7th edition yet.

Some people say this is the greatest CoC campaign ever. The realism of getting ready for an Antarctica expedition is unmatched. Those looking for action and adventure right away would be disappointed. We googled a lot of equipment and items to see what they were.

As a tie-in to At the Mountains of Madness, this is a good piece of work. The issue is if you've read At the Mountains of Madness, there are a lot of things that won't surprise you as a Player and you'll have to roleplay surprise for your PC. 

Definitely a different type of campaign compared to Masks or HotOE. There are mysteries and investigative trails tied to the goings on of the expedition.

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The Children of Fear (2020)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Purist
1923 - China, India, Tibet
416 pages
Run twice: 7 and 10 sessions

The PCs basically travel the Silk Road through China, India, and Tibet. They start at a slide show lecture in Peking and are sent on an adventure.

There is an incredible amount of history and descriptions of the areas the PCs travel through. This can be used as a source book.

This is not your standard CoC campaign where you travel to defeat a global conspiracy, fighting evil at every turn. If you expect this, you'll be disappointed.

When I ran this with a native Indian, she mentioned that the names weren't vetted. That some were "nonsense." Province and caste is all baked into each person's name. Each province also has a major religion. The names don't make sense to her as much as "The Compte de Oxford" would be nonsense to someone in the UK. She did say the background and religion info were well researched. 

More than once did my Players google information during play because they were so fascinated by what they encountered and wanted to learn more. One of the reasons we play games set in historical time periods is for the novelty and richness of the setting. Piquing a Player's interest enough to look up information out of the game is a high compliment.

I wouldn't run this as my first CoC campaign, but maybe after the Players have become jaded by the standard cookie cutter campaigns and scenarios they've gotten used to and need something new to kick them in the pants with.

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The PCs are invited to a lecture in Peking and get flashes of the future. They're sent to The Caves of The Thousand Buddhas. There they find a Holy Lama who sends them on a quest to save the world. The PCs travel to Taklamakan, China; Sitavana, India; Derge, Tibet; Pemako, Tibet; Nalanda, India; and Assam, India.

One issue is that the Holy Lama can go with the PCs or not. Both times, I've run this, the PCs decided to bring the Lama with them. I basically told them straight up and out of game, you can chose to take him or not. In my second run, one Player decided to take the Lama as a replacement PC when his PC vanished with a Dakini. In one chapter, the Lama is sacrificed in a very grisly manner; surprise, surprise, surprise. I got to play up the horror in that scene.

Another issue is that there is an evil conspiracy, but they're behind the curtain and are invested in the PCs succeeding. So, they rarely show up. I can see how this might leave a bad taste in some people's mouths, GMs and Players, but I see the campaign as a giant test of karma.

Another issue is that a specific ritual is performed twice with variations. When reading this, I was concerned that Players would be bored, but in both plays, it didn't become an issue. The first time the ritual is performed (a slightly modified one substituted by the evil conspiracy), the PCs are sent to either The Good Place or The Bad Place (or in between); this is one of the greatest reveals ever. The second time the ritual is performed (the correct one), the world is put right. I do recommend sending at least one PC to The Bad Place, so the other Players can howl about their misfortune; or at least tell them about it.

Throughout the game, unknown to the Players, the GM is keeping track of each PC's karmic balance. So every little side quest, side story, act of kindness, act of selfishness is recorded. After the first ritual is done, there is a reckoning.

In the campaign, there is a Southern and a Northern route with respective encounters. In both runs, I cheated and picked encounters I wanted to try out on the PCs, so I played fast and loose on that.

The Giantess Reborn encounter turned out interesting. One group chased Hasina in the graveyard and when it looked like she'd get away, a PC shot her in the back. My second group found her in the cave and let the Danyal nail her to the cliff wall. I had fun running The Rat King and The Painted Ruins encounters also.

I do recommend reading Into the Silence, a book about WWI and travel through Tibet in approximately the same time period as the campaign. It showed how harsh it was.

After reading that book, I created a Minor Setback Table to add flavor to travel montages:

1. Clothing not warm enough or waterproof enough
2. Sickness / Disease (Diarrhea, Dysentery, Malaria, Typhoid, Fever, Chills, Altitude sickness)
3. Food poisoning
4. Stolen rations by porters
5. Getting lost
6. Porters on strike due to wages, holiday, superstition (demons, unholy area, holy place)
7. No porters available (planting / plowing season, holiday, inauspicious day, pay too low)
8. Sirdar (foreman) short changing the porters in food and money, causing strife
9. Hostile locals (prohibition on killing birds, insects, or animals; people meditating in caves or on retreat; locals with no goods to sell or willing to give directions)
10. Leeches
11. Exhaustion
12. Snow storm mixed with Sand
13. Frostbite
14. No water
15. Yaks and Mules dying in the middle of nowhere (unable to take all your equipment)
16. Sudden snow storm
17. Wrecked tents by avalanches of rock and snow
18. Food too frozen to eat
19. No firewood / No Yak patties to burn at higher altitudes where there aren't trees
20. Rope bridges washed out by floods, freezing water crossings

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Eternal Lies (2013)

Trail of Cthulhu (ToC)
1937 - Globetrotting
400 pages
Ran once: 27 sessions

The campaign starts with PCs asked by a wealthy heiress to investigate her father's past. In 1924, her father and his friends did some unspeakable things and she was asked to never ask about it nor look into it. Well, now it's 1937 and her father's dead and she wants to know what happened.

This sets off the PCs into a world spanning campaign to save the world.

My favorite long campaign. Yes, it's not Call of Cthulhu (CoC), but you can convert it here.

Why do I like this so much? Published in 2013, it follows the footsteps of Masks published in 1984. That's 30 years of RPG evolution applied to the grand daddy of epic CoC campaigns.

Masks of Nyarlathotep set the gold standard and this campaign improved upon it.

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The PCs will start in Savannah, Georgia (USA), then go to Los Angeles (USA), Bangkok, Ethiopia, Malta, Mexico City, Yucatan, and finally to Thibet. The in-between cities can be visited in any order.

Five mouths dripping nectar appear in cities around the world (LA, Bangkok, Ethiopia, Malta, Mexico City). Cultists harvest this nectar and sell it on the black market as a drug. The PCs go from city to city, hunting down each cult, destroying each mouth.

What's nice is that each version of the cult is different due to how the nectar affects each location, so it's not a repeat of a previous city. Savannah is an insane asylum. Los Angeles (sex). Bangkok (violence). Ethiopia (masochism), Malta (sex / sacrifice), Mexico City (music / dance). I have an issue with Malta repeating Los Angeles excess, sex; I'd replace it with either religious ecstasy (my preferred choice) or gluttony. Also I didn't like the dungeon crawl aspect of Malta's catacombs and would replace the traps with tests related to religious fervor: self-sacrifice, self-flagellation, stigmata, visions, speaking in tongues, etc.

In addition to destroying the mouths, they need to completely destroy the creature's body which is located in Thibet.

In Act 2 there are meta-plots, family troubles and anti-Investigators, that affects the PCs home life when they're not investigating and destroying a cult. A nice touch and an innovation not normally found in campaigns.

I ran this with ToC and the system works really well for a slow eroding of a PC's pillars of Sanity. Over time, each pillar starts buckling and collapsing. I think every PC had lost at least one pillar by the end of the campaign.

Look for the Eternal Lies Bonus Material (2013). This adds extra scenes you can insert into the campaign. I ran the campaign with these extra scenes. I actually don't remember where I got these, they might have come with the online purchase from Pelgrane Press.

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Horror on the Orient Express (1991/2020)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Purist
1923 & other time periods - Europe along the Orient Express train line.
700 pages
Run once: 42 sessions

PCs start in London and wind up riding the Orient Express to Constantinople and having adventures in various cities enroute.

Originally published in 1991, converted into 7th edition in 2014, and reprinted as a 2 volume set in 2020.

Another classic campaign. The innovation of this campaign is that instead of handing out handouts, the Players play out the scenario described in the handout with pre-generated PCs. So, instead of reading a long boring handout, they play out the scenario as a flashback.

The 2014 conversion is a little bit spotty as the rules for time periods outside of 1920 weren't quite set in stone. Cthulhu Dark Ages, Cthulhu Invictus, and Cthulhu by Gaslight for CoC 7th edition weren't published yet. I found some issues, mostly on armor, when I ran the 2014 version.

If people want to speed through the campaign, they can just read the handouts without playing the flashbacks, but some of the best scenarios are the flashbacks. One of my favorites was the Gaslight scenario, The Blood Red Fez.

This campaign is definitely worth running or playing, but in my opinion, not as good as Eternal Lies or Masks. But hey, some people's favorite ice cream flavor is Chocolate and some Vanilla, but there's nothing wrong with Strawberry.

The 2020 printing recommended running Reign of Terror (sold separately) as a historical scenario option. Only Part 1 (of the 2 Parts) are relevant. I've played it (6 sessions) and run it (2 sessions). It has spoilers for the whole campaign and would probably be better if it was played after the campaign is completed.

Note: Minor issue with 2020 printing. The pdfs are fine, but some photos and maps in the print version have bad contrast and have turned up muddy and are hard to make out.

Note: Major issue with 2020 printing. This is the two hardback book set. The page numbers for each book are in sequential order, but the page cross references inside are unchanged from the 2014 multi-booklet set, so ALL of the page cross references inside are incorrect. For instance, Vol 1, p.95: "see the Gaslight on the Orient Express section on page 83." It's really on page 127. Use the table of contents or index instead.

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The PCs start in London, but have to catch the Orient Express in Paris heading towards Constantinople (Istanbul). PCs go through the Dreamlands, Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Vinkovci, Belgrade, Sofia, and Constantinople. The PCs are on a treasure hunt, gathering pieces of a statue and other artifacts scattered along the path of the Orient Express.

The statue pieces are cursed and affect every location they're stashed in. When picked up by the PCs, the PCs are themselves cursed. Unknown to the PCs, a villain is following them. The PCs will eventually figure out they're being followed by a vampire who wants the statue for himself.

My Players hated the Dreamlands Express (Dreamlands) and The Dark Crusader (Dark Ages). On the Dreamlands Express, nobody wanted to mingle with the other passengers. In Dark Crusader, one Player kept on getting his PC killed trying to get to the Red Tower and just reused the same character sheet and just added another Roman numeral to his name (Andre I, II, III, IV, V, etc.). At that point I gave up and just narrated what they saw.

My main issue with the Orient Express is that it doesn't make any sense. The reason the train is an express is that it goes from Paris to Constantinople in six days. It's an express. But in the scenario, the PCs are getting off at various cities, sometimes for several days. The train ain't going to wait. I also don't think the Orient Express has on-and-off privileges. Some GMs make the PCs try to catch up with the train at the next station via plane or horseback ride. I just handwaved and ignored this issue. One solution is maybe have a special touring Orient Express that happens to stop at various stations for multiple days.

Why is this a problem? Well, there are 40+ named NPC passengers and staff on the train (See Strangers on the Train chapter in Vol 1). If you make friends on the train, then get off for a few days, and then get on another train, the passengers and staff will be different. There goes your whole list of NPCs. One solution is to use the NPCs sparingly, only bring them in as needed. But for a richer experience, it'll be better if they stayed on the same train with the PCs.

When I ran Blue Train, Black Night, it was fun putting miniatures with each NPC in various compartments and in the dining car. The PCs then had to decide where to sit and who to interact with. I think the same thing should be done for various segments of the train trip. There would be more role playing as the PCs have to interact with various NPCs. Over time, some NPCs would disembark and maybe a new NPC would show up.

For a campaign based on a famous rail line, very little of the campaign uses the train; it's more about the cities the train passes through.

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Horror's Heart (1996)

Call of Cthulhu 5th - Purist

1923 - Montréal

84 pages

Played once: 8 sessions

PCs are invited to explore a newly discovered tomb in Montréal, Canada.

Sort of a weird scenario, what was going on kept me off balance, but I enjoyed it.

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PCs start and mainly stay in Montréal. We find a dead body with a fresh heart, a family of werewolves, and Chaugnar Faugn cultists.

The whole scenario is broken up into six days.

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Impossible Landscapes (2021)

Delta Green
1995/2015 - New York City and Carcosa
368 pages
Run once: 9 sessions

PCs are sent to catalog the items in missing woman's apartment in NYC. Things then spiral out of control.

This is an amazing piece of work. It uses Dennis Detwiller's iconic art throughout. It looks like found art, excerpts from case files, handwritten notes on evidence by insane Agents, even handwritten corrections in the Index.

Reading this is like diving deep into the Rabbit Hole. You find layers upon layers upon layers. I doubt any Player would dig that deep, but if they did, the supporting material is there.

The campaign is 4 scenarios. One previously published, reworked and expanded, plus three new ones.

Even though there is lots of material here, the number of sessions is quite short. But because there's so much material, I think you can run this several times and uncover different parts of the campaign each time.

Though a short campaign with lots of pages, I still recommend this. 

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The previously published scenario is The Night Floors (68 pages). The new scenarios are A Volume of Secret Faces (114 pages), Like a Map Made of Skin (29 pages), and The End of the World of the End (32 pages).

The issue is The Night Floors used to be 15 pages long. No matter how you pad it, it's still a short scenario. I ran it and it took only 2 sessions to enter and escape the Night Floors, even though it's now 68 pages long. Afterwards, the PCs spent an additional 2 sessions doing needed research. Act 2 took 4 sessions. Act 3 took 1 hour. Act 4 took 1 session.

Act 3 took only 1 hour because the PCs had a map from Act 1 and beelined to the Hotel Broadalbin without any prompting and found the required bottle straight away.

In Act 4, the PCs went straight to the Palace, but called on some help from Bael to make them invisible and avoided two obstacles. The cost was 5 corruption to protect all 5 PCs with invisibility.

In the end:
1 PC failed to follow a waiter to the Night Floors (from the Palace) and vanished.
1 PC took 100 SAN loss after looking at the King in Yellow (fumbled SAN Loss) and turned into the King in Yellow.
1 PC returned to NYC in 1955 and become the patient Sunshine and in 1985 watched helplessly as the PCs ignored her.
2 PCs made it through the book tunnel back into the Library, escaped Dorchester House, and is on the run as escaped patients.

The PCs got their hands on a copy of The King in Yellow play. Considering how many copies of this is floating around in this campaign, sooner or later, the PCs will get their hands on one. They read it and sure enough, I couldn't find what happens when they read it. OK, someone (PB) found it for me: p.348-349. I assume the one written by the scribe machine is The Red Book.

Because there are so many pages, sometimes it is hard to find something that I had read earlier. Electronically searching through the PDF helped a lot, even though I had a hard copy. Arc Dream will send you a PDF of the book and handouts if you send them proof of purchase and picture of you with the book. The electronic versions of the handouts is a nice touch and saved me some time as I ran the game online.

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Masks of Nyarlathotep (1984/2018)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Purist/Pulp Cthulhu
1925 - Globetrotting
666 pages + handouts
Ran twice:
34 sessions using Masks of Nyarlathotep (2010, 4th Edition, 248 pages) in Purist mode.
21 sessions using Masks of Nyarlathotep (2010, 4th Edition) with Companion (2016, 729 pages) in medium Pulp mode.

PCs start in NYC to meet an old friend and are launched into a world spanning epic campaign.

This is the classic campaign published in 1984 and revised multiple times. Converted to CoC 7th edition in 2018 (666 pages), the 5th edition is updated and vastly expanded into two hefty volumes + printed handouts + slipcase.

The Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion (2016) expanded the the campaign with 4 additional scenarios and added in-depth info on every city, making each city almost another character in itself. This is now out of print.

I recommend running this in Pulp mode because of the lethality of the campaign. When I ran this in purist mode, I think over 25 PCs died. With medium pulp mode, I got around 10 deaths and 5 died at the very end after they saved the world because they wanted to explore one last place. I didn't like the Pulp Cthulhu insanity chart (too forgiving) and would recommend using the Purist chart in the Keeper Rulebook instead.

Masks 5th edition (2018), converted to CoC 7th edition, came out just as I finished running the campaign a second time. So, I haven't run the latest edition nor read it.

This is a classic campaign because of the set pieces and because of its scope.

Note: Minor issue with the 2018 printing. The pdfs are fine, but character portraits lack contrast and in the print version, a fair number of NPC thumbnail portraits are hard to make out, an almost indistinct dark blur.

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Both the Masks Companion and Masks 2018 edition have a pre-campaign scenario for the PCs to get chummy with Jackson Elias, the NPC in NYC who will be murdered by the NYC cultists, and thus launching the PCs into the campaign. The Masks Companion scenario, The God of Mitnal, is set in the Yucatan and is non-Mythos related. The Masks 2018 prologue scenario is set in Peru.

PCs go from New York City, to London, Cairo, Kenya, Australia, and to Shanghai. Not necessarily in that order though it's highly recommended that the PCs last city should be Shanghai.

Each city has a cult, each an aspect of Nyarlathotep, thus the Masks of Nyarlathotep. There's a race against time as the PCs try to figure out what's happened and try to reassemble the Eyes of Light and Darkness and assault Gray Dragon Island (Shanghai) in a James Bond You Only Live Twice fashion, before the bad guys launch a rocket ship and open a Gate that heralds the end of the world.

The second time I ran this, the PCs went to cities out of order, skipped Cairo, went to Shanghai early, stopped the rocket, then placed the Eyes. After that was all done, they decided to go to Egypt and got the party wiped (some died, some went back in time) under the pyramids.

This campaign was written in 1984 and it's not very forgiving. At one point, I injured half the party as they tried to climb up a ladder to a hunting platform in Kenya. That ladder is now infamous in my play group, as infamous as the Dread Gazebo. There's also a painting where you can get permanently lost. And under the pyramid is pretty deadly especially if you meet Nyarlathotep.

The 5th edition (2018) renamed some of the NPCs and changed some genders. 1984 was before the internet and names were harder to vet. Authors used to use old phone books in order to find ethnic names. Or in this case, it looked like Larry DiTillio used a takeout menu. One of the worst names was Tandoor Singh, now renamed to Taan Kaur.

In the Masks Companion, the weather (deep snow) and the solar eclipse of Jan 24, 1925 was pointed out. Masks 2018 points out the snow storm and two following storms, but no mention of the eclipse. It is possible the PCs might be off to London before Jan 24, but it's nice to note that in 9 days, NYC would experience a total eclipse, foreshadowing the campaign's apocalyptic Jan 14, 1926 eclipse.

When I first ran this campaign, due to lack of information, every city was the same metropolis, but the information in the Masks Companion and also Masks 2018 will help make each city different. NYC with deep snow and "the concessions" in Shanghai help make each city different.

I did love the scenario Bloody Botany in the Masks Companion, a trip to Ho Fong's (now Ho Fang's) country house.

One more issue is that the PCs find a lot of books, but it is impossible to read a number of them before the end of the campaign. Some can be read during long sea voyages, but the reading time for most of the tomes are prohibitive. The good news is that PCs can (skim) do initial reading of books and the reading time is under the control of the GM. By skimming a book, I let the PCs bookmark spells found. Most spells have diagrams or runes or sigils and stand out on an initial reading.

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Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (1982/2004)

Call of Cthulhu 6th - Purist
1928 - Globetrotting
176 pages
Played once: 15 sessions

PCs join Boston's Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight, an exclusive fraternal organization. As the PCs go into deeper layers of the organization, they learn more of its secrets.

This was the first published CoC campaign, so it's a little rough around the edges. It was originally 74 pages including two bonus scenarios. The 2004 version has more than doubled the number of pages with more information and details.

I mainly remember exploring the Silver Twilight lodge and the climatic ending.

I enjoyed playing in this.

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PCs go from the Twilight Lodge in Boston, to a lecture in New York City, a coven in Scotland, a movie shoot in the desert of the American Southwest, the coast of Maine, Easter Island, and the rise of R'lyeh and Cthulhu from the sea.

The bad guys are trying to raise Cthulhu from the depths. And the PCs are trying to stop them. One issue with this campaign is that you sort of get a smattering of everything across the scenarios: Serpent People, Chthonian, Spectral Hunters, Mi-Go, Deep Ones, The Crawling One. It's sort of a let's have the first campaign ever and throw the kitchen sink at them because it'll be cool. Though when I played in it, I didn't notice this.

People always complain that they never get to meet Cthulhu in CoC games. Well, here he is, at the end of the very first CoC campaign.

Wandering around the 3rd floor of the Silver Twilight Lodge was a lot of fun. The movie shoot was a unique setting and so was Easter Island.

We didn't play the two bonus scenarios. And I think we skipped Maine. So, it'll probably take 17 or more sessions to play the whole book.

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Shadows Over Stillwater (2019)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Down Darker Trails
Late 1800s - New Mexico & Arizona USA
176 pages
Played once: 5 sessions (for the 3 linked scenarios)

The PCs arrive in Stillwater as outsiders.

There's actually five scenarios in this book and three combine to create the Shadows Over Stillwater campaign. It took 5 sessions to complete the campaign.

We didn't play the other two scenarios: Beneath the Burning Sun and Stonegarden, but PCs arrive as outsiders also.

So maybe 7-9 sessions for all the content.

The book included 4 towns: Stillwater, Santa Rosita, & Shade, NM; and Stonegarden, AZ. You can use them as templates for your own homegrown scenarios.

The campaign was ok, not bad, not great, just ok.

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Because rattlesnakes in the wild west always comes to mind, almost every western game uses Serpent people. In Shadows Over Stillwater, the bad guys are Serpent people. They're using fireworks to spread a virus that creates zombies in town. Next, hunting the fireworks brings the PCs to the Native Americans who you team up with to enter the underground Serpent people lair, a dungeon crawl, to save their missing people. The last in the series leads to Serpent people using Graboids, I mean Burrowing Horrors, to cause earthquakes and eventually making a volcano erupt. The solution is again entering an underground lair. Someone asked why I thought the campaign was ok. I don't like dungeon crawls. Yes, the rooms in the lair are thematic and not random, but the solution is to go room to room, meeting hostiles, and clearing the rooms. Zombies, Serpent People, and Graboids, Oh My!

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Tatters of the King (2006)

Call of Cthulhu 6th - Purist
1928 - mostly UK and Elsewhere
232 pages
Played once: 15 sessions

PCs start in London as their home base, but quickly go to Scotland to evaluate an asylum inmate as a favor.

Most of the campaign was set in various areas of the UK.

I enjoyed this campaign, and only remember the UK parts and the finale.

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PCs start in London experiencing the play, The Queen and the Stranger, go to Scotland to evaluate an asylum inmate, return to London and experience the spreading madness of the King in Yellow, to Suffolk County to deal with Standing Stones, Carcosa, Goatswood, then a chase to Milan, Bombay, Nepal, and finally to the Plains of Leng to meet Hastur (aka The Tattered King, The King in Yellow).

I mainly remember that most of the campaign was set in various areas of the UK. But looking at the book, that's only the first two-thirds of the campaign. Background material from The Children of Fear would flesh out the travel through India and Nepal, so it would be less generic and more memorable.

The bad guys are Hastur cultists trying to manifest Hastur on Earth.

This was a nice King in Yellow campaign. Starting with the King in Yellow play, then the madness spreading throughout London. The PCs, of course, have to stop this. They chase the head cultist all the way to the Plains of Leng and face The King in Yellow who tries to make a deal with the PCs.

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Terror From the Skies (2012)

Call of Cthulhu 6th - Purist

1929 - mostly UK

144 pages

Run once: 11 sessions

PCs go to a wedding in Shelborough, England and wind up in a race to save the world.

Though this was published as a purist campaign, after reading some reviews, I decided to run this with Pulp Cthulhu (medium pulp).

Reading through this, there are definitely some old school influences; various random unnecessary save throws that don't really add to the story. The campaign consists of 10 scenarios, all very short and I expect each to take one session.

I found a lot of issues with this campaign while running it. Luckily, for anybody running this, I've put extensive notes in the Spoilers section.

Overall, not a bad campaign.

Note: Minor issue with 2012 printing. Some pictures are really dark and hard to make out. Illustrations in the pdf are fine.

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The amount of spells and monsters the PCs can run into does beg for Pulp Cthulhu vs Purist.

Also, there are no PC maps. Most maps have spoilers and requires some editing if you're going to show them to the Players.

Introduction (took 1 session):
p.10 & 16, Gravestones should have the beehive with bees dancing around it carved on them. The gravestone handouts do not depict this at all.
p.12, Navigate rolls for getting lost in the marsh. I didn't bother, this doesn't matter to the story. I used the sea mist and made them wander around in it. But seeing the tree and having a bad flashback was good as that reinforced the nightmares are more than just nightmares.
p.15, Julian Baker tells the PCs everything and most of it is correct. There's no extensive leg work the PCs need to do, there's no guess work, all handed to them in a box with a bow on top. If you want to make the scenario run longer, you can give partial information instead. The curse seems a bit odd too. If you destroy the gravestones, do the dreams end? I decided it did. So, does anything come out of the crypt? I decided no, though the Players were a bit disappointed that there was nothing to fight. The PCs actually got a horse and chains and dragged the 4 offending gravestones out of the churchyard, smashed them with sledge hammers, and then rented a boat to drop the pieces in the English Channel. Maybe send a Mini-Xiclotlan when the gravestones are disturbed? Though when they were defaced 20 years ago, nothing happened.
p.16, The plaque in St. Mary's. The puzzle is too complicated and there's no way the Players will figure this out. They did it the hard way by surveying the graveyard for gravestones marked with beehives and comparing it with the parish records, thus finding the 4 gravestones that don't match any burials.
p.19, There were no SAN rewards listed for completing the Introduction, so I handed out 1d4 SAN for having the wedding.

Whitby Vampire (took 2 sessions):
p.23, Whitby Swing Bridge and 199 Steps. 

Swing Bridge - open

Swing Bridge - closed

Swing Bridge - surface

199 Steps

p.24, A Tour of Whitby. The descriptions aren't very clear and Googling images aren't very clear either. Luckily one of our Players had been there twice for a Goth Festival. The Spa Pavilion is at sea level and you take the treacherous Spa Ladder up to Whitby Abbey where the cemetery is. The Abbey (Catholic) was destroyed by King Henry VIII when he created the Church of England. At the top of the cliff face is a small operating church, St. Mary's. The multiple skill tests for this is pretty crazy and old style. Two of the PCs got extreme successes, so I dropped Frederick Davis into the sea instead. I think the purpose of this was to show that the Deep Ones weren't antagonistic. One PC who had opted to walk to the Abbey via a safer route (199 Steps, the Abbey Steps) spotted the wave that sent Frederick to shore safely. I also let him see an indistinct head bob in the water momentarily, maybe it was a seal or a Deep One.

The Spa Pavilion

Spa Ladder

Whitby Abbey

p.25, The Procession. This is confusing. Why would the ghosts go around the gravestone where there is no coffin or body? And why would there be a freshly dug grave if there's no burial? If you read the scenario carefully, you'll find out that the body was lost at sea and the Deep Ones buried it, p.35, So, there's no body. Who are these ghosts? Why do they care? p.32 says the procession only happens for buried bodies of a poor man. So, is the body there or not? The procession scene is cool. Since there's an operating graveyard here, there must be a church. So, the PCs visited the church, St. Mary's, to ask questions of the local priest. To fix this, I'd have a body and changed the information on p.29 (Gabriel Ward's name with question marks remove the question marks), p.33 (no body found change it to body washed ashore), p.35 (Deep Ones buried him change it to put him ashore, hoping someone would help revive him, but he died anyway).
p.26, The picture has a pool of blood around Elliot Elder's body. The Star Vampire should have sucked him dry. There should be no pool of blood.
p.28, Handwritten Sheet. It's just a list of cryptic sentences with the last item, The Baneful Dust, having explicit instructions. This should really be a handout and not have GM info embedded in this. I mis-read this and accidentally told the PCs it was loose leaf sheets with spells on it and the comments were written as notation on the side. Oops. In the big scheme of things, it probably doesn't matter.
p.30, The dates are swapped for Steven Mason and Gabriel Ward. Steven should be 16th and Gabriel the 18th.
p.32, Detailed info about the Anchor in right column. This is not marked very well. I read this, then during play, I couldn't find it.
p.33, Gabriel's boat, the Merman, is still here. So obviously it didn't sink while he was fishing. If the boat's here why would they think he drowned? So, the body must have washed ashore (with help from the Deep Ones, hoping someone would help him, maybe?) I'd also say the boat was found adrift (or found washed ashore) and it had obviously capsized because everything was soaked in sea water. Making people think maybe Gabriel fell overboard. This seems more reasonable. Or leave the boat tied up and say he drowned near his house. But then his body was drained of blood and full of puncture marks. So why say he drowned? There's just too many issues here.
p.33, A Sea Trip. I had 6 Deep Ones bookend the PCs on the street as they looked for lodging at night. The Deep Ones strongly requested that the PCs come with them to see someone. The PCs agreed and I gave them piggy back rides to Staithes. During their talk with the Deep One elders, the Deep Ones decided the PCs were also looking for Gabriel's murderer and would let the PCs go. The Deep Ones gave the PCs a stone with a sigil on it, to be tossed into the sea, if they found out who was responsible for Gabriel's death; it would call the Deep One tribe.
p.34, Staithes is north of Whitby. This is where the Deep Ones moved to.
p.36, Tom Jenkins. One of the PCs went Temporarily Insane, so he got locked up in the Whitby jail. Tom Jenkins showed up to write up a story about what happened. I had him follow the PCs as they drove to Ughorpe and sent a Star Vampire to attack the PCs. The driver failed his drive roll and the Star Vampire succeeded, so it was able to force the car off the road and into a tree. After a tense fight, where they shot at it, threw motor oil on the creature to make it visible, and set it on fire, the PCs killed the Star Vampire. The PCs needed more motor oil for their car, so they walked back towards Whitby toward the nearest service station. On the way back, they noticed a car that started up and U-turned quickly away from them (PCs made their Spot Hidden, NPC failed his Sneak).
p.37, There are no SAN rewards for this chapter. I would handout some if they dealt with the Deep Ones non-violently, realizing they're not a threat. I'd handed out 1d10 SAN for killing the Star Vampire, for knowing it's killable and how to kill it.

North York Moors (took 2 sessions)
p.45, Ashton Brown stands out like a sore thumb at the Flask Inn. He needs a cover story for why he's at Lilla Howe. I said he was visiting/doing research on Lilla Cross.

Lilla Cross

p.47, Bloody Beck ritual and dancers. Everything is ok until you wonder where the dancers came from. I assume they're not local as that would be a big tip off when a majority of Lilla Howe's population disappears or drops dead. So, if they're students recruited from Durham Cathedral, wouldn't the locals, especially at the Flask Inn, notice a bus full of students getting off at the bus stop and heading to Bloody Beck? A good cover would be a student field trip.

p.51, Ashton Brown. He's human, but he can wield a Nerve Whip. p.63, Alelia Carter has one too. So, from this I concluded that the PCs can wield them also. The issue is that the Nerve Whip is way too powerful. You may want to either only allow Shan and Shan possessed NPCs the ability to activate it, set a number of uses before a recharge is required, or make it a Fighting Specialization Nerve Whip (20%), the same as a sword (a Nerve Whip seems to act like a Light Saber, except it causes nerve pain). 

p.52, Voorish Sign. In The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic, the Voorish Sign enhances spell casting and temporarily wards off Mythos creatures. Nothing is said about making the invisible visible. This either could be a mistake by Elliot Elder or as a GM, you can make the Voorish Sign make the invisible visible. I preferred to stick with cannon and decided Elliot Elder was mistaken, but the Voorish Sign would fend off a Mythos creature for a round or two, as the creature decides whether the practitioner was a powerful spellcaster or not.

My Players decided to enter the pyramid at the Bloody Beck after interrupting the ritual. Even though they hadn't gone to the Durham Cathedral location to register their biosignatures, I thought why not? They were hot to trot and when's the last time a group of investigators volunteered to enter a dangerous enclosed space without prompting? Also denying them entry, then forcing them to Durham before letting them into the pyramid at Limehouse seemed unnecessary and railroady.

Durham Cathedral (took 1/2 session)

PCs came here to see Professor Graham after finding his name in Elliot Elder's journals. Totally ignored all the Student Societies because they had no reason to look at them and then went to Lilla Howe.

Cardington (took 1 session)

Cardington Airship Sheds with Airships

Cardington Airship Sheds

I decided there were no fences, but there were nightwatchmen patrolling the grounds and interior. PCs tried to drive stealthily close to the Airship Sheds, but failed. A nightwatchman asked what they were doing there, and told them to leave. PCs left and came back from a different direction.

The two stealthiest PCs snuck into the Airship Shed and offices. I simplified this, basically every failed Stealth roll or obvious noise, I had them make a Luck roll. Any Luck roll failure meant the nightwatchman had found them. After they took care of the nightwatchman, if there was additional noise, I sent cultists with Nerve Whips. Upon exit, I had a Shantak launch towards the fleeing PCs from the Airship Shed.

PCs got into a car and tried to flee. Their luxury car had a 6 Build. Every 10 pts damage by the Shantak destroys 1 Build. They finally defeated the Shantak by tossing a handful of Baneful Dust at it. The Shantak had done 4 pts of Build damage to the car before it decided to fly away.

Newcastle (took 1 session)
p.73 Reference to Handout Paper in the Safe #1 is incorrect, it is on p.74, NOT on p.71.

PCs sort of got stuck because they got into the wall safe, but didn't de-Shan Roland Timon. Without de-Shaning him, it's impossible to figure out who J.C. (initials on a handout) is. So, either expand the initials to the full name or add extra correspondence that tells the PCs that J.C. is John Carrigan. PCs broke into the house again after failing to abduct Roland Timon, so I added some more correspondence that explained who JC is.

Carrigan's House. Safe in the Study. That safe is annoying obnoxious. The "no save" shock is really odd. After one PC got shocked into unconsciousness, another PC tried a non-conductive object. Yeah, I shocked him too because it didn't make sense that anyone with a rubber glove could just take all the objects out of the safe. But since the house is empty and there's no neighbors, eventually, the PCs would regain consciousness. So, what's the point of the shock trap? It's just an old style D&D trap. I'd just get rid of it, seal up the safe, and keep the hypnotizing trap on the door. The hypnotizing trap only lasts a few rounds because the PC is allowed to save each round. So, there's a disconnect between the duration of the shock trap (hours) and the hypnotizing trap (rounds).

The List (took 1.5 sessions)
The location of the Graf Zeppelin tickets:
Amanda Freeman-Danby carries hers and Eric Todd's in her purse during the day and under her pillow at night. p.81
Edward Driscoll's is in the lining of his hat. p.84
Sebastian Wright's is in a locker at the Shambles Club, but the locker key is attached to his watch fob in his trouser pocket. p.87
John Carrigan's is in his clear safe at his house in Whitley Bay. p.75.
Roland Timon's is in his wall safe in his office. p.72.
The Carrier is carrying his.

There's a question as to which cultists are Shanned. If Shan can telepathically contact each other, why do they need to telephone each other about the Investigators? p.7 Being Shanned, states that some Shan are connected, not all. Considering that there seem to be a lot of Shan and they regularly take over people who are in the way such as Seth Gray or even the numerous human sacrifices at the Bloody Beck. p.88 Penalties indicates that all of the cultists on the List have been Shanned. So, all of the cultists have been Shanned.

When I ran this, I made a mistake and thought that Sebastian wasn't Shanned as I couldn't find it in the text and he didn't carry a Nerve Whip. You may want to mix this up a little and just have some dedicated / deluded cultists. It was amusing that when they tried Cast out Shan on Sebastian, nothing happened. Also when they killed Eric Todd, I had the Shan leave Eric's head, and they had to deal with newly freed Shan. Amanda may also be free of Shan.

Heliowall (took 1 session)
It's hard to find in the text where the pyramids are located, so here's the list:
1. The Forest - The Pennines in central England.
2. The Sacred Lake - Loch Carron in the Scottish Highlands.
3. The Trenches - Military training ground in Salisbury plain.
4. The Final Pyramid - Southampton.

For the Shan, remember its build is -2, so any firearms attacks against it is with a penalty die. The one Shan inside the first pyramid was no challenge as they have only 1 HP.

Yet again, lots of unnecessary extended tests and cascading tests at various locations (make this save throw, if fail, roll this, if fail, roll this). I simplified most of the tests.

Graf Zeppelin (took 2 sessions)

The Graf Zeppelin schedule should be readily available as the airship trip should have publicity and anybody inquiring about buying tickets should be presented with that info.

The Graf Zeppelin schedule (pieced together from the text):
August 1, departs Zeppelin Airship Works, Friedrichshafen, Germany for New Jersey, USA (across Atlantic Ocean).
August 5, arrives Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey.
August 7, departs Lakehurst for Friedrichshafen (across Atlantic Ocean).
August 10, arrives Friedrichshafen.
August 15, departs Friedrichshafen for Japan (across Europe and Asia).
August 19, arrives Kasumigaura naval airship base, Japan.
August 23, departs Japan for Los Angeles, USA (across Pacific Ocean).
August 25, arrives Mines Field, Los Angeles, California.
August 29, departs Los Angeles for Lakehurst (across USA).
August 31, arrives Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Graf Zeppelin

Graf Zeppelin Superstructure

Graf Zeppelin Gondola - floor plan

Workers repairing the Graf Zeppelin on the outside

View of engines

There are no descriptions of the NPC passengers. Also if you follow the schedule of p.104 First Day, events happen to NPCs (Tim Owen & Landon Hughes) who have been replaced by PCs or Cultists. If Landon Hughes is replaced by a PC, use Robert Hall for the stock-purchase order.

It is also not clear who is sharing a room. I've put Lady Grace Drummond-Hay by herself. Weigand & Wilkins together. Harman & Rosendahl. Hirsch & Maruyama. Wood & Hail. Lee & Jackson. Mason & Baker. Philips & Gray. Hughes & Thompson. Owen & Webb. 

My Players grabbed the wrong guy looking for the Carrier, Robert Hall, then decided they had to do more desperate measures and decided to sabotage the two right engines at night, by exiting a service hatch, tying on a safety line, and shooting at the engine. I had the PC make Climb rolls, failure means they fall, but are caught by the line. Each round they're out in the cold thin air, I caused 1d3 damage. Once they make a successful Climb roll, they can shoot at the engine, requiring a Hard success to disable it. Then they had to readjust their safety line to shoot at the second engine. The PC crit fumbled and the line snapped. Oops. Luckily the PC still had 30+ Luck and Avoided Certain Death.

PCs decided to disable the airship vs trying to figure out who the Carrier was. Once they started damaging the ship engines, the Carrier had to act and stop the sabotage. The PCs even convinced the captain to stop the engines, so the Carrier had to take over the controls and restart the engines.

The Carrier's HP is 21. Can auto-repair damage for 1d6 HP per round, total lifetime repair of 6 pts. This is sort of cool, Terminator-like. But again too rules heavy and unless the GM describes the repair, it effectively just gives the Carrier 6 more HP. I would actually change this to Rises Again: Once it reaches 0 HP, it falls dead, give it 6 HP as it auto-repairs damage the next round, and then it springs back to life to attack once again.

Last Leg (took 1/2 session).

Basically epilogues for the PCs and tying up loose ends.

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The Two-Headed Serpent (2017)

Call of Cthulhu 7th - Pulp Cthulhu
1933 - Globetrotting
272 pages
Run twice: 11 and 14 sessions

The PCs belong to The Caduceus Foundation, sort of a Doctors Without Borders non-profit organization. As they run various missions around the world for the organization, they begin to realize that their organization is more than it purports to be.

I really enjoyed this campaign and highly recommend it. I would go with Medium or High Pulp with this campaign. I allowed Gadgets/Weird Science and Psychic powers.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Their foundation is opposed by Snake people and also run by a different faction of Snake people. Oh, wait, what's that on the cover? The Caduceus, the Staff of Hermes, with two snakes intertwined. Spoiler alert!

The PCs travel to Bolivia, New York, North Borneo, Oklahoma, Iceland, Belgian Congo, Calcutta, Snake Island, and Mu.

I loved the Oklahoma scenario. This is the end all and be all of Snake Handling Churches. There's always Snake people in CoC Westerns and inevitably a snake handling church / cult. I found this one of the better realizations of what one would be like.

Various traps and Caduceus treatments start turning the PCs into Snake people hybrids. Will they embrace the changes or try to find a cure?

Who will the PCs oppose and who will they eventually support is part of the campaign. In one run, the PCs destroyed both Snake people cults. In another, they joined Tyranissh's side and hybridized the whole world and became co-leaders of a new world order.

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Unseen Masters (2001)

Call of Cthulhu 5th - Purist

Modern - mostly New York City & Rhode Island

216 pages

Run once: 6+ sessions

Three fairly long scenarios that make up a mini-campaign.
The Wild Hunt - 4 sessions.
The Truth Shall Set You Free - ? sessions.
Coming of Age - 2 sessions.

After reading this, I don't recommend this as a mini-campaign. The scenarios aren't really that related. The 1st scenario and part of the 3rd is fine as a standalone scenario, but the 2nd and 3rd recommend putting in other scenarios to pad out the timeframe, so they're better off as part of a longer campaign framework, not as connected scenarios.

There's also a lot of pop culture references in the scenarios, thinly veiled references to various movies, so it may be hard to tread on the thin line of homage, caricatures, and snickering humor; it can easily fall into farce and ruin the atmosphere for horror.

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The book starts with adding additional skills: Forensics and a whole host of Psychiatry skills. I wouldn't do this. I'd just let characters with Medicine do Forensics and keep all the Psychiatry skills under Psychoanalysis. The issue with additional specializations is that it dilutes their skill pools even more. Why do this? Also Dholeshouse.org does not include these new skills, so it'll be harder for your Players to use Dholeshouse.org to generate PCs.

The first scenario, The Wild Hunt, is an homage to The Night Stalker and Carl Kolchak and is explicitly noted in the scenario. There's nods to Hellraiser and other horror movie tropes. There's lots of red herrings and part of the fun is hunting down the wrong clues as this is more of a sandbox scenario. Part of the first scenario is a book that if read by a PC leads to the second scenario.

One problem is that there are a lot of red herrings and enough supporting information that make the red herrings plausible, so it may be impossible to rule out some of the red herrings.

The second scenario, The Truth Shall Set You Free, is problematic in that it's not a scenario, but a sub-plot to be added to another scenario that becomes its own scenario. The authors should have written a scenario and then added this subplot instead. They recommend running some other scenario and merging it with this scenario. The scenario is about one of the PCs, after reading a specific book from the first scenario, being tricked into starting a cult and bringing on the end of the world. What he sees and hears isn't what the other PCs experience. So, there's a lot of private outside of the room conversations with the affected PC. And conversations with the other PCs without the affected PC. For an in-person game, it's sort of doable, but even then, the other Players will figure this out eventually. The other option is to put it all out there and have the Players understand they can only act on PC knowledge. I think this is manageable, but not ideal. There are some clever things in this scenario as the affected PC can bring the other PCs into his delusion and there are supernatural effects that bolster the affected PC's claims. I can see the other PCs buying into this and helping the affected PC end the world, so at some point there's going to be some Player vs Player action going on. So, if you run this scenario, I'm not sure there's a way to get to the 3rd scenario with the investigator group intact.

The third scenario, Coming of Age, is a demon-child (Damien) scenario. One of the PCs should have an 11 year old son or nephew named David, the demon-child. So, this should be set up ahead of time when creating characters in the first scenario. David's powers grow over time and like the second scenario, it is recommended the GM run other scenarios as this plays out over time, so again, this scenario is not completely self-contained. This scenario also has thinly veiled references to The Omen, Friday the 13th, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. Of course, the David part of the scenario can be excised and you can just run the Camp Nar-Aqua part as a standalone scenario.

Camp Nar-Aqua is in Rhode Island, for those like me who had trouble figuring this out.

The 2 sessions to complete this scenario only solves the main Camp Nar-Aqua plot line of Billy and the Shining Trapezohedron. The PCs got their hands on the Shining Trapezohedron and encased it in lead and concrete and sunk it in the Atlantic Ocean.

As a follow-on scenario, I ran The Evil Stars from Cthulhu Now. The Evil Stars focuses on God's Lost Children, a band that is mentioned in both The Wild Hunt and Coming of Age.

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