Pulp Cthulhu - Scenarios - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review

Pulp Cthulhu (CoC 7e, 2020, 272 pages) contains the supplemental pulp rules and includes 4 scenarios: The Disintegrator, Waiting for the Hurricane, Pandora's Box, and Slow Boat to China.

Pulp Cthulhu is set in the 1930s because of The Shadow and other pulp heroes of that time period. The 30s also means that Prohibition is repealed (Dec 1933) and alcohol is legal again. What's a two-fisted action hero without some hard drinking?

What's different in Pulp Cthulhu?

1. Character Generation: Pulp Archetype with higher stat for core characteristic (1d6+13 x5), 100 bonus Skill pts, and 2 Pulp Talents; 2x HPs, some new occupations, psychic powers, and weird science.
2. Luck Spends: There are a lot of new ways of spending luck. The favorite: Avoiding Certain Death.
3. Pulp Insanity: The Bout of Madness table is more forgiving. Insane Talents, gain a new Insane Talent the first time you go insane.
4. 1930s: Background and Setting Information. Price charts.

In purist CoC, Investigators look for clues. In Pulp Cthulhu, the clues find you! (and smack you in the face.) So, don't expect complicated clue trails.

The scenarios in my order of preference:
1. Pandora's Box
2. The Disintegrator
3. Slow Boat to China
4. Waiting for the Hurricane

All the scenarios are quite fun and I'd run them again.

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes. At conventions, I generally book a 6 hour time slot which includes time for explaining the system and a break for food.

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The Disintegrator
Time Period: 1930s
Location: near Kingsport, MA (can by any seaside town, doesn't even have to be seaside, just remote)
Pages: 23
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: None
Hook: Demonstration and auction of a new device, The Disintegrator.

Gee, I wonder what the device does?

This scenario has the floorplans for a 55 room, three story hotel.

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The Plot: Various shady NPCs bid for the device. Everybody wants the device including Mythos creatures who are willing to resort to threats and violence. The resolution is open ended and up to the PCs.
The Bad Guys: NPCs, Shoggoth Lord, and Mi-Go

Lots of opportunity for roleplaying as the PCs mingle with the large cast of NPCs.

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Waiting for the Hurricane

Time Period: 1930s (1935)
Location: Key West, FL (any seaside town affected by hurricanes)
Pages: 18
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: None
Hook: PCs are in a hotel that gets isolated by a hurricane.

This scenario has the floorplans for a 17 room, two story hotel.

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The Plot: Cultists kidnaps tourists for a ritual. The PCs will chase them via boat to an island where the ritual sacrifice will be held. Stop the ritual.
The Bad Guys: Cultists, Deep Ones, Star-Spawn of Cthulhu

Other people have said this is more action oriented than the other scenarios, so I've been leery of this one. I actually played in this and it was quite fun. Definitely low on investigation, more fights and chases.

I actually rammed the Star-Spawn with a boat, but apparently the creature hadn't read the story, Call of Cthulhu. It picked up the boat I was in and tipped it over.

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Pandora's Box
Time Period: 1930s (1933-34)
Location: Any large city in the USA
Pages: 29
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: None
Hook: Pandora's Box is stolen from a nightclub, get it back.

This scenario has floorplans for a fancy nightclub.

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The Plot: Cultists have stolen the Box from a mobster's nightclub. Get it back and/or get rid of it.
The Bad Guys: Mobsters and Cops, and various Mythos creatures from the Box.

You have a choice of regular PCs or mobsters. I've played it as normal employees of the nightclub and I've run it with heavy handed mobsters as PCs sent to recover the box. Both work fine. In one game, we returned a replica of the box and sunk the original to the bottom of the sea.

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Slow Boat to China
Time Period: 1930s (1931)
Location: A luxury cruise liner going from San Francisco to Shanghai, China (can be from any city to any city as long as it's a long ocean voyage)
Pages: 30
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: None
Hook: A locked room disappearance while on a cruise ship.

This scenario has floorplans of the cruise liner (8 decks) and info on meals, entertainment, and such, so you can use this as source material for other cruise liners.

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The Plot: People on board are disappearing, being sacrificed to the Pipes of Leng by The Crawling One. Find and destroy the Pipes of Leng before the boat sinks.
The Bad Guys: Tcho-Tcho, The Crawling One, Hunting Horror, Zombie, and Flying Polyp.

One fun part is to separate the PCs into various passenger classes, making them roll Credit Rating to acquire better accommodations. A Fumble would force them one class lower (sorry sir, all tickets for that class have been sold out). Some PCs use Credit Rating as a dump score, so I drop them directly into Steerage. I found it interesting, describing the differences in accommodations and food. Traversing to the upper class areas (by lower classes) are strictly prohibited and enforced. Even wanting to go to a lower class section (by upper classes) is questioned and frowned upon.

The Crawling One can swap identities, so it's a hard guessing game as to who the killer is. Most PCs give up and look for the Pipes instead.

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Keeper Rulebook - Scenarios - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review

CoC 7e Keeper Rulebook

Most people forget that in the core rulebooks there are scenarios. In the Keeper Rulebook (CoC 7e, 2016, 448 pages) are two scenarios: Amidst the Ancient Trees and Crimson Letters.

What people also overlook are the excellent Appendices.
Equipment Prices for 1920s (p.396-398) and Modern (p.399-400)
Weapon Tables: p.401-406
Game Summary Rules: p.407-419
Summary of Combat: p.408-413
Combat Flow Charts: p.412-413 (you really need to look at this)
Summary of Chase Rules: p.414-416
Summary of Sanity Rules: p.417-418 (you really need to read this)
Summary of Magic Rules: p.419 (you really need to read this)

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes. At conventions, I generally book a 6 hour time slot which includes time for explaining the system and a break for food.

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Amidst the Ancient Trees

Time Period: 1920s (1925)

Location: Bennington, VT (or any wooded wilderness)

Pages: 18

Run Time: 1 session 

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: A girl is kidnapped and the PCs are part of a manhunt to recover her.

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The Plot: Track the Kidnappers to a Lake and Dig Site. Rescue the girl, other prisoners, and destroy the site, without getting captured and turned into Undead Servants.
The Bad Guys: Kidnappers, Undead Servants, and Gla'aki.

I found this to be an ok scenario. An example of a rural wilderness scenario.

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Crimson Letters

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Arkham, MA (Miskatonic University)

Pages: 20

Run Time: 2 sessions 

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: The Dean tasks the PCs to recover the missing Witch Trial Papers.

I love the whole host of NPCs and I've used this setting as a launching point for a series of MU adventures. I think this is an excellent scenario.

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The Plot: Follow lots of leads, GM decides who really has the papers. Once you have the book, exorcise it.
The Bad Guys: Mobsters, Ghouls, Zombie, and The Horror in Ink.

I've used Miskatonic University and A Time to Harvest to flesh out the setting.

This is a sandbox scenario where the PCs can go anywhere. If you want to extend this scenario, don't decide who really has the papers until you're ready to end the scenario.

In my games, the Dean, Wheatcroft, and Abner Wick have become reoccurring NPCs.

The Dean sends the PCs on various extracurricular activities for extra credit.

A running joke is that every death on campus is from natural causes, otherwise the well-heeled parents won't send their kids to MU if they knew the truth. That's why MU has its own morgue separate from the city's. Wheatcroft continually falsifies autopsy reports.

Wick's Unconsidered Trifles is the go to spot for selling occult books and for Mythos advice. When PCs ask Wick to help with rituals and such, he always tells them how dangerous it is and warns them away. Of course, the PCs always go ahead. He will sell them manuscripts and such, but insists that he will NOT participate in any ritual as they are too dangerous. Only a fool would try these rituals. He only collects and sells these books as curiosities. Of course, he was willing to accept the original Witch Trial Papers in payment for overseeing the removal of the curse, with the PCs present and participating in the ritual (performed in the labyrinthian tunnels underneath the shop). The PCs then had a counterfeit copy made and returned the copy to the University.

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Mansions of Madness: Vol 1 - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review

Mansions of Madness - Volume 1: Behind Closed Doors (CoC 7e, 2020, 224 pages) is a collection of 5 scenarios set in the 1920s: Mister Corbitt, The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse, The Code, The House of Memphis, and The Nineteenth Hole.

The earlier 1990 version of Mansions of Madness included the following scenarios: Mr. Corbitt, The Plantation, Crack'd and Crook'd Manse, The Sanatorium, and Mansion of Madness.

Mister Corbitt and The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse are updated versions of the similarly titled scenarios published in 1990.

The connecting theme between all these scenarios are haunted houses, whether by ghosts or other entities. If you want to run a series of ghost hunter investigators, this would be the book to get. Most of the hooks are missing persons, but the action occurs in the houses the PCs enter.

I'd rank them in my order of preference:
1. Mister Corbitt
2. The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse
3. The House of Memphis
4. The Nineteenth Hole
5. The Code

Overall, all of these scenarios are enjoyable and quite solid. The newer scenarios are more complicated and harder to run.

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes. At conventions, I generally book a 6 hour time slot which includes time for explaining the system and a break for food.

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Mister Corbitt

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Boston, MA (can be moved to any city)

Pages: 30

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: Neighbor across the street is doing dodgy stuff.

Mr. Corbitt is not the same Corbitt from The Haunting scenario. They just coincidentally have the same last name.

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CoC's version of Rear Window.

The Plot: Mr. Corbitt accidentally drops the arm of a small child (amputated) while returning home at night. He uses these parts to build and feed the Child-Thing in his basement. PCs investigating his house will eventually run into the Child-Thing.
The Bad Guys: The Child-Thing in the basement and Deadly plants in the Greenhouse.

I actually moved Mr. Corbitt's house to Arkham and made it part of my Miskatonic University series. The house across the street from Mr. Corbitt's is where the PCs reside, a boarding house for students run by a nice old lady. PCs rotate through the boarding house as they die due to mysterious circumstances on campus. Students must pay rent in advance because these irresponsible boarders sometimes just disappear without notice. Uncollected possessions are stored in labeled boxes in the basement.

So far, no one has followed Mr. Corbitt to the dump. PCs just observe and break into Mr. Corbitt's house when he's away. In the Greenhouse, the Purple Flower used to be a save or die poison, it has been toned down, allowing for a save throw each round. PCs have burned down the house several times. In my MU universe, the burned out hulk of Mr. Corbitt's house is a daily traumatic reminder when they leave the boarding house in the morning for classes.

One of the more disturbing things is the Scampering Woman-Thing reminiscent of A Christmas Story's leg-lamp prize, a woman's head attached to a leg.



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The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse

Time Period: 1920s (1925)

Location: Gamwell, MA (near Boston, but can be moved to any city)

Pages: 28

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: Investigate the disappearance of a home owner, determine if he's dead.

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CoC's version of The Blob.

The Plot: Go into Mr Cornthwaite's house, discover something hungry is in the walls and is affected by salt. Try to destroy it and flee.
The Bad Guys: Spawn of Shub-Niggurath oozing out of the walls.

The blob is in the basement, but it can also send tendrils between the walls and floors. Allow the PCs to find enough of the salt clues before doing a full press attack. In one run, the PCs ordered a dump truck full of salt and poured it into the basement.

The man with the axe is a great jump scare. Lots of opportunity for role playing and misunderstanding.

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The Code

Time Period: 1920s (1925)

Location: Hampton, NY (can be moved to a rural or suburban location)

Pages: 34

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: A friend has made an amazing scientific discovery and needs your help.

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The Plot: PCs are tricked into going to Wellington Manor. The servants are con artists trying to unlock a Time Suit with the help of the PCs. PCs can get their hands on it and unlock the suit first.
The Bad Guys: Con artists posing as servants and Various things out of time: T'challix and Temporal Fractal Entity.

This is one of Jon Hook's favorites, but I'm more lukewarm on this scenario. I do like timey-wimey movies and stories, but a number of events seem very disjointed and fairly random. In my game, a PC unlocked the Time Suit and basically became a time god (or they thought they were at the end of the scenario). If the game continued past the end of the scenario, Hounds of Tindalos hunting PCs down would become a major issue.

I watched Seth Skorkowsky's YouTube video on this scenario, lots of great ideas. It requires lots of heavy lifting by the GM to make this a better scenario. Luckily Seth has done the work for you.

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The House of Memphis

Time Period: 1920s (1927)

Location: Boston, MA (can be moved to any city that can support a large entertainment industry such as Hollywood)

Pages: 40

Run Time: 2 sessions

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: Investigate the disappearance of Memphis the Great, a stage magician.

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The Plot: Memphis was murdered by his apprentice and is actually haunting his house and is looking for a body to possess. At some point, there is a battle royale between Memphis and his apprentice. PCs can aid in the banishment of Memphis.
The Bad Guys: Memphis and his deadly versions of stage magician tricks.

I love the stage magician props and references to stage magic.

Room 15, the Theater Gallery. What's missing are stage magician trap doors. I'd add that to the stage platform and put in theater seating or at least a stack of foldable chairs. I'd also add mirrors on all the walls (covered by curtains), so the magician can watch himself perform while practicing.

In one run, the PCs helped Memphis possess his apprentice and they pledged their loyalty to him in exchange for money and power. This basically throws out all the SAN loss/award benefits at the end of the scenario and turned it on its head.

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The Nineteenth Hole

Time Period: 1920s (1928)

Location: Dundee, Scotland

Pages: 37

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: None

Hook: Investigate the disappearance of the owner of a golf club.

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The Plot: An etheric travel machine has trapped the inventors and the missing person in the ether, making them ghost-like. This also attracts multi-dimensional creatures. Find the machine and turn off its power without getting trapped yourself.
The Bad Guys: Various etheric effects, Dimensional Shamblers, and Hounds of Tindalos.

The NPCs are fun to run. It'll be hard to relocate this scenario to a different golf course in the USA as various details are location specific. PCs went directly to the club house without doing other investigation which totally makes sense. Once they were in there, events happened, enough to make them leave and do some interviews and research before returning and exploring the club house more thoroughly.

Due to the etheric effects and various creatures this scenario could be very deadly.

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Petersen's Abominations - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review

Petersen's Abominations: Five Epic Tales of Modern Horror (CoC 7e, 2017, 200 pages) is a collection of 5 scenarios that were created as one-shots for convention games by Sandy Petersen.

To see how Sandy creates scenarios, you can watch this video: GenCon 2018.

The problem with these scenarios is that they were built as one-shots with pre-generated PCs. The scenarios are designed to be dangerous and deadly. The likelihood of a PC surviving can be low and you cannot drop these into any existing campaign as it'll chew up your PCs and spit them out.

If you like more complicated scenarios (which I do), then I recommend Panacea and Voice Over the Phone.

Hotel Hell, The Derelict, and Mohole are more straight forward.

Overall, I found the scenarios are ok for what they are.

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes. At conventions, I generally book a 6 hour time slot which includes time for explaining the system and a break for food.

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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Hotel Hell

Era: Modern

Location: British Columbia, Canada (wilderness)

Pages: 27

Run Time: 2 sessions

Pre-Gens: New hotel owner and buddies

Hook: You've inherited an old hotel out in nowhere and want to renovate it and make it a destination resort, but this being a money pit is the least of your worries.

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The Plot: Unknown to the PCs, gates to Hell are opening up all over the world. The hotel is ground zero for one of the gates. While renovating the hotel, the PCs must figure this out and prevent their gate from opening.
The Bad Guys: Various demonic activity at the hotel.

There's a subplot of local Tlingit indigenous people who are hiring out as workers and a fire and brimstone Christian preacher. These serve as red herrings and a distraction to the repair work.

As you uncover secrets in the old hotel, odd demonic activity such as strange accidents, dead birds, and weird sounds haunt the PCs. This activity increases as the gate prepares to open up, acting as a ticking clock, telling the PCs they must do something before worse happens.

Overall, a fun haunted hotel scenario. If the PCs fail, the world ends.

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The Derelict

Era: Modern

Location: Icy North Atlantic Ocean

Pages: 21

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: Various rich and famous people

Hook: You're on a luxury yacht sailing the icy Atlantic and find an abandoned cargo ship.

This scenario was originally published as a Free RPG scenario in 2016.

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The Plot: Explore the cargo ship, get attacked by an invisible creature, kill or be killed.
The Bad Guys: The Sciapod and the cold water.

The creature is deadly and invisible. If you are touching silver, you can see it. The chances of figuring this out is pretty low unless your PC is wearing a silver ring or earrings (which the GM will determine by asking questions before the game starts). The cargo ship has heavy equipment that can be used to trap and kill the creature.

This game generally turns into survival horror with a high chance of TPK.

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Panacea

Era: Modern

Location: Dallas, Texas (or any large city in USA)

Pages: 31

Run Time: 1 session

Pre-Gens: Various normal people

Hook: You're at a house party, celebrating a miracle cure, and things get out of hand.

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The Plot: ZyMedBio is using Mythos Drugs to genetically heal people. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong.
The Bad Guys: Mutated employees, Dark Young, and Mythos infected evil computer.

After an attempted rape at the party (trigger warning), the PCs investigate ZyMedBio and will windup sneaking into the facility. Inside are various rooms of horror. Eventually, the PCs will either flee or try to set the building on fire.

I found the chimera NPCs (half-animal / half-human) pretty amusing.

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Mohole

Era: Modern

Location: North Sea drilling rig

Pages: 35

Run Time: 2 sessions

Pre-Gens: Various scientists and engineers

Hook: You're a 3rd party observation team sent to audit a drilling platform.

Project Mohole is for real. Wikipedia entry.

Russian's Kola Superdeep borehole: Wikipedia entry.

Article about digging super deep: BBC article.

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The Plot: Drilling too deep unleashes black goo that mutates everything. Unless the PCs stop the drilling (unlikely), this is survival horror with high chance of TPK.
The Bad Guys: Mutated employees, Formless spawn of Tsathoggua.

As the PCs learn about the black goo, things escalate, mutating NPCs into hostile creatures, equipment breaking down, things swimming in the water. When the PCs have finally decided to abandon the platform, there's only so much room on the lifeboats. If lucky, they might have called for a helicopter. To top it off, the drilling will cause an undersea volcanic eruption completely destroying the drilling platform and causing a tsunami. Good luck with that.

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Voice Over the Phone

Era: Modern

Location: Dallas, Texas (or any large city in USA)

Pages: 29

Run Time: 2 sessions

Pre-Gens: Gang members

Hook: Previous gang members have created their own gang and started a turf war. Stop them.

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The Plot: Gang members are using Mythos magic to increase their territory. Find the Infernal Mechanism and destroy it.
The Bad Guys: Cultist gang members, reanimated heads, police, and other gang members.

The SE13 gang is a thinly veiled reskinning of the MS13 gang. The Infernal Mechanism is a ritual circle with severed heads in jars (still alive). Periodically, the heads wake and give advice and/or make phone calls. This gives the splinter gang an edge, but the machine wants sacrifices. The PCs will hunt down the location of the machine and destroy it. Of course, like in any other gangster movie, there's an undercover cop.

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Doors to Darkness - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review

Doors to Darkness (CoC 7e, 2016, 144 pages) is a collection of 5 scenarios slated for beginner GMs because the scenarios are easy to run and don't contain red herrings to lead your Players astray. The first chapter is 7 pages of GM tips. All the scenarios are set in the 1920s. The book has 10 pre-generated PCs that can be used in any of the scenarios.

I've run all the scenarios and some multiple times at various conventions.

I'd rank the scenarios in order of preference:
1. Genius Loci
2. Ties That Bind
3 (tie). Servants of the Lake
3 (tie). None More Black
5. The Darkness Beneath the Hill

Overall, I recommend the scenarios. Though it is aimed for beginner GMs, it doesn't mean it's only for beginner Players, veteran Players would enjoy these scenarios also.

Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes. At conventions, I generally book a 6 hour time slot which includes time for explaining the system and a break for food.

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The Darkness Beneath the Hill

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Providence, Rhode Island

Pages: 21

Run Time: 1 session

Hook: A friend invites you to visit his newly inherited house.

My least favorite scenario of the 5. I probably will never run this one again.

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The Plot: Your friend's house connects to an underground tunnel complex for smuggling slaves which connect to a Serpent People complex. He disappears and you've got to rescue him because he got captured by Serpent People.
The Bad Guys: Serpent People and their servants.

I didn't like this scenario because it's very much like a dungeon crawl. The rooms and illustrations are pretty interesting and I love showing them to the Players. The only real danger is that the Ghasts you can run into are very deadly for inexperienced PCs. The Serpentine Scientist is also dangerous, but most PCs just ambush him. Some of my Players have flooded the complex after rescuing their friend by breaking through the wall to the River.

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Genius Loci

Time Period: 1920s (1925)

Location: Danvers State Hospital, Massachusetts

Pages: 21

Run Time: 1 session

Hook: A friend, a patient, at the Danvers State Lunatic Asylum sends you a letter asking for help.

My favorite scenario in the book. The only drawback is that a map of Danvers State Hospital isn't included in the scenario. Luckily there's a website where the GM can look up all this material. I've put a link in the spoiler section for the GM.

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The Plot: A Lloigor is living off of the pain of the patients in the hospital. The PCs need to restore a broken seal to re-imprison the Lloigor.
The Bad Guys: Crazy Doctor and a Lloigor

One of my favorite scenarios as there's lots of online resources for Danvers. There are pictures and maps of the facility. 
https://www.danversstatehospital.org/

People have recommended watching the movie: Session 9 (2001)
It was filmed at Danvers before it was torn down.

You can also find loads of insane asylum inmate pictures online. I sorted them in order of creepiness into the G, H, I, J Wards. Going from nice normal pictures of a place you'd send your grandma to to a place that looks like it's rife with abuse.

G Ward

G Ward

H Ward

H Ward

I Ward

I Ward

J Ward

J Ward

If you want to, you can just relocate Danvers to Arkham and make it the Arkham Asylum and make this a Miskatonic University scenario. The patient can be either a friend of the PCs or a PC that finally broke and has been institutionalized.

p.s. I was asked about the Elder Sign. So, I looked at the scenario again and sure enough, there is no advice about resealing the Lloigor. Dr Shine's papers at Salem Hospital should include more information about "Hathorne's Disk," the Elder Sign.

If you want to extend their quest a bit more, you can add a note saying that Dr Shine's final request was to place various papers and items with his body. Thus necessitating a visit to the cemetery at night with shovels. You can put a shattered Elder Sign inside his coffin or instructions for creating one. I put a shattered one which the PCs had to put back together before tracing out the sigil. They then visited Abner Wick (from Crimson Letters in Keeper Rulebook) who taught them how to make an Elder Sign, for a price, but he refused to enchant one as it cost 10 POW (permanent loss), so a PC had to do this.

The PCs wanted a more permanent solution, so they had a large Elder Sign made out of metal by a company that made manhole covers. This necessitated two people to move. They took that, a wheel barrel, and bags of cement. PCs also knew by calendar when the new moon was, so they wanted to do this before the night Larry gets sacrificed. They snuck onto the Asylum grounds at night, avoided the guards and interns who patrolled the grounds. As the Elder Sign got closer to the Lloigor, it noticed it and alerted Dr Berger and other helpers. Then it became a race to place the Elder Sign in the right spot. The PCs didn't know exactly where to put it, but knew it needed to be placed somewhere in the Amphitheater, as that was part of the remodel that removed the disk. Some PCs fought Dr Berger and his interns, while another PC slid the Elder Sign around, trying to figure out the right spot, and the Lloigor started spinning up his Vortex Attack. I used the Vortex Attack as a count down clock. The PCs knocked out the humans and got the Elder Sign on the right spot before the Vortex Attack reached its full power. How do you know you got the right spot? When the Lloigor gets bottled up and becomes powerless, the Vortex Attack suddenly collapses. The PCs then poured concrete over the Elder Sign, so no one would find or disturb it.

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Servants of the Lake

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Squatters Lake, Massachusetts (can be tied to Miskatonic University scenarios)

Pages: 20

Run Time: 1 session

Hook: A student from MU has disappeared on route to Kingsport.

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The Plot: The student disappeared at a motel, snatched by cultists and turned into a zombie.
The Bad Guys: Cultists, Zombies, and an Avatar of Gla'aki

Almost everybody suspects the motel owners right off the bat because it's such a horror trope. That's ok, because the real horror is finding the zombies which are a big surprise. One time, a PC fell into the well in the old settlement in the middle of the night. As the other PCs went to get a rope, a zombie fell into the well too. Loads of fun. Nobody has gotten rid of the Avatar, most of the time, they kill the Cultists, run over a few Zombies, and flee.

You can also use this like Dead Light, a between scenario that happens on the road. Instead of making it an investigation, just drop this into your campaign as the creepy Motel the PCs have to spend the night in.

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Ties That Bind

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Ipswich, Massachusetts (can be tied into Miskatonic University scenarios)

Pages: 20

Run Time: 2 sessions or a 6 hr convention slot

Hook: PCs are asked to investigate a case of vandalism and strange stones left behind.

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The Plot: The strange stones are Byakhee eggs. The Byakhee just wants them back.
The Bad Guys: Paramentals in the swamp, Momma Byakhee and Daddy Byakhee

I love this scenario because it's so different from other CoC scenarios. I've run this loads of times. The solution is to just hand over the eggs and the hatched Byakhees. That has happened a few times, a few times the PCs went toe-to-toe with the Byakhees, sometimes using a car as a weapon, another time, a PC decided to become the new Marsh Wizard and bound the Byakhees to her bidding.

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None More Black

Time Period: 1920s

Location: Arkham, Massachusetts (can be tied to Miskatonic University scenarios)

Pages: 15

Run Time: 2 sessions

Hook: A student at MU has died.

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The Plot: Cultists are selling The Black, a Mythos drug, on the MU campus. They're making it at an abandoned meat packing plant. PCs need to kill the head cultist who makes the drug.
The Bad Guys: Drug dealing Cultists, Nightgaunts, and Raw Head.

The Nightgaunts are very deadly. They usually kill at least one PC. The Raw Head is optional and even deadlier. I've never used it. The general outcome is burning down the meat packing plant. Since the meat packing plant is on the river bank, I assumed the plant dumped its raw offal sewage directly into the river, no real health regulations back then, so there should be a sewer pipe that runs from the river to the floor drain in the Main Slaughter Area. Grossly coated with old coagulated blood, animal fat, decayed meat, and flies. Great to crawl through. And it takes you directly under the meat hooks. Oops.

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