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Friday, September 23, 2022
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.
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
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.
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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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