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 The 30s also means that Prohibition is repealed (Dec 1933) and alcohol is legal again.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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