The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set (CoC 7e, 2022, 154 pages) consists of dice, rules (24 pages), a solo adventure (56 pages), 3 adventures (80 pages), handouts for the adventures (17 pages), and 5 pre-gen PCs.
There are two editions: 2018 and 2022. The only difference between the 2018 and 2022 editions is new art and the inclusion of fixed typos and errata. You can tell the difference between the editions based on the cover art.
The Adventures:
Alone Against the Flames: 1 Player, no GM (solo, chose your own adventure).
Paper Chase: 1-2 Players, 1 GM.
Edge of Darkness: 2-5 Players, 1 GM.
Dead Man Stomp: 2-5 Players, 1 GM.
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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Alone Against the Flames
Time Period: 1920s
Location: Emberhead, somewhere in New England's Lovecraft Country.
Pages: 56
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: PC generated during play. No GM.
Hook: You're on a bus trip to Arkham for a new job.
This solo adventure is a good introduction. It's a choose your own adventure game walking you through various die rolls and is a good tutorial for the system. This doesn't use the pre-gens and was written as an early tutorial, including character generation during the adventure walk through, otherwise they should have used the pre-gens.
I played this when it first came out and the free PDF (50 pages) is available here: Alone Against the Flames.
If you use the free PDF, you should get the CoC Quick Start Rules which includes the scenario The Haunting here (50 pages): CoC QuickStart and The Haunting.
This solo adventure is quite entertaining, worth trying a few times to see the different endings.
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My first run through, I played cautiously like a veteran CoC Player and survived, finding a bicycle I fled the crazy little town.
My second run through, I decided to do some more dangerous things and wound up burning at the stake in the town square. Yep. That's what happens when you do stupid things. But it was more exciting.
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Paper Chase
Time Period: 1922
Location: Arnoldsburg, Michigan (can actually be set in any town).
Pages: 12
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: Choose from 5 pre-gens; 1-2 PCs and 1 GM.
Hook: Someone broke into Uncle Kimball's home and stole some books. Uncle Kimball disappeared over a year ago. Recover the books and if possible find Uncle Kimball.
Originally published in the CoC 3e core book, originally 3 pages long.
A fairly simple scenario.
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The Plot: Uncle Kimball has turned into a Ghoul and just wants reading material. There's nothing much to do when you live in the cemetery.
The Bad Guys: A Ghoul. Technically nobody unless you count the PCs if they're trigger happy.
One of the most benign scenarios. A scenario about PC choices. Do they kill Uncle Kimball, leave him alone, what do they tell Kimball's nephew?
If you want to add more to the family drama, you can make Uncle Kimball a relative of the PC and have them inherit the house. Then you don't need Thomas Kimball to contact the PC.
Someone also mentioned that investigating the stolen books doesn't really involve looking for Uncle Kimball and the scenario lacks various clues and the PCs have to make a leap of intuition to go to the cemetery. I did see one clue trail in the uncle's journal. But when I played this, the GM added extra clues that made it easier: A few of the missing books were Uncle Kimball's favorite books. If the grounds around the house is searched, multiple tracks in the dirt of cloven hoof prints running back and forth from the house to the cemetery. Clearly, something has made this trip repeatedly. This would get the PCs to the cemetery earlier. And if one of the PCs is the nephew, then there's more of a vested interest in finding Uncle Kimbal, and recognizing Uncle Kimball would be immediate and more impactful.
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Edge of Darkness
Time Period: 1923
Location: Arkham, MA.
Pages: 32
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: Choose from 5 pre-gens; 2-5 PCs and 1 GM.
Hook: Merriweather summons friends to his deathbed and has a last request. Banish an entity he and his friends had summoned at an old farmhouse.
Map of an abandoned farmhouse is provided.
Originally published in CoC 5e core book, originally 8 pages long.
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The Plot: Search the house, find the ritual needed to banish the creature, perform the ritual.
The Bad Guys: The Lurker in the Attic and Zombies.
Depending on how much research is done, it may take more than 1 session. In the game I played in, we went straight to the house and it took only one session.
The best part of this scenario is the long drawn out ritual that is needed. The entity will try to scare and attack the PCs as they try to complete the ritual. As a GM, I'd try everything possible to distract and harm the PCs with full on exorcist mode. It should be scary and dangerous.
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Dead Man Stomp
Time Period: 1925
Location: Harlem, NY.
Pages: 26
Run Time: 1 session
Pre-Gens: Choose from 5 pre-gens; 2-5 PCs and 1 GM.
Hook: PCs are in a jazz club and all hell breaks loose.
Map of a jazz club is provided.
Originally published in CoC 5e core book, originally 9 pages long.
One of my favorite scenarios.
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The Plot: Leroy Turner has a magic trumpet that can raise the dead (as zombies). Chase down Leroy before he accidentally raises a cemetery full of corpses.
The Bad Guys: Mobsters and Zombies.
Maps of an auto garage and Trinity Cemetery are also provided.
There are a couple of great scenes in this scenario:
1. The opening scene where a gangster shoots someone in the head. For the best effect, you should have a PC at the same table, so you get the blood splatter. Then the body gets up! When I ran this, all the PCs were at the same table with Pete Manusco. Instead of making him a stranger, I had the PCs meet up with him for some business.
2. The funeral procession. What's better than a dead body rising from his own coffin during a funeral procession? PCs pulling out guns and shooting wildly.
3. The Old Garage. Gangsters have kidnapped Leroy and are questioning him. Do the PCs just listen in? Do they rush in? In my game, the PCs listened in until there was gun fire.
4. The cemetery. I would love to have Leroy raise all the dead as per Michael Jackson's Thriller, but so far, they've always stopped him before that happens.
I don't know if they had extensive funeral processions in NYC. I had relocated the scenario to New Orleans because of a subliminal memory from James Bond's Live and Let Die.
I was working on my own version of The Walking Dead RPG and of course, Free League announces their own game, The Walking Dead Universe, to be released in 2023.
My idea is different. It's more of an extension of indie RPGs where failure and drama is rewarded vs success. Robin Law's Hillfolk is about inter-character conflict. Delta Green gives you an experience check if you fail a die roll. Dungeon World gives you an XP for rolling 6 or less (failure with trouble).
I've pushed it to the limit. I decided that I'm going to make a game based on failure. Why? Because I binge watched The Walking Dead and noticed that Rick is a horrible leader. He makes bad decisions that get people killed, yet he survives and other people who make terrible decisions also live because they're fan favorites.
I wanted to make a rules lite game and I know there's no way I can get the IP (intellectual property) for The Walking Dead, so I can only build a generic zombie game with sly references to The Walking Dead.
So, the game is about people messing up. The more drama you create, the longer you survive. Zombies are more of a wild card that can get you killed. What's more boring than a group of survivors who know what they're doing and where nothing goes wrong?
The game is also couched as a TV series to explain why everything is so messed up.
Anyway, I wanted to beat Free League to the punch.
Full Disclosure: It's a work in progress and not playtested.
It's free to use or modify for non-commercial purposes as long as you keep my copyright notice intact. If you want to redistribute, please keep the copyright intact and/or point people to this blog post instead, so at least I'll know how many people are interested in it.
I got into four games via the signup lottery. Before the convention started, got offered two via waitlist and only took one of them. Then during the convention, a seat opened up for the Alien game, so I signed up for that. I played a total of 6 games. Two games were excellent, two good, two ok. All the Players at my tables were good to great.
Overall, an excellent convention.
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11/4 Fri 1-4pm (ran over by 1/2 hr to 4:30pm)
The Friend, the Fiend and the Shadow of the Night
System: Vaesen
GM: Bitburg_Chef (David)
Players: Morgan Hua (as Titus Gregorian the Academic), daveasaurus (Mattias as Hunter), greywolf5465 (Stefan Ekberg as PI), dwc (Darrin as Fader Sven Halström the Priest), CarlyD (Charles the Servant)
Late October 1865 - Several deaths have been reported in the streets of Upsala. The victims were found in alleyways or abandoned buildings on the edge of town; young women that are pale as a silver birch, yet with a wide smile on their face. The migrant worker district to the east of the city seems to be hit the hardest. The mood starts to shift, the workers call for aid but the police are at their wits end. If these murders continue a potential riot could harm all of Upsala, that is heavily relying on these migrant workers. Is the society able to figure out the cause of all the trouble?
A Investigatory who-done-it Vaesen scenario.
Content Warnings: Body Horror / Violence / Blood / Gore / Trauma
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, X-Card, Lines and Veils
For 4-5 players, ages 18 and older. This game is beginner friendly.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
I've played Vaesen twice before and have been lukewarm about the game. I think the system is ok, not great, so execution of the game by the GM makes or breaks the game for me.
We had a great table of Players and a really good game authored by the GM. Highly recommended.
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This game wound up to be almost a monster mash. A day before Halloween, we get a Vampyre, a Werewolf, and Witches. We were only missing a Golem (Frankenstein). People are being murdered, but who or what is doing this?
Following several leads and clues, we figure out one of the perpetrators works at a bakery. We sneak in at night and get into a pitch battle with the Vampyre (proving our suspicions) and wake the baker that was a Strigoi, whose spirit returned to his body. When asleep, the Vampyre detaches from him and attacks victims without his knowledge. We trick the baker into showing us his baking technique and after a struggle, lock him in the oven and burn him alive.
We did find out who the Werewolf and who the Witches were, but rooting them out were for another game. The Werewolf was the one who sent us the initial letter to investigate the deaths because the Vampyre's predations were putting too much heat on it. The Witches were transforming garbage into bread and selling it, but the Vampyre's spells were draining their spells' potency and their bread reverted to garbage too quickly.
The only minor nit is that there wasn't a direct clue trail to the Vampyre. We investigated all the leads we had and we had to make an intuitive leap at the end. At one point, when we visited a Russian Orthodox church asking about immigrants, they should have told us one of the new immigrants was working at the bakery. Instead, it was a deliberate dead end. That NPC never went there. We had to guess that the NPC was working at the bakery.
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11/5 Sat 8am-Noon
Saturnine Chalice
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: Bitburg_Chef (David)
Players: Morgan Hua (Osbaldo ‘The Peacemaker’ Hounsell - Assassin),
Something went wrong at the heist; In and out in 15 minutes the Boss said. Easy pickings and no resistance from the other Family… Well F!!! Not only was "Greasy Thumb" Guzik and his men home, but they waited for you to get to the safe… You were set up. Rocco, Shaun and Arrigo are dead; you got a hefty beating and a couple of scars. You managed to hold on a couple bags but someone ratted you out - or - one of you is working for Guzik. Whatever; New York is too hot now, not only are the man from "Greasy Thumb" after you but also the cops who got alerted during the fiasco. Best to drive up north towards Canada and lay low with what you got... and maybe you can figure out who the rat was...
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, X-Card, Lines and Veils
For 3-5 players, ages 18 and older. This game is beginner friendly.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
A good game, but I felt this GM who ran the Vaesen game, ran the Vaesen game better.
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The PCs' car breaks down outside of a mansion. We're all gangsters on the run from the law. Interestingly enough, we never went down the route of figuring out who the rat was. And we were basically pretty nice for gangsters inside a stranger's house. I expected more gangster shenanigans.
As things got increasingly strange, we finally figure out there's four statues made of lead at the cardinal points. We're stuck inside the house and various servants and people die repeatedly in horrible ways. At one point, my PC, an assassin, goes downstairs into a dining room and after witnessing a death of an NPC upstairs, sees her downstairs surrounded by the other PCs and multiple duplicates of another NPC. He just shoots her in the forehead, the first PC caused death after more than 3 hours of game. The other PCs become totally shocked. Then the duplicates disappear and the scene changes and reshapes itself. At this point, we realize we have to do desperate things to escape this trap. One PC finally asked if we should destroy the statues. We knew they were part of a ritual circle that was probably keeping something out or maintaining the magic inside. Without any other viable options, we said, "Yes. Do it." After destroying one and the sigil on it, then another, the house starts to age, changing to what we expected the house to be. We destroyed all the statues and then we found ourselves freed. An entity captured in the house also escaped. Afterwards, the GM told us the entity was trapped and it was manipulating us to free it.
I think this game has no solution other than to let the creature escape. I guess the other option was to stay in Hell House forever like the other NPCs. So, the game is more about exploring the house, suffering through the horrors, and finally escaping and letting the creature free. There was a mystical book in the house we learned about, but none of the gangsters read it.
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11/5 Sat 1-5pm
The Perfumed Jungle
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: Anthony Lee-Dudley
Players: Morgan Hua (William 'Bill' Anderson - CIA Case Officer),
molgars (Ryan Reese - CIA Junior Field Agent),
Modoc31 (Quan Bao Tran - Vietnamese Ranger),
Grant Dowell (Gabriela Rojaz - CIA Pilot),
mikc (Staff Sergeant Isaiah 'Prophet' Lane).
April 1972
The Xuan Chi valley - A largely unexplored area of the Vietnam Highlands.
As the active military phase of the US police action in Vietnam winds down, a team of CIA operatives are allocated a mission to locate and retrieve a highly prized asset, a US government biochemist, from deep inside the Vietnamese highlands.
Content Warnings: Body Horror and Conflict Situations
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion
For 3-5 players, ages 18 and older. This game is beginner friendly.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
We had an interesting set of PCs. It was a good game for what it was. I did feel it was a bit railroady. This game lacks a great deal of realism for what I was looking for in a Vietnam wartime scenario.
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I felt there were a lot of unrealistic logistic setups to force us into various situations. I think it could have been done a lot better with a more subtle hand. We helicoptered in to a forward base and then were given a beat up helicopter that could reach our destination, but not return without refueling at our destination. Of course at our destination, the base has been overrun and our asset is gone and there's not enough fuel to get us to the second location where our asset has fled to nor back home. Our helicopter radio doesn't work and the base's radio mast is destroyed. At the base, we run into a zombie that can be only taken out with a head shot. We go north towards the second location as far as we can and land. The clearing is near a deserted village. We find a zombie feeding on a pig. We clear the village, booby trap our helicopter and start walking. At the edge of the village we found a ritual cave complex, a member our missing asset's team, pod people plants, and a Dark Young. We take out the Dark Young and blowup the cave, but lose a PC. At this point, most of us were ready to walk back through the jungle to South Vietnam. Indications were that the second location was probably overrun with zombies, Dark Young, and our missing asset. But the GM tells us an abandoned helicopter at the second location could get us home. As a group, we decided to continue on (because it was a one-shot, not because it was the smart thing to do.) At the second location, my PC looks over a ridge of a crater and spots hundreds of cultists and Shub-Niggurath and goes catatonic. Another PC, our pilot, collapses, so the two remaining PCs decide to drag us to the helicopter they can see on the ridge and try to fly it out. PC with 20% piloting fails, pushes the roll, and fails again. The copter falls into the crater and we die. TPK.
What's the chances of a random clearing that we pick has the ritual cave our asset used?
GM only offered the idea that the 2nd location had an intact helicopter when we were ready to abandon the mission. Earlier we had found transcripts that seem to indicate the 2nd location's copter had gone down. We basically as a group said, "F*ck it. It's the end of the scenario, might as well try it."
A lot of the logistics didn't make sense. The only time you'd send helicopters or planes on a potential one way mission is if it was a suicide mission, not to recover an asset.
The game felt like a low budget version of Apocalypse Now.
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11/5 Sat 5:30-9:30pm
City of Angels, Secrets, and Garlic
System: Jiangshi
GM: P. Trolius
Players: Morgan Hua (Sing-Ha - the new world - 3rd gen, son),
Jiangshi is a story game about a Chinese family making their living by running a restaurant in one of North America's Chinatowns, circa 1920s, and possibly having to deal with supernatural entities - such as Jiangshi - at night. The scenario "City of Angels, Secrets, and Garlic" is set in one of the 200 buildings of Los Angeles's old Chinatown. For this scenario we'll play members of a Chinese-American immigrant family running a restaurant. I know you'll do this respectfully and we'll talk about it before the game starts!
Tone: Dramedy, some dark tones with room for silly moments. Horror is mild.
Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, Open-door policy, Lines & Veils, informal X-card (as in, not tech-supported in the tech I'm using in this scenario but otherwise entirely in play!)
Content Warnings: Racism (may be minimal depending on player choices and sliders we agree to at the beginning of the game; in all cases some content is veiled), oppression, potential for (supernatural-oriented) violence, missing people
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, Lines and Veils
For 2-4 players, ages 18 and older. This game is beginner friendly.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
I heard about this game and really wanted to try it. The most bizarre thing is that the authors made a lot of effort to use the Cantonese naming convention for PC names as most immigrants at that time came from Canton and spoke that dialect, but Jiangshi is the Mandarin pronunciation for hopping vampires.
GM spent about 1/2 hour explaining the game and safety tools. I found that a bit excessive. Most indie games are pickup and play.
The game should really be multiple days with various phases of the day: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Dead of Night. With Jiangshi appearing during the hours of darkness. During daylight, the PCs deal with their daily lives and running a Chinese restaurant. In this game we only played a single day cycle, instead of multiple days. Usually, you start with 5d8 for die rolls (with modifiers), but each following day, you lose 1d8, so it gets harder and harder to succeed. For convention play, we started with 4d8. Roll the dice and order them high to low. Each 4 (4 is a homophone for death) cancels the highest dice. Then look at the remaining highest die. The result for die rolls on 1d8: 8-7 = success, 6-5 = partial success, 4 = cancel highest die, 3-1 = failure, 0 = fumble (this almost happened when two 4s cancelled out the other two dice, but the PC used a skill to add an additional die).
The GM pacing was a bit slow for me, but I enjoyed the role playing at the table and the storytelling.
I am curious as to what type of variations you can throw at the Players to keep this game fresh. I feel this game is like Alien RPG's cinematic mode. It's great for one-shots or a short series if you have different scenarios to run, probably can't do a campaign.
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The game started with all the PCs waking up in the morning after having nightmares. Each nightmare card covers up a character ability and timeslot. To remove the card, you have to talk about your nightmare with another PC and have them comfort you, and have them succeed in a die roll.
All the nightmares pointed toward disaster.
The PCs then are dealt cards with various chores that need to be done at the restaurant. If you retained a nightmare card (simulating listlessness, worrying, etc) you have fewer hours that you can spend on chores. I'm not sure what happens if you can't do all the chores required for running the restaurant. Chores can also be swapped with another PC.
Signs and portents show up during our chores and point to Death. People are reported missing. My PC learns how to drive away Jiangshi from an ancestral recipe book.
In the end, while having a fancy dinner for the most powerful Tong in the city of LA, Jiangshi show up. There's a pitched fight for the restaurant and our PC family drives them off and gain the patronage of the Tong.
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11/6 Sun 7-11am (GM warned us game could run short depending on what the Players do, we finished in about 3.5 hrs)
PX Poker Night
System: Delta Green
GM: stef18885
Players: Morgan Hua (A1C Robert Cantu - light fingered),
thethirdt (SrA Jerry S. Young - hot headed),
dajebriza (SrA Alicia Geiger - mediocre),
plc5 (A1C Sheri J. Sims - whistle blower),
random-answer (AB Carlos Herrera - delinquent).
Somehow you ended up on Platte USAF base in the back end of nowhere (Nebraska). You didn’t expect this when you signed up to USAF. Now you are going about your duties and waiting to be discharged (honorably or dishonorably – you don’t really care). Just another day on the base trying to find something interesting to do. Hell at least maybe you can win some money from the commander as its poker night tonight....Oh wait – what’s that van at the security gates……………..
This is a classic Delta Green scenario and I always wanted to play this.
The PCs are all "problem" personnel on punishment detail. Because we all do our own thing, most of the PCs were split up and the GM did a masterful job keeping the narrative together. This was my favorite game of the convention.
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A van shows up and it is announced that we're supposed to keep away from it. It goes to the airplane boneyard. Of course, the troublemakers were already there illegally stripping wiring and equipment for reselling on the black market.
My PC was the last one out of there. He witnesses armed guards wearing special helmets exiting the van and sweeping the boneyard. A repetitive body shaking sound comes from the van. My PC fumbles a SAN check and flees in paranoia.
He gets called into the camp commander's office and thinks he's being investigated for the thefts, so he throws Herrera under the bus for the thefts, then finds that the commander just wanted him to know his brother was in the hospital with a drug overdose. Oops.
The personnel on the base become more and more erratic. Then Poker Night happens and gets interrupted by an NPC setting himself on fire.
Eventually, the PCs head to the van and a UFO that crashes in the boneyard. Inside the van is a device that is making the unsettling sound, we shut it off. Grey Aliens from the UFO ask for help. Three of us steal the van and flee; two PCs decide to help the Aliens.
The two PCs, Sims and Young, help free a trapped creature which escapes the UFO. The Greys fall like controlled puppets. The entrance to the UFO irises closed and Sims escapes outside, Young gets cut in half in the doorway.
The other PCs who flee get captured by Apache helicopters.
All survivors are introduced to Delta Green.
That was the end. I thought the game was excellently run with the split narratives. My only minor nit was the GM should have allowed us to do individual epilogues instead of ending the game abruptly since we still had about a 1/2 hour left in the game and we hadn't run over time.
Afterwards, the GM told us he had to tone down the SAN checks because in some previous runs, the PCs never made it to Poker Night. And to use this as a starter scenario where the survivors join Delta Green, you really do need to reduce the SAN loss.
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11/6 Sun 12-4pm (GM warned us it'll probably run only 3 hrs and he was correct)
Mandatory Fun
System: Alien RPG
GM: Allegedly Dave
Players: Morgan Hua (Khan - ex-pilot),
Kafkas-Banjo (Nunez - science advisor),
FatherofGeorge (Lawson - security officer),
11thguest (Stewart - IT specialist)
It’s 2187 and humanity has spread out among the stars. For most people space is hell, but not for you. You are an employee of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and you’ve got a future!
Every year the top executives at Weyland-Yutani gather for the annual executive retreat at the luxurious Overlook Station in the New Eden Sector. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone trying to climb the corporate ladder. Enjoy a few cocktails with your favorite co-workers as you scheme your way to the top at this once-a-year celebration of power points & middle management. Just be careful whose hands you step on.
Content Warnings: Body horror, Parasites, Corporate meetings
Additional Safety Tools: Pre-game discussion, X-Card, Lines and Veils
For 3-4 players, ages 18 and older. This game is beginner friendly.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
I found this game ok, the GM pacing was too slow for me. The problem is that the PCs don't know each other and it's another split party, but the GM didn't navigate the split party well enough by introducing enough tension between scenes. So, scenes happened, but weren't that interesting.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
All the PCs have their own Hidden Agendas. So, we split up and do our stuff. Khan and Nunez hung out together and investigated the Pathos, a freight hauler. Lawson and Stewart investigated a top executive. There are headaches and some infections. Then the space station loses power. The PCs finally get together at the Pathos, the only remaining ship at the station. They then go out together to get the Pathos unclamped from the station. Nunez had doubts about going, but decided to go. Guess who died? The surviving PCs unclamp the ship and get away from the station.
Paper Chase
Edge of Darkness
Dead Man Stomp
