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Sunday, November 27, 2022
Starter Set - Scenarios - Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - Review
2022 edition
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.
Paper Chase
Edge of Darkness
Dead Man Stomp
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