1981: X2 Castle Amber

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Published in 1981, the second entry in the ‘X’ series of modules for Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed for use in conjunction Expert Dungeons & Dragons could not have been more different than the first. Both are pulpy in their tone and inspirations, but where X1 The Isle of Dread is a lush mashup of King Kong and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle’s The Lost World with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft, X2 Castle Amber combines its Pulp sensibilities with a mixture of horror—the Gothic and the Lovecraftian in particular, sybaritic ennui, dreamlike dread, and woozy whimsey. The locations are different too, the Player Characters expected to sail to and explore a large island in search of treasure in X1 The Isle of Dread, whilst in X2 Castle Amber, they are unceremoniously pulled into an alternate dimension—not once, but twice—and forced to go looking for answers (and solutions) to their predicament, again not once, but twice. The bulk of X2 Castle Amber take place in a castle—or technically, it takes place in Château d’Amberville and is therefore not actually very castle-like—followed by a potentially lengthy wilderness section. In fact, having the scenario’s location before the wilderness section, when it is normally set after it in a traditional wilderness module, is very strange indeed, and that is in a very strange, often weird module indeed.

X2 Castle Amber is designed for a party of six to ten Player Characters, between Third and Sixth Level. The total of the party’s Experience Levels should be between twenty-six and thirty-four, ideally averaging thirty in total. Both X1 The Isle of Dread and X2 Castle Amber begin with the Player Characters on the Continent of the ‘Known World’. In X1 The Isle of Dread, they discover the journal describing a trip to the Thanegioth Archipelago, and lured by the mention of great treasure, sail off on the thousand-mile journey as soon as possible. In X2 Castle Amber, they are traveling to the Glantri City where they are hoping to find employment with one of the princes, but along the way, they get lost and are forced to make camp. After a sleep filled with nightmares, they awake to find themselves in the foyer of a mansion—a French mansion no less! With the mansion surrounded by a strange and very deadly mist, the Player Characters have no choice but to go forward and explore. In room after room, they will be confronted by one strange encounter after another—a nobleman who wants to set-up a bare-knuckle boxing match between his magen (or magical men) and whomever the party nominates as their champion, with bets on the outcome encouraged; a great banquet attended by ghosts which the Player Characters can also attend and eat their fill, and in doing so gain great benefits or dire consequences; a room with its floor covered in a Green Slime, ceiling in a Black Pudding, and its only furniture, a very full treasure chest, is covered in a Grey Ooze; an Ogre servant who killed his mistress and now dresses like her and attempts to emulate her; a river in an Indoor Forest crossed by a bridge under which lives a troll; a noblewoman buried accidentally alive in the chapel by her brother—in a very obvious nod to Edgar Allan Poe; a throne room populated by skeletons frozen in their last moments; and a mad, misshapen court jester with the power to charm others and turn them into white apes! And this is only the start.

X2 Castle Amber is home to the aristocratic Amber or D’Amberville family, and they are either incredibly bored or insane, often both. Their aim, when encountering the Player Characters is not necessarily to kill them, but toy with them and extract some entertainment value. This is not to say that Castle Amber is not deadly or that its inhabitants are all friendly—it is deadly in a great many places and many of the inhabitants are decidedly hostile. It is deadly—and weird—in another way too. There are multiple means of a Player Character dying simply by eating the wrong thing or making the wrong choice, notably at the banquet and later when picking cards from a tarot deck, and then failing a Saving Throw. However, death is not the only effect that a Player Character might suffer, such as having the spell Feeblemind cast on him or being turned into a ghost, and there are also many beneficial effects that a Player Character might gain. For example, he might gain a permanent increase in Hit Points or actual attributes or an increase by one Level upon the completion of his next adventure beyond that of Château d’Amberville. There is also quite a lot of treasure, both monetary and magical, to be found if the Player Characters are thorough and are prepared to brave the castle’s many dangers.

For the most part, X2 Castle Amber is fairly linear. The Player Characters start at the foyer of the castle and work their through the West Wing into the Indoor Forest and from there either into the East Wing or the Chapel. Although this is a mansion, it does not have a lived-in quality. It is all quite self-contained and all but frozen in time. This applies to many of the individual rooms and locations too, which often feel more like tableaus awaiting the arrival of the Player Characters and their involvement, the mix involving opportunities for roleplaying in interacting with the inhabitants and deduction in working out the tricks and traps to be found in the castle—as well as combat. This sense of the scenario being frozen in time applies to the Player Characters too, for at the end of each gaming session, they are encircled by a cloud of amber light, a space in which they are protected from the denizens of the castle, including wandering monsters, can recover Hit Points and spells, and even train to go up a Level if they have acquired enough Experience Points. This not only enhances the oddness of the Château d’Amberville, but it suggests a degree of agency upon the part of someone else… This though is only the first part of X2 Castle Amber.

Much of the first part of the scenario is presented as a mystery. Not so much a murder mystery—although that is sort of present in the scenario’s overall plot—but a mystery as what is going on and why the Player Characters have been pulled into the weird and whimsical world of Castle Amber. Plus of course, how they escape the castle and ultimately the grey mist. The scenario makes this relatively easy in placing a scroll in several places around the castle which gives explicit instructions as to the means of escape. This requires that the Player Characters locate several Silver Keys and then the Gate of the Silver Keys, which is located in the dungeons below Castle Amber, and from there travel to the original homeland of the D’Amberville family, Averoigne, and this is where the scenario opens up and again marks it out as something different to previous scenarios.

Averoigne is a mythical province of France and the setting of a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith which originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine. Used with permission, this marks X2 Castle Amber out as one of the first scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons to use licensed content and the module includes a list of all of the stories in its bibliography. Unlike in the castle, the Player Characters have far more freedom of movement in Averoigne—to an extent. No longer are they in a Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy land, but an ahistorical fantasy land, one based on mediaeval France in which magic is outlawed by the church and the likelihood is that any demi-human Player Character is likely to be regarded as an abomination. So as much as they freedom of movement, they are constricted by the society of the land they are in. Like any good wilderness scenario, the Averoigne section of X2 Castle Amber is a sandbox which the Player Characters must explore driven by the need to locate the four items they need to unravel the final scenes of the scenario. So there is a need for subterfuge here unless the Player Characters want to become outlaws and fugitives.

However, advice and background for the Dungeon Master for this section of the scenario is perhaps a little underwritten. X2 Castle Amber is definitely not a sourcebook for Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne—though it could certainly form the basis of one—and so states that, “The encounters in this part of the module are left sketchy since most take place in cities and would require more detail and space than is available in this module. The DM should flesh out each adventure as he or she desires, designing NPCs, town streets and other details as necessary.” Potentially, this does leave the Dungeon Master with a lot of work to develop encounters and NPCs should her Player Characters deviate too much from the four quests to find the items necessary for them to progress onwards. At the very least, the Dungeon Master will need to improvise some of the encounters and NPCs outside of the scenario’s plot, and as a consequence, X2 Castle Amber is best run by an experienced Dungeon Master rather than one new to Dungeons & Dragons.

Lastly, the Player Characters can enter the scenario’s final dungeon, The Tomb of Stephen Amber. This is X2 Castle Amber at its mostly deadly, a complex of nine rooms, containing in turn, a Blue Dragon, a Flame Salamander, a Wyvern, a Stone Giant, a Manticore, a Mud Golem, a Great White Shark, and a five-headed Hydra, and that is in addition to dangerous environments in which these denizens reside. Now the Player Characters will not face all of these creatures, but they will face most of them, making for a tough physically challenging end to the module. If the Player Characters persevere and survive, they will encounter the NPC who has been sort of helping them along the way, be thanked, and richly rewarded for their efforts, including the resurrection four of their dead comrades—if they want. Surely, there can be no clearer indication of how tough a module if the Player Characters are being offered the chance of resurrection at the end?

Rounding out X2 Castle Amber is a bestiary of seventeen new—or mostly new—monsters. These include Amber Lotus Flowers, Giant Amoeba, Aranea, Brain Collector, Death Demon, Mud Golem, Grab Grass, Gremlin, Killer Trees, Lupin, Magen (of various types), Pagans, Phantoms, Rakasta, Slime Worm, Sun Brother, and Vampire Roses. Of these, the Aranea and the Rakasta originally appeared in X1 The Isle of Dread, and of the rest, the Pagans are worshippers of nature some of whom actually practice human sacrifice…! They can be found in the castle and in Averoigne, whilst some of the larger monsters are confined to the castle’s dungeon, including the Neh-Thalggu, or brain collector, and the Slime Worm.

Physically, X2 Castle Amber is done in the traditional format for TSR, Inc.’s modules—a wraparound cover with maps on the inside, containing a plain black and white booklet inside. The Errol Otus cover depicting a giant wielding a tree trunk and grabbing a castle tower is excellent, but not necessarily appropriate to the events of the scenario. The internal illustrations, many of them done by Jim Holloway are superb, imparting both the horror and the humour of the module.

One interesting aspect of X2 Castle Amber is how in 1981 it prefigures I6 Ravenloft and Ravenloft itself as a campaign setting. Surrounded by a strange grey mist, Castle Amber is essentially a pocket dimension all of its very own—as is Averoigne in the later part of the module—and both would sit very easily on the Demiplane of Dread as Domains in their own right. Of course, the module is completely unconnected to Ravenloft for obvious reasons, but the similarities are there such that importing X2 Castle Amber into the Realm of Terror campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition, without any difficulty at all. Further, given that both have the influence of Edgar Allan Poe in common, with some adjustment, X2 Castle Amber could also be adapted to be run as part of a Masque of the Red Death campaign as well.

As a complete scenario, X2 Castle Amber is principally a ‘funhouse’ dungeon, essentially a series of self-contained tests and challenges consisting of mostly puzzles and traps with little to any overarching plot or nod to consistency. Hence you have a weird room layered with puddings and oozes, and a ceiling with shafts that hide a myriad of traps. The effect initially then, is to confuse both Dungeon Master and then her players. First the Dungeon Master, because the module provides a sort of overview and of course, advises her to read the module through carefully, yet until she has actually done so, she will not really grasp what is going on and what the full plot is. This is because it is not effectively explained in the introduction to an infuriating degree, leaving it to the Dungeon Master to thoroughly read through the module to find out what is going on. Second for the players and their characters. They will have no idea what is going with the characters’ abduction and limited choice but to go forward and explore. Only once the Player Characters find the scroll they will at least have an objective and even then, there is the possibility that they will find the scroll, collect everything they need in Averoigne, do everything necessary to solve the mystery of how to leave Castle Amber, but never work out or learn what the overall plot is. However, by this point, the Dungeon Master will of course know what is going on.

The funhouse aspect of X2 Castle Amber also comes out in the humour, often dark humour, of the scenario. This includes squirrels with the Midas touch, the Jester with his White Ape companions, and Gremlins whose Chaotic area of effect will reflect spells, prevent mechanical effects from working, trousers to fall down, helmets to slip down over the eyes, and the like, all at their whim and amusement.

One issue with X2 Castle Amber which will require an experienced Game Master is the underwritten motivations of the NPCs, specifically the members of the D’Amberville family. Although the background to the Amber family is given and it is made clear that none of them is actually sane, ranging from slightly eccentric to completely insane, that they are Chaotic, uncooperative, bored, and looking for some diversion to relieve that boredom, individual motivations—apart from one or two—are sorely lacking. Which leaves the Dungeon Master with a lot of effort to put into the portrayal of these NPCs, many of them of high-Level Magic-users and Clerics beyond that possible in Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons at the time of the module’s publication.

—oOo—

X2 Castle Amber was reviewed by Jim in White Dwarf No 35 (November, 1982), who said, “Castle Amber is the second module for use with the Expert Set and is an attempt to bring randomness back into D&D. The 3rd and 6th level party become trapped in Castle Amber where they are beset by the members of the Amber family. Escape lies into a wilderness on another world where magic is frowned upon and spell casters may well come to the attention of the Inquisition. Non-humans are going to have a hard time here as they will be very conspicuous. Amber Castle depends a lot on chance leaving little room for skill and at times can be deadly.” His conclusion was that “I don’t recommend X2 unless you like chaotic adventures and designing urban areas.” and gave it a score of six out of ten.

More recently, X2 Castle Amber was included in ‘The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time’ in the ‘Dungeon Design Panel’ in Dungeon #116 (November 2004). Author of Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, John Rateliff said, “A rare example of a licensed product that shines both for its treatment of the original setting and for its excellence as a D&D adventure. Inspired by the ‘Averoigne’ stories of Clarke Ashton Smith, the best of the Weird Tales writers, it has a distinctive quirkiness, dangerous and sensuous and slightly amused all at the same time. There’s a reason it inspired not one but two sequels.”

—oOo—

By being set on an alternate plane of existence, X2 Castle Amber is very self-contained, which means that it is incredibly easy to adapt to other settings, whether that is as a Demiplane of Ravenloft or elsewhere. Yet initially, X2 Castle Amber feels incomprehensibly weird, leaving the Dungeon Master with little or no idea as to what exactly is going on, but give it the careful read through that every module demands—and is warranted here more than most—and the module’s weirdness and whimsy begins to come together. In places, underwritten and underdeveloped by modern standards though it is, X2 Castle Amber does have a coherency, eventually, that the archetypal ‘funhouse’ dungeon often lacks and the challenge perhaps lies in imparting that sense of coherency to the players. In addition to that, X2 Castle Amber does leave the Dungeon Master with a lot to develop to get the very most out of the adventure, whether that is fleshing out the motivations of individual D’Amberville family members or expanding upon the Averoigne wilderness section. The latter is arguably a not much more than a fascinating snapshot of the county which deserved further exploration which it never got in Dungeons & Dragons. It certainly would have made a fine addition to Ravenloft.

X2 Castle Amber is not perfect and it requires a lot of input upon the part of the Dungeon Master, but it is a fantastic Dungeons & Dragons adventure, made all the more enjoyable by its whimsy and weirdness, its humour and its horror. This with the combination of the Gothic and the Pulp Horror push it away from the classic medievalism of earlier modules into a much darker fantasy than that typically found in Dungeons & Dragons, and that is why X2 Castle Amber is regarded as a classic.

1981: The Spawn of Fashan

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

In the beginning there was Dungeons & Dragons. This made a lot of people happy, but it also made some people unhappy, and it even made some people both happy and unhappy. The happy people played it, the unhappy people refused to play it and campaigned to stop the people playing it because their sense of fun was entirely devoted to doing something else which they felt the people playing it should be doing, and the people it made both happy and unhappy, thought they could do better, including the very people who were happy with Dungeons & Dragons because they had made it. And the people who thought they could do better than Dungeons & Dragons either tried to make new, better versions of Dungeons & Dragons, or they tried to create versions of their own which were better, faster, more fun, more realistic, and well, just not Dungeons & Dragons. Some would be very close to Dungeons & Dragons, others far away, and others…? Well however close these fantasy heartbreakers were, most would remain the province of the Game Master and his gaming group, but others would come to market and some would succeed, some fail… and some would achieve legendary, even cult status. None more so than The Spawn of Fashan.

Self-published by Kirby Lee Davis in 1981, The Spawn of Fashan would sell only a handful of copies, but gave rise to an infamous review in Dragon #60 by Lawrence Schick who could not believe that anyone would create a roleplaying game as dreadful as The Spawn of Fashan and very quickly concluded that, “The Spawn of Fashan is a great parody of role-playing rules!” That issue of Dragon was published in April, 1982, and a combination of an incredulous review and the possibility that the whole review was not about an actual roleplaying game, but one entirely made up, and was thus an April Fool’s joke upon the part of Schick and Dragon magazine, meant that The Spawn of Fashan passed into legend. That legend would be kept alive by its inclusion on the ‘REAL MEN, REAL RÔLE-PLAYERS, LOONIES AND MUNCHKINS’ lists which parodied early gamer archetypes and stereotypes, as in Loonies “play a variant Spawn of Fashan” as their favourite SFRPG and as their Favourite King Arthurian RPG, “play a variant of Spawn of Fashan so variant it shouldn't be called Spawn of Fashan anymore”. However, The Spawn of Fashan is real, and due to actual demand, a number of reprints were published in 1998, followed by a fortieth anniversary edition in 2021. It is the latter version, which is being reviewed here, notably because, getting hold of any other version, is hideously expensive.

So what is The Spawn of Fashan and what is The Spawn of Fashan about? It is a Class and Level roleplaying game written in response to the lack of individuality in any one character in Dungeons & Dragons. As to what it is about, The Spawn of Fashan is not really a setting as such, more—definitely much more—a set of rules for character creation and combat. What background there is suggests that Fashan is a world reduced to the level of a mediaeval economy by a nuclear war and in addition to leaving high tech artefacts to be found, the nuclear war also resulted in areas of radiation and a background radiation high enough that minor psionic abilities are common amongst the all-Human descendants of the survivors. So technically, The Spawn of Fashan is not so much a fantasy roleplaying game as a post-apocalyptic one. Either way, it is actually based on The Annals of Fashan, a series of fantasy novels by the designer, the setting and background for which did not make it into the final draft of The Spawn of Fashan. Had it done so, the roleplaying game would have been longer, but it might actually have been more interesting in terms of setting, storytelling, and roleplaying potential. The designer though wanted to avoid giving away the plots of the novels. Nevertheless, any Referee and group of players roleplaying The Spawn of Fashan would still be roleplaying a version of Fahsan—though not the designer’s Fashan—hence every other campaign being a ‘spawn’ of Fashan. Which begs the question, ‘When are you playing The Spawn of Fashan, but not playing The Spawn of Fashan?’, since it is almost impossible to play in Fashan because there is so little of the setting in The Spawn of Fashan such that any campaign of The Spawn of Fashan cannot actually be set on Fashan…

That said, what do you play in The Spawn of Fashan? Well, all Player Characters The Spawn of Fashan are human. A character has eight statistics—Strength, Dexterity, Reflexes, Constitution, Intelligence, Charisma, Courage, and Senses. Actually, there ten statistics, as a Player Character can also have Courage and Courage as well as Courage, but only if he has extra special fighting abilities. Anyway, all but Senses are rolled on five six-sided dice (or as The Spawn of Fashan puts it, “five 1-6 dice”) and the lowest one dropped, except if a character is female, in which case, “The number of dice rolled at any time for strength, constitution, and hit points is halved.” This is despite the fact that in the book’s introduction the designer states that neither he nor his team are sexist in terms of the pronouns used in the book. Which is fine except he is sexist in terms of game design. Anyway, female characters are fine, because they gained increased Charisma and Intuition. Unfortunately, the designer ultimately never actually defines what Intuition is… and actually getting find that out involves following the instruction, “[see the ‘Destiny’ listing on the Mental Illness table].” which leaves to wonder why it is defined on a Mental Illness table and if that means that all female characters—because they have Intuition—on Fashan are mentally ill? Once you have found the Mental Illness table in the fifty-one pages of Section VII which both contains all of the charts for The Spawn of Fashan and take up more than half of The Spawn of Fashan, a section supposedly for the Referee’s eye’s only, the actual entry on that table reads, “Destinied. Character is destinied. Referee should roll on the Destiny Table for the character.” However this immediately followed by a note which states, “Due to the necessity of having the Destiny Table interlock with the Referee's cultures and history, it is not given here.” So essentially, not only are female characters impaired in The Spawn of Fashan, as written in The Spawn of Fashan, they cannot be created using its rules unless the Referee has already defined a world or campaign setting where intrinsically, they are not equal to men. The good news is that for The Spawn of Fashan, this is only the start.

First though, a character needs not one, but two character-types. These are occupations and include Bandits, Barbers, Beggars, Carpenters, Construction Workers, Creepers, Farmers, Healers, Mercenaries, Merchants, Metal Forgers, Miners, Misfits, Occultists, Priests, Sailors, Specialists, Stone Cutters, Swayers, Teachers, Thieves, Traders, Trappers, and Wood Cutters. Once the relevant table is found—and this is a phrase which could be repeated again and again with The Spawn of Fashan—the Referee rolls on the table according to area the Player Character is from to determine his Parents’ Choice of character-type and the player choses his character’s Childhood Choice character-type. This does not seem to have any effect except if the Parents’ Choice of character-type is Misfit, in which case, the Player Character’s character-type is also Misfit. The actual explanation of the character-types are listed in the dreaded section of Section VII and for the most part are fairly obvious and straightforward, sometimes giving statistic increases, equipment, and the like. The less obvious character-types include the Creeper, men of darkness known as Shadowers, the Occultist, renowned and hated for exerting control over the societies of Fashan with their mind control, and the Swayer, the dreaded masters of persuasion. In particular, Creepers can exude a black, inky cloud that most cannot see through; the Occultist can enter into a trance and cause anyone nearby to stutter and be indecisive or to suffer seizure, depending on his Intelligence; and Swayers are so persuasive that their words can require a Saving Roll to withstand.

Some character-types, like, can have Senses, the ability to detect life and also food and provisions. There is, however, no magic in The Spawn of Fashan and no religion or gods in The Spawn of Fashan, the latter more because in The Spawn of Fashan there is no real setting. Which means that the Priest character-type has no role until the Referee has defined her own ‘spawn’ of Fashan. In addition to rolling for Statistics, a player rolls on fourteen tables for eyesight, sense of smell, hearing, taste, body (to give advantages and disadvantages rather than a body type), insight, intellect, mental illness, phobia, compulsion, hand usage, height and weight, learned abilities, and language. Some of these require Saving Rolls on a twenty-sided die, but for the most part they generate a completely random selection of abilities and facts. For example, the character has Independent Eye Movement, is allergic to particular type of animal which the Referee will determine, has Heavy Sound Good Hearing (bonus to initiative versus heavy plodders), can tell poison in the water and drink, is double-jointed and has superhuman strength, has Sense of Life, is a Gambler and gets bonuses the riskier the situation, is Destinied (see above for how that is left up to the Referee to determine), fortunately has no phobias, has the compulsions of being a Coward, suffers from Daydreams, and Practices every action, is 5’ 6” and 139 lbs, and because he has an Intelligence of twenty or more, is an ‘Expert on Subterrainian Passages’.

Without a doubt, character generation in The Spawn of Fashan is inaccessible, obtuse, overwritten and unnecessarily complex—and that is just the six or so steps of creating a character, including rolling for Luck Factor and starting Bank Notes, and does not take into account the numerous secondary and derived values the roleplaying game employs. Nor does it take into account the time needed. In fact, no matter how long that time is, it is simply too long. As much as the means and the rules do provide the degree of individuality that the designer wants, whether or not that degree of individuality is either wanted or warranted, they are simply not presented in a manner to help either the player or the Referee through the process.

Then there are the mechanics to The Spawn of Fashan. The core mechanic is the Saving Roll on a twenty-sided die and roll high, but for a roleplaying game of its vintage, it should be no surprise that the bulk of the mechanics in The Spawn of Fashan focus on combat. However, there is a sense of combat being a static affair with neither side involved actually moving, so just an exchange of blows, though movement is covered in surprise and initiative (including when neither party can detect the other because they are both dead—including the Player Characters). Combat involves yet another splurge of terms and terminology and factors that Referee and player has to take into account before either has to roll, including how hard the attacker wants to hit, where he wants to hit, then if the defender parries or dodges (rolled on a percentile dice rather than the standard twenty-sided die), consulting tables as necessary, and making a Saving Throw if the level of damage suffered is equal to or greater than the Serious Injury Tolerance Level. If the attack is successful, rolls are made to see if the armour itself is damaged, point by point, and… if the defender is not actually dead by this point, it is difficult not to believe that anyone—in the game or out—still has the will to live, let alone continue playing… Thankfully though, the people of Fashan are so insecure that they do not congregate in groups of more than thirty, so there are no armies on Fashan, and so need for rules handling army combat.

Surprisingly, the advice on ‘The Makings of a Campaign’ is a decent read and avoids much of the incoherency found throughout the rules. They are backed up by tables for random encounters and generating locations, including ruins and dungeons, and two examples. One is a setting, the other is of actual play. Whilst the monsters have absurd names such as Arl-Grats, Bactrolo, Bartaln, Bull Makl, Cronalk, Filcornect, Larnex, Lorsenfolo, Purtorfalm, Rolmtrokl, and Transgrusan, the setting is equally as silly, which describes the land of Boosboodle in the ‘Boosboodle Inner Human Habitation Zone’ (Bihhz) through which flows The River Mazoo, travel to the towns of Jugble and Crumbudz, and when all else fails, tells the Player Characters that they can go ‘North, where Melvin is Standing Now.’ It is both silly and intentionally humorous upon the part of the designer, but mostly comes across as just plain silly. The other is the example of play. It is without a doubt, the worst example of play in any roleplaying game before Hackmaster Basic. It recounts how a Player Character Thief, Sook, enters a general store in Biddles, the capital of Boosboodle and attempts to buy first some armour, then a religious artefact, followed by a hoe, and lastly, a metal chest. When that succeeds, the player has Sook throw it at the merchant and kill him. It is clear from the writing that boredom has set in on either side, with the Referee resorting to sarcasm and the player to random acts purely to get a response. It is a truly terrible, but funny piece of writing because it is at such odds with the po-faced tone to the rest of The Spawn of Fashan.

Where The Spawn of Fashan, 40th Anniversary Edition is actually interesting is in the essays which appear at the front of the reprint. Here the author talks how he brought the roleplaying game to fruition not once but three times! First at its conception and its subsequence appearance at Denvention II in 1981, followed by renewed interest from roleplayers in both the late eighties and the late nineties, the latter leading to a reprint and inclusion of the first essay. Third, and more recently, its publication upon its fortieth anniversary. Both retrospectives are interesting in highlighting how challenging it was to bring something like The Spawn of Fashan to print then, and how ambitious the author was in doing so. They also allow him time to reflect upon his creation and the hobby’s response to it, and it is clear that he readily accepts rather than resents the latter—especially with regard to the lack of a table of contents or index for example. There can be no doubt that a roleplaying game with as legendary a reputation as The Spawn of Fashan is deserving of both essays where other roleplaying games of such ilk may not be.

Physically, The Spawn of Fashan is as bad as you possibly imagine. It is laid out in the style of a newspaper rather than a book and its text is dense, and notoriously unedited, being riddled with spelling mistakes and inconsistencies and cross references which lead the reader down a blind alley. There are few illustrations and to be fair, they add very little to the overall tone or feel of the book. The Spawn of Fashan, 40th Anniversary Edition at least does come with an index and a table of contents—the original version and its reprint did not and one can only imagine how daunting it must have been to find anything—anything at all—in the book.

—oOo—

The Spawn of Fashan was reviewed three times following its initial publication, first by Charles Dale Martin in Different Worlds Issue 19 (February 1982). Amongst the many elements he criticised of the roleplaying game were the combat system, writing that, “The combat system is both complex and unwieldy. It imposes too great a strain on the players and the referee - using these rules is rather like playing Gladiator, Traveller and Arduin Grimoire simultaneously. Bunetluest, Bushido and Chivalry & Sorcery provide more realism for less effort.” He was equally critical of the game’s treatment of female characters and of the publisher wrote, “The Fashan co-op seems to be out of touch with the adventure gaming community. The game was released at a science fiction convention. The only other role-playing systems mentioned are D&D, AD&D, The Fantasy Trip and Magic Realm. I am familiar with fifteen fantasy role-playing systems and I must conclude that, despite honest effort, Spawn of Fashan is several years behind the state of the art.” However, concluded that, “…[I]t may still be worth buying. The referee’s notes are excellent guidelines for any fantasy campaign. Game masters of an eclectic bent may wish to use some of the new character classes and the many tables in their own game systems. And some adventurous souls might play the game and enjoy it.”

Then there was the infamous review in Dragon #60 (April 1982) by Lawrence Schick, titled ‘Don’t take Spawn of Fashan seriously’. His initial impression was of it being “…[O]ne more mediocre rewrite of the D&D® rules.” but then, “As I read the 96-page rulebook (list price $8.95), my initial boredom was gradually replaced by confusion, amazement, and finally delight. At first glance, the rules seem badly organized and poorly written. The opening sections are deluged with pages of ill-defined jargon and numerous confusing references to tables apparently placed elsewhere. By the time I reached the rules quagmire entitled “Combat,” I could only wonder in amazement that any set of rules could be this bad.” He continued, “Then the light started to dawn. Plowing through the monstrous Tables and Charts section, I began to grin, and by the end of the book, I was laughing loudly. The Spawn of Fashan is a great parody of role-playing rules!”.

Lastly, Ronald Pehr reviewed The Spawn of Fashan in The Space Gamer Number 49 (March 1982). He described The Spawn of Fashan as “…[A] fascinating set of fantasy combat rules which are trying to become a full role-playing game.” and that “…[I]ts current value seems limited to experienced FRPG players who want something novel. Beginners will be baffled, and gamers happy with their current rules will find little reason to journey to the far planet of Fashan.”

—oOo—

There have been some notoriously bad roleplaying games published over the course of the hobby’s history. Efforts like F.A.T.A.L., Myfarog, and Racial Holy War are justly reviled for their inherent offensiveness and the ignorance of the values espoused by the authors. Make no mistake, The Spawn of Fashan does not deserve to be placed alongside that excrescent trinity and it would be insulting to the author to think otherwise. However, that does not mean that The Spawn of Fashan is not a bad game—far from it. The Spawn of Fashan is terrible game. Dense, overwritten, and incomprehensible with a formidable learning curve  hampered by poor, oh so poor cross referencing and interminable page flipping, all accompanied by a hilariously awful example of play. Even trying to explain the rules in The Spawn of Fashan is akin to rewriting them and not just simplifying them, but translating them. Yet there are flashes of potential here, for the notes for the Referee’s notes and philosophies on worldbuilding are not without merit, which leads the reader to wonder quite what a subsequent edition of The Spawn of Fashan could have been like in the hands of a more experienced production and development team. And wonder quite that because lurking within the game’s stodgy writing, there is a game which by the standards of the time could have been made better and more accessible and more playable. Of course, the appearance of any such subsequent edition might well have done much to negate the reputation of the first edition (at least partially). As the essays in the front of The Spawn of Fashan, 40th Anniversary Edition make clear, it was not to be. Despite its legendary reputation, The Spawn of Fashan is real, it is not a parody, and with the availability of The Spawn of Fashan, 40th Anniversary Edition, you too can find out just how bad it really is, what optimism and faith in your own vision can create, and how sometimes, even if you really do not like Dungeons & Dragons, you really cannot do better. As bad as it is, and because it is as bad as it is, Kirby Lee Davis is to be commended for reassessing it again and letting us reassess it with the release of The Spawn of Fashan, 40th Anniversary Edition.

1981: Attack of the Mutants!

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Yaquinto Publications was a publisher of board games—in particular war games—and roleplaying games between 1979 and 1983. Its most successful was The Ironclads, which simulated combat between the first armoured ships, or ironclads, during the American Civil War and won the Charles S. Roberts Award for ‘Best Initial Release of 1979’. It also published a number of roleplaying games such as Man, Myth & Magic and Timeship—both now published by Precis Intermedia. However, perhaps the publisher’s most interesting innovation was its packaging design for a line of board games known as the ‘Album Games’. Essentially, titles in this series were packaged in what were double-LP record albums. The game board would be presented on the inside cover, and where the record or records were sleeved were stored the rules, counters, and other components for the game. In later entries in the series, a spacer was used which made each Album game an inch or so thick. This made the game less like a record sleeve (each Album game carried a disclaimer on the cover stating it was a game only and that no phonograph record was to be found inside) and the spacer could be used for storage. Over the course of twenty-titles, the Album series covered fantasy, Science Fiction, historical wargames, and family games, including a game based on then extremely popular soap opera, Dallas.

Published in 1981, Attack of the Mutants! is a two-player board which depicts the last moments of Humanity following the Big Melt-Down of 1993. In the Science Building at Central State Tech, kindly old Professor Applewhite, assisted by his daughter and research assistant, the wholesome, clean-scrubbed Penny, has discovered Dynamic Ultimate Place and is about to open a gate to another, safer world. This is only just in time, for outside the building, clamouring to get in is horde (or four) of multi-armed/bodied/headed and/or tentacular mutants, all intent on smashing their way in, taking their revenge on mankind’s last survivors, and if not that, capturing the bright, but eligible marriage Penny! As the absentminded old professor races to activate the device, doors have been locked, barricades put up, Kamigawa 4697J Janibots armed with appliers, saws, files, and laser welders have been posted as guards, and the surviving members of the ROTC—including Leon ‘Buck’ Bukaw, who just happens to be Penny’s recently found, first love, stand ready to take the fight to the mutants as they smash down one door after another and spill into the next room or corridor, getting ever closer to the Tech Room and the means of mankind’s survival!

What you get with Attack of the Mutants! is a three-part board, twenty-five by twelve inches in size. One side depicts the main play area of the Science Building with its various corridors and rooms—including a summoning circle! On the other side is the Combat Display and the game’s various tables, whilst in between them in the crease of the packaging is a turn tracker. The game requires two six-sided dice, one per player, which do not come with it, but are easy to find. The game comes with over a hundred, small but on thick card, counters. On the Human side, these consist of the eight survivors and twenty-four Janibots, whilst the more than fifty Mutants consist of the Mutant Leaders (black), Radioactive Mutants (red), and ‘normal’ Mutants (green). There are also counters to indicate broken doors, barricades, and turn order. All of the Human and Mutant counters have a number on them to indicate their combat strength. This is either four or five for the Humans and three for the Janibots, whilst each of the Mutants has two combat values—one against Humans (which is either three or four) and one against the Janibots (two or three).

The Humans are all illustrated with their respective faces, whilst the Mutants and the Janibots are done as single colour silhouettes. Notably all of the characters—whether Human or Mutant—are named. So the Humans include Joey Cabelli and Percy Fitzwalter as well as Penny and her father. The Mutants include Amos, Ozzy, Rusty, Bud, Bodine, Hoss, and others. This adds an element of individuality to the game and in play can lead to some storytelling and table talk as the game proceeds and the players come to identify more and more with their counters and their characters. For the Human player, this is helped by the thumbnail descriptions given in the Designer Notes.

Set-up is simple enough. The Human player sets up first, placing Professor Applewhite and Penny—the two Techs—in the Tech Room, then stationing the other Humans and the Janibots throughout the Science Building. He also places a number of barricades which are impassable by the Mutants. These can be placed anywhere on the board, so their placement will vary from game to game. The Mutant player then places his forces around the four sides of the Science Building, making sure that there is one Mutant Leader on each side.

A turn consists of six phases. In the first two phases, the Mutants move and attack. This will also mean that they have to smash down doors, requiring a die roll, the more Mutants involved, the greater the chance of success. If there are Mutants on both sides of a door, they can open it. Once a door has been smashed, the Mutants can freely back and forth through the doorway. In the second two phases, the Humans move and attack. Humans do not have to smash down doors, even if they are members of the ROTC. Movement for either side is one space only and Janibots cannot move unless accompanying a Human.

Combat, in both the Mutant Combat Phase and the Human Combat Phase is handled on the Combat Display on the other half of the board. In groups of five against five, the Humans and Mutants face off against each other, their respective players rolling a die simultaneously, trying roll equal to, or less then, their respective Combat Values. If they do, their opponent is eliminated. Although the Humans and Mutant Leaders have higher chances of defeating their opponents, lucky rolls can lead to both sides killing each other! Combat continues until one side defeats the other in a location, and involves a lot of dice rolls and thus a lot of luck.

The final phase is the ‘Glow and Go’ phase. For each red or Radioactive Mutants in play, the Mutant player rolls a single die. If a six is rolled, the Radioactive Mutant succumbs to the effects of his radiation sickness and dies. His counter is removed from the game.

Play continues until the end of turn ten. To win a decisive victory, the Human player must have one Tech and three Human Guards in the Tech Room at the end of the game. If he has at least two Humans—Guards or Techs in the Tech Room, it is a Marginal Victory. Similarly, to win a decisive victory, the Mutant player must one Mutant Leader and three other Mutants in the Tech Room at the end of the game. If he has at least two Mutants, of any type—Leader, Radioactive, or Ordinary, it is a Marginal Victory. Anything else is a draw.

In addition to the basic rules, Attack of the Mutants! includes options for adjusting the balance between the Humans and the Mutants, facing Overwhelming odds, Humans and Mutants running away because of the latter, and adding hidden movement. This hidden movement is done on a separate and reduced game board, repeated in black and white rather than colour, and on the reverse of that is an alternate scenario where the Mutants have come from another world and are escaping into ours via the newly opened gate. Can the world be saved from this invasion from a doomed world? The sheet also includes some developer’s notes which provide more background about the Science Building and the Humans defending it.

Physically, Attack of the Mutants! is decently done. The cover of the album is brilliantly gaudy pastiche of the schlocky Sci-Fi horror ‘B’ movies and cheap paperbacks the game is inspired by, and the game board is clear and simple to see and play on. However, it does get a little cramped with all of the counters in play and then the constant movement of them from the main board to the Combat display and back again needs to be done carefully so as not to shift counters already there. It is accompanied by Robert Crumb-like cartoon illustrations that capture the horror and the desperation of the setting. The counters are also bright and easy to read, but the rules booklet and the developer’s notes are plain and unillustrated. However, they are easy to read and understand.

In addition, Yaquinto Publications published a second version of Attack of the Mutants! This was a simplified version that came as a two-page cardboard folder and was designed as an introductory version, intended to, “…[I]ntroduce people to the general concept of Adventure Gaming.” This was packaged with orders from the publisher and was also available via Game Workshop mail order in the early nineteen eighties. This version would have been many a player’s first introduction to the concept of Album Games, and may well have spurred them to purchase a full copy of Attack of the Mutants!, and potentially, other titles in the line.

Attack of the Mutants! is a two-player wargame, a tower defence style game long before there were such things. It is intended as an introductory level game, easy to learn, and providing a decent degree of playability and challenge, but little in terms of the type of simulation which might be found in a more traditional type of wargame. It is also designed to be fun for players new to the hobby and for those who have some experience of it. The introductory level means basic movement and combat, the latter involving a lot of dice rolls, but the results can often be wild and chaotic, which would fit the game’s theme. It also means that there is little in the way of tactics or planning as the two opposing sides clash again and again, although if he can, the Human player might want to target the Mutant Leaders as that would prevent a decisive victory for the Mutant player. Conversely, the Mutant player just needs to kill Humans, and if he can get to the Tech Room, kill one Tech to prevent a decisive victory for the Human player. All of which not only makes it sound bad, but also makes it sound bad because it is an old design. Nothing could be further from the truth, because forty years on and Attack of the Mutants! is easily comparable with a game like Zombies!!!, and if you were comparing the two, Attack of the Mutants! is more focused, has a shorter playing time, and is self-contained. Remake Attack of the Mutants! today as Attack of the Zombies! and would anyone raise an eyebrow?

Attack of the Mutants! is simple in its design, but it is intended to be an introductory board game. It is also chaotic, but that fits the theme of the last few Humans holding off the hordes of Mutants, making a last desperate stand with a Janibot by their side or scrambling to get back to the Tech Room and through the gate just in time to escape. As the game progresses and the Humans and Mutants fight, their stories can emerge in play and they become just a bit more than counters with names on, all helping us to engage with the theme of Attack of the Mutants! And what a gloriously cheesy theme that is—rampaging Mutants, stalwart heroes with jaws made of granite, a heroine ready to scream at the right moment, and mankind’s last stand!

Attack of the Mutants! not only succeeds as a fun way to introduce people to the general concept of adventure gaming, but as a very light, highly thematic game full of glorious clichés and fifties ‘B’-movie bravado. Ameritrash it might be, but by god, it’s American Ameritrash!

Review 1500: Call of Cthulhu

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Call of Cthulhu was first published in 1981. Written by Sandy Petersen, it is famously, the roleplaying game based upon the works and creations of American horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, drawing upon the adage, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” from his own essay, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’. Indeed, it is the first roleplaying game to do so as its sole focus—other roleplaying games and supplements included the creatures of Lovecraft’s Mythos within their pages, but not in the way that Call of Cthulhu does. The roleplaying game places the action—and by action, mostly investigation—in Lovecraft’s own period of the Jazz Age, the nineteen twenties, and has ordinary men and women investigate the machinations and conspiracies of creatures and entities best left unknown to man, the creatures and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as their all too human cultists and acolytes, and if not save the world in the long term, at least save the world for now. In doing so, their bravery in the face of Cosmic Horror, will remain unknown and go unrewarded save in the knowledge that mankind is safe—for now, for ultimately the stars will come right, and Cthulhu will rise from where lies dreaming deepest R’lyeh to reclaim what was once his, along with a host of other aliens and beings beyond our understanding who regard Humanity as nothing more than an infestation—if they do at all. In the process, their investigations will see them delve into secret places, peruse and study ancient tomes, learn blasphemous knowledge and incantations, and see things and beings best left unseen, all of which might drive them insane, such is the nature of the truth about the world and the cosmos which has long been forgotten.

An Investigator in Call of Cthulhu has nine attributes—Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Appearance, Education, and Sanity. Of these, Sanity is actually derived from the Investigator’s Power, and plays a major role in the roleplaying game, whilst Education determines the number of points a player has to assign to the skills granted by his Investigator’s Occupation. This Occupation can be Antiquarian/Historian, Author, Dilettante, Doctor, Journalist, Lawyer, Professor, Parapsychologist, and Private Eye (the choices available will greatly expand with subsequent editions and supplements), granting skills such as Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Library Use, Occult, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Read/Write Other Language, and Speak Other Language for the Parapsychologist occupation. In addition, an Investigator’s Intelligence determines the number of points a player has to assign to personal interest skills.

The skills themselves are very modern and geared towards the investigative playing style of the game. Thus Library Use for conducting research in libraries and newspaper morgues, Read/Write Latin or Ancient Greek for reading ancient or Mythos related tomes, Psychology for determining if a potential cultist is lying or even insane, Credit Rating for getting a loan or moving in the right social circles, and so on. There are combat skills too, such as Handgun or Fist, but these are not always reliable in play, since many of the Mythos creatures are immune to their effects. One notable skill is Cthulhu Mythos, which represents an Investigator’s knowledge of the cosmic horror which threatens mankind’s understanding of the universe, knowledge which will permanently damage an Investigator’s Sanity. Investigator creation is actually very simple, but the range of Occupations and skills lend themselves to a multitude of ideas and concepts for Investigators and their backgrounds all inspired by the historical setting of the roleplaying game.

Our sample investigator is Henry Brinded, a Bostonian from a wealthy family who studied Classics at Yale before serving as an artillery officer with the American Expeditionary Force in Northern France during the Great War. As a consequence he is slightly deaf and abhors loud noises. He owns and runs a small antiquarian shop which specialises in ancient and medieval manuscripts.

Henry Brinded
Occupation: Antiquarian
Strength 11 Constitution 11 Size 12 Intelligence 16
Power 14 Dexterity 13 Appearance 17 Education 17
Sanity 70 Hit Points 11

Archaeology 20%, Bargaining 30%, Boating 30%, Credit Rating 40, Cthulhu Mythos 00%, History 65%, Law 30%, Library Use 50%, Make Maps 20%, Psychology 25%, Read/Write English 85%, Read/Write Latin 50%, Speak French 25%, Swim 25%

Combat Skills
75 mm Field Gun 20%
Rifle 20%

Mechanically, Call of Cthulhu famously uses Basic Role-Playing for the basis of its mechanics, the percentile system derived from RuneQuest. In the earliest editions, it went further though than just using the Basic Role-Playing as the basis for its rules. It actually included a copy in the box and both player and Keeper would need to know these rules before going on to play Call of Cthulhu, which in a way made Call of Cthulhu a supplement for Basic Role-Playing rather than a roleplaying in its own right. In comparison to RuneQuest, the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu are much simpler and would remain virtually the same until their revision with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It is primarily a skills-based game, a player rolling under his Investigator’s skills or if against an object or NPC, on the Resistance Table, using percentile dice. Really, this is not very much more than Basic Role-Playing—a copy of which is included in the box as an introduction to the rules—with a plethora of different skills to account for the change in genre and time period.

The one notable addition to the rules is Sanity. An Investigator begins play with his Sanity equal to his Power attribute times five, and it is tested if he encounters something scary, be it the dead body of a fellow Investigator or a creature of the Mythos. Fail the test and the Investigator might lose a few points for seeing the corpse, eight or ten for encountering a Mythos creature, and even one hundred points for seeing a Great Old One such as Great Cthulhu himself! If an Investigator fails the Sanity roll (and sometimes even when he succeeds), then he can not only lose Sanity, he can go insane, temporarily if he loses five points in one go, but indefinitely if he loses a fifth within the space of an hour, such is the corrosive effect upon the fragility of the mortal mind. Such an Investigator might end catatonic or suffering from amnesia, but one of the probable outcomes is that he suffers from a phobia, and the rulebook includes a lovely list such as Ballistophobia or Teratophobia. Now there are only a few here, but again subsequent expansions to the game would add many more.

Sanity can also be lost for reading Mythos tomes such as the infamous Necronomicon or the dread Revelations of Glaaki, but sometimes they have to be read to learn the means or the spells necessary to thwart the Mythos—at least temporarily. However, doing so means gaining points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill, representing the fundamental understanding as to the true nature of the universe and mankind’s place in it. The more points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill an Investigator has, the lower his maximum Sanity. Now it is possible to regain points of Sanity, typically by defeating or thwarting the plans of a cult or a Mythos creature, but also by undergoing Psychoanalysis. The latter takes a while though, is not guaranteed to work, but is safer than the former option—depending upon the Alienist and the institution of course. In the long term, as an Investigator loses points of Sanity, the lower the chance he has of withstanding shocks and exposure to the Mythos, the greater the chance of losing more Sanity, and so on, until his Sanity is so low, he retires alive but unhinged or it drops below zero and he is insane. Permanently.

Much of the rest of the rest of the core rule book is dedicated to the Mythos itself. This begins with the gods and creatures, from Azathoth, Cthuga, and Great Cthulhu to Y’Golonac, Yig, and Yog-Sothoth, from Byakhee, Chthonians, and Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath to Shoggoths, Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, and Star Vampires. All are given full stats and extensive write-ups, much of which will be familiar from later editions of Call of Cthulhu. Here though, Petersen classifies them not once but twice. First into Outer Gods and Great Old Ones as well as Alien Races and Monsters, and second, into classes—Minor, Moderate, Major, Great Old Ones, and Outer Gods. Thus, Shub-Niggurath is an Outer God, Ithaqua a Great old One, Hounds of Tindalos are Major, Shoggoths Moderate (!), and Mi-Go Minor. It does feel oddly forced, but as a way of quantifying them it works well enough. The well-done chapter of the Mythos Monsters is followed by an explanation of how Mythos magic works and the dangers of reading the various Mythos tomes. Again, the explanations are well done, and again, the spells reinforce how this is not a roleplaying game in which the Investigators learn a spell and blast away at their enemies with eldritch power. Most of the spells consist of call, contact, summon, and/or bind the things of the Mythos, which means bringing them to the Investigators and exposing their minds to the unspeakable horrors to the detriment of their Sanity, and many spells cost Sanity to cast. Which is fine if you are an insane sorcerer with no Sanity! Lastly, the Mythos tomes are simply listed and do feel as if they warrant further development—which again, in subsequent editions, they would.

And then there is the ‘How to Play the Game’ chapter. This is a superb chapter—which like so much of the rest of Call of Cthulhu will be visited again and again—which explains, if it was not clear from the first six chapters, how Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game of a different stripe. With the first sentence it states that, “Call of Cthulhu differs in feel and motivation from other roleplaying games.”, warning that direct confrontation with the Mythos will not only fail, but probably end up with the death of the Investigators involved. The solution is to investigate, to visit libraries, conduct interviews, read arcane tomes, scout out locations, and more. It also advises that the Investigators avoid too much gunplay lest they arouse the suspicions of the authorities. It is a fantastic read and it is followed by good advice for the Keeper of Arcane Secrets—as the Game Master is known in Call of Cthulhu, in setting up and running a scenario and a campaign. As good as the chapter is, the two subject matters—one for the players and one for the Keeper—do not feel as if they should be together, in case of the advice for the player, this far into the book. Nevertheless, this is an excellent chapter, its contents pertinent today as it was in 1981. It is followed by an example play, which sadly does not involve Harvey Walters.

The core rulebook includes not one, but three scenarios. First up is ‘The Haunting’—more recently renamed ‘The Haunted House’, a scenario which inserts the Mythos into a classic haunted house set-up and delivers some great shocks and scares in what has since become almost everyone’s first encounter with Call of Cthulhu. It has been developed since, and appeared in almost every version of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook except for the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. (It is instead included in the Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition Quick-Start and returned to the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook for its fortieth anniversary edition.) It is a creepy little classic, here feeling a little barebones, but effective all the same for a single session.

The second is ‘The Madman’, which is set in the backwoods of Vermont and has one Old Harny Whitaker—renamed Harny Reginald in later editions—acting strangely, attacking a postman for no apparent reason and said to be performing mysterious rituals atop nearby hills. More of a detailed outline, this is something for the Keeper to develop herself, starting with a stronger hook for the involvement of the Investigators. The third scenario is ‘The Brockford House’, which has never been reprinted beyond the pages of the core rulebook, has the Investigators looking into another house and the strange noises coming from underneath. Located just off the coast of Maine, this is a more physical scenario than ‘The Haunted House’, involving little in the way of investigation or research, leaving the Investigators even more ill prepared for what they face than usual. Although it has its moments, ‘The Brockford House’ is unimpressive.

Lastly, the appendices provides a mix of content, some of which would be included in later editions, some of it not, and a fair bit of what would be later reprinted would be shifted to the second book in the Call of Cthulhu box set, ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’. The appendices open with ‘Notes on a Fragment of the Necronomicon’, penned by Phileus P. Sadowski. This is a delightful in-game examination of the dread tome, which adds detail and history to its listing earlier in the core rulebook. However, the fact that the given date for the article is 1979 and it references Lovecraft: A Biography by L. Sprague de Camp, it does feel out of step with the rest of the game! Otherwise this is an engaging piece with which to draw the rulebook to a close. ‘Rewards for Valor’ suggests the types of rewards the Investigators might gain as a result of their efforts, focusing on the types of loot that they might find in temples or cult headquarters. As odd as this may read to modern players of the roleplaying game, this has a stronger grounding than at first seems, for the Investigators do need a source of income if they are to go off around the world investigating the unknown rather than holding down proper jobs. For the Keeper there is advice on cultists and cults, including primitive cults, and the nature—both benefits and costs—of worshipping the unnamable, and a list of libraries known to contain occult material rules for Sages, from whom an Investigator can learn more of the nature of the world and perhaps gain other help too.

Besides ‘A Timeline for H.P. Lovecraft’ and some Nautical skills, the appendices also includes three further scenarios. Two of these are two scenario vignettes, which can be used to begin or add to a campaign. The first of these, ‘A Beginning Scenario for a Campaign’, involves a deadly encounter on a bus tour in Vermont, leading to the Investigators being hounded by allies of the Mythos, whilst the second, ‘The Cultists’ Lair: A Scenario’, is a detailed summoning site in the crater of an extinct volcano. The first is the better of the two and works better as the beginning of a campaign, something that the Keeper can take away and develop on her own. The second has plenty of detail, but not necessarily the scope as intended. Between the two is 

‘Shadows Over Hollywood: A Scenario’, which has never been reprinted and switches from typical East Coast setting of Call of Cthulhu to the West Coast. It has the Investigators connected to or working for The New Western Dawn, an occult magazine, sent out to investigate sightings of strange winged creatures dancing at an old mission in the San Bernardino mountains. There is not very much for the Investigators to really learn or do in the scenario and like a lot of early scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, it does over reward the Investigators. If they do insist on getting involved, things get very, very nasty.

If the rulebook for Call of Cthulhu focused on Investigators and the weirdness of the Mythos, the second book in the Call of Cthulhu box provides the context. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ is both an almanac for the Jazz Age and an expansion to the rules. Even the cover is put to good use with a set of deck plans for an airship, but inside there are maps of noted archaeological sites—from Ife in Nigeria, Scara Brae in the Orkney Islands, and Çatal Hüyük in Turkey to Moundville in the USA, Pan-P’o-Ts’un in China, and Luxor in Egypt. These in particular are eye opening, in many cases the reader’s first exposure to some of the amazing archaeological sites found around the world, ripe to be visited by the Investigators’ resident archaeologist or used as a site by dread cultists, their accompanying text spurring a Keeper to research more. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ also includes timelines ordinary and outré for the decade, thumbnail biographies for the notables of the period, a list of companies with goods and services to add flavour to a game, floorplans of the railway coaches (terrifying train journeys would go on to become a staple of Call of Cthulhu scenarios), travel speeds and times, and goods and prices.

In play, there is the addition of new weapon stats and notes for the war boomerang, the musket, Thompson submachine, and even a 75 mm field gun! The ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ also provides a short guide to crimes, arrests, and handling bribery too, including notes about the 18th Amendment and thus Prohibition (a subject which the roleplaying game would also revisit numerous times over the next four decades). The guide to handling arrests are really very good, highlighting what might happen if the Investigators’ actions arouse suspicion and the potential consequences are, because ultimately, although their actions may be morally right, legally they may be anything other than right. This enforces the sense of the ordinary world around them versus the Cosmic Horror they face. Organised crime is covered as well, as is the Ku Klux Klan.  ‘Beasts & Monsters’ expands on the list of entities and forces of the Mythos, but with more ‘mundane’ creatures. So crocodiles and pythons, but also the ghost, the mummy, the pixie, the vampire, the werewolf, the wraith, and the zombie. The latter, the more traditional monsters have their own Sanity losses, of course, and their inclusion opens up the realms of possibility and using Call of Cthulhu as a more traditional horror roleplaying game, and again, that possibility would be revisited again and again in the next forty years, most notably with the anthologies Blood Brothers and Blood Brothers II.

However, there is some variation between the content of the ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’. Later versions provide ‘Other Occupations’ such as Gangster, Missionary, Policeman, and Soldier, and include content which had previously been included in the rulebook. The most notable inclusion here though, is a section called ‘Previous Experience’. This offers a more random means of creating an Investigator, a player rolling to determine his Investigator’s attributes and then gender, starting age, birthplace (in the USA), Education (this can be lower in rural areas) and where he went to school. This will add some points to various academic skills, and then he selects one or more Occupations, and works out his prior experience. This is done in five-year terms (much like the roleplaying game Traveller does, but in four-year long terms), the Investigator receiving the given skill bonuses for the Occupation. For example, for the Gangster this is Climb (5), Jump (5), Fast Talk (10), Credit Rating (10), Drive Auto (10), Listen (10), Bargain (5), Spot Hidden (5), Law (5), Dynamite (5), Sub-Machine Gun (5), Revolver (5), Shotgun (5), and Pick Pocket (5) for each term. It even comes with a complete example, the prior experience of Eben Stone, whose fortunes remain unknown in comparison to those of the perennial Harvey Walters.

Whichever version of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ was present in the Call of Cthulhu box, there is no denying the wealth of detail it provides player and Keeper alike. There is so much information in its pages that the Keeper can use to bring her campaign to life and add verisimilitude, and so much of it has since been re-explored and developed—if not by Chaosium, Inc., then by other publishers. Certainly both The Keeper’s Companion vol. 1 and The Keeper’s Companion vol. 2 can be seen as developments of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ as well as various aspects of the core rulebook.

In addition to the core rulebook and ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’, Call of Cthulhu includes a sheet of Character Figures, which can be cut out and used as figures during play instead of miniatures. Both Investigators and Cthulhu entities are done as silhouettes, those for the monsters the same as their illustrations in the core book. The silhouettes of these Character Figures would also influence the sculpture of the miniatures manufactured Grenadier Models. Lastly, the box contains a poster map of the world, marked with sites of interest across the globe, both Mythos and mundane. It is nice and clear, but perhaps a little large to use easily.

Physically, Call of Cthulhu is well presented, it is easy to read, and is broken up by boxed text and the occasional illustration. Actually there is very little artwork in the core rulebook and whilst not all of it is of the highest quality it is in the main effective in evoking a certain dark and lonely mood. The use of a single Investigator, Harvey Walters, as an example throughout the rulebook, from creation to insanity really helps the reader understand the roleplaying game’s mechanics. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ feels a little cramped in comparison, but that is down to the amount of content within its pages.

It is difficult to pinpoint any real issues with Call of Cthulhu as it originally appeared. There are details which perhaps the reader might feel the designer got wrong about the Mythos, but there are perhaps two issues, one more serious than the other. The lesser issue is that the scenarios are variable in quality, but to be fair, these are the first scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, so cannot be expected to be amazing the first time out. The standout scenario, is of course, ‘The Haunting’, still brilliantly playable and as effective a piece of horror today as it was in 1981. The major issue is the lack of advice for the Keeper on the design and presentation of NPCs, especially cultists. There are some notes in the appendices, but the Keeper is very much left on her own to develop these herself with little real guidance. Of course, in subsequent editions of the roleplaying game, as well as innumerable scenarios and campaigns, the Keeper would be shown again and again what a cultist or other NPC might look like in terms of the rules, but here in the core rulebook, she is left a little wanting.

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Call of Cthulhu would go on to win the Origins Awards for Best Role-Playing Game in 1982 and receive the Game Designer’s Guild, Select Award in 1981, and ultimately, be conducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame in 1995. Within a year of its publication, it would be reviewed several times, some of them in quite lengthy write-ups.

William Barton, who would go on to write Cthulhu by Gaslight, reviewed Call of Cthulhu in Space Gamer Number 49 (March, 1982) and said, “Overall, CALL OF CTHULHU is an excellent piece of work.” He noted that there were several inconsistencies in the interpretation of the Mythos, but considered, “Petersen’s depth of research in the books and in the Mythos is next to remarkable.” and despite a number of failings overlooked in the simplification of Basic Role-Playing into Call of Cthulhu, concluded that, “The worlds of H. P. Lovecraft are truly open for the fantasy gamer.”

In ‘Call of Cthulhu is a challenge’ in Dragon #61 (May 1982), David Cook was critical of the rules, especially what he called, “[T]he incompleteness of the combat system.” with its small list of weapons, and a lack of rules for cover, movement, surprise, and the like. He was particularly critical of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’, complaining that, “It, like the appendices, appears to be notes and unfinished design work.” and suggested that it could have been better used to present the background to Lovecraft’s stories for those unfamiliar with them. His most serious complaint was that “The most serious flaw in the game is the lack of rules for NPC’s. The rules do say, and quite rightly, that Investigators should seldom meet any of the monsters listed. Doing so will often result in Investigator death or insanity, not a pleasant prospect for a player. Therefore, the Investigator will be dealing with and battling NPC’s. However, there is nothing given in the rulebook about creating interesting NPC’s. There is no quick system for generating NPC characteristics and skills. There are no suggestions for what NPC’s will know, how they will be armed, or what (or why!) they are doing. This lack of information puts an extremely large burden on the Keeper and makes it especially hard to create NPC’s that will keep the players’ interest. There should have been a section devoted to this in the rules.

Although Cook’s initial conclusion was initially less than positive, “It is difficult to either love or hate the game.”, but ultimately said, “It is a good game for experienced role-playing gamers and ambitious judges, especially if they like Lovecraft’s type of story. However, those players and judges just getting into roleplaying or who have never read a Lovecraft story are well advised to wait on this Game until they have more experience.”

Reviewing Call of Cthulhu in Open Box in White Dwarf No 32 (August 1982), Ian Bailey wrote, “Sandy Petersen has faithfully reproduced the tone of Lovecraft’s with the Call of Cthulhu game system and as a result, it is not about hacking and slaying, it is about investigation, which boils down to a rewarding battle of wits between the players and the Keeper.” He also noted that, “The game encourages good role-playing from the players. The rules embody a number of deterrents for the would be ‘fighter’.” His only criticism was that the sourcebook was too “U.S. orientated and consequently any Keeper ... who wants to set his game in the UK will have a lot of research to do.” Before concluding that, “Call of Cthulhu is an excellent game and a welcome addition to the world of role-playing.” and awarding it a score of nine out of ten.

Call of Cthulhu would be voted number one in ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ in Arcane #14 (December, 1996). The article summed it up as “Call of Cthulhu is fully deserved of the title as the most popular roleplaying system ever – it’s a game that doesn't age, is eminently playable, and which hangs together perfectly. The system, even though it’s over ten years old, it is still one of the very best you’ll find in any roleplaying game. Also, there’s not a referee in the land who could say they’ve read every Lovecraft inspired book or story going, so there’s a pretty-well endless supply of scenario ideas. It’s simply marvellous.”

—oOo—

It is surprising to note that when Call of Cthulhu was published, there was no other horror roleplaying game on the market. There were plenty of roleplaying games with horror elements in them—primarily classic monsters such as werewolves, vampires, and zombies—but none dedicated to the genre itself, so when Call of Cthulhu was published in 1981, it was not only ground-breaking, but it was also ground-breaking in its genre again and again. To begin with, it quantified the Mythos, its creatures and gods, spells and tomes, not as something to fight and defeat as was the case in their previous appearances in roleplaying games and supplements, but as something to be scared of and thus avoid, as a real threat to the Investigators and humanity, and in doing so elevated the Mythos in the hobby into something more than just fodder for sword and spell. The general lack of familiarity with the Mythos also meant that the creatures and gods presented in the pages of Call of Cthulhu were also all the more unknowable, so the scares and the horror that the Keeper could bring to her game were all the more effective. Arguably, this presentation would spur interest anew in Lovecraft’s fiction and ultimately lead to the popularity that his creations have today. It presented a whole new way of roleplaying and game—investigating, researching, interacting with NPCs to get information, and attempting to find a means to defeat the ghastly enemy using the mind and knowledge rather than brute force. It emphasised the skills and the knowledge of the Investigators, who are just ordinary men and women, rather than the might and powers of adventurers in other roleplaying games. When combined with the fact that the roleplaying game was set in the real and comparatively modern world, although one several decades before, it made the Investigators all the more human and relatable. 

It also inverted the way in which the roleplaying game was traditionally played. In most roleplaying games, the Player Characters gain in power and heroic stature, becoming better warriors, learning more powerful spells, and gaining more wondrous magical artefacts or other equipment. Not so in Call of Cthulhu. In Call of Cthulhu, the Investigators can improve their skills, but they do not gain amazing powers or even better equipment, or even increase their Hit Points. There is no ascending spiral of heroic power. Instead, the more the Investigators learn of the Mythos, whether through encounters or research, they may gain secret, arcane knowledge, but they suffer for it, becoming mentally unbalanced, even insane if they learn too much. Theirs is a descending spiral of insanity, theirs is at best a desperate and secret battle to save humanity, heroic but still unknown.

Lastly, of course, there is Insanity. Call of Cthulhu introduced a Sanity mechanic and it was simple and elegant. No more could a roleplaying game get by without addressing the mental fortitude, or lack of, of its Player Characters, and although there have been many ways to handle fear and being scared half to death in roleplaying games since, Call of Cthulhu did it first and did it simply and elegantly.

In the years since it was first published, Call of Cthulhu has been presented in multiple new editions, and its concepts explored again and again, in ways that the original designer probably never envisioned, in hundreds of scenarios and tens of campaigns, from the ancient past to the here and now (and even beyond). Call of Cthulhu is and has been incredibly well supported in its forty years of being in print. And the great thing is that the content from forty years ago can still be played using the rules presented in the original edition of the roleplaying or the latest. Which is a testament to the firm foundation that was laid by Sandy Petersen for Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying with the first edition of Call of Cthulhu.

There is a reason why Call of Cthulhu is regarded as one of the greatest roleplaying games ever published. It is a classic piece of design that successfully emulates the singular genre it is inspired by and in doing so, introduced new ways to roleplay and tell amazing stories as well as innovations to the roleplaying hobby that are still influential today. It is always going to be the greatest horror roleplaying game there is, not just because of the Mythos, but because of its influence, innovations, and the simple fact that it can still give you a great playing experience.