Mother’s Madness

A young woman suddenly moves from Birmingham, Alabama to the Vermont hills in the middle of the night, in the space of an hour—as indicated by her smartwatch. To the local authorities it looks like youthful activities—likely something drug related—gone wrong at best, an abduction at worst, the young woman seeming to have wandered out of the hills where the local kids like to party. Probably the former. To the members of Delta Green, the secret organisation with the U.S. government, it looks like something worse. It looks like signs of the Unnatural. Agents are quickly dispatched to the small-town hospital when the young woman, an African American student at university in Alabama. Their assignment is to investigate and potentially, negate an occurrence of the Unnatural before it even happens. From the start this is a challenging investigation. The Agents will need to develop a sufficiently strong reason for their being there and conducting an investigation. The victim, Robyn Bullock, seems profoundly shocked by the experience and there is something just a little odd about her experiences. By the time her family arrive, the initial difficulty of the investigation ramps up. They will not deal with strangers and whilst they will deal with Federal law enforcement, such is their distrust, they do it under strict circumstances. It is this lack of distrust in the Federal government and in law enforcement that runs the rest of the investigation.

This is the set-up for Presence, a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural. There are no specific requirements in terms of the Agents needed to play it, though strong interpersonal skills are going to be useful given the reaction that the Agents will receive during parts of the investigation. The investigation will switch from Vermont back to Alabama, which effectively means that the Green Mountain State is a diversion should the players surmise that its location suggests the involvement of the Mi-Go. What the Agents should learn is that Robyn has an interest in the New Age, astrology, and modern Wicca, and here the scenario is particularly modern in what they have to investigate—her social media presence. This will enable them to discover other several women in the same Facebook community who appear to have suffered similar situations to Robyn, and begin to close in on a suspect. The investigation is rich and superbly detailed and will take them into rural Alabama and take on a more physical nature.

If the players and their Agents have found the investigation difficult to date due to distrust of the Agents, it gets worse, as some of the inhabitants actively hate the Federal government and will not help the Agents at all. When they track down the culprit, it is effectively a ‘kill house’, but one infused with the Mythos as well as booby traps. It is a very nasty end to a difficult investigation.

This is a scenario that will directly change at least one of the Agents, such is the trauma and power of Robyn Bullock, and the scenario includes rules for that and the way in which they will be changed. These are psychic rituals, and there are six of these described. They include Apportation, Divination, Psychic Intrusion, and so on, and they all require the expenditure of Will Points and Hit Points to empower. This is in addition the Sanity loss involved too.

One of the issues with Presence is with the number of the NPCs who loath the Federal government and law enforcement. This makes for good roleplaying, but it will not be familiar to audiences and gaming groups outside of the USA. For example, one of the NPCs is described as a “Deranged dominionist and sovereign citizen”. Non-American audiences are unlikely to understand what this is and perhaps time and space could have been found in the scenario to explaining it.

Physically, Presence is well done. The artwork is excellent, though unfortunately the maps, done on aerial photographs with swathes of green forest are slightly difficult to read.

Presence is a really tight investigation bookended by some really weird nasty encounters with the Unnatural. At least one Agent will come away radically changed and some may not survive the final encounter, and that is to be expected for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game.

Short, Sharp Cthulhu II

Collections of short scenarios for Call of Cthulhu are nothing new—there was the 1997 anthology Minions, but that was for Call of Cthulhu, Fifth Edition. It was also a simple collection of short scenarios, whereas the more recent Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror in being both a collection of short scenarios and something different. Published by Chaosium, Inc. for use with either Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, it is a trio of very short scenarios—scenarios designed to be played in an hour, designed to introduce players to Call of Cthulhu, and designed to demonstrate Call of Cthulhu. All three have scope to be expanded to last longer than an hour, come with pre-generated investigators as well as numerous handouts, and are designed to be played by four players—though guidance is given as to which investigators to use with less than four players for each scenario, right down to just a single player and the Keeper. All three are set in different years and locations, but each is set in a single location, each is played against the clock—whether they are played in an hour or two hours—before a monster appears, and each showcases the classic elements of a Call of Cthulhu scenario. So the players and their investigators are presented with a mystery, then an investigation in which they hunt for and interpret clues, and lastly, they are forced into a Sanity-depleting confrontation with a monster.

No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror is the sequel. It is again designed to be used with either the Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition full rules or the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and again, it contains three scenarios. However, each is more expansive and plays out in a larger area than the single locations to be found in the scenarios for Gateways to Terror. Consequently, the three scenarios in No Time to Scream are longer, intended to be played in two hours rather than the one, That said, they can each be played in an hour and each comes with a rough timeline for such a playing length. Whether played in an hour or two hours any of the three scenarios works as as evening’s entertainment, or as a demonstration or convention scenario. All three are suitable for players new to Call of Cthulhu, whilst still offering an enjoyable experience for veteran players.

The anthology begins with an overview of its three scenarios and an extensive introduction—or reintroduction—to the core rules of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. This is to help the Keeper introduce the rules herself to her fellow players, whether sat round the table at home, playing online, or at a convention. In turn it discusses the investigator sheet, using Luck, skill rolls, bonus and penalty dice, combat, and of course, Sanity. Included here are references to both the Call of Cthulhu: Keeper Rulebook and the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set with pertinent points marked. The only thing not included here that perhaps might have been useful is a list of these references, possibly at the end of the section. It notes too, that the scenarios contain text to be read aloud to the players and two types of clues. ‘Obvious’ clues are meant to be found as part of the investigative as they are vital to its progression and they do not require any skill check to be found, whereas ‘Obscure’ add further detail and background, but are not vital to the completion of the scenario. They are typically discovered following a skill check. If an ‘Obvious’ clue does require a skill check, it is typically to see how it took the Investigator to find and to see if there are any complications from finding it. Otherwise this is all very useful, if not as a reminder, then at least as a means of the Keeper having to avoid flipping through another book.

Each of the three scenarios is tightly structured and follows the same format. This starts with advice on the scenario’s structure, specifically the timings if the Keeper is running it as a one-hour game. Then it discusses each of the four investigators for the scenario, including their notable traits and roleplaying hooks, what to do if there are fewer than four players, and what if there are more than four, before delving into the meat of the scenario itself. All three are very nicely presented, clear and easy to read off the page in terms of what skill rolls are needed and what the investigators learn from them. As well as decent maps, each scenario comes with a sheaf of handouts, suggestions as to how each of its four investigators react when they go insane, which includes possible Involuntary Actions and Bouts of Madness, and lastly, details of the four investigators. These are not done on the standard Investigator sheets for Call of Cthulhu, but those and the handouts are available to download.

The first scenario is ‘A Lonely Thread’, which takes place at the well-appointed country cabin of an elderly Professor of Archaeology who teaches part-time at Miskatonic University. A learned and avuncular man, he regularly invites guests to stay at his home, and this time that includes the Investigators. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that the professor is unwell, is he acting oddly, and seems forgetful. Is that because he is ill, or is there something else going on here? Striking the right note of oddness takes some roleplaying skill upon the part of the Keeper and the players using what their Investigators know about him as given and suggested on the Investigator sheets. Just how soon the players and their Investigators notice and just how soon they act will greatly influence the outcome of the scenario.

The professor is definitely not himself, having become possessed by an alien wire-like entity, which he was investigating as part of his research into the Mythos and inadvertently set free. The creature has also threaded itself through the body of his housekeeper and is quietly gestating its new form in the wood cellar below the house (so, this scenario does prove that is something in woodshed). Once the Investigators have worked out that something is wrong, confronted the professor, fought and discovered his situation, then they will have the whole house to explore as well as his workshop. There is the opportunity to gain some clues before doing so, but the scenario’s time limit is reached when the creature-that-was-once-the-professor’s-housekeeper completes its transition and begins to stalk the Investigators through his house.

The ending is likely to be quite physical in nature, though the option is given for fleeing, as is setting fire to the professor’s cabin and workshop. This is actually covered in some detail and mechanically uses a Luck roll to determine if the Investigators are successful. Overall, this is a decent scenario and straightforward to run.

The second scenario, ‘Bits & Pieces’, moves the action to Arkham itself and the city’s morgue. This is where the Investigators will find themselves in 1927 after they receive a telephone call from a disgraced physician in which he mutters about cultists, resurrection, and the need for cleansing fire. The call brings a disparate group of people together, first at his apartment and then at the morgue, where once they have broken in (because it is closed for the night), they find the doctor almost dead, his final words being, “Don’t’ let them out.” So, whomever stabbed him in the neck with a scalpel is still in the morgue and not only that, but the corpse that the doctor was obviously working on, is not on the slab. So where has that gone? Once the Investigators start looking, they do not find anyone. However… what they do find are parts of a body and every single part wants to fight back.

‘Bits & Pieces’ feels very much inspired by the film Reanimator, because these body parts are animated and not only do want to get back together, they prepared to fight to do so. This scenario is huge, silly fun. It manages to combine both horror and what is effectively, slapstick. Plus, the body parts all do different things to the Investigators. The arms will lay traps and stab them, the legs kick them and run away, the torso barges them, and best all, the head not only bites them, it actually calls the police to try and get ride of the Investigators! The aim for Investigators is to grab all of the body parts and get them to the furnace to burn all of the evidence—if they can work out how to operate it. The time limit on the scenario is when the morgue opens up in the morning. This is a brilliantly fun scenario, very physical, and is going to be highly memorable one to play and run.

The third and last scenario is ‘Aurora Blue’. This is the most mature and complex of the three scenarios in terms of its themes and tone. This is because it sees a clash of the marginalised. It takes place in late winter, 1932 and the Investigators are agents if the Bureau of prohibition, marginalised because their backgrounds and their assignment. The Investigators consist of an African American, of mixed African American and Inuit heritage, an older African American, and a woman. Consequently, given the attitudes the Bureau of Prohibition, their careers have found them marginalised to the backwater of Alaska, at the time a U.S. territory rather than a state. This is because after first believing that a new source of very popular bootleg alcohol was Canada, their bosses want to blame the delay in actually investigating and dealing with the source, a farm in the Chugach Mountains, Alaska, and anything that might go wrong, squarely on the Investigators. ‘Aurora Blue’ helpfully includes a sidebar with advice on the portrayal of the marginalised quartet and the attitudes towards them, but also suggests that the Keeper refer to ‘Realism: Reality and the Game’ from Harlem Unbound.

In addition, the scenario also includes a ‘Memory’ for each of the Investigators, triggered by a scene or encounter, in which they each have the opportunity to recall a similar moment in which they were faced with the prejudices against them and what happened as a result. These flashbacks are a moment to highlight and personalise their status and for each player to roleplay his or her Investigator.

The scenario also suggests that the Keeper refer to the Color Out of Space—both the short story by H.P. Lovecraft and the film from 2019—for the look and style of ‘Aurora Blue’, as this is the threat at the heart of the scenario. Scenarios for Call of Cthulhu that involve a Color Out of Space tend to be quite traditional, the alien creature landing near a farm and its poisonous aura first causing unparalleled fecundity and change before a rot sets in that renders everything into a grey infertility. The difference between them is the set-up and who the Investigators are, and in this case, the Investigators are agents of the Bureau of Prohibition, and the set-up focuses on the clash between their desperation in being given a bad, possibility career-ending assignment and the economic desperation of the farm that is producing Aurora Blue, the brand of the bootleg alcohol which the Agents have been sent to investigate.

In many ways, ‘Aurora Blue’ is not a subtle affair, its horror on show from the start and its mutated fecundity and hints of its barren blight to come pervading the scenario throughout. The main opportunity for roleplaying is with the farmer’s daughter, ill-treated and then rendered mute by the effects of the Color Out of Space, with only crayons and paper as her only means of communication and with her drawings serving as clues that the players have to interpret. The scenario is also more sophisticated in terms of its outcomes. The Agents can succeed in completing their assignment and they can potentially defeat the Color Out of Space, but this is optional—fleeing the farm without destroying the Color Out of Space is an acceptable option. It may also be possible to get away with the farmer’s daughter, but the scenario does not really make clear to the Agents and their players the strength of the connection between her and the Color Out of Space and how, if possible, it can be broken. Consequently, the optimum outcome of ‘Aurora Blue’ is not as clear as perhaps it should be for a scenario that is as short as this and for a scenario that is designed in part to demonstrate the roleplaying game.

The book is rounded out with two appendices and a set of indices. The first of the appendices contains the handouts for all three scenarios,, whilst the second has the bibliographies of the authors. The indices consist of four—a general index and then one for each of the three scenarios.

Physically, No Time to Scream is very well presented, with decently done maps and a great deal of the artwork can be used to show the players during play. The handouts are also well done, the crayon drawings for the farmer’s daughter from ‘Aurora Blue’ standing out for being singularly different. Lastly, it should be noted that the running length of all three scenarios makes them fairly easy to prepare and have ready to run.

No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror is good sequel to Gateways to Terror: Three Evenings of Horror. The three scenarios in this new anthology get better and more interesting as they go along. ‘Bits & Pieces’ stands out as a very rare combination for Call of Cthulhu—slapstick and horror—whilst ‘Aurora Blue’ is an excellent combination of back woods horror and poisoned hope with the need of the Investigators to prove themselves. As a collection of one-shots, demonstration scenarios, and convention scenarios, No Time to Scream: Three Evenings of Terror delivers three more, short doses of horror and does so in an engaging, well designed, and multi-functional fashion.

Scares Under Scotland

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal takes place on the Home Front with the Player Characters, or Agents, suddenly rushed to the Scottish coast where a strange discovery has been made. With the Battle of France over and the Nazi war machine readying itself for Operation Sea Lion, Britain is frantically preparing defences against imminent invasion. In Scotland, this includes teams of coast watchers keeping an eye for roving U-boats, whilst just inland, near the sleepy village of St Abbs, an archaeological dig led by Professor Angus MacLeary, has made a discovery in an ancient cave system below a hill that sits behind a megalithic stone circle that stands looking over the sea. This is a highly valuable cache of the Blauer Kristall—or Blue Crystal—much coveted by Nachtwölfe, which uses it to fuel its increasingly weird weapons of war. Section M has been alerted to the discovery and quickly despatches a team of Agents, that is, the Player Characters, north to investigate and secure what could be a war-winning resource for analysis by the boffins at Clemens Park.

From the outset, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal sounds quite a bit like Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under the Gun and in a great many ways, it is. Both scenarios are set on the Home Front and both take place in August—Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under the Gun in August, 1940 and Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal in late August/early September. Both scenarios are intended as sequels to Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard, and thus both scenarios have the issue of the latter taking place in August, 1940. So there is a tight timeline involved. Both scenario involve a discovery being made underground which first attracts the attention of Section M, then the associated forces of the Mythos—in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun it is Deep Ones, whereas in Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal, it is the Mi-Go—and both end in a three-way tussle between the Agents, the agents of the Mythos, and one of the Nazi factions in the secret war. Surprisingly, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal, it is Black Sun and not Nachtwölfe. Since it involves the Black Sun, it can be run after the events of ‘A Quick Trip to France’ found in the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart: A Quick Trip to France.

This is not to say that there are no differences. The Agents will have the opportunity to engage a little with the locals at the village pub at one in the scenario and there is an engagingly Hitchcockian feel to the train journey from London to Scotland. The Agents will also have their first encounter proper with the Mi-Go, one of the utterly alien factions in the Secret War, and may be able to parley with them in order to persuade them to work as allies, if only temporarily, against the Black Sun soldiery which has landed on the coast to take control of everything. There is more scope for roleplaying too, with the villagers, with the members of the coastal watch, with the members of the archaeological team, and even with the Mi-Go! What Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal also does is introduce the Agents to both two more factions in the Secret War—Black Sun and the Mi-Go—and to the fact that the relationship between the Nazi factions, Black Sun and Nachtwölfe, is actually a rivalry.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal is another short, sharp scenario which can be completed in a single session. There is a bit of clean-up in terms of what happens to the members of the archaeological dig and any captured Black Sun agents or troops, and the success of the Agents is measured in just how much and who they can get back to London. Success is not guaranteed through as the Agents face some tough Black Sun forces for a small group and they may make any potential successes less guaranteed by not making allies in the scenario. This a tough little scenario, high on combat and action over investigation.

Although Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal is not a complex scenario, like the previous Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun, its climax does involve a big battle with multiple opponents and factions, so it does feel a little like a mini-wargame rather than the climax of a roleplaying scenario. Certainly, the Game Master might want to have the factions involved in this tunnel and cave-based confrontation divided between herself and the Player Characters to make it easier to run and give her fewer dice to roll and NPCs to keep track of.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the maps of the various locations are decently done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal is a short and serviceable scenario, more action and combat than investigation. Its main problem is that it feels too much like Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun, so the Game Master may want to run at least one scenario, if not more between the two if she is running the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 scenarios in chronological order. Otherwise, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Falling Crystal is an easy scenario to add to an early war campaign for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20.

Danger Under Dover

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under the Gun takes place on the Home Front with the Player Characters, or Agents, suddenly rushed to the Kent coast where a frightening discovery has been made. With the Battle of France over and the Nazi war machine readying itself for Operation Sea Lion, Britain is frantically preparing defences against imminent invasion. This includes the fortification of the Kent coast, specifically in and around Dover and its famous, chalk cliffs which stand at the closet point between England and France. There are news reports that excavations have unearthed an ancient British fort, but this only a cover story. What an archaeologist and several British army engineers have discovered is a strange stone pillar which seems to make everyone feel at least queasy, if not leave them suffering nightmares, seeing things out of the corners of their eye, and if that is not odd enough, suffering bouts of ichthyophobia! Those that have been suffering the worst have been hospitalised. As agents of Section M, the Player Characters are ordered to investigate the site at St. Andrew’s Cliff.

With a little care, the Agents have the opportunity to learn what happened to the men digging at St. Andrew’s Cliff and perhaps conduct a little research locally. Very quickly, the Agents are rushed to the site, now a combination of fortification in the making and archaeological dig site, both semi-abandoned. The Agents have the afternoon to investigate the site before events take a sudden and highly confrontational turn. The site, including the Agents and the few members of the British Army left to guard the site are attacked—not once, but twice! First by locals from the nearby village and then by Nazis. The Agents may already have discovered the legends about the nearby village of St. Andrews, but what they find out in the confrontation is that the legends are true, that, “Them St. Andrew’s folk aren’t right — flat-faced, goggle-eyed devils!” In other words, Deep One Hybrids. The Nazis are members of Black Sun, though only a small team that has landed by glider on the cliffs nearby. This is a big fight—though small in the scheme of things—over who has access to the strange stone pillar in the case of the Black Sun unit and who should be punished for defiling the strange stone pillar in the case of the villagers.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun is a short, sharp scenario which can be completed in a single session. It does leave the question of what to do with a village of Deep One Hybrids on the English coast up to the Game Master. Either raid the village and intern everyone as per the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps raid on Innsmouth in 1928 or actually recruit them as allies in the Secret War against the Nazi occult? Both options are valid and both would make for interesting developments, especially the latter. More so if the Game Master is planning to run Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard. The events of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun take place in June, 1940, whereas the events of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard take place in August, 1940. Both involve Deep Ones, so they are thematically linked and thus Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard can be run as a possible sequel to Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun. Since it involves the Black Sun, it can be run after the events of ‘A Quick Trip to France’ found in the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart: A Quick Trip to France.

Although Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun is not a complex scenario, its climax does involve a big battle with multiple opponents and factions, so it does feel a little like a mini-wargame rather than the climax of a roleplaying scenario. Certainly, the Game Master might want to have the factions involved in this fog-bound confrontation divided between herself and the Player Characters to make it easier to run and give her fewer dice to roll and NPCs to keep track of.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the maps of the various locations are decently done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Under The Gun is a short, sharp encounter with the multiple forces of the Mythos that also manages to pack in a little investigation as well. It can be played in a single session and this makes it easy to drop into a campaign, especially taking early in the war.

North Sea Nasties

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a Secret War against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard is designed for a group of Player Characters who have one or two basic adventures under their collective belt, likely Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart: A Quick Trip to France. In ‘A Quick Trip to France’, the Agents were assigned to investigate the activities of a Black Sun Master in the village of Saint Sulae, southwest of the city of Rouen. That mission takes place in June, 1940, merely weeks after the invasion of the Low Countries and the fall of France. Barely two months pass and in August, 1940, the Agents are sent on another mission into enemy occupied territory. This time, the Netherlands. As the country’s general populace begins to adjust to the shock of being invaded, the newly formed resistance has already begun to report to London where Queen Wilhelmina and her government are now in exile. These reports percolate throughout the various offices and departments of British intelligence, the odder stories ignored by all except Section M. One such report is from the small Dutch fishing town of Nermegen and tells of a strange installation being constructed at both St. Olaf’s lighthouse and on the nearby Skellen Island and of the presence in the town of Nachtwölfe. The rivals to the Black Sun, they are likely just as dangerous. For Section M, this is the first known sighting of the Night Wolves, and it wants it confirmed by the Agents. Their mission to travel by submarine to the Dutch coast and make landfall by folding canoes. There, they are to make contact with the local Resistance movement, avoid all contact with the German garrison, investigate Nachtwölfe activities in and around Nermegen, before proceeding to Skellen Island and determining what the secret organisation is up to. Any and all intelligence is to be gathered with expediency.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard is a straightforward mission and scenario. The Agents are first given some training in the use of the folboat—or folding canoe, used in Operation Frankton and made famous by the film, The Cockleshell Heroes—and the Player Characters the basic skill in them as a nice bonus, before the mission begins. The process of the mission is presented in some detail, including making contact with the Resistance and gathering rumours about the Nazi activities in and around the town, the latter of which will lead to another location on the coast where Nachtwölfe was seen operating and a local drunken fisherman who might know a lot more than they had imagined! Ultimately, this should prime the Agents to investigate first St. Olaf’s lighthouse and then nearby Skellen Island. Both locations are fortified, the scenario including full details of the defences and the enemy numbers stationed at both. For the most part, stealth is probably the most useful skill that the Player Characters will need as a full out assault will alert the garrison and any Nachtwölfe nearby. That will change once the Agents are on Skellen Island and have broken into the base there, ‘Installation 41’, a big bruising fight the likelihood, helped by some unexpected allies.

If the players have been paying attention, by the time their Agents get into ‘Installation 41’, they will have some idea of whatever it is that Nachtwölfe is up to, it involves the Deep Ones. The latter are a major faction in the Secret War, and just as Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard is designed as the first encounter that the players and their Agents have with Nachtwölfe, it also their first with any other faction of the Secret War. The likelihood is that the Agents are not going to be able to communicate with the Deep Ones—an option that the scenario does not really explore—but they are going to see them in action against the scientists and soldiers of Nachtwölfe. There is the option to add more Deep Ones if the Agents are floundering, but either way, the best way to run this fight is for the players to roll for the Deep Ones as well as their Agents, so as to keep the action flowing and the Game Master from rolling for too many NPCs.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard does involve Nachtwölfe, though not necessarily the key to its power and the means to power its many advanced weapons of war, the vibrantly blue Blauer Kristall. This and the fact that it takes place in August, 1940, means that it takes place after the events of the campaign, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis, which ends in May or June of that year. It could be run as a sequel, but it could also be shifted to earlier in the war and countries under German occupation that bit earlier. Denmark and Norway are good candidates and if used, Operation Vanguard could be run during April 1940. If the Game Master decides not to run Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis,or is running for different group of Agents, then she can simply run this scenario as is.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the maps of the various locations are decently done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard feels inspired by Operation Biting, the 1942 raid to capture German radar equipment from near the village of Bruneval in Normandy. Then again, it could been inspired by any number of World War 2 films or commando missions! Overall, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20: Operation Vanguard combines a good mix of the Mythos and the military and is a solid stealth and assault mission that includes a little investigation as well.

Airstrip Assault

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

In addition to any number of scenarios for Achtung! Cthulhu, Modiphius Entertainment also publishes what it calls ‘Section M: Priority Missions’. These are smaller missions and scenarios intended to help a Game Master is hard-pressed for time or needs an alternate scenario when there are fewer players. Alternatively, they can be used as one-shots or woven into ongoing campaigns. Each though, provides a single mission that can be played in a single session as well as adventure hooks should the Game Master want to expand the scenario.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is the third entry in the series and the second to be set in North Africa. Its premise is very simple. A mysterious Luftwaffe aircraft has been spotted making a forced landing at an airstrip in North Africa following an engagement with the RAF where it is undergoing repairs in a hangar on-site. The LRDG, or Long Range Desert Group, which conducted the reconnaissance, indicated in its report that the aircraft resembled the Junkers G 38 bomber, a model based on a 1929 large, four-engined transport. However, there are significant differences. This aircraft has only two engines, both of them rear-facing, and there is no rear fuselage or tail boom. Whatever the aeroplane is, it must be experimental, because what it resembles is a flying wing! The report also contained one other fact: the damaged aircraft seemed to flicker in and out of sight as it landed. Could it be some new radical prototype? The RAF was sceptical. It was just one unidentified aeroplane and the fact that the report said it seemed to flicker in and out of sight as it landed was ridiculous. The report was filed away.

However, the very fact that this strange aircraft was said to have flickered in and out of sight as it landed was more than enough to attract the attention of Section M. Especially when its hears each disappearance was marked by an intermittent burst of blue light! This is definitely more than a simple prototype. Whatever is in that hanger at the airstrip is definitely connected to Nachtwölfe or Black Sun. Likely a wunderwaffe of the former or some devilry of the latter. The mission is simple. The Player Characters have to get to the airstrip, sabotage or steal the aircraft, and then report back!

The LRDG operated in North Africa between 1940 and 1945, which gives a wide time frame in which to run the mission. Ideally though, it should be after the events of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire is and early on in the war when Nachtwölfe was a relatively unknown force in the Secret War. It would also mean that it could be easily run as a side mission for part of the campaign, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis. The campaign involves Nachtwölfe and its third mission is set in Cairo and Egypt. Either way, the fact that the damaged engine is flickering with a blue light probably means Nachtwölfe involvement.

As with other ‘Section M: Priority Missions’, the focus on Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is on detailing the location and mapping what and who is there. As an active airfield there are a lot of personnel. There are over fifty members of the Luftwaffe and twelve members of Nachtwölfe assigned to operate and monitor the newly designed prototype. There are also fifteen vehicles, primarily used for transport in and around the airfield, plus, of course, several Bf-109 fighters. The map of the airfield is nicely done, showing both how widely spaced out the various locations are for the safety of the men and the aeroplanes in case of attack or explosion and how temporary the landing strip is, with only two buildings. One is a modern concrete command post; the other is an old fortress. There is also a single hanger and a machine shop. These and the other locations are lightly described and there are no internal maps of the command post, fortress, hanger, or machine shop. The Game Master will need to do some research or improvise if the Player Characters want more information or floor plans. That said, these locations should be familiar to anyone who has seen a few World War 2 films!

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is a strike mission. It is military in nature and it will involve a lot of stealth. Plus, if the Player Characters are to steal the strange prototype, then one of their number should include a pilot. The focus on the strike mission, that is, get in, steal or destroy the prototype, means that there is little in the way of variation in terms of hooks or how the Player Characters get involved. Instead, three possible outcomes are discussed, including destroying the aeroplane, alerting the base personnel, and escaping aboard the aeroplane, ready to fly it back to Allied territory. In addition, several ‘Encounter Escalation’ options are suggested. These are all thematically appropriate such as a sudden downpour of rain that turns the airfield into a muddy quagmire or a flight of Allied bombers attacks the aircraft!

However, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 saves its best for last—“Who’s the big feller?” This is Egypt, there are Nazis, so there has to be big bruiser of an NCO ready to duke it out with one of the Player Characters with his fists! And if that NCO is played by the late Pat Roach, then all the better. His inclusion, though, points to the obvious inspiration for the Priority Mission, and that is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Another is that the mysterious aircraft which initiates the plot is based upon the Blohm and Voss BV-38 ‘Flying Wing’ that appeared in that film. Another possible inspiration is Captain America: The First Avenger in the design and modification of the aeroplane.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the map of the airfield is nicely done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is more military than Mythos, more stealth and action than cosmic horror. As a military operation though, it is actually easier to prepare and run and thus easy to slip into an ongoing campaign or run when a backup scenario is needed. Despite the lack of Mythos in the scenario, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 3: Assault on Zuara 2 is fun and its playing around with its inspirations is engaging.

Atlantis Abides

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It pitches the Allied Agents of Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is a world-spanning campaign and the fourth release for Achtung! Cthulhu. An adaptation to the 2d20 System of the earlier version for Call of Cthulhu, the release of a campaign so early in the line makes sense chronologically. It takes place between August, 1939, before the start of the war and May/June, 1940, the period of the Phoney War when full hostilities had yet to break out and France was not yet invaded. The campaign will take the Player Characters or Agents from Vienna to Greenland via Rome, Cairo, Nepal, India, Persia, and more, in a desperate effort to prevent an incredibly ancient artefact from falling into Nazi hands. The period is rife with tension, but the Player Characters have a greater freedom of movement than might be imagined during the rest of the war and whilst they are not in danger of running into German military forces, they will be stalked in the shadows by Nachtwölfe agents and encounter many of their proxies.

In addition to being set early in the war, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis not just the first campaign for Achtung! Cthulhu, but also the first campaign for the Game Master and her players. This shows most obviously in the series of three sets of boxed text. ‘Roving Red Line’ handles the travels of the Agents around the world, summarising the options, but also giving a nod to those interstitial moments of map movements in the Indiana Jones series of films; ‘U.L.T.R.A.’ gives the Game Master extra details about NPCs and plot information; ‘Basic Training’, a simple guide to handling the mechanics of the 2d20 System in Achtung! Cthulhu in a particular scene as well as possible Threat expenditures for the Game Master to make the Agents’ more challenging. It also shows in the path and tone of the campaign. Apart from a framing device, the individual chapters of the campaign are not connected and there is no set path from its start to its end, so there is much less of an emphasis upon the collection and analysis of clues to move from one chapter to another. The tone is muscular, very much more action-orientated and in the realm of the Pulp genre rather than the horror genre. This is not to say that the campaign is not lacking in monsters or scary situations, but Shadows of Atlantis primarily involves encountering Nachtwölfe agents and its local, sometimes indigenous proxies as well as monsters based on local legends. Thus, there is a marked lack of monsters and entities drawn from the Cthulhu Mythos. In fact, almost none of the classic creations from H.P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre appears in Shadows of Atlantis. This does not mean that there is not a Mythos presence in the campaign, since Nachtwölfe plays a major role in the campaign, whilst Black Sun plays a minor role, but it remains offscreen for much of the campaign and the backstory to the campaign is unlikely to be revealed to the Agents. This does, however, fit the period, that of the Phoney War, when there is a high degree of uncertainty as to the nature of the enemy faced by the Allies and what that enemy would do next.

The campaign opens in August 1939. The Agents are in Vienna, Austria, working for Section D before what becomes Section M is established, to contact a German agent who feels betrayed by her masters following the death of her husband, Doctor Botho Ehrlichmann, under strange circumstances. He was a noted archaeologist and she believes that he was killed to keep his research a secret. This research concerned the translation and study of the scripts carved on an ancient black stone found in Egypt by a previous German archaeological team. Now his notes are missing and his wife does not want the Nazis to have them. The paper chase will lead the Agents across Vienna with the Nazis at their heels and subsequently out of Austria, south to Rome. By this time, war will have broken between Germany and Great Britain, but no such state exists between Italy and Great Britain. Nevertheless, Italy under Mussolini is a police state and the Nazis are already in Rome, conducting an archaeological dig deep under the streets of the Eternal City. By now, the preliminary research that the Agents will have done into Ehrlichmann’s notes reveals that the stone was linked to a powerful ancient artefact that was split up into five parts and hidden in various locations around the world. One of the locations was in Rome, which is why the Germans were digging into the tunnels under the city.

This sets up the framework for Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis. Researchers back in Section D in England will continue to translate and decode Doctor Ehrlichmann’s notes. This provides the clues as to the next location where another part of the device can be found and what it is called. These assignments will take the Agents to Cairo, Nepal, India, and Persia, but beyond Vienna, these can be tackled in any order. In many cases, the Agents will find that the Nazis already have their own operatives or proxies on the ground, conducting archaeological excavations, often oblivious or uncaring of the dangerous consequences they are triggering. All involve fantastically monstrous situations, whilst the Cairo and Nepal chapters stand out for their weirdness. The Nepal chapter takes the Agents to an almost Shangri-La-like location, whilst the Cairo chapter sends the Agents into a version of the Dreamlands. The latter is the more engaging of the two, the other often exposition heavy and reading more like a travelogue.

Prior to the campaign finale in Greenland—and beyond, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis includes an extra location, new to this version of the campaign. This is British Honduras. With the Agents busy in Asia and the Middle East, when Section M learns of the location of another part of the artefact, it sends another team to secure it. Unfortunately, nothing has been heard from this team, ostensibly conducting an archaeological dig, for quite some time, so Section M arranges for a second expedition to locate the missing team and recover the piece of the artefact. However, word has got out about the missing team and the authorities have already agreed to an offer of help in finding it from the German Ambassador. Though this is with the proviso that neutral observers accompany the rescue mission. The twist here is that these neutral observers will not be the Agents who have been following up on details from Doctor Ehrlichmann’s notes in Vienna, Cairo, Nepal, India, and Persia, that is, in the rest of the campaign. They will instead be entirely different and new Player Characters. This is intended to provide a change for the players, both in terms of perspective and challenge, in roleplaying other characters, but it is a jarring shift. It is also a shift in tone, since the characters and the players will be dealing with Germans and German agents, not as direct threats, but as individuals—supposedly—helping to find missing archaeologists. So, this sets up some tensions between the Player Characters and the NPCs, as well as presenting more roleplaying opportunities than in the other chapters. However, the chapter does take the campaign to an off-scene location and so out of the flow of the campaign’s story. Alternatively, it provides a change of pace and focus before the big finale.

The finale takes place in Greenland and beyond—way beyond. The finale delivers on the title of the campaign and drops the Agents into the most mythological of places. In other words, Atlantis. Since this is Atlantis, this is on its last day, the day of its collapse. As the city falls apart around them, the Agents need to rush through the panicking and fleeing citizenry to stop Nachtwölfe from bringing its plans to fruition. It is a big, exciting conclusion to the campaign and there are some pleasing payoffs to the rest of the campaign as well as little Easter eggs for Achtung! Cthulhu as a whole. The campaign finale discusses various outcomes including failure upon the part of the Agents.

In terms of support, the appendices for Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis provides stats for the major NPCs and monsters in the campaign and details of the new tomes, spells, and artefacts that appear in the campaign, including the one that forms the major driver for the campaign. There are also several related scenario seeds, quite detailed, but take place after the events of the campaign, all of the handouts, and four pre-generated Agents. They consist of a German émigré Private Investigator, an American secret agent, a British engineer and explosives expert, and an Irish-Czech circus performer turned mystic! If the players are choosing to create their own, then an Agent with knowledge of archaeology will be useful, as will a mystic.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is a great looking book, neatly laid out and illustrated with some excellent artwork. It is also well organised, each chapter opening with a Mission Overview, followed by its three scenes, and then brought to a close with a Debriefing. Where the campaign is lacking is in illustrations of the moving parts of the campaign, all the parts that the Agents will interact with. So there are no illustrations or portraits of the NPCs (though some do appear in the artwork) and certainly no illustrations of the various objects and parts of the artefact to be found. This is a major omission in either case, as the illustrations would make the identification of both objects and NPCs faster and easier and so made the campaign more real for the players and their Agents. There is also very little in terms of text to be read out or paraphrased by the Game Master, leaving her with quite a lot of description for her to parse and present to her players. Overall, given that Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is intended as a first campaign, certainly for Achtung! Cthulhu, the campaign is not always as helpful as it could or should be.

Given the Pulpy tone of the campaign, what is surprising about Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is the lack of good NPCs. Or the lack of scenery-chewing villains who appear over and over to make the lives of the Agents difficult before making their escape vowing to have their revenge after being defeated by the Agents. Part of this is due to the lack of illustrations to help the NPCs to life in general, but it is also due to the true villains of the piece working through proxies—often over-the-hill archaeologists with questionable morals—so they do not get a chance to strut their stuff as much as the style of the campaign warrants it.

Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is a campaign of the opening moves in the secret occult war between the Allies and Nazi Germany, but very much one of Lovecraftian action horror rather than Lovecraftian investigative horror. Not without its moments of intrigue and stealth, especially in the opening chapters in Vienna and Rome, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis is action-orientated, fists-flying, pedal to the metal, cosmic horror.

Monks & Mythos

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

In addition to any number of scenarios for Achtung! Cthulhu, Modiphius Entertainment also publishes what it calls ‘Section M: Priority Missions’. These are smaller missions and scenarios intended to help a Game Master is hard-pressed for time or needs an alternate scenario when there are fewer players. Alternatively, they can be used as one-shots or woven into ongoing campaigns. Each though, provides a single mission that can be played in a single session as well as adventure hooks should the Game Master want to expand the scenario.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire is the second entry in the series. It opens with the Player Characters having been sent to Cairo by Section M to investigate a monastery belonging to the Order of St. Barbara, patron saint of miners. The monks of this monastery are known to wear brooches that depict a serene female face and are notably carved from a strikingly blue stone. Section M has been sent one of these brooches and has identified the stone as being Blauer Kristall. Nachtwölfe is known to have an extreme interest in this rare mineral and constantly scours the world for sources from which it can develop science, technology, progress, biological enhancements, and wonder weapons powered by Blauer Kristall. The monastery, located a few miles outside of Cairo, is also said to be home to a relic, a skull of similar blue stone, purported to be the cranium of the saint, transfigured in sapphire. The Player Characters are ordered to get into the monastery and determine if the skull really is made of Blauer Kristall and if the monks have a bigger source.

The scenario primarily consists of a map of the monastery and a description of its various buildings. The map, along with an unlabeled one for the players, is nicely done. The basic details of what is going on in the Order of St. Barbara is also described, but without any discussion of the motivations of either the monks or their Mythos allies. There are also no stats, so the Game Master will need to consult the Gamemaster’s Guide and alter the Truths as necessary. Some possible motivations and suggestions as to what might be going is instead suggested in the several adventure seeds included in the scenario. At the most basic, the monks are innocent of any Mythos connection, but Nachtwölfe are definitely interested in gaining possession of whatever Blauer Kristall is being held in the monastery. Other seeds see the Player Characters tracking Mi-Go through tunnels under Cairo and find themselves in the caves below the monastery; Nachtwölfe is there when the Player Characters arrive and they have to stop the Nazis getting away with the Blauer Kristall; and Cairo is haunted by the ‘Ghost of St. Barbara’, a glowing blue apparition stalking the streets of the city, whose appearances seem to coincide with a series of thefts of ancient manuscripts from antiquities museums and private collections.

One other way to use the scenario is as a side mission for the campaign, Achtung! Cthulhu: Shadows of Atlantis. The campaign involves Nachtwölfe and its third mission is set in Cairo and Egypt. Yet in whatever way in which the Game Master decides to use Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire, she will still need to develop some motivations for both the monks and the Mythos presence at the monastery. This will vary depending upon how strong the links are between the monks and the Mythos. The stronger they are, the more the scenario will need the Game Master to develop those motivations and the more the scenario needs this attention, the more input is required from the Game Master, and the less immediately useful the scenario is as written.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the map of the monastery is nicely done.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 2: Our Lady of the Eternal Sapphire is not quite ready to run, and depending upon how the Game Master wants to use it, needs more input and development than it necessarily should. Consequently, it is not quite the download and play scenario that the publisher intended.

Ghoul Agglomeration

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves, utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

In addition to any number of scenarios for Achtung! Cthulhu, Modiphius Entertainment also publishes what it calls ‘Section M: Priority Missions’. These are smaller missions and scenarios intended to help a Game Master is hard-pressed for time or needs an alternate scenario when there are fewer players. Alternatively, they can be used as one-shots or woven into ongoing campaigns. Each though, provides a single mission that can be played in a single session as well as adventure hooks should the Game Master want to expand the scenario.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 1: Resurrection Men is the first entry in the series. As the frontlines shift between the Allied and Axis forces, Allied intelligence has learned of a network of Great War-era tunnels near an impending advance, whilst Section M suspects that it might actually be the site of Ghoul colony. The Section M agents are assigned to investigate the tunnel network, confirm its suspicions, and if necessary, wipe out the colony. The obvious location for the scenario is along the trench lines left over from the Great War, either in France or Belgium. It could also be shifted to the Italian/Austrian frontline from the Great War. Chronologically, if set in Northern France, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 1: Resurrection Men could be run during the operations of the British Expeditionary Force in Northern France in 1939 and 1940 or at any time after D-Day. One alternative to this, would be for the Player Characters to be all members of the French Resistance, which would make for a different scenario and mean that it would work better as a one-shot.

The scenario requires some preparation upon the part of the Game Master. There are no stats provided, so the Game Master will need to provide stats for the ghouls and a German patrol that the Agents might have to try and avoid, but that is all. What the scenario provides is a good map of the remains of the World War I tunnel network and some advice and suggestions. This covers how the ghouls will react to the presence of the Agents, what else the Agents might encounter, and a total of ten adventure hooks. This includes Allied forces being concerned about corpses vanishing, a former French officer-now ghoul with no love of the Nazis claiming to have intelligence to share, looking for an agent believed dead, but was supposed to have been carrying important information and now her corpse is missing. The ten adventure seeds are all decent ideas and all will need fleshing out by the Game Master. One alternative could be that Section M needs the information learned by a recently dead agent and the only way to learn that information is have some ghouls pick his brains! The variety also suggests the ways in which the Agents might go about fulfilling the mission—full out assault, a claustrophobic and tense series of close quarters bug-hunt style battles in the tunnels, or even approaching with an open hand.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 1: Resurrection Men is cleanly and tidily laid out. It is not illustrated, but the map of the tunnels that make up the ghoul nest is very nice.

Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 1: Resurrection Men is not quite ready to run, but it really only requires minimal preparation. Nor is it quite a full mission, but as a small location with lots of ideas as to how to use it, there can be no doubting its utility. For the Game Master wanting something quick to prepare and run, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 – Priority Mission 1: Resurrection Men is just the ticket, but if the Game Master has a bit more time, it can be made to be much more.

Fruits Of Your Labour

Achtung! Cthulhu is the roleplaying game of fast-paced pulp action and Mythos magic published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is pitches the Allied Agents of the Britain’s Section M, the United States’ Majestic, and the brave Resistance into a secret war against those Nazi Agents and organisations which would command and entreat with the occult and forces beyond the understanding of mankind. They are willing to risk their lives and their sanity against malicious Nazi villains and the unfathomable gods and monsters of the Mythos themselves, each striving for supremacy in mankind’s darkest yet finest hour! Yet even the darkest of drives to take advantage of the Mythos is riven by differing ideologies and approaches pandering to Hitler’s whims. The Black Sun consists of Nazi warrior-sorcerers supreme who use foul magic and summoned creatures from nameless dimensions to dominate the battlefields of men, whilst Nachtwölfe, the Night Wolves utilise technology, biological enhancements, and wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) to win the war for Germany. Ultimately, both utilise and fall under the malign influence of the Mythos, the forces of which have their own unknowable designs…

Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Operation Black Cap is a short adventure for the roleplaying game. It takes place in March, 1941. Section M has received word that a Ju 52 transport aeroplane crashed due to unseasonably bad weather in the mountains of Montenegro in Yugoslavia and that when it crashed, the transport aeroplane was carry the finds from a Black Sun archaeological dig in Italian East Africa. This includes a valuable occult object, one potentially connected to the cult of the Black Goat, Shub-Niggurath. The Agents are assigned the mission to infiltrate Yugoslavia, make contact with a local asset, proceed to the crash site, and once there, either recover what the object is or destroy it. This sounds straightforward enough, but there are complications. First, Black Sun is certainly going to want to recover the crash site and take repossession of whatever the transport aeroplane was carrying. Then there is the question of whatever it was that brought the Nazi aeroplane down. Lastly, there is the political situation in Yugoslavia, which is growing increasingly tense as the prince regent and the Yugoslavian government are put under pressure by the Nazi government in Berlin and fascists within the government to sign the Tripartite Pact and enter an enforced alliance. By the end of March, the prince regent would sign the Tripartite Pact and the military would stage a coup d’état in response, and within two weeks of that, Nazi Germany would invade. All that is to come, but in the meantime, the Yugoslavian army is on alert, its soldiers on edge, the Agents have to sneak in at the same time as a Black Sun contingent all but mounts a mini-invasion of its own!

The scenario is linear, taking the Agents from the beaches on the Adriatic Sea up into the mountains via a local contact to the crash site. Along the way, they will encounter Serbian army patrols to avoid—though the scenario includes an optional scene if the Agents are captured, and past two check points. One is manned by the Serbian army, the other by Black Sun troopers, and how they get past either checkpoint is up to the Agents. Things take a turn for the weird when the Agents reach the village of Glavica, near the crash site. It is clear that it has been the site of a battle, but the buildings are covered by vines hung with mishappen fruit and a black fungus covers almost everything. What few animals and inhabitants remain are odd and fearful. This though is a lull in the story before the action ramps up with the scenario’s final three scenes. The first of these plunges the Agents into the confrontation between the villagers—who of course, are deeply involved in the situation—and the Black Sun soldiers in a pitched battle at the crash site. The intervention of the Agents will tip the balance against the Black Sun, but this is no case of ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, since the villagers are almost as evil and fanatical in their own way! Penultimately, there is a confrontation with cultists who brought the aeroplane down and their revenge upon the Agents for their intervention, and either their theft or destruction of the artefacts that the German transport was ferrying to Berlin. After that, the Agents need to hightail it back out of the mountains and then out of Yugoslavia. Several suggestions of varying complexity, are given as possible means of escaping Yugoslavia, with one of them nicely handling the desperate situation in the country.

Physically, Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Operation Black Cap is cleanly and tidily laid out, and it does include a couple of good pieces of artwork. The maps are clear and easy to use, although the aeroplane at the crash site does not particularly look like a Ju 52 transport aeroplane—not one of its three engines in sight! Lastly, a map of the village might have been useful.

Achtung! Cthulhu Mission: Operation Black Cap is a simple and direct affair, a snatch and grab whilst having to deal with battling factions of the Mythos. Easily played in a session or two, it is easy to slot into a campaign set early in World War II, although it is very time and setting specific. Combat focused, it is at its best when discovering the fecund malignancy in the village of Glavica, and then in confronting not one, but two factions of the Mythos.