The Other OSR—Forgotten Duty

The Book of the Key is an elaborate monastic chronicle written in the sixteenth century in an obscure Italian dialect that describes events and happenings so fantastical that they are at odds with the known history of the period, yet the work is anything other than a satire. The marginalia is even strange, annotations consisting of esoteric formulae and prayers dedicated to an unknown and unnamed god. The god is described as having the power to permit movement from this world to another, from this reality to another… It is currently held in the library of the University of Navarra, in the city of Pamplona, in north-east Spain. It is also rumoured to have been stolen from its previous owners, and that they, the Knights Hospitaller, seek to return to their possession. There are many reasons why someone might want to examine The Book of the Key. Perhaps to right a wrong by engaging in the many-worlds theory of quantum physics to shift to another reality where the right rather than the wrong took place. Perhaps to open, or even close, the way, perhaps to prevent access to our world by otherworldly entities such as Dimensional Shamblers or Hounds Out of Time. Perhaps the book points to the means to locate an artefact that will be inimical to a true enemy. Perhaps the connections to the Mythos of the book are already known and it has fallen into the wrong hands, and whoever that is, they need to be stopped from using it.

This is the set-up—or rather the set-ups—to Forgotten Duty, a modern day scenario for Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition, the Old School Renaissance-adjacent roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Just Crunch Games. Whatever the reason for the Investigators to want to look at the book, the curator at the museum, Gustavo Ibáñez, will sadly explain that the book is currently not held by the university, but has been loaned to a benefactor to the university, Count Cielo Al-Hamrā. Fortunately, he can arrange an interview with the count and when this happens, the count will be very gracious and tell the Investigators that he has returned the book. The book though, has already been shipped off elsewhere, or has it?

There is a strangeness that runs deep not only into the question of the missing book, but also in the city of Pamplona itself. The inhabitants seem to be suffering from collective trauma, there are reports of missing persons and missing persons posters across the city, and the Investigators begin to suffer strange dreams, nightmares that point to the city’s dark history and the invasion of the Romans centuries before. Random strangers approach the Investigators, some to question their interest and reason for being in the city, others steal from them, or worse, assault them as an act of revenge, but for what? Then there is Count Cielo Al-Hamrā, a man that the Investigators have met, but whom nobody can quite recall too much about beyond his being a great benefactor to the city.

Ultimately, the investigation will point to Count Cielo Al-Hamrā as being key to getting to the heart of the mystery in Pamplona, let alone being key to locating the book. In fact, by this time, the location of the book almost becomes secondary to the need to find just what is really going on in Pamplona. Doing so will take the Investigators to the count’s home, a villa with an oddly unlived in feel and signs of strange activity, whilst the staff genially about their odd duties. This is to the extent that the Investigators may be able to explore the villa almost unimpeded, though something is surely waiting for the truly curious. Which should of course, include the Investigators.

Forgotten Duty supports the Game Master with details about Pamplona and the University of Navarra, descriptions and details of the odd encounters that the Investigators might have around the city, and the means to create the dreams that they begin to have. There are missing persons posters too, as handouts. Throughout, there are footnotes as well, and these will help the Game Master add flavour and detail to the scenario.

Physically, Forgotten Duty is decently done, but a little rough around the edges. It does need another edit as there is missing text, but the maps are good, as are the few handouts.

Forgotten Duty is a solidly weird and creepy scenario. It can easily be played in a single session and so be run as a convention scenario, in fact more easily than it can be worked into a campaign. It is also just as easy to adapt it to the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror of your choice.

—oOo—

Just Crunch Games and All Rolled Up will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 31st to Sunday June 2nd, 2024.

Cthulhu ‘Old Style’ like its 1981

The first thing that you notice about Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is how surprisingly white and colourful it is. There is bold use of colour in its chapter headings and then the rest of the book is simple, black on white text. Which gives it a clean, modern aesthetic, that is, of course, easy to read, but also in keeping with the setting for Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition. That setting is the modern day of the here and now because just like H.P. Lovecraft set his stories in his time, so the Game Master’s scenarios are, by default, set in her time. This does not mean that Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition cannot be set in other historical periods, but the modern day is the default. Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, which means it pitches ordinary men and women in extraordinary situations and confronts them with the true sanity-leeching mysteries of the universe as portrayed in the stories by H.P. Lovecraft. For its mechanics, it uses The Black Hack, Second Edition, the player-facing retroclone originally published in 2016. Lastly, the simple layout and use of colour allows the artwork of Paul Tomes and Andrés Sáez Martínez to really stand out.

Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is published by Just Crunch Games following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Notably content for both editions of the roleplaying game is compatible and the roleplaying game is designed for quick and easy play, especially Investigator creation. After an introduction and a decent example of play, Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition wastes very little time in explaining the rules. For its core mechanic, whenever a Player Character—or Investigator—wants to take an action against a threat that will either hurt or hinder the Investigator, his player makes a Save against an appropriate attribute by rolling under it. If the roll is successful, the Investigator avoids the Threat, but suffers its consequences if his player roles equal to the attribute or higher. This is always player-facing, so whenever an Investigator wants to punch a cultist, his player will roll a Save against his Investigator’s Strength, but to avoid the cultist punching the Investigator, his player would roll a Save against his Investigator’s Dexterity. Depending upon the situation the player can also run with Advantage or Disadvantage.

The investigative aspect of Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is handled via Resources. These categorised into three types—Investigative, Sanity, and Supplies. All types of Resource work in the same way. Each is represented by a die type. When a Resource check is called for, the Resource die is rolled. If the result is a one or a two, the Resource suffers a Break, meaning that the Resource is partially used up. Eventually the Resource die is stepped down to a four-sided die and when that suffers a Break, it is completely used up and thus Broken. Investigative Resources are divided between Smokes and Flashlights. Flashlights are divided into Smokes and Flashlights. Flashlights are used to get clues through studying, finding clues, spotting things, and so on, whilst Smokes cover gaining clues via interaction, financial means, or connections. When a one or a two is rolled on either Investigative Resource, a clue is still found, but something bad happens to the Investigator. When Flashlights is Broken, the Investigator is burned out and exhausted, whilst when Smokes is Broken the Investigator has brought too much attention upon himself.

In terms of running and playing the game, Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition lays its principles for both the Game Master and the player early on. For the former, this includes giving out plenty of information, setting the stakes when the Investigators are faced by threats, giving them opportunities and choices, and so on, whilst for the latter, to be a part of the story and support the other Investigators’ role in the story, to investigate and ask questions, to focus on survival rather than fighting, and more. Much of this will be familiar to veterans of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but not everyone is, so the advice here is more than welcome.

An Investigator in Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition has six Saves (or attributes)—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma—that are rated between three and eighteen. He also has four Resources— Hit Die, Sanity, Flashlights, and Smokes—and various Benefits, including a Skill, and various Assets. Two methods of creating an Investigator are provided. Freeform gives the widest choice, but the simplest method is to pick one of the roleplaying game’s six Archetypes. There are six Archetypes—Adventurer, Bruiser, Performer, Philanthropist, Ruffian, and Scholar. Each determines the Resource die values for an Investigator’s Resources, gives a single Special Ability and lets the player choose another from a choice of three, and either rolls for or chooses an Occupation and an associated skill. There is actually a lot of flexibility within each Archetype, so that an Adventurer can be an Archaeologist or an Aviator, but he could also an Aristocrat or a Sales Rep.

Henry Brinded
Strength 13 Dexterity 12 Constitution 10 Wisdom 15 Intelligence 18 Charisma 11
Sanity D10 Flashlights D12 Smokes D10 Hit Die D4 Armed 1 Unarmed 1
Hit Points: 4
Special Abilities: Iron Mind, Deduction, Erudite
Occupation: Academic
Skill: Language (Latin)

An Investigator is meant to be fragile, although as a group, Investigators do have access to a pool of Fortune Points which allow a failed Save or Resource check to be rerolled. Combat follows from the core rules and in spite of Investigators having access to Fortune Points, enforces their fragility. They have relatively few Hit Points, weapons can be deadly, and armour is rare.

Sanity is handled as a Resource die in Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition. When an Investigator is confronted with something truly terrifying or the effects of the Mythos and the Investigator’s Sanity suffers a Break, it indicates that he has encountered something so hideous or unreal that he has temporarily lost his connection with reality. Sanity being Broken means that the Investigator has lost focus or is overwhelmed by the alienness of what he is confronted with. The Investigator becomes permanently insane when the number of times a Sanity Break occurs equals the Resource die for his Sanity. However, not all horror is equal, and it is possible to suffer a Shock instead of an incidence of Insanity when his Sanity suffers a Break.

The moments when an Investigator is likely to be at his most fragile is in confronting the Mythos. Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition does not include an extensive list of Mythos entities and creatures. It goes even further by not actually including stats for several of the Old Ones, but instead discusses their relationship with humanity (or in some cases, humanity’s ‘supposed’ relationship with them). This moves the seven discussed—Azathoth, Cthulhu, Hastur, Nodens, Nyarlathoptep, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth—into narrative roles rather than something that can be physically defeated. Only eight lesser creatures and races are given more detail, both in terms of background and mechanics. Traditional Mythos creatures such as the Deep Ones, Elder Things, Ghoul-Kin, Rhan-Tegoth, Shambler, Shoggoth, and Yuggothi, are joined by the Deathless, the equivalent of Keziah Mason from ‘The Dreams of the Witch-House’ and its antagonist. All of these are given nicely detailed descriptions and an excellent illustration. In each case, their stats are very simply presented, there is a note as to their motivation, and their origins, purpose, and allegiances are discussed, along with options and variants. It is interesting to note that Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition makes clear that Deep Ones are not the equivalent of Orcs or Goblins in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Both Mythos tomes and artefacts in Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition work in a fashion similar to Mythos antagonists. Each volume or item is measured by its Index, representing both the potency of its content and the danger it represents to the reader; Ire is the attention garnered by its possession—and especially—the use its lore, power, or spells; and Lore the ‘benefit’ gained from the successful study or use of it. The latter might a modifier to a Save, an Advantage on a later Save, a Skill, one or more Spells, and so on. In the case of the Index and Ire factors, the Investigator will need to make a Save against them. Failure in the case of Index means that the Investigator suffers a Shock and in the case of Ire, a failure means that the attention and scrutiny of cultists or other forces of the Mythos has been drawn to the tome or artefact and thus to the Investigator. This can lead to more direct encounters with them or set up difficulties in the story later on, meaning that Ire and a failure to Save against it has narrative rather than mechanical consequences. One thing not explored here are Mythos artefacts—the focus is entirely on tomes rather than objects.

The list of Mythos tomes avoids the classics of Lovecraftian investigative horror, so no Necronomicon, De Vermiis Mysteriis, or Unausprechlichen Kulten. There are several quite detailed examples though and tables for the Game Master to create her own. In terms of spells, there is a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. Thus, there is The Voorish Sign and Elder Sign alongside Deceiver’s Charm and Cyclopean Shift. Of course, knowing and casting magic has consequences. Knowing any spells automatically imposes a reduction in the Resource die for an Investigator’s Sanity and casting spells requires a personal sacrifice, there being the possibility of an Investigator losing a point from of his six Saves. In addition, casting a spell triggers a save against the Ire of that spell, potentially attracting the attention of the cultists and other Mythos entities. Magic in Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is deadly and dangerous, and its use is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

The scenario in Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is ‘Save Innsmouth’. This is an expansion and development of Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary. It is specifically written to be run in two hours, but is easily expanded to run in a longer, fuller session. In line with the rest of the roleplaying game, it is set in the modern day, taking place in Lovecraft Country in New England in the modern day, specifically in and around Innsmouth. In the short version, it begins en media res, with the Investigators trapped in the tunnels and caverns of the blighted town, decades ago shattered by the 1928 FBI raid. Already bruised and battered—and low on Resources—they must find their out of their rough and rancid prison, hunted by a strange creature… In the longer version, the Investigators, students at Miskatonic University and members of its Miskatonic Heritage Club, have travelled to Innsmouth, first by bus and then by hiking, in order to examine and photograph the pre-Prohibition town before it is completely bulldozed to make way for a health spa. It is a scenario in two parts. The bulk of its investigation is done in the journey to Innsmouth, whilst the action takes place in the second part, the imprisonment, which is what is played out in the shorter version of the scenario. If there is an issue with the scenario it is that the author talks about it for four pages before actually telling what the scenario is about. This is frustrating, although the information given in those four pages is both relevant and useful.

Lastly, Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition gives a short discussion of campaigns, supporting it with a series of tables of prompts and pointers that can be used to bring the Investigators and get them sufficiently intrigued by a mystery to want to investigate. These are good starting points which the Game Master will of course, have to develop. It also introduces the concept of Remnants, the consequences of encountering the Mythos upon an Investigator’s personality. Roleplaying these will reward the players as a whole with an extra Fortune Point.

Physically, Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is nicely presented. It needs a slight edit, but is very accessible, clean, and tidy, and the artwork is excellent. This does include some artwork generated by MidJourney AI, but the publisher has made a charitable donation to the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution.

Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is a streamlined and cleaner presentation of the earlier, The Cthulhu Hack, much like Old School Essentials is a cleaner and more accessible update of the Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay. It is not just cleaner and more accessible, the book itself is handier and easy to use. The downside of that is that it is not comprehensive in its treatment of the Mythos, but it is complete in and of itself. In play, the consistency of the rules, especially Resources, means that an investigation becomes one where every effort matters, not just facing the Mythos, since there is a chance of depletion, of a Break, each time an effort is made towards the investigation. Thus, the consequences of an investigation are wider than mere loss of Sanity and the tension of looking into mysteries is prevalent throughout an investigation rather than in just the confrontation with the Mythos.

Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is an excellent redesign and reimplantation of The Cthulhu Hack. It provides a solid introduction to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying and for any looking for a Old School Renaissance compatible roleplaying game dealing with the Cthulhu Mythos, Cthulhu Hack, Second Edition is the obvious choice.

Memories & Mystery

Published by Just Crunch Games, Thro’ Centuries Fixed is a scenario for The Cthulhu Hack, the elegant, stripped back player-facing roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror based on The Black Hack. It starts simple, using a classic storytelling situation, and then adds layers of mystery which hide an interesting twist upon another classic storytelling situation, this time of a Lovecraftian nature. Then it does it again. Veteran players of Lovecraftian investigative horror will quickly recognise the situation their Investigators are in and will quickly realise which entities of the Mythos are likely to be responsible for their current state. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Even as they keep the culprits in mind, the players have plenty of scope for both roleplaying and investigation as their Investigator try and work out what actually is going on. The set-up also means that Thro’ Centuries Fixed is suitable as a one-shot and would work well as a convention scenario. The nature of the set-up does mean that it would be awkward to add to a campaign, but it could work as a campaign starter. In addition, the simplicity of the mechanics to The Cthulhu Hack means that the scenario can very easily be adapted to the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror of the Keeper’s choice since she will be working with adapting the plot rather than the rules.

Thro’ Centuries Fixed is set in the modern day and takes place in New England, but could easily be adapted to other times, if not necessarily places. As a possible campaign starter, it could work in Lovecraft Country given its geographical location. The scenario begins with each of the Investigators waking up in a strange bed. Everything is unfamiliar to them. Their bodies, the colours, the light, the place. When they get up, they each find themselves in an unfamiliar home filled with a family made up of strangers who in turn each tell the Investigator that they have been acting oddly, out of character. The Investigator cannot recall anything from before he woke up and all this is new to him. Which means effectively, at this point, the Investigator and his character sheet starts out as a blank slate. This will change as the Investigator explores the ‘new’ world around him. In game terms, this reduces the amount of preparation necessary to run the scenario and it lends itself to further ideas—perhaps the players could actually be playing and creating versions of themselves and perhaps in the opening scenes, the players could take it in turn to roleplay the family members of the other Investigators. In whatever way the opening scenes of the Thro’ Centuries Fixed are played out from player to player, Investigator to Investigator, there is potential here for some unexpectedly fraught and domestic roleplaying not normally seen in Lovecraftian investigative horror. One option here, would be for the other players to roleplay the various members of the mysterious families that each of the Investigators wakes up. Otherwise this will require some preparation beforehand, whereas with this troupe style play, many of these scenes can be improvised.

Investigation beyond their respective homes quickly reveals to the Investigators is that they live in the same location and they have been working together. This is in Maine, near the Acadia National Park which is on Mount Desert Island and is also home to the Black Woods Museum. In particular, the Investigators have been taking an interest in the forthcoming opening of the Peaslee Collection which will house the archive of Nathanial Wingate Peaslee, famed for explorations of Australia. Of course, mention of Peaslee’s name will be further indication to Lovecraft devotees of which Mythos entities are involved in the scenario. Fortunately, and even though it runs to only forty pages, Thro’ Centuries Fixed is a little more complex. When the now aware Investigators visit the Peaslee Collection, they find themselves oddly attracted to the curators as there is something fascinatingly familiar to them, though it seems that their actions, much like those of the Investigators before they awoke, are strange… And then, they get really strange as the scenario hurtles to its confrontational conclusion.

Physically, Thro’ Centuries Fixed is a slim digest-sized book. It is neatly organised with the rules pointers clearly marked and sidebars containing supplementary information or advice for the Keeper. It is lightly illustrated, but the artwork is decent and the map serviceable.

Thro’ Centuries Fixed draws obviously from H.P. Lovecraft’s story, ‘The Shadow Out of Time’, making much of it familiar to the Lovecraft devotee or veteran of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but is very much its story. Thro’ Centuries Fixed explores the horror of amnesia and disassociation in an interesting and involving way, nicely pulling the players and their Investigators into the unknown from the Investigators own unknowingness.

Abnormal Once Again

Like any roleplaying game with its own set of monsters, familiarity breeds contempt. One exposure to them too many and they become less impressive, less of a threat, and so they lose their impact. So it is with Dungeons & Dragons and the contents of the Monster Manual and so it is with Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Now for Dungeons & Dragons the common solution is to provide an ecology guide to a particular monster or a whole new bestiary, but for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror there is less obvious scope for creating and adding more monsters to the canon of the Cthulhu Mythos. There is though, plenty of scope for variation, reinterpretation, and making connections, which is exactly what Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos does.

Published by Pelgrane Press, it should be made very clear from the start that whilst the mechanics of Hideous Creatures are designed for use with the Gumshoe System of Trail of Cthulhu, the rest of the supplement’s content will work with just about any roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. And even then, adapting the mechanics of Hideous Creatures to any other roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror should not present too much of challenge given that for the most part the creatures and monsters it presents and re-presents are already present in those other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. So whether for Call of Cthulhu or Cthulhu Hack, Delta Green or FATE of Cthulhu, this is a supplement which should prove useful to the Keeper or Game Master of those games, not just Trail of Cthulhu.

As the title suggests, Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos examines the creatures of the Mythos—not the gods and deities, but the various races, beasts, things, and horrors. It builds around some fifteen or so such examinations previously available as single write-ups, all written by Kenneth Hite, to which Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Becky Annison, Helen Gould, and Ruth Tillman have added another sixteen. So some thirty-one of them, from Bat-Things, Bholes, and Black Winged Ones to Wendigo, Worm-Cultist, and Y’m-Bhi. Many of them will be familiar, such as Byakhee, Deep Ones, Ghoulds, or Shoggoths, but others are new. Yet whether old or new, all draw inspiration from and are described to some degree in some of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, and others. Each entry comes with an overview of the hideous creature, accompanied by its stats in the game. After that, each and every entry in the book gets a whole not more interesting, for overview and the stats mere serve as the chassis upon which is mounted various ideas, developments, and suggestions. They include possible alternative abilities; variations upon the explanation and interpretation of what each hideous creature is; Mythic Echoes draw parallels between the hideous creature and monsters and creatures of various myths around the world; the ‘Investigation’ second provides clues for each and every one of Trail of Cthulhu’s investigative abilities; ‘Scenario Seeds’ are adventure ideas; and lastly, the Bibliography provides a thumbnail description of the hideous creature’s source in the Mythos fiction as well as other works of note in which it—or an alternative version—has appeared over the last century. 

So, what Hideous Creatures provides is not just thirty-one horrible monsters and alien races, but over three hundred possible extra abilities across the thirty-one entries, over three hundred variations, over one-hundred-and-fifty parallels and connections with the Mythic Echoes, over nine hundred clues tied into Trail of Cthulhu’s Investigative Abilities, ninety or so scenario seeds, and thirty-one bibliographies and sample clues. It should be noted that the variations are designed to be ‘intentionally self-contradictory’, whilst the scenario seeds are based upon the classic or baseline versions of the Mythos creatures and monsters. It seems churlish to reduce the supplement to just numbers, but what it showcases is the scope of the supplement’s imagination and just the sheer number of ideas on show. 

So for example, Night-gaunts, the winged creatures with barbed tails, prehensile paws, and inward horns upon their heads, traditionally known for their blankness of their faces and their predilection for tickling their victims are suggested as having a face like a roiling storm, a shifting plasticity, or a void which opens onto a Great Abyss. They might not be slender, but as their name suggests—gaunt, with wings like a moth or a flying squirrel or… Instead of simply tickling to make a victim laugh, a Night-gaunt’s barbed tail renders him agonizingly breathless or recoiling in helplessness as spiders scuttle over the skin. New possible abilities include Chest Crunch as a Night-gaunt lands upon a victim’s chest and crushes his lungs, or Tracking, enabling a Nigh-Gaunt to track a victim it has already touched via its sense of smell, whether on the Earth, the Moon, or in Dream. Variations include Night-gaunts capable of assuming the faces of those it has killed or of anyone currently dreaming, actual investigation of or curiosity about Night-gaunts enables them to filter into the dreams of the foolish and so attract their attention, and Night-gaunts themselves are immune to the most harrowing of Mythos manifestations or locations. Mythic echoes draw parallels between the Night-gaunt and the legend of the Night Hag, amongst others… Amongst the Clues, Anthropology links cultures around the world with traditions of dark shapes crushing or tickling their victims, whilst Cop Talk reports many people hearing the missing girl laughing ‘from upstairs’, but can she have been upstairs from everyone on the whole block? Of the three scenario seeds, ‘Precious’ looks to be highly entertaining, as the 1928-1929 archaeological dig at Lydney Park by Tessa Wheeler and Mortimer Wheeler unleashes something which haunts and hunts those associated with the dig, including one J.R.R. Tolkien! The bibliography starts with H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’ before suggesting authors as diverse as W.H. Pugmire, Brian Lumley, Gene Wolfe, and more. Lastly, the handout takes the form of a flyer put out by a husband whose wife disappeared upon Silverstrand Beach, warning others and calling for the attention of the authorities.

As well as examining many of the familiar, Hideous Creatures examines nine new creatures—Bat-Things, Black Winged Ones, Gaseous Wraiths, Medusas, Raktajihva, Ultraviolet Devourer, Vampirish Vapour, Worm-Cultist, and Y’m-bhi. Of these, Raktajihva actually comes from a letter written by H.P. Lovecraft and is interpreted as an avatar of the Bloody Tongue, whilst for Call of Cthulhu purists, whilst the Worm-Cultist may not necessarily be new. Something similar, named the Crawling Chaos, does appear in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, the very first campaign for Call of Cthulhu.

Physically, Hideous Creatures is as well laid out and as well written as you would expect for a book from Pelgrane Press. If there is a downside in terms of the presentation, it is that the artwork is not quite as good as in other supplements for Trail of Cthulhu. That said, the handouts for each and every one of the entries in the supplement are excellent.

Ultimately, Hidden Creatures takes its inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s own assertion that stories of vampires, werewolves, and even ghosts had become too familiar and too formulaic to evoke true horror—“Horrors, I believe, should be original – the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.” Unfortunately, with the proliferation of the Mythos in fiction, games, and other media, the authors of Hideous Creatures suggest that, “Almost a century after he wrote, his own monstrous races have likewise begun to seem like comfortable story furniture rather than unnerving signals that the world is horrible and wrong.” Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos is a counter or solution to this problem, presenting a plethora of ideas and variations which successfully makes the familiar unfamiliar, and providing inspiration upon inspiration for the Keeper or Game Master—whatever the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror.

Mother's Embrace

Published by Just Crunch Games, Mother’s Love is an anthology of three scenarios for The Cthulhu Hack. As its title suggests, the three involve investigations at the root of which stands Shub-Niggurath, ‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young’, ready to ensnare the unwary in her fecund embrace, wrap her woody branches around them, and perhaps, grant them rebirth. All are modern, but one is set in 1950s Canada, whilst the other two take place in the Mediterranean in the relative here and now. All three are essentially one-shots and whilst they do require preparation upon the part of the Keeper just as any other scenario, the rules for investigator generation in The Cthulhu Hack make it easy for the players to create their investigators and get playing. All three are also fairly light on mechanics, making their plots and set-ups easy to adapt to the roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror of the Keeper’s choice.

The trilogy opens with ‘Deep Roots’ which sees the player characters investigate a double murder and apparent abduction of a child in 1950s Canada. Written by Chloé Germaine Buckley and Jonathan Buckley, it casts the investigators as members of law enforcement or Child and Family Services, the first because of the murdered couple, the second because the abducted child had recently been adopted by the murdered couple. The child was adopted from The Rainy River Home for Foundlings and Orphans, located in an isolated town in northwestern Ontario, and the investigators will quickly learn that another child adopted from the orphanage—which has recently been shut down—was also involved in a violent incident. So the question is, are the cases involved? Further, just what might have been going on at the ramshackle and rarely inspected home for children?

Answers of course lie at the orphanage, although there is much information to be found in the nearby town of Lake of the Woods by talking to the inhabitants or checking local records. The orphanage, naturally—or is that unnaturally?—stands on the edge of a dense forest that the locals, including members of the nearby First Nation reserve, avoid. There is definitely a sense of the gothic to both forest and orphanage, of the forest as a force beyond nature, and of protecting its own. What it is protecting should be fairly obvious, but why is left up to the Keeper to choose one of three options given. Once chosen, the Keeper only need use the elements for the selected option given in the rest of the scenario. This gives the Keeper some flexibility in how she runs the scenario and some of the options could actually work together as well as stand on their own.

If there is an element in ‘Deep Roots’ which could have been better handled, it is the link from the murder (and the other violent incident) to the orphanage. It feels slightly too tenuous for the investigators to want to go there based on the information they have at that point. Some players, having learned of the link, may simply decide to follow it up anyway, but others may need more of a reason and the Keeper should probably be prepared for that just in case. Overall, ‘Deep Roots’ does a solid job of presenting Shub-Niggurath as a maternally protective presence and there is a nicely creepy atmosphere to the scenario, one that plays upon our fear of children as malicious beings and our fear of the woods.

The second scenario takes place at a specific time and location—Malta and 2016, the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In Keris McDonald’s ‘Ġgantija’, a local expat thespian has decided to stage a special performance of The Tempest held in the Neolithic Temples at Xaghra. Unfortunately, the rehearsals take a turn for the worse when one of their number is found dead and after going to the police, the player characters, or actors, find themselves chased by something beyond their imagination, from island to island. The set-up for this scenario is absolutely fabulous, any roleplayer should relish the opportunity to play a cast of plummy-voiced, luvvies and the like, overdoing the acting before confronted by murder, a weird cult, and a curse. Designed ideally for four or so players, it is a pity that Ġgantija did not come with a list of actor archetypes for the players to create and really ham it up with before it becomes bloody and undulating.

From this somewhat BBC Sunday night drama-style beginnings ‘Ġgantija’ quickly turns up the weirdness before adding in a dash or two of conspiratorial elements. These manage to feel both unexpected and unsurprising at the same time, being a radical plot twist on the only island it could take place on. Overall, this is a fun adventure, one that portrays Shub-Niggurath as a primordial, vengeful mother figure.

The third and final scenario in Mother’s Love is ‘Gifts of the Flesh’ by Kathryn Jenkins. This casts the investigators as members of Protectors of Mistreated Animals (PMA) setting out to break into an abattoir on a tiny Greek island, which is the source of a highly successful ‘luxury’ organic boar meat business. As animal rights activists they want to confirm their suspicions that ‘Kronos Meats’ are using chemical enhancements to produce such good quality meat. The investigators will need to sail to the tiny island where the company is based, make their way past its one town, and from there break into the abattoir. 

Unfortunately, ‘Gifts of the Flesh’ is linear in structure and more obviously so, and whilst there are clues to found, it never really feels as if the investigators can do very much, except push on. For the players to want to have their investigators to push towards the climax of the scenario, a strong sense of motivation will be needed. More than any of the three, ‘Gifts of the Flesh’ would probably have benefited from pre-generated investigators. There is a thick, oppressive atmosphere to the scenario, which transforms Greek myth into the Mythos and casts Shub-Niggurath as a transformative figure—there being a lot of change in the scenario—capable of giving rebirth. There is also a lot of background to the scenario and anyone with a keen interest in Greek myth may make the connection between myth and Mythos fairly quickly. Again, there are notes on how to obfuscate the links.

Physically, the three scenarios and Mother’s Love as a whole is well presented. The hardback has a decent full colour cover and the internal artwork is decent too. The three scenarios are generally written with a reasonable amount of advice for the Keeper to help in their staging. Some of the maps could have been more sharply produced though.

Mother’s Love is a solid collection of scenarios, each easy to run, each easily adapted to the mechanics of the Keeper’s choice, and each entry exploring a different aspect of Shub-Niggurath. None of the three is unplayable, but ‘Ġgantija’ is the standout, presenting opportunity aplenty for some great roleplaying, almost like actors being offered juicy roles. 

Droned to Failure

The latest scenario The Cthulhu Hack from Just Crunch Games is Valkyrie Nine. The winner of both the UK Games Expo 2019 Best Roleplaying Adventure and UK Games Expo 2019 People’s Choice Awards Best Roleplaying Adventure at UK Games Expo 2019 is a one-shot Science Fiction scenario of cosmic horror set some fifty years into the future. It is 2072. Two years ago the European Space Agency initiated its Valkyrie project, establishing a series of automated stations on the Lunar surface to mine for its mineral wealth. One year ago monitoring and maintenance teams were assigned to each of the stations. Unfortunately, as the scenario begins, the Valkyrie Nine mining station has suffered a calamitous event of an unknown nature and it is up to the player characters to determine the cause and nature of the event and save the rest of the crew.

Although it can be played by fewer players, Valkyrie Nine is best played by five players. What they play are not members of Valkyrie Nine’s crew, but instead the station’s maintenance drones. To that end, five pre-generated drones are provided—an Emergency Unit, a Build Unit, a Medical Unit, a Service Unit, and a Survey Unit—and the means to modify them. As drones, the characters have the Saves Durability, Integrity, Cognition, and Expertise, instead of Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Dexterity. Instead of Hit Points they have Structure and instead of Flashlights and Smokes Resources—the ability to spot things or conduct research and learn from others respectively—they have Spatial Acuity and Relational Code, whilst a third, Database Access, represents a Drone’s ability to cope with data dissonance. Plus each drone type has its own features and two Modules—selected from a range of four—which work much an ordinary investigator’s Occupation in providing an Advantage when making an associated Save. 

Valkyrie Nine
Rescue-One
Emergency Unit

Durability 8 Integrity 6 Cognition 13 Expertise 13

Spatial Acuity d8
Relational Code d8
Database Access d4

Structure 6

Features
Heat Shield (d8, plus Rad hardened), Tripod (Extendable, unstable), Prehensile (Long gathering grippers), Siren (Warning, plus vocal unit)

Modules
Biometrics [X] Override [X] Suppression [O] Structural [O]

At the beginning of Valkyrie Nine the player character drones are activated following an incomplete recharging cycle to find the mining station in near darkness bar emergency lighting, the air filled with smoke, and a siren blaring. There are no signs of the crew. The task before the drones is to establish the nature of the emergency, conduct repairs as necessary, locate the crew and render aid as required. Their progress is hampered by a station-wide power reset, locked doors and hatches, and more. As they progress through the station, it soon becomes apparent that something strange is going on…

Valkyrie Nine is a sandbox-style investigation in which the drones are free to explore the limits of the station in any order their players desire. The base consists of three domes—Crew, Command, and Research—around a central Core dome below which is the Geo-Dig into the Lunar surface. Each of the locations, from dome to dome is described in some detail and what the drones might find at each.

The horror in Valkyrie Nine is of a slow build and reveal, the drones working from dome to dome uncovering more clues as to what has happened, some of them mundane, some of course, quite weird. Each of the locations is quite detailed and pleasingly, many of them are accompanied by play-test notes from the author which not only add a personal touch, but also help the Game Master stage and run the game.

There are two potential issues with Valkyrie Nine. One is that experienced players may guess or deduce the nature of the mystery at the heart of the scenario. There is no way to avoid this, except for such players to be good sports and roleplay their determining the nature of the mystery. Realising the true nature of the situation does not necessarily confer any advantage though… The other is that whilst the investigation process is well handled, the revelation of the scenario’s mystery is not as strongly supported as it could be. There is Game Master advice on how to handle this in drip feed fashion, but given that the scenario is written as a one-shot, it would have been helpful for the Game Master other than the author if some nudges and hints tailored to the player characters had been provided. To counter this, it might be a good idea for the Game Master to prepare some prior to her running Valkyrie Nine.

Physically, Valkyrie Nine feels somewhat cramped, but then it has a lot of information to impart to the Game Master. It is lightly illustrated with a nice pair of pieces that can be shown to the players at the appropriate time. There are more handouts than illustrations, these reflecting the bland, almost bureaucratic nature of the Valkyrie Nine facility. Well, it is a European Space Agency programme after all…

Valkyrie Nine presents an intriguing mystery and roleplaying challenge for the players in roleplaying drones presented with a disaster situation of unknown cause. For the Game Master, Valkyrie Nine is a challenge to prepare, present, and run—as a sandbox more challenging than a straightforward investigation—but overall, this is a superb little horror one-shot scenario which feels inspired by the films Moon and Alien as if played by Huey, Dewey, and Louie from Silent Running.

Hacking the Fecundity

The Dark Brood is a supplement for The Cthulhu Hack, the the elegant, stripped back player-facing roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Just Crunch Games and based on The Black Hack. It explores the nature and fecundity of Shub-Niggurath, ‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young’, presenting possible manifestations of both herself and her ‘Dark Brood’, examples of her Dark Brood, a set of adventure seeds built around them, and more. This comes packaged in a slim booklet, not illustrated, but cleanly and clearly laid in fashion which is easy to read and grasp.

The idea is that the incessantly fertile womb of Shub-Niggurath serves as a ready source of strange new horrors, impossibly copious in form, but limited in terms of their existence, and born of an uncaring mother to slither forth to spread horror and chaos, to serve those dedicated to the worship of their mother, and to scream and squall having been abandoned by her. For Shub-Niggurath herself, The Dark Brood suggests five aspects—Creator, Nurturer, Sustainer, Guardian, and Incubator. The descriptions accompanying these aspects do not go into any great depth, the supplement focusing more on her offspring than on ‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young’, but they perhaps represent more attention than has been paid to her in any number of roleplaying supplements for Lovecraftian investigative horror over the years. This is not to discount the number of scenarios that involve Shub-Niggurath, but these aspects do indicate that there is scope for further examination of them. Perhaps there is room for an anthology of full scenarios dedicated to her—even from Just Crunch Games.

From the wellspring of chaos that is Shub-Niggurath’s womb, The Dark Brood suggests that her children take on three forms. These are as the almost human-like Avatar, sect-leader, begrudging but wise adviser, or power behind the throne; as Servitors, bound as bodyguards, hunters, assassins, and so on, often to serve a cult leader; and as Mindless Progeny, womb-spawn spat out to do more than destroy, desecrate, and despoil. Six examples of Dark Brood are given, each randomly created using the mechanics presented in the earlier supplement, From Unformed Realms. They include the Devil Hound, an oddly triangular canine-like thing whose gaze burns flesh, is able to move through certain materials without trace, and the touch of which causes strange dreams of the womb, whilst the Ophidiaes is a massive creature with a bite which melts flesh and who leaves behind a faecal trail of partially digested flesh. The six are all examples of Mindless Progeny rather than Avatars or Servitors, so there is scope again for material that develops and presents examples of these forms. 

Some of the six example Mindless Progeny are perhaps underwritten in terms of their purpose, the following trio of Adventure Seeds make up for it. They include strange goings on in a fertility clinic, a handful of missing children on forestry land of which local travellers are the primary suspects, and the strange death of a pioneer in the sports drinks industry. These are nicely developed, each a page or two in length, with multiple suggestions for getting the investigators involved, and each easy for the Keeper to develop into a full adventure. 

Options for worshippers of Shub-Niggurath are also given. These explore who and why someone might so worship her, so those who worship her for Betterment might be radical lifestyle gurus, dieticians, and so on. Other options include Breeding, Contagion, Indulgence, and even Philanthropy! These are accompanied by a number of rituals devoted to Shub-Niggurath, all quite nasty and quite detailed. The suggestions are that they were part of witchcraft practices, of fairy legends, and of alchemy, but hints that in them there may be something more akin to modern chemistry. How this rituals might be learnt is up to the Keeper to decide (or perhaps a future supplement?). Rounding out the supplement is an ‘Obligatory Random Table’, consisting of ten entries which work as encounters, nudges, and so on that can be rolled for during a game or used as inspiration by the Keeper. Again, this is a good set of ideas and suggestions for her use.

The Dark Brood examines Shub-Niggurath like no supplement before, presenting a rash of ideas, creatures, adventure seeds, spells, and more. Yet there is a sense of frustration to the booklet, for it touches upon certain elements without developing them, like the other two aspects of Shub-Niggurath’s avatars, the cults devoted to her, and so on. To be fair though, this is a slim volume, so there is not the room for everything else a Keeper might want in a supplement devoted to her. Ultimately, The Dark Brood is an interesting and likable booklet which handily supplements any information about ‘The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young’ a full rulebook might contain. In the meantime, the Keeper will have to wait for the definitive supplement on Shub-Niggurath.

Constant Cravings

Three Faces of the Wendigo—although you would not know that this was the title because it does not appear on the cover of the book, front or back—is an anthology of scenarios for use with The Cthulhu Hack, the light ruleset with player facing mechanics based on The Black Hack for handling quick and easy games of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Putting this oddity aside, the anthology presents three standalone encounters in the snowy, icebound climes of North America with the fearsome spirit of Algonquin legend—the Wendigo and the desperate anthropophagical cravings they engender. Each of the trilogy is a stark white, wilderness bound confrontation with the ultimate in cultural taboos. Long pig anyone?

Published by Just Crunch Games, the trilogy opens in media res with ‘Wolves in the Mountain’ by Richard August. The player characters—trappers, hunters, merchants, and residents of the town of Newcome, long left behind by the frontier—are heading into the mountains. Only a day before, a ragged, desperate stranger staggered into town, recounting a tale of treasure, an expedition into the mountains, and betrayal and bloody murder by the expedition leader, Marlowe. Now, the posse of player characters is heading back up the stranger’s path in order to bring Marlowe to justice (and if they find the treasure in the meantime, that is a bonus, right?). Having ascended up the side of the range, the player characters come upon a cave mouth, beyond which lies a set of charnel caverns, full of blood, decay, madness, and something else… Set some time in the nineteenth century—the exact period is never made clear—‘Wolves in the Mountain’ nicely builds a sense of raw horror, almost brazen in its sinewy muscularity. There is a sense also of something ‘Old School’ here in the vaguely dungeon-like caves which echos back to the very earliest of days of Call of Cthulhu when scenario writers had nothing but Dungeons & Dragons upon which to model their adventures. 

The cloying sanguine atmosphere of the first half is nicely contrasted by the scenario’s second half, a desperate pelt down the down the cold, white mountain, back to Newcombe. Only something has beaten them to it and this where the pacing of ‘Wolves in the Mountain’ becomes flaccid… There is no set ending to the scenario, the Game Master being provided with five potential endings, all of them suitably bleak. It also means that there are five unsupported endings, one of which the Game Master will need to choose and then develop himself if he is to keep up the energy and pacing of the scenario’s first half. He will also need to really provide the players and their characters with some kind of motivation at that point too, because the likelihood is that in comparison to the first half, they are likely to be left floundering, wondering what they should be doing.

The middle scenario switches to the Jazz Age of the 1920s and somewhere along the Saskatchewan River. In ‘Lonely, Dark, and Deep’ by John Almack, the Houghton party of Americans, is on a hunting trip. The scenario includes the members of the party as pre-generated characters—Judge Houghton, his wife, Ida, their friend, Doctor Sawyer, a dentist, Ian Corey, a cook, and Motega, a local guide. Echoing Alone Against the Wendigo—the solo scenario for Call of Cthulhu published in 1985—the party finds that at first, nature seems to be striking back at them, but then it does does seem so natural anymore, but rather more unnatural until… This is the simplest of the three scenarios in Three Faces of the Wendigo, being a wilderness set adventure of survival horror consisting of little more than a few scripted scenes. It is short, sharp, and easy to prepare for a one-shot or demonstration game.

The end scenario is ‘Tainted Meat’, written by the designer of The Cthulhu Hack, Paul Baldowski. It moves the trilogy into the modern day and back to Newcome—or at least a Newcome—where time and life seems to have passed the tiny town by. The player characters are travelling nearby when an accident renders their car in need of repair and in the coldness of midwinter, the nearest town is Newcome. The inhabitants seem odd, ill prepared for visitors, but seem to want to help even if their behaviour is a bit remote. The title of the scenario might suggest what is going on in Newcome, but the player characters will need to put no little effort into finding out what is really going on. This is because in the main, the scenario is set up to be reactive in its response to the actions of the player characters. They will be primarily exploring the town in an effort to discover what is going on in Newcome, essentially rendering the town as a ‘mini-sandbox’. 

In comparison to the first two scenarios, Tainted Meat’ is very different. Mechanically, it involves a lot more NPCs for the Game Master to keep track of and roleplay, but in terms of atmosphere, its horror is primarily creepy and odd, though there are plenty of scares too. Its pace is much slower, which lends itself to being played over more than the single session. Overall, this scenario is the most sophisticated in the book and brings it to a solid conclusion.

Physically, Three Faces of the Wendigo is a neat little book. The front cover is very nice and the internal illustrations are decent enough. The writing needs another editing here and there, and perhaps a little more development in terms of the endings. What the book could have done with, is maps. Now both the cave of ‘Wolves in the Mountain’ and the Newcombe of ‘Tainted Meat’ are described in some detail, but really a map of each should have been included for easy reference by the Game Master.

None of the ideas at the heart of the scenarios in Three Faces of the Wendigo are original, but they do not have to be in well designed and well executed scenarios. Which is, for the most part, what the scenarios are in this trilogy for The Cthulhu Hack. That other part—the not the ‘most part’—really comes down to the undeveloped ending(s) of ‘Wolves in the Mountain’, which otherwise starts strong. Of its companions, ‘Lonely, Dark, and Deep’ is a solid, straightforward piece of survival horror, whilst ‘Tainted Meat’ is as creepy and as dark as you would want a taboo busting scenario to be. Overall, Three Faces of the Wendigo is a decent trilogy of one-shot or demonstration scenarios.

The Innsmouth Project

In terms of Lovecraftian investigative horror, salt-sodden Innsmouth is an outlier, a place where the Mythos walks wild, its true batrachian nature hidden behind a  veneer of pretense to human civilisation. So of all the places in the Call of Cthulhu canon, it is relatively little visited. There is the campaign Escape from Innsmouth and the anthology, Before the Fall, both published by Chaosium, Inc., but scenarios are far and few between in comparison to the many other locations visited in Lovecraft Country. Further, the fate of Innsmouth remains unexplored and unvisited, the proposed 1998 supplement, Children of the Deep, never having materialised. That is until the release of Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary in 2016.

Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary is a short, one-session, one-shot of survival horror scenario for use with Just Crunch Games’ The Cthulhu Hack. Based on The Black Hack, The Cthulhu Hack is a rules, light set of player facing mechanics that handle investigation, sanity loss, action, and combat with relative ease. Investigator creation is also easy, so a group could create their investigators and get playing in a very time. Similarly, the scenario is straightforward and simple enough that the Game Master could adapt it to the rules of his choice, whether a Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying game or not.

Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary takes its cue from the dilapidated and crumbling nature of post-financial crash Detroit and the loss of its history with the loss of its architecture. In the early twenty-first century, Innsmouth has been abandoned for some ninety years, raided and cleaned out by the FBI as part of Prohibition. Now some developer wants to move and regenerate the town, meaning the loss of the remaining architecture which dates from the period of Prohibition and even older. Keen to document and explore this rare remanent of the twentieth century before it is lost, a group of students and ‘urban explorers’ from Miskatonic University in Arkham—the player characters—have made the trip north. Yet as the scenario opens, they find themselves at the bottom of a briny hole, battered and bruised, with only one way out...

Beginning in media res, Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary is at its heart a linear affair, a set of underground tunnels, cellars, and caverns that ultimately do lead to an exit. The investigators do no more than follow this labyrinth—the Game Master can arrange these as he likes, but the tunnels will lead to this exit anyway—perhaps piecing together Innsmouth’s secret history from the clues found at several of the locations in the labyrinth, eventually either escaping via a flooded cavern, dying in the attempt, or being consumed by the tunnels’ other inhabitant. The Game Master is free to run this how he likes, but a time mechanism or countdown is provided to speed the scenario up.

The problem with Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary is that although it has the means to break up the monotony of the escape attempt, it does not develop or handle them as well as it should. The scenario includes some eleven points that the investigators are supposed to know or have experienced prior to the start of the scenario. These can be given out as is, but it is suggested that they be played out as flashbacks. In fact, this should have been more than a suggestion—it should have been a recommendation, perhaps with advice on how to present them and more detail which would have both fleshed them and the scenario out. Together they would have helped to bring the current state of Innsmouth to light, as currently this feels overlooked—or at least, underdeveloped.

Another issue really left up to the players to decide is what their investigators are carrying. They are allowed the gear necessary to help them document or explore the soon to be bulldozed town of Innsmouth plus a luxury item. Some advice as to both would not have been unwelcome and would have made the scenario easier and quicker to set up. Certainly some equipment suggestions would have helped. That said, the character creation process is otherwise well done and includes a means to establish relationships between the characters in readiness for their ordeal.

Physically, Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary is a simple, eight-page booklet, unillustrated and done on glossy paper behind a good, brochure-like cover. At the core of Save Innsmouth: A Student Documentary is a good scenario, but it misses opportunities to flesh the scenario out and to bring the dilapidated current state of Innsmouth to life as much as it does its past.

Hacking Convicts & Cthulhu

The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu combines two of the more interesting titles to come out for roleplaying Lovecraftian investigative horror. The first is of course The Cthulhu Hack, the elegant, stripped back player-facing roleplaying game based on The Black Hack. The second is Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia which presented a new society and new horrors against a backdrop of isolation and corruption in a convict colony. The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu brings the two together, providing an introduction to the setting of Great Britain’s first steps on the far continent and supporting them with the light mechanics of The Black Hack.

Published by Just Crunch Games, The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu layers the background elements over the mechanics of The Cthulhu Hack. So it uses the same five Classes as The Cthulhu Hack—Adventurer, Bruiser, Philanthropist, Ruffian, and Scholar. Then a player selects from a Role, essentially what the Investigator does in the New South Wales penal colony, the options being Convict, New South Wales Corps officer, Free Settler, or Government Official. This determines starting equipment. Each Investigator also needs an Occupation, whatever he did before coming to Australia and if a Convict, an Offence, whatever it was that got him transported. There are more social benefits to these background details, but there are likely to be circumstances where the Keeper will award an Investigator an Advantage or Disadvantage die, depending upon the circumstances.

Our sample Convict is Henry Bacon, a big man capable of handing out a battering. Greed and a fondness of gin got him involved in crime and he became a fearsome gang member. He did kill a man, a rival gang member, but witnesses all swore that he was provoked and that it was self-defense, so Bacon did not go to the scaffold. He was sentenced to transportation for life instead.

Henry Bacon
First Level Bruiser
Role: Convict
Crime: Murder
Occupation: Bricklayer
STR 16 DEX 13 CON 11
INT 13 WIS 11 CHA 09

Hit Points: 12
Sanity Die: d8
Attack Damage: 1d8/1d6 (Unarmed/Improvising)
Lamplight/Rum: d4/d4
Gear
Uniform, bandana, six letters from home, shiv, empty flask

Mechanically, The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu makes three changes. The first is to have all attributes rolled on 2D6+4 rather than three six-sided dice. This is reflect the harsher life and conditions in the colony. The other is to change the names of the Flashlights and Smokes—the first the resource used to discover clues, the second the resource used to purchase things or bribe people—to Lamplight and Rum. The reason for the change from Flashlights to Lamplight is obvious, but that of Smokes to Rum less so. The change is because Rum was a unit of currency in the early years of the colony.

The third change is to add rules for Shock. This gives an alternative effect to failing a roll of the Sanity Die, a short, sharp shock lasting a moment or a few rounds while an Investigator suffers the shakes, dives into cover, faints, screams, and so on. This allows the players to better handle their Investigators’ Sanity Dice as a resource, so that they are not depleted too early on in a scenario.

What The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu does not do is provide the means to create Aboriginal Investigators as does Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia. The author explains that this is because this would add further tension to a playing group in an already tense situation. Guidelines are given for equipment in the colony, for blackpowder weapons and indigenous weapons—the latter surprising given the lack of Aboriginal Investigators. Also listed are possible written sources of information that might be sources of written information for the Investigators and a number of Mythos entities indigenous to Australia to supplement those given in The Cthulhu Hack. This is accompanied by a short discussion of the Mythos down under. 

Rounding out The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu is ‘Longships and Short Fuses’, an adventure outline set at mine where the treatment of the convicts has led to its superintendent being recalled to Sydney. After he has left, a tunnel collapses in the mine revealing a centuries old burial containing a Viking longship. Three options are given as what is going on at the mining site and these are decent enough. It is just that encountering an entombed Viking longship on the coast of Australia of all places, is more than likely to stretch the credulity of the players, let alone the fact that they will have to portray their Investigators not necessarily knowing all that much, if anything at all, about the Vikings. 

Physically, The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu is reasonably laid out and lightly illustrated. As written, The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu is just about serviceable as an introduction to the setting of Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia, but no more and no less. If there is an issue with the supplement, it could have better highlighted the corruption rampant in the colony during the period of this setting. Arguably Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia overemphasised it just a little too much, but The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu does not emphasis it enough. If there is a second issue with the supplement, it is the nature of the scenario, which is faintly ridiculous.

Ultimately, to get the most out of The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu, the Keeper will need the fuller information and background to the setting found in Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia. Thus The Cthulhu Hack – Convicts & Cthulhu provides a serviceable method to run the Convicts & Cthulhu setting using The Cthulhu Hack rules.

—oOo—

Just Crunch Games will have a stand at UK Games Expo, which will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2017 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Charting the Unchartable

Ostensibly, From Unformed Realms is a supplement for Cthulhu Hack, the stripped RPG of Lovecraftian investigative horror published by Just Crunch Games that is based on The Black Hack, the equally back-to-basics RPG inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, it is a systems neutral supplement that can be used with just about any RPG of Lovecraftian investigative horror or any RPG that deals with the weird, in just about any genre or time period. Well, that is except for a couple of pages at the back that are more period and element specific, but neither of those pages are the supplement’s raison d'être, which is essentially, rugose and squamous. What it is, is a means to throw something unexpected and unknown into the path of the investigators, adventurers, or misfortunates…

With a matter of rolling three six-sided dice, the GM can determine a significant feature of something unspeakable. The first die determines the type of trait—extremities, senses, skeleton, fluids, appearance, and other features; the second a category, so for example, under fluids the options are voluntary and involuntary (plus tables for nature, neurotoxins, and unclean as needed); and the third die, the specific detail, which might be spittle, ink, sweat, vomit, bile, pus, and so on, all depending upon the rolls made.

Trenton ran. Behind him he could hear Dawson’s cries for help, but it was too late for Dawson, held as he was behind the bar-like ribs of the thing’s chest cavity. It was the first life-form that they had encountered on this planet, its sibilant wheezes, rising and falling making it sound like the wind that should have rolled between the towers of this ancient city of yellow metal. It was not they had they not heard these sounds, it was why they they were just not wary enough until Dawson noticed that there was no wind. Then the sibilance stopped and the shout came. It staggered his companion and before he could react something lumbered out of the shadows with its impossibly tall jaw wide open and snapped shut on the exo-archaeologist. 

Dawson had yelled and banged to get free. It took no notice. Trenton took no notice. All he saw were the multiple legs and then the spinning inside the cavity. Dawson rolling and rolling as a secretion was spread from front to back, howling in fear as he tried to work out what was happening to him. It was not going to happen to him though. Trenton had to get back to the landing ship. Then the thing began to pipe a pulsing sound and as it bounced off the yellow metal walls around him, Trenton knew he was being hunted.

So with a matter of three rolls of the dice, it was determined that with these monsters, its senses involve sound, specifically a shout or whisper; that it has a skeletal adaptation in the form of a cage; and that its form is arachnoid. Anything else is all terrible imagination. Of course, these are just three options and the GM is free to roll as many or as few times as he wants, but this is where From Unformed Realms works best, as a spur upon which the GM can hang his imagination and develop something more from the dice results.

Where From Unformed Realms does not quite work is going from first questions, such as “‘What does this thing look like?” and “What is the role of this thing?”. It is not a means to create monsters and other things in rational means since it neither sets out with those questions in mind nor places the tables and their answers in anything other than a random order. Now there is nothing to stop a GM consulting a particular sub-table to obtain such directed answers, but in some cases there is only a limited number of answers. Which means that such cases, for example ‘form’ and ‘specialist’, do not offer as many variations in comparison to other categories.

Rounding out From Unformed Realms is the two-page ‘The Obligatory Appendix’ in which a GM can roll up a mission statement or plot for his next scenario. These include tables for ‘The Hook?’, ‘Organisation’, ‘Reason?’, ‘Location?’, ‘Horror’s Motivation?’, ‘Nightmares?’, and ‘Strange Discovery?’. Unlike the various tables given in the rest of the book, none of the entries come with an explanation, but to fair, this is not really needed as the various entries are all self-explanatory. Further, these tables are organised in a logical fashion so as to help the GM set up the bare bones of a plot ready for him to flesh out. Further they are really only suited for use in the modern era, so the 1890s of Cthulhu by Gaslight, the Jazz Age of the default period of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or the contemporary period of the here and now.

Arguably, From Unformed Realms could benefit from clearer advice on how to use the tables, that is, more directed advice on how to use the tables. Equally, the appendix could be expanded into its own book and there can be no doubt that this would also be very useful. As it is, From Unformed Realms is the sort of book you want to have on your shelf when short of ideas and short of time and browsing for inspiration.