TTRPG Thoughts: Call of Cthulhu 7e Starter Set
Like a great many people who witnessed WotC's fall from grace in January of 2023, I was filled with a sudden curiosity to play new tabletop games. I had already been playing small indie games from itch.io such as Apothecaria and Ebb Tide, but those were all solo games; I wanted to bring something to my regular D&D players to tempt them away from WotC and broaden their horizons.
I got the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set in physical form for Christmas, and when it went on sale in PDF form I couldn't exactly say no—so, my players and I migrated to Chaosium's eldritch fields. We'll probably finish up our Eberron campaign in D&D 5e before switching to Pathfinder 2e for good, but so far we've been enjoying our time in the 1920s with Chaosium.
This "review" is going to cover two Call of Cthulhu adventures from the Starter Set: Alone Against the Flames (a solo adventure) and Edge of Darkness (an adventure designed for 2-4 investigators/player characters and 1 Keeper/GM). I had a good time with both of the two adventures, but there were definitely some drawbacks.
Before I say anything else, however, I must point out I would absolutely recommend that you buy the Starter Set if you're at all interested in Call of Cthulhu, regardless of any drawbacks. For one thing, the price point can't be beat; four adventures, a dice set, and a booklet of introductory rules for less than 30 USD in the continental United States? That's amazing, especially considering how the combined prices of the full, physical Keeper Rulebook and Investigator Handbook exceed 100 USD if you buy them new and not on sale.
I think the Starter Set succeeds in most of what it's trying to do, which is be an introduction to the TTRPG world of Call of Cthulhu. Where it falls short, however, is where it tries to be an introduction to tabletop role playing games in general. I think certain aspects of the layout and how important information is presented aren't the clearest and most obviously delineated, but this might be because I'm coming from D&D 5e and am used to "read-aloud bits for the players" and "information meant solely for the GM" to be separated. Take my words with a grain of salt.
Also, heed this warning! There are spoilers for each adventure beyond this point!
My players had a blast with this. We'd never played in a real-world historical setting before (we mostly stick to classic fantasy) and we ended up having to google some interesting questions such as: when were fax machines invented? When could women open their own bank accounts without the permission of a husband or father in the state of Massachusetts? How fast do telegrams travel? Because all of us had at least a passing interest in history, finding out information to inform the gameplay never bogged us down and served to keep the gears turning in my players' minds.
I think my players enjoyed the element of vulnerability that came with playing Call of Cthulhu. Instead of the plethora of hit points that their characters had in D&D 5e, their characters in CoC generally had only 10 or so hit points and would remain quite "squishy" for the duration of our play. (For those unfamiliar with the system, in CoC one's character levels up their skills instead of their whole self; hit points do not increase with each survived adventure). They had to consider their choices more, and when they went to investigate the haunted farmhouse I could sense how tense they were upon finding the dead raccoon and (later) the body of Maggie McPhirter.
That said, I think the adventure had some loose ends that threw my players for a loop. The book that the NPCs reference extensively, De Vermiis Mysteriis, is a red herring; the players aren't supposed to be able to access it at the Miskatonic University. However, my players were convinced it was important, so I ended up changing it into a Cthulhu Mythos tome and letting my players sneak into the university archives to get their hands on it. Ultimately, the only investigator who could read the Latin text decided not to do so, since she valued her sanity, but we still spent a good two real-world hours in the bowels of the University. The other red herring in Edge of Darkness is the golden sarcophagus box inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, from which my players moved on pretty quickly after obtaining a translation. The red herrings were worrisome for me as a newbie Keeper, because I didn't know enough about the game world to really be able to compensate for them on the fly when things inevitably strayed from the plan. I only came up with the Cthulhu Mythos tome substitution after watching Seth Skorskowsky's introductory video about CoC's mythos and magic; tomes aren't discussed in the introductory rules that come with the Starter Set.
The handouts included in the adventure were frustrating. I play virtually over Discord without using a VTT, and the handouts for the players given in the digital document collection of the Starter Set come in the form of a single PDF. They aren't separate image files, so I couldn't copy/paste them individually or even upload them one by one into our TTRPG server. I had to take screenshots of each handout and copy/paste them for my players, which created issues with the text being smaller in some images because I had to fiddle with the zoom function in Adobe Acrobat, thus impacting readability. Additionally, some of the images were sideways in the PDF, so I had to take a screenshot, save it, open it in an image editing program, rotate it to the proper orientation, save it again, and then upload it into the server for my players to see. I get the feeling that the creators of the Starter Set had intended it to be used for in-person game sessions, even in PDF form. This seems like an irritating oversight to me.
Beyond the handouts, however, as I read further along in Edge of Darkness it became clearer and clearer that this isn't an adventure designed for virtual play; none of the notes for the Keeper offer suggestions for how to make it work in that fashion. For the climactic final confrontation with the Lurker, the investigators need to complete a banishing ritual at midnight (complete with chanting in Latin, burning some powder, and drawing a pentagram and other symbols). I had to really scratch my head for a bit over how to make this work for virtual play, and my solutions felt jury-rigged and not nearly as immersive as I would have liked. I would have loved to have played this module in-person and had so many ideas for how to make the ritual a truly memorable experience—but, unfortunately, that wasn't the case given that my players are scattered across the eastern half of the United States.
Unlike Edge of Darkness, Alone Against the Flames works perfectly well either virtually or in-person... because there's only one participant. This solo adventure reads like one of the "choose your own adventure" books from the 1980s, which was jarring for a few seconds—I had grown accustomed to more linear solo TTRPGs from itch.io—before I settled into the format. I'm grateful for having a physical copy of the booklet containing this adventure; as someone who hates navigating through PDFs, I would have found this torturous in digital form.
I will say that the plot of Alone Against the Flames is in some ways lackluster. If the player is genre-savvy, they should have quite a strong inkling of what's going to happen as soon as May Ledbetter mentions a festival that keeps the isolated town alive and fairly prosperous year after year. By the time Silas, the motor coach driver, leaves the PC stranded in this small town, that inkling should settle into certainty. I've read this plot before in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, and seen it in an episode of the TV show Supernatural (it was "Scarecrow" from Season One).
That said, the plot isn't really the point of the adventure. What makes this adventure "work" is that, as the player is guided through its many, many prompts (over 250 of them, in fact), they are taught how to play Call of Cthulhu passably well in a way that lets them progress at their own pace. The player is gently guided through all of character creation in the adventures opening stages, and makes a few initial skill checks before the action starts to ramp up and build toward a fearful crescendo.
Recognizing the plot before your character realizes they're in danger doesn't really accomplish anything; your character is trapped by the choices offered by the narrative ("to investigate the ruined church, turn to page X") that make perfect sense for a character who doesn't recognize that they've been selected to be sacrificed to the alleged spirit of the town of Emberhead. It's a bit like screaming at someone to run from a monster they can't see, only you're trapped behind a soundproof wall and there's nothing substantial you can do to help the person you're trying to save. You can't cheat, in other words. My guess is that the writers behind Alone Against the Flames knew that a good chunk of their audience would be canny to the plot, and used that to their advantage when crafting the adventure. My sense of foreboding was growing stronger and stronger as all of the signs pointed to what was going to happen, but there was no choice but to press onward and hope that I could see my character through to the end without my dice rolls getting her killed.
Alone Against the Flames has a multitude of endings (I skimmed the document and found five on a first pass, but I have a hunch there are more), some of which are "good" and involve your character escaping being burned at the stake, and some of which are "bad" and involve your character being killed. Some of the endings involve the townspeople of Emberhead receiving their comeuppance, others do not. The adventure has a lot of replay value, and I enjoyed it. It's a good way to spend a lonely dark night when you don't have anyone else around to play Call of Cthulhu with.
All in all, I think the Starter Set is a great introduction to the gameplay and world of Call of Cthulhu. As mentioned previously, the monetary value can't be beat, and I genuinely believe that you get a lot of bang for your buck; even with the slight annoyance regarding how Edge of Darkness isn't the most easily adapted to virtual play, I and my players still had a great time with both of these adventures.
I hope you do as well.