Review: Terrors From Beyond (Chaosium, 2009)

This is a rarity for Chaosium in recent years, a book of six non-campaign scenarios.  Not counting MULAs, they haven't done this since 2007's Mansions of Madness (2nd ed).  If you ignore second editions, you have to go all the way back to 1999's forgettable Last Rites.

Most (or all?) of these scenarios are taken from tournament scenarios and are designed primarily as one-shots.  They all provide pregenerated characters, both to tie the characters closely to the plot and to give the opportunity for roleplaying character types that might not otherwise see light of day.  Unlike Mansions of Madness, where all scenarios revolved around a spooky place, there is no real unifying theme.

As a review of a scenario anthology, this will contain multiple and egregious spoilers and is for Keepers' eyes only!  Players, read no further!

Review: Farewell, My Sanity (Chaosium, 2007)

This review was originally published in a slightly different form on RPG Geek.

This is Chaosium's Miskatonic University Library Association Monograph #0346, Farewell, My Sanity, originally published in 2007. The MULA books are limited print run, rough-draft style releases from Chaosium. Their purpose is threefold: one, to test the market on a limited basis to see if there is demand for a wider release; two, to allow authors a quick path to publication in the hobby; three, to save Chaosium money on editing, typesetting, art, etc.

The good news is that you can get more unusual material, or that with limited mainstream appeal, than you would otherwise. The downside is that this is often little more than a step above self-publishing, and they are often expensive compared to official releases in the main line. Farewell, My Sanity is an exception to this at $20 for 120pp, although there is a lot of white space that pads the page count unnecessarily.

Content-wise, this contains two excellent, solid scenarios that capture the feel of both Call of Cthulhu as well as Los Angeles.

Spoilers abound!  Players, stop reading now!

Review: The Keeper's Companion, vol. 1 (Chaosium, 2000)

(This review originally appeared in slightly different form at RPG Geek.)

This book is the second of four "core" books released by Chaosium in the early 2000s, the others being The 1920s Investigator's Companion (1997), The Creature Companion (1998), and The Keeper's Companion vol. 2 (2002). Like the other three, this is not "core" in any meaningful sense of the word, and is certainly not a requirement to play the game -- all you need for that is the basic Call of Cthulhu

book.

About a quarter of the book is taken, with slight modifications, updates, and corrections, from the original Keeper's Compendium (1996). The majority of the book was written by Keith Herber, with a list of supplemental authors that read like a who's-who list of Cthuloid luminaries (including Aniolowski, Petersen, and Ross).

This book does not has a unifying theme (other than "for Keepers") but is an anthology of material covering a diverse array of subjects. As such, the chapters skip around a fair amount, and also their utility will vary wildly from Keeper to Keeper. This is to be expected. Anthologies in general are not all things to all people and, in my experience, tend to be very hit and miss.

Review: Miskatonic University (Chaosium, 2005)

(This review originally appeared in slightly different form at RPG Geek.)

This is a large supplement written by Sam Johnson and released by Chaosium in 2005. It's the third reworking of official material published about the famous university, expanding upon 1995's Miskatonic University Guidebook by Sandy Atunes, which itself expanded on Keith Herber's groundbreaking Arkham Unveiled (1990). This is not a third edition, as most of the material here is either new, newly collated, or newly rewritten. Johnson put a lot of work into this and it was long in coming -- I think three years past its original projected release.

The main point of this supplement, as stated in the "Clear Credit" section, is to be the complete gaming reference for M.U., pulling in every creature, character, secret, etc. from the history of gaming scenarios and also most Mythos fiction. Unfortunately this has a fairly mixed effect, as I'll go into later.