My First Call of Cthulhu Game: Edge of Darkness One-Shot

 

A D&D DM's First Impressions of Call of Cthulhu

   Though I've been DMing for years now, the only tabletop RPG besides D&D I've played is Dread. Dread is a very rules-lite game designed for horror one-shots where the only mechanic is a Jenga tower. It is great fun, but gets stale after a few games. I've tried more than a few times to hack D&D apart into a scarier game, but the truth is that it's just not designed for horror. Call of Cthulhu seemed like the perfect solution to this problem. It has combat, chase, and sanity mechanics, as well as the potential for longer campaigns, but it is still simpler than D&D. I picked up the Starter Set and ran Edge of Darkness for my RPG group, and it was a massive hit. It was the most fun I've had as a Game Master in a long time. 

The Starter Set

    This box costs 25 dollars and it is excellent value for your money. You get a simplified version of the rules (laid out in the perfect way to guide players through character creation), a solo choose-your-own-adventure style book, three scenarios, an array of handouts for them, and some dice. It was very simple for me to learn the rules and for my players to make their characters. If you want to try Call of Cthulhu, this is more than enough to get you going. 

Edge of Darkness

    I picked the scenario Edge of Darkness to run since it seemed straightforward and had the coolest monster, the Lurker in the Attic. The Lurker is invisible and capable of turning dead people into its zombie minions. It's also too powerful for the players to take head on, so they have to think carefully. Very nice. Prepping the scenario wasn't too difficult overall, but there were a few parts that left me scratching my head. The basic plot is that a dying old man tells the party to go to a cabin and banish a monster before he dies and the monster is set free from the cabin. He gives them a box filled with documents to investigate. Then, the party heads to the cabin, explores, finds lots of creepy things, discovers the ritual to banish the creature, and then tries to enact the ritual while the Lurker terrorizes them. Simple, effective, and scary. What is not simple are the mystifying red herrings present in the adventure that have nothing to do with the plot and serve to distract the players from the actual scenario. The box of documents contains clues that point to Egyptian artifacts, blocks of amber, lost continents, and New Orleans. The book claims that these red herrings are intended to set up future adventures. This does not work. Clues setting up future plot points are great, but not if your players interpret them as the current plot. I tried to take most of these out of the scenario, but they are unfortunately present in the physical handouts. Beyond that, however, Edge of Darkness is great. There are evocative descriptions and detailed instructions for what can happen based on what the players do. There's also sections detailing the Lurker's motivations and behavior as well as ways to adjust the scenario if it's too deadly or too easy, allowing GMs to improvise with confidence. It is clearly written to make life easy for GMs, something which other RPG adventures fail to do so often. 

Running the Scenario: "I THROW THE MOLOTOV!" 

    The party introduced themselves at St. Mary's Teaching Hospital. Present was Daphne the flapper, Walker the P.I., Dr. DeYoung the professor, Joseph the cop, and Duke the journalist. They arrived to the deathbed of Rupert Merriweather, who gave them the task of banishing the evil he had left behind in a spooky cabin. Rupert gave them the box and went into a coma shortly afterwards. The players spent some time rooting through and examining the box's contents. They loved the physical handouts. Handouts are a big part of Call of Cthulhu, which is awesome. Very immersive. As I expected, they latched onto the red herrings quickly and began wondering aloud if they should go to New Orleans to investigate an unrelated murder. Another player mentioned that they might need an amber block to complete the ritual. Fortunately, they abandoned these ideas once I pressed the urgency of Rupert's oncoming death. The investigators first stopped at a hardware store for supplies. The scenario says to allow any player who wants a gun to have one, so I obliged. Dr. DeYoung asked to make an occult roll to see if he knew any supplies specific to the occult realm to bring. I answered that flashlights, incense, salt, or silver might be appropriate. Somehow, Walker latched onto the idea of salt and purchased several bags to bring with them. The party made a stop at the small town of Ross's Corners and learned from the locals that a woman named Maggie hadn't come home last night. Then, they proceeded to the cabin. As soon as they arrived, Walker began spreading a line of salt through the grass to surround the house. He came across both the body of a raccoon and a dead Maggie, provoking some sanity loss. Both of them had their ribs ripped apart and their hearts torn out. After the end of the salt escapades, they explored the first floor of the cabin. The entire first floor is covered in protective wards carved by its last occupants. This was a smart move by the writers, since it allows for the players to deal with a very powerful monster in a fun and interesting way. This illustrates the part of Call of Cthulhu I like the most: The players have to think with their heads and take the situation seriously to defeat their enemies, instead of just using what's on their character sheet. 

    Duke heard some noises coming from the cellar. Joseph and him went down to check it out, and everyone else was too chicken to come with them. Joseph barely dodged a chair leg being swung at his head by Red Jake, who then charged up the stairs and grabbed his things. The players determined he wasn't an immediate threat, just a crazy hobo who saw a monster. They started fighting over whether or not to cuff him. Jake bristled at the idea, as he'd be dead meat for the monster. He finally agreed to go wait in their car. They explored some more, and Duke's curiosity about the attic got the better of him. He poked his head up and succeeded his dodge roll as the monster charged him, but he still took damage as he fell off of a table. At this point, many of the characters sanities were running low, especially Daphne and Joseph. The investigators recovered a trunk of supplies to complete the banishment ritual in the basement. They waited until midnight and then began, with Joseph acting as their lookout. I described the Lurker becoming enraged, leering at them through the windows. Joseph saw Red Jake sprinting from the car as a nearly-invisible swirl of smoke chased him. The cop considered going out to help him, but then his chest exploded and his heart was ripped out, exploding on his face. This horrific sight caused Daphne to lose 6 sanity points at once, which resulted in major emotional trauma. She became paranoid and developed a fear of blood. The Lurker then started bombarding them with dead squirrels and zombie raccoons, which tore at the warding symbols above the entrances. Daphne smacked a zombie raccoon with a shovel. The ritual continued calmly for a bit longer until a woman cried for help outside the house. Out of the tall grass stumbled Maggie, her ribs torn open and her eyes glowing with undead evil. The sight of this was enough to make Joseph suffer major trauma as well as amnesia. He had no idea what was going on! Walker then ran over to kill Maggie, and the ritual continued. 

    The ritual neared completion when the cabin was flooded with light from a car. The town sheriff then yelled out, asking what was going on inside. Before the investigators could warn him, the Lurker turned his head backwards and took him as an undead thrall. To the players horror, the sheriff got back in his car, revved the engine, and began driving straight towards the house. If he succeeded, it would destroy the wards and the Lurker would slaughter them. Daphne and Joseph were too insane to act, while Dr. DeYoung was the only one still keeping up the ritual. Walker fired his gun but missed. It at last came down to Duke. He held in his hand a Molotov cocktail which he had made earlier in the game. Duke looked at me and said "I throw the Molotov." I smiled and replied "Make a hard throw check." Duke had placed zero points into throw. The likelihood of success was one in ten. He tossed the dice and the whole table held its breath. 

    Duke rolled a 4, a hard success. 

    I described as Duke tossed the cocktail through the broken windshield. The inside of the car exploded in a fireball, and it veered off to the side, tumbling over twice before stopping to rest as a smoking wreck. The table cheered. But the Lurker had one last trick up its smoky sleeve. In the adventure, it states that if you want to be a 'nasty' Keeper, you can have the Lurker throw corpses into the house, then resurrect it as zombie, thereby bypassing the wards. I was feeling mean, and I wanted to bring them right to the edge of disaster. A huge dark object flew through a window, landing in the center of the house. The investigators were face to face with a zombified brown bear. It roared and attacked. Now, Call of Cthulhu is not made for epic combats. If you've gotten into combat, you've gone wrong somewhere. This became clear to the players as one strike from the bear's claws was enough to nearly kill both Joseph and Duke. After a tense couple of rounds, Walker managed to finish it off with his pistol, but Joseph and Duke were badly injured. The investigators gathered to finish the ritual, and after coming face to face with the Lurker for a brief harrowing moment, it was banished. The players had succeeded, but they immediately rushed Joseph and Duke to the hospital, while Daphne would never be the same. 

Critical Success!

    My first Call of Cthulhu experience was amazing. It was tense, funny, stressful, and best of all, scary. In Dungeons and Dragons, its hard to make players really afraid and most problems can be solved with skill checks and good stats. This game is different. If you want to put the fear of God in your players, vibe in the 1920s, and never be sure who will survive, Call of Cthulhu is what you need for your next session. 

Thanks for reading!

Art by Chaosium.