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This book is a collection of some aging Call of Cthulhu adventures, most of which seem to be from the very early years of Call of Cthulhu - probably back when it was 1st or 2nd edition. That's for a game that's currently in edition 5.5 - in other words, they're dated, and somewhat severely. For somebody who's interested in seeing what scenarios were like back then, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's nowhere near the quality of adventures that have come since.

For me, reading this book is almost painful - it's like watching the baby steps of Call of Cthulhu, half-hearted and confusing. For example, "Black Devil Mountain" has a good number of failings. Characters are introduced, but never developed enough for you to feel any sympathy for them - especially a little girl who happens to be "chosen" by the local supernatural boogies. There's a dungeon crawl, but there's no information on how to make the scene scary. There's a host of monsters - wolves, ghouls, the undead (skeletal and zombie), Cthonians and Hastur, all ganging up for a Mythos hoedown in this remote location. There's plenty of potential, especially if you drop the nonsense, but the scenario doesn't even have an ending - a plot thread involving the little girl is referenced, but never developed. Keeper improvisation is key, but it's a joyless read, and there's not a lot to recommend it. (Top-notch interior art, though - whoever the artist was deserves a steady job.)

Other scenarios share the same failings. For example, a scenario called "The Asylum" has a lot of great material - an insane doctor with an unwholesome link to shoggoths, an inbred tribe of squatters - but the scenario is written as a formless mass of statistics, room listings, and characters, all of whom aren't described in enough detail to make it coherent. Meanwhile, the entire scenario's premise - and promise - is summed up in a brilliant, watery piece by Tom Sullivan, a man held in the air by the tentacles of some kind of thing while the asylum, monolithic and angular, looms in the background. Does the scenario reflect that? To some degree; but there's no emphasis on story - just information. Now, there's a lot of good material, and a dedicated Keeper could massage it into a good scenario, but without the art, I wouldn't have given the scenario a second glance. So there's that.

Other scenarios are pretty much the same. A shipboard interlude aboard the Mauretania has some interesting encounters, including an assassination attempt and a linkup with some other fearless investigators of the occult. A haunted house turns out to be much different from what was expected. The lengthiest scenario, The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn, is definitely an odd duck - it has the most story-esque presentation, but goes on for way too long and ends in a weird situation. (As a matter of fact, the first part of the story seems more like a setup for the second rather than a useful adventure.) It's good, but the plot twists - a body switch, a mad scientist who's able to create a handy Death Ray - are a little extreme, even for Cthulhu. I found Thoth's Dagger, an Egyptian scenario, to be the least impressive, consisting of yet another Goddamn Dungeon Crawl in a pyramid/tomb.

Probably the most remarkable is Gate Out of The Past, which almost plays like a board game version of Call of Cthulhu - three Elder Things pop open a gate to Arkham and wind up bringing shoggoths with them. Since the other end of the gate leads into the Cretaceous, the investigators get a chance to play tag with a Ceratosaur in the distant past. But the scenario mentions that playtesters actually wound up allowing Arkham to be destroyed by vengeful shoggoths, and I assume that such a result shouldn't be disallowed by Keeper fiat. There's no fixed end; just a bunch of ingredients.

I don't know - maybe people like those elements, with just creatures, a setting, and some information. I, personally speaking, loathe it - there's nothing in the adventures that I couldn't pull out of the central rulesbook. Compared with the narrative flow of , say, Masks of Nyarlathotep - or even "Landscrapes', from At Your Door - these scenarios pale. They were likely useful for their day, but now that they're outdated, they either need to be upgraded and rewritten or eliminated.

What saves the book from being a sale to Titan Games is the material in the back. The Ten Rules of Cthulhu Hunting offer humorous advice and anecdotes to players for aiding them in their fight against the Mythos, including quotes from movies - "What are we supposed to use, harsh language?" apropos to the advice being given. There's a series of remarkably useful adventure seeds, most of which will be handy for when you need an idea for next week's adventure. The most useful section - at least, the most gruesome - is a section that details the gruesome details of the corpses left behind by Mythos monsters. Sample text:

Nyarlathotep:

"We found the room in a terrible state. Reddish-gray slime coated the walls and the furniture had been tossed around the room like a child's toys. Our friend was sprawled in the center of the room, a look of absolute teror frozen on his face When we moved the unmarked corpse slightly there came a faint rattling noise from inside the head. X-rays revealed that the brain had shrivelled to the size of a large walnut."

That's not bad for a single paragraph, although others are much more explicit - the extra gore is okay, but it gets a little repetitive if you read them all at once. It's some good stuff to scare the hell out of players, though. (Almost every monster is listed, including some from the Dreamlands.) It closes out with a Gahan Wilson inspired novelty flow chart designed to create adventures from scratch - "Your / (self/uncle/father/brother/etc.) / is missing and / was last seen in / a creepy old house / in which he performed ghastly experiments / which explodes." Funny stuff.

Is it worth buying? If you want to see what the early days of Call of Cthulhu were like, sure. There's material that can be mined out of this stuff that'll make it more up-to-date, and some scenarios could be made excellent with the addition of a lot of work on behalf of the Keeper, but it's a product that seems half-finished. The stuff in the back is worth looking at - even paying for - but the problem is that it isn't worth the $18 purchase price for scenarios that haven't been touched in a good while. (There's even references to the CHA statistic in the book, a 2nd or 3rd edition stat later replaced by APP.) I would buy it if you're interesting in doing some renovation, but as for meÖthere's just not enough here to justify even keeping it in my collection.

-Darren MacLennan

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Cthulhu Casebook
Author: Barton, Clegg, Hamblin, Hargrave, Harmon, Herber, McCall, Monroe, Willner, Wolcott, Smith, Sullivan Category: Company/Publisher: Chaosium Line: Call of Cthulhu Cost: $20 Page count: 135 ISBN: 0-933635-67-2 Capsule Review by Darren MacLennan on 05/21/99. Genre tags: Historical Horror Gothic	This book is a collection of some aging Call of Cthulhu adventures, most of which seem to be from the very early years of Call of Cthulhu - probably back when it was 1st or 2nd edition. That's for a game that's currently in edition 5.5 - in other words, they're dated, and somewhat severely. For somebody who's interested in seeing what scenarios were like back then, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's nowhere near the quality of adventures that have come since. For me, reading this book is almost painful - it's like watching the baby steps of Call of Cthulhu, half-hearted and confusing. For example, "Black Devil Mountain" has a good number of failings. Characters are introduced, but never developed enough for you to feel any sympathy for them - especially a little girl who happens to be "chosen" by the local supernatural boogies. There's a dungeon crawl, but there's no information on how to make the scene scary. There's a host of monsters - wolves, ghouls, the undead (skeletal and zombie), Cthonians and Hastur, all ganging up for a Mythos hoedown in this remote location. There's plenty of potential, especially if you drop the nonsense, but the scenario doesn't even have an ending - a plot thread involving the little girl is referenced, but never developed. Keeper improvisation is key, but it's a joyless read, and there's not a lot to recommend it. (Top-notch interior art, though - whoever the artist was deserves a steady job.) Other scenarios share the same failings. For example, a scenario called "The Asylum" has a lot of great material - an insane doctor with an unwholesome link to shoggoths, an inbred tribe of squatters - but the scenario is written as a formless mass of statistics, room listings, and characters, all of whom aren't described in enough detail to make it coherent. Meanwhile, the entire scenario's premise - and promise - is summed up in a brilliant, watery piece by Tom Sullivan, a man held in the air by the tentacles of some kind of thing while the asylum, monolithic and angular, looms in the background. Does the scenario reflect that? To some degree; but there's no emphasis on story - just information. Now, there's a lot of good material, and a dedicated Keeper could massage it into a good scenario, but without the art, I wouldn't have given the scenario a second glance. So there's that. Other scenarios are pretty much the same. A shipboard interlude aboard the Mauretania has some interesting encounters, including an assassination attempt and a linkup with some other fearless investigators of the occult. A haunted house turns out to be much different from what was expected. The lengthiest scenario, The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn, is definitely an odd duck - it has the most story-esque presentation, but goes on for way too long and ends in a weird situation. (As a matter of fact, the first part of the story seems more like a setup for the second rather than a useful adventure.) It's good, but the plot twists - a body switch, a mad scientist who's able to create a handy Death Ray - are a little extreme, even for Cthulhu. I found Thoth's Dagger, an Egyptian scenario, to be the least impressive, consisting of yet another Goddamn Dungeon Crawl in a pyramid/tomb. Probably the most remarkable is Gate Out of The Past, which almost plays like a board game version of Call of Cthulhu - three Elder Things pop open a gate to Arkham and wind up bringing shoggoths with them. Since the other end of the gate leads into the Cretaceous, the investigators get a chance to play tag with a Ceratosaur in the distant past. But the scenario mentions that playtesters actually wound up allowing Arkham to be destroyed by vengeful shoggoths, and I assume that such a result shouldn't be disallowed by Keeper fiat. There's no fixed end; just a bunch of ingredients. I don't know - maybe people like those elements, with just creatures, a setting, and some information. I, personally speaking, loathe it - there's nothing in the adventures that I couldn't pull out of the central rulesbook. Compared with the narrative flow of , say, Masks of Nyarlathotep - or even "Landscrapes', from At Your Door - these scenarios pale. They were likely useful for their day, but now that they're outdated, they either need to be upgraded and rewritten or eliminated. What saves the book from being a sale to Titan Games is the material in the back. The Ten Rules of Cthulhu Hunting offer humorous advice and anecdotes to players for aiding them in their fight against the Mythos, including quotes from movies - "What are we supposed to use, harsh language?" apropos to the advice being given. There's a series of remarkably useful adventure seeds, most of which will be handy for when you need an idea for next week's adventure. The most useful section - at least, the most gruesome - is a section that details the gruesome details of the corpses left behind by Mythos monsters. Sample text: Nyarlathotep: "We found the room in a terrible state. Reddish-gray slime coated the walls and the furniture had been tossed around the room like a child's toys. Our friend was sprawled in the center of the room, a look of absolute teror frozen on his face When we moved the unmarked corpse slightly there came a faint rattling noise from inside the head. X-rays revealed that the brain had shrivelled to the size of a large walnut." That's not bad for a single paragraph, although others are much more explicit - the extra gore is okay, but it gets a little repetitive if you read them all at once. It's some good stuff to scare the hell out of players, though. (Almost every monster is listed, including some from the Dreamlands.) It closes out with a Gahan Wilson inspired novelty flow chart designed to create adventures from scratch - "Your / (self/uncle/father/brother/etc.) / is missing and / was last seen in / a creepy old house / in which he performed ghastly experiments / which explodes." Funny stuff. Is it worth buying? If you want to see what the early days of Call of Cthulhu were like, sure. There's material that can be mined out of this stuff that'll make it more up-to-date, and some scenarios could be made excellent with the addition of a lot of work on behalf of the Keeper, but it's a product that seems half-finished. The stuff in the back is worth looking at - even paying for - but the problem is that it isn't worth the $18 purchase price for scenarios that haven't been touched in a good while. (There's even references to the CHA statistic in the book, a 2nd or 3rd edition stat later replaced by APP.) I would buy it if you're interesting in doing some renovation, but as for meÖthere's just not enough here to justify even keeping it in my collection. -Darren MacLennan Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 3 (Average)

Cthulhu Casebook