The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Latest, but far from last, in Chaosium's series of updated editions of older products comes Escape from Innsmouth, 2nd Edition. Personally, I'm a bit mixed in my opinion of the practice. On the one hand I would like to see Chaosium put out more high-quality original material. On the other hand, though, "Escape" is such a good book it would be a shame if it were to fall into the "good but long gone" category of games remembered fondly by old-timers but unavailable to anyone else.

At 170+ pages, with generally excellent illustrations including a glossy insert map of Innsmouth and an excellent cover painting, "Escape" is substantially bigger than most Call of Cthulhu products, and the space is well used. The first 70 pages make up a description of the isolated seaside town of Innsmouth -- one of H. P. Lovecraft's most sinister and intriguing creations, rotting from within in the wake of an ancient contamination by the miscegenating, monstrous Deep Ones and their half-human spawn.

The book gives us a good overview of the doomed town's history, and it's current society under the corrupt auspices of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the local cult/church/government. A lengthy description of the town itself follows, broken down by neighborhood. Each section discusses the character of that part of Innsmouth, and details a selection of places and people that players are likely to be interested in.

There are a lot of deliciously evil details and "hooks" here, many expanding on passages from Lovecraft's Innsmouth-related stories. It's all very atmospheric -- creepy and mysterious with hints of not-quite-specified, but clearly unwholesome goings-on. The whole tainted town comes to life in a way not common in an RPG book

The rest of the book -- about 100 pages -- is devoted to three Innsmouth adventures and a number of outlines. The first adventure, "The Crawford Inheritance" is a solid introductory story about genealogy, grief, and forgotten family secrets, with an unusually personal element to the horror. It would be excellent for a single PC, and can be played without a single round of combat -- both fairly rare characteristics. The second adventure, "Escape From Innsmouth" develops one of the minor events from Lovecraft's "Shadows Over Innsmouth" into a full- fledged scenario. It is a fairly good story, and it serves well as a way for players to learn a bit about the town and its secrets, but it relies a bit too much on cliched scenes and characters and leads players around by the nose a bit -- perennial RPG adventure defects.

The third, and by far the longest, adventure is "The Raid on Innsmouth." I think it's a minor masterpiece, designed as the finale of an Innsmouth campaign. Expanding the "offstage" raid mentioned at the end of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth," it deals, in gruesome detail, with a top-secret government raid on the town and the surrounding region. In a nod to the movie "Aliens" from which the adventure borrows fairly liberally (hey, they could do a lot worse), the PCS are brought along on the raid as "advisors." Of course, the feds are woefully unprepared for the monstrosities they're up against, and it's up to the PCs to use their unique skills and knowledge to pull at least a modicum of victory out of the jaws of certain defeat.

At first glance the adventure would seem a logistical nightmare -- there are a total of six groups of raiders: Treasury Department agents, marines, even a submarine crew, each acting simultaneously with different missions, plus dozens of friendly and unfriendly NPCs, monsters and locations. Player characters are divided among the missions as needed, with other players taking the roles of other raiders in each scene. Many of the friendly NPCs have individual (and conflicting) goals, and the bad guys have their own plans to counter the raid. It sounds confusing, and it is, but the book clearly spells out what is happening during each of the eighteen "scenes" the adventure is broken into, and how the intertwining events should be staged for maximum impact. Even though there is a lot more heavy weaponry and trained personnel than your typical CoC adventure, it shows every sign of being as terrifying as ever, and PCs without combat skills have plenty of opportunity to contribute! in significant ways. I can't wait to run it with my group.

Escape From Innsmouth definitely falls into the "must buy" class of Cthulhu products. This is the kind of claustrophobic, madness-tinged mystery that Call of Cthulhu is all about. Not having read the first edition, I can't really say whether someone with the first should get the second, but those would be the only Call of Cthulhu keepers I would even hesitate to recommend the book to.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Escape From Innsmouth, 2nd Edition
Author: Kevin Ross, et al. Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium Cost: 22.95 Page count: 176 ISBN: 1-56882-115-8 Capsule Review by Eric Brochu on 12/22/97. Genre tags: none	Latest, but far from last, in Chaosium's series of updated editions of older products comes Escape from Innsmouth, 2nd Edition. Personally, I'm a bit mixed in my opinion of the practice. On the one hand I would like to see Chaosium put out more high-quality original material. On the other hand, though, "Escape" is such a good book it would be a shame if it were to fall into the "good but long gone" category of games remembered fondly by old-timers but unavailable to anyone else. At 170+ pages, with generally excellent illustrations including a glossy insert map of Innsmouth and an excellent cover painting, "Escape" is substantially bigger than most Call of Cthulhu products, and the space is well used. The first 70 pages make up a description of the isolated seaside town of Innsmouth -- one of H. P. Lovecraft's most sinister and intriguing creations, rotting from within in the wake of an ancient contamination by the miscegenating, monstrous Deep Ones and their half-human spawn. The book gives us a good overview of the doomed town's history, and it's current society under the corrupt auspices of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the local cult/church/government. A lengthy description of the town itself follows, broken down by neighborhood. Each section discusses the character of that part of Innsmouth, and details a selection of places and people that players are likely to be interested in. There are a lot of deliciously evil details and "hooks" here, many expanding on passages from Lovecraft's Innsmouth-related stories. It's all very atmospheric -- creepy and mysterious with hints of not-quite-specified, but clearly unwholesome goings-on. The whole tainted town comes to life in a way not common in an RPG book The rest of the book -- about 100 pages -- is devoted to three Innsmouth adventures and a number of outlines. The first adventure, "The Crawford Inheritance" is a solid introductory story about genealogy, grief, and forgotten family secrets, with an unusually personal element to the horror. It would be excellent for a single PC, and can be played without a single round of combat -- both fairly rare characteristics. The second adventure, "Escape From Innsmouth" develops one of the minor events from Lovecraft's "Shadows Over Innsmouth" into a full- fledged scenario. It is a fairly good story, and it serves well as a way for players to learn a bit about the town and its secrets, but it relies a bit too much on cliched scenes and characters and leads players around by the nose a bit -- perennial RPG adventure defects. The third, and by far the longest, adventure is "The Raid on Innsmouth." I think it's a minor masterpiece, designed as the finale of an Innsmouth campaign. Expanding the "offstage" raid mentioned at the end of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth," it deals, in gruesome detail, with a top-secret government raid on the town and the surrounding region. In a nod to the movie "Aliens" from which the adventure borrows fairly liberally (hey, they could do a lot worse), the PCS are brought along on the raid as "advisors." Of course, the feds are woefully unprepared for the monstrosities they're up against, and it's up to the PCs to use their unique skills and knowledge to pull at least a modicum of victory out of the jaws of certain defeat. At first glance the adventure would seem a logistical nightmare -- there are a total of six groups of raiders: Treasury Department agents, marines, even a submarine crew, each acting simultaneously with different missions, plus dozens of friendly and unfriendly NPCs, monsters and locations. Player characters are divided among the missions as needed, with other players taking the roles of other raiders in each scene. Many of the friendly NPCs have individual (and conflicting) goals, and the bad guys have their own plans to counter the raid. It sounds confusing, and it is, but the book clearly spells out what is happening during each of the eighteen "scenes" the adventure is broken into, and how the intertwining events should be staged for maximum impact. Even though there is a lot more heavy weaponry and trained personnel than your typical CoC adventure, it shows every sign of being as terrifying as ever, and PCs without combat skills have plenty of opportunity to contribute! in significant ways. I can't wait to run it with my group. Escape From Innsmouth definitely falls into the "must buy" class of Cthulhu products. This is the kind of claustrophobic, madness-tinged mystery that Call of Cthulhu is all about. Not having read the first edition, I can't really say whether someone with the first should get the second, but those would be the only Call of Cthulhu keepers I would even hesitate to recommend the book to. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Escape From Innsmouth, 2nd Edition