There are few role-playing games that are popular
enough to have entire magazines devoted exclusively to them. But
Call of Cthulhu does not only have
one magazine, but
several.
Most
CoC fans will probably be
familiar with The Unspeakable Oath, the longest-running of them. A
newer addition is The Black Seal, a magazine mostly dedicated to
European and British Mythos concerns. Another newcomer is the
German-language publication
Cthuloide
Welten by
Pegasus Press,
the German publisher of
Call of
Cthulhu. And if the #3 issue is any indication, it's a magazine
well worth purchasing.
The layout is up to Pegasus Press' usual high
standards, which means that it is superior to almost every other
publication in this industry. The art mostly consists of period photos,
with several drawings of varying quality mixed into it. Also noteworthy
is the near absence of ads, unless you count the industry news section
at the beginning (but then again, I don't mind learning that Chaosium
plans to publish a CoC SF
campaign named Undying Mars...).
This means that the 96-page magazine is almost pure information.
And just what kind of information can be found in
this issue? Well, noteworthy articles include:
- Aus den dunklen Zwischenreichen
- In den Tiefen der Meere (Teil 1): The first installment of a
two-parter about your average doomed scientific expedition. You know
the drill: Expedition finds ancient ruins (in this case, in South
America near Lake Titicaca), disturb something they should have left
alone, and get killed except for one man who promptly gets confined to
an asylum once he gets back to civilization and leaves his notebooks so
that a group of player characters can get into lots of trouble. Yes,
it's clichéd - but it's also fun, and the writeup and the
handouts (the diary) make you want to read more about this (in Cthuloide Welten #4, presumably).
- Der Sänger von Dhol:
A 1920s one-shot adventure taking place on an isolated German North Sea
island. These islands, for anyone not familiar with them, make a great
location for horror adventures - they are isolated, constantly
threatened by floods (there are dikes on all sides, and most of the
islands is below the medium water line), and the inhabitants are
usually a group of tightly interconnected families among whom it isn't
uncommon to marry your cousin. The adventure seems to be lots of fun,
and like many CoC one-shots,
the eventual fate of the pregenerated PCs is likely to be grim. Unlike
many adventures, you won't play people who came from outside the
island, but the inbred islanders themselves who have lived their for
most of their lives... The only problem with this adventure are the
character sheets, which seem to suggest that all PCs are illiterate,
which would make many of the handouts pointless. (According to Pegasus
Press, only one of the characters is, in fact, illiterate). Keepers
looking for a good one-shot should give this a try, though the players
should better be mature.
- Autofahren in den 1920ern: Die
USA: This is a short essay giving a broad overview over car
technology in the USA of the 20s, and gives the keeper and the players
a good idea what driving back then was like. This is very useful, as
many adventures in the 1920s will involve some sort of traveling...
- Aus dem Leben eines
Cthulhu-Investigators: An article that gives good advice - and
quite a few random tables - that help the players round off their
characters' personalities. After all, even CoC investigators doomed to die
still ought to have a personality...
- Geister- und Auraphotographie:
This essay describes the spirit- and aura-photography popular in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries - the tricks used by various
charlatans, the people who were fooled to them, and some baffling cases
that have never been adequately explained to scientists' satisfactions.
In the universe of the Mythos, it might very well possible to capture
things on films that normal people cannot see with their blank eyes...
- Im Angesicht der Ewigkeit:
A discussion of published Cthulhu campaigns, scenarios, and settings
that take place beyond the "default" 1920s setting of Call of Cthulhu -
from the distant past to the near future. A very interesting read, as
most of the products were completely unknown to me - and many looked
cool enough to hunt them down. Also mentioned are some non-CoC products that might nevertheless
be of interest to the keeper looking to expand his campaigns, such as Transhuman Space
or Nightmares of
Mine.
- Franz Kafka - Zwischen
cthuloider Realität und kafkaesker Traumwelt: This essay
gives an overview of the life and works of the famous writer Franz
Kafka. Not only does his biography have some eerie similarities to that
of H.P. Lovecraft, his many writings also tend to be rather... odd. And
when seen through the lens of the Mythos, he becomes even more
interesting. His style of writing seems to indicate that he was the
plaything of otherworldly forces, just like Erich Zahn. And just why do his diaries contain large
gaps - and why did he burn many of his writings? Questions that a
keeper might wish to explore...
- Die Cthulhu-Matrix: An
essay about the "standard" plot of CoC
scenarios - and tips and tricks on how to avoid them.
All in all, this issue is full of information useful
to a
CoC keeper, and more than
worth the €5.00 price of admission. Anyone who is able to read German
and has at least a passing interest in
Call of Cthulhu would do well to
pick it up.
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