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The 1920s Investigator's Companion saw first publishing in 1993, and has been subsequently revamped twice in 1994 and 1997. The book I am reviewing is the latest revision that I know of, which has been printed in 1997, to accompany the 5th Edition of Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game. This review will start out by going through the work chapter by chapter, evaluating the contents and discussing the usefulness of every part, followed by my observations regarding its style and printing quality, and it will end with my conclusions and purchasing advice.
Substance
Chapter 1: The Roaring Twenties
Spanning over 12 pages, the first chapter of the book starts out by discussing the socio-economical aspects of life and the trends and fashion in the 1920s in America. Note the underlining, since it is my first major gripe of the book that became evident as soon as I finished the first chapter. This book's contents deal almost exclusively with the U.S.A. in the 1920s - Players or keepers seeking to find information about running a game in continental Europe or the U.K. will be very much disappointed by the lack of information concerning such. This could perhaps be seen as an agreeable and understandable displeasure considering H.P. Lovecraft's stories set in the timeframe are all set in the U.S.A. With this matter set aside, the chapter does what it aims to do pretty well, giving the reader information about sports, movie, music and fashion trends in the 1920s year by year as well as describing the economical situation and its progression through the 1920s adequately accurately. The chapter ends with a semi-detailed chronology of the 1920s.
Chapter 2: Becoming an Investigator
The second chapter takes up, unfortunately, the majority of the book. The first and shortest part of the chapter is devoted to tips on how to play an investigator, discussing investigator finances, relationships with family, friends and protégés, managing personal collections and making a will. The second part of the chapter deals with occupations. The only worthwhile addition that I can note in this chapter is the Earnings per social class entries that discuss how much a typical person belonging in a socio-economical class (i.e. Lower Middle, Upper Class, etc.) makes in a month. This information, followed by a table of occupations matched with socio-economic classes could have very well simplified this chapter and saved a lot of book space for more interesting material. However, the next 38 pages are simply wasted on dozens of Player occupations with write-ups for each occupation followed by their Earnings, Contacts and Connections, Skills and Special Rules. These 38 pages also have sidebars classifying personas of the era into occupations, such as Salvador Dali, Painter.
This is where the most noticeable problem about the book surfaces. Not only are there just too many occupations in the book, but some of these occupations are either redundant, or conflicting with their counterparts in the Call of Cthulhu 5.6 rulebook that I have, or simply don't make sense. Let me try to make myself clear with a few examples. To demonstrate the redundancies, I'll take two business occupations: Company Officer/Executive vs. Small Business Owner: Almost same social class, absolutely same set of skills, similar contacts and almost the same Special rule. And believe me, this is an example out of many, such as Musician Jazz, Musician Legitimate who are separated only by being in neighboring social classes. Excuse me?
Then, as I noted there are occupations that just don't match the rulebook correspondents. Take Antique Dealer, for example. The 1920s Companion argues that Antique dealers do not have Arts, Crafts and the like as occupation skills. They do, however, as a special rule get a 1d20+40 points to their Antiques skill - a skill which I could not find neither in this book or the main rulebook. Go figure. And then there are the broken occupations. As a political occupation, Communist/Radical has a weird array of skills. See for yourself: Club, Fast Talk, Fist/Punch, Grapple, Handgun, Head Butt, Kick, Other Language, Persuade, and Psychology. If you ask me, he belongs under the heading Criminals, actually, judging from the list...
All the problems are further aggravated by the fact that the occupations are not even alphabetically listed. They have been first gathered under a dozen or so headings (Adventurers, Athletics, Politics, Science, Law, etc.). The occupations under each group are alphabetically sorted, and the groups themselves are alphabetically sorted. So, Pilot ends up on Page 41 and Antique Dealer ends up on page 54. Fortunately, an alphabetical index of the occupations can be found at the back of the book. No comment.
The chapter is concluded by a 10 page alphabetical list of skills. Each skill has a descriptive write-up and if applicable how advanced technology or knowledge in that particular skill is in the 1920s. Most of the skill descriptions are redundant as they exist already in the main rulebook, and only information concerning the era would have definitely been better. However, compared to the occupations, the space lost here isn't terribly important.
Chapter 3: Tools of the Trade
Spanning 45 pages, the third chapter deals with the tools and means investigators have in the 1920s to pursue their investigations. Once again, this chapter is divided into three parts. The first part deals mostly with research resources available in these years, and what kind of information can be had from them. The book does a very good job of laying out the available paths of research for the investigators, and detailing them one by one, starting with public records and moving onto newspapers, libraries, museums and consultants while giving the most significant examples of each and what kind of information can be extracted from then.
The second part of the chapter is devoted to transportation & travel options available. While doing a good job of detailing the options available for transportation inside and between towns and the rates for each means of transportation, the chapter becomes fairly annoying towards the end when it starts to give descriptions and prices of cars, motorcycles, boats and airplanes available in the era. While all this information is generally useful, its usefulness is greatly hindered by the lack of pictures for these vehicles makes. This lack of visual aid makes it very difficult for the reader to actually distinguish them. Having read through over a dozen pages of vehicle descriptions, he will still have no clue how a Ford Model A differs from a Ford Model T unless he is an antique car enthusiast except in terms of price and horsepower.
The last part of the chapter details the tools and arms available in the era, giving descriptions and prices of all kinds of equipment that the investigators may need during the course of an investigation, and follows this with similar descriptions of several arms ranging from handguns to machine guns. Thankfully, this time pictures of the weapons have been provided. It is worth noting here that the number of weapons in the book is rather impressive, and detailed information about each weapon can be read from easy to read charts. The damage table, however, is I believe taken from Call of Cthulhu 5, and is in a few places contradictory with my 5.6 rulebook, in which case I assume the newer rulebook should be taken as being right.
Chapter 4: Words of Wisdom
The last chapter, made up of two parts, is once again, a generally useful finale to the book. The first part details the processes required to obtain the license of a professional private detective, and the privileges and responsibilities of one, as well as giving useful advice to the investigator on how to conduct and progress an investigation. The second part details the state and progress of forensic pathology in the 1920s and how far science can help in an investigation. The second part, I believe, is also included in the Call of Cthulhu 5th edition rulebook in greater detail, though if my memory serves me right it does not appear in the 5.6 Hardcover edition. The book ends with an index of occupations (?) and a 1920s investigator character sheet.
Style
The book is laid out in classical Chaosium two column layout with small and sparingly placed black and white art and the full page chapter dividers. On average, the art is below the quality that I have observed in other Chaosium offerings that I have read. The addition of newspaper clippings and advertisements concerning the topic of the chapter are nice touches that make up for the low quality of the art. The problems with Style do not end here, however.
It is my expectation of the third revision of a book to be grammatically free of errors. 1920s Investigator's Companion contains several typos, word repetitions and broken grammar in several places. For a book advertised as a Core Book for Players, these mistakes are not easy to overlook. While they are not numerous enough to call the book's editing horrible, it does not shine as a merit at all.
Another gripe about the style is the quality of the printing of the copy I obtained. The front and back covers (which actually are the same picture.. odd.) of my book suffer from some weird blurring, and the print quality of the interior suffers from a similar fate at times, looking like it came out of a cheap inkjet printer. Whether this problem can be observed in all copies or not, I don't know.
Conclusion
So what can be said of this book? I have one important observation to make
This book is not a core book. Firstly, the book at several points assumes you know the game's mechanics, but it does not even remotely discuss them. It instructs you on how to fill your character sheet, but without actually having a clue what anything does. Although a lot of things from the rulebook have been duplicated here (and to an extent expanded in unnecessary ways) picking up this book will not enable you to sit at a Call of Cthulhu game and start playing. Second, it has all sorts of information about the 1920s but no information about the Cthulhu Mythos that a player would need in order to be acquainted with the setting. The way it is, the book reads more like a Film Noir Detective HOWTO with lots of occupations and skills slapped in which don't make much sense in the first place without an explanation of game mechanics to a new player.
So then, what is this book? In my view, this is a good sourcebook gone very wrong. If the duplicated information in the book such as the occupation and skill lists and the firearms damage table are there to make this a stand alone book for players (And the book's advertisement tagline "This is the core game book for players!" suggests such..) they fail miserably without the game mechanics. This book would be enough for no player, and no player with the main rulebook would need this book for the duplicated information.
Throwing out these useless 48 pages, you are left with an 80 page fairly good sourcebook detailing life in America in the 1920s. With 16 pages more of juice, totaling a standard 96 pages, the book would have been a much more valuable source of information for both Keepers and Players. And I bet it would have cost much less as well. But as things are, there is just way too much useless stuff in here, and it costs more than what I think is justifiable. Passing a verdict on this book is fairly difficult, however, because I liked the 80 pages that I read, and really hated the 48 pages that I think were wasted. Buy it if you feel you need more information about what the world was like in 1924 - how easy it was to find a phone or get a cab, or a flight to Philadelphia... But know you'll pay more than it's worth.
If possible, I would have given it a 2.5 on substance and 3 on Style, but due to my affection for Chaosium I will round the scores up today.
Substance: 3
Style: 3
