Playtest Review of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set

The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set suggests learning the game by playing a solo adventure, then playing with just one player, and then playing with a full group. If you want to give Call of Cthulhu (CoC) a try but don’t want to spend a lot of money to start, consider trying the starter set.

I decided to playtest the rules exactly as recommended. Spoilers ahead. If you plan to run the starter set you can play the solo adventure (free Alone Against the Flames PDF) before reading my review of that adventure.

Alone Against the Flames started off strong. I really felt like it was the 1920s and I was in the middle of nowhere. The village was really creepy. I liked the art and the map.

However, all the rituals you uncover as secrets kill you. As do some of the mundane secrets. The way to survive involves making a successful strength roll and finding a random bike, fighting some villagers or a bear, or sneaking away. It wasn’t satisfying to me as a player looking for investigation and using uncovered secrets to survive.

I saw enough promise in Alone Against the Flames to buy the PDF Alone Against the Frost. It looks to be more robust and maybe will give me a better play experience.

I also saw a glimmer of what Call of Cthulhu could be. If the village contained secrets my PC needed to find to survive I’d be spurred on to investigate. The secret the girl at the boarding house provides a bonus die to break my chains later. In the boarding house basement I find evidence not only of previous doomed travelers but also the bicycle which I later use to escape. An approach like that would have hooked me.

After surviving the solo adventure, I found Paper Chase to be cheerful and light hearted. There is no real risk. The adventure made no sense to me. The PC meets a book reading uncle turning into a ghoul so he can have more time to read (the art shows the ghoul in clothes while in the adventure it is naked).

Now if the ghoul uncle had eaten someone? And the PC knew? That would be horrific. Make the PC make a hard choice concerning the ghoul, to kill it or trust it to banish itself, and make the choice cost sanity. But the adventure is benign and a bit silly instead.

I did like all the investigating the PC does. The binary pass/fail nature of each clue was sometimes offset by the chance to push rolls. Some clues were staggered with better results yielding more uncovered secrets.

I did not like Edge of Darkness which is an on the rails dungeon crawl. A dying sage asks the PCs to stop a monster he and some fellow sages summoned years ago but never banished. The PCs must travel to an abandoned ruin of rooms and corridors, find magic that beats the monster, and use the magic while fighting off zombies and the monster to defeat it. There are no secrets for the investigators to investigate.

I was so stymied by this adventure that I simply couldn’t run it. It didn’t have any of the Call of Cthulhu tropes I wanted: secrets, mystery, slowly building threat, and a horrifying monster reveal. I purchased Dead Light to run instead.

I did end up running Edge of Darkness because Dead Light was so short. The PCs already knew the monster was in the attic so the whole description of what happened if they went up there was wasted information. The rules on running the ritual were buried in text so I missed the rule and had to wing it. The monster seemed weak and it appeared that few shotgun blasts would end it without the need for a ritual. I also didn’t know that a revised Dead Lights and Other Dark Tales was available which might have helped.

Overall, I was surprised to find running Call of Cthulhu to be exhausting. Rules were hard to find and parse, adventures ran short, and the overall vibe varied wildly. I think CoC would be a fine game to run if I had a few more hours a week to prep and wasn’t already tired from work and life when I show up to GM. Right now though, it is simply too much work for me. I am holding off on buying the main rulebooks for now. Not the outcome I wanted and I wish the game had worked better for me.

If you don’t need the dice, I don’t think the starter set is worth getting in print. PDFs would work fine. The pregenerated investigator sheets are corrected in PDF form. Nothing in the box besides the dice is something you can’t just print or run from a screen. I recommend the starter set for trying out Call of Cthulhu. See how it actually plays without sinking a large investment into finding out. I’m glad I did even if I didn’t get the result I was hoping for.

 

[Nebulous]

Having been playing Masks of Nyalathotep with Pulp Cthulhu rules this past year, it must be noted that the context of the game is changed substantially from previous, and the Luck points tend to dominate proceedings. While some like the spending resource as a mechanic, it has made the game feel quite meta-gamey in practice.

It’s notable that the Delta Green game, which used to be one of the most popular supplements for Call of Cthulhu in the 5th/6th editions, went an entirely different direction. It has no meta-game mechanics aside from a very mild inclusion of Willpower points, and the tone of the game is much more like a thriller. Luck, if ever referred to when no other skill or stat will do, is simply a 50/50 roll.

People’s views on the matter will differ, but it probably ought to be noted that the original 7E play-test ended up with declaring the Luck rules to be ‘optional’ (because of the outcry). Most 7E players tend to ignore this though, and certainly, if you play Pulp rules, Luck is the central mechanic of the game.

Yes, Luck can be very meta-gamey. The rules are aware of that though and give lots of granularity for the Keeper to run the kind of game he/she wants, and restricting how Luck is used is part of that.

The following optional rules are suggested for those wishing
further granularity within Pulp Cthulhu. These optional rules
can add further complexity to the game, so Keepers should
carefully consider their inclusion before committing to using
them in play.

OPTIONAL: FINE-TUNING LUCK
Some groups may prefer a lower level of pulp, wishing to
restrict Luck expenditure. Some options are suggested below
for Keepers wishing to fine-tune their games and lessen the
role of Luck spending in the game to some extent.
• Restrict the amount of Luck points that can be spent to
adjust a skill or characteristic roll. Where normally there
is no limit, Keepers may prefer setting a maximum limit
of 10 or 25 points to affect any one roll (decreasing the
margin of success).
• Don’t allow Luck spending to avoid weapon fumbles or
malfunctions, or increase the cost to 25 Luck points.
• Don’t allow Sanity losses to be decreased through Luck
spends, leave only the Resilient talent to afford such mental
invulnerability.
• If outlandish escapes from certain death don’t appeal to
you or your group, forgo the Avoiding Certain Death rule

 

[Nebulous]

Notably, there is a Supers supplement in the works for the Pulp Cthulhu line - which gives most people the clue for the direction it takes.

I did not know that! Interesting.

 

[Nebulous]

Having been playing Masks of Nyalathotep with Pulp Cthulhu rules this past year, it must be noted that the context of the game is changed substantially from previous, and the Luck points tend to dominate proceedings. While some like the spending resource as a mechanic, it has made the game feel quite meta-gamey in practice.

About 15 years ago I ran Masks of Nyarlathotep with Cthulhu d20 melded with some Modern 20. I had never played CoC before so it was my first introduction. I went and bought all the Chaosium stuff after that, so for them it was a good move to buddy with WotC. Anyway, it was Pulp Cthulhu all the way. Players were tougher of course in d20, but that's the kind of game I wanted to run, and there was still death and insanity, just less of it. Not much Library Use, more dynamite chucking and the infamous Gas Camel.

 

[TrippyHippy]

About 15 years ago I ran Masks of Nyarlathotep with Cthulhu d20 melded with some Modern 20. I had never played CoC before so it was my first introduction. I went and bought all the Chaosium stuff after that, so for them it was a good move to buddy with WotC. Anyway, it was Pulp Cthulhu all the way. Players were tougher of course in d20, but that's the kind of game I wanted to run, and there was still death and insanity, just less of it. Not much Library Use, more dynamite chucking and the infamous Gas Camel.

Chaosium were pretty reluctant buddies with WotC, truth be told, and it was Wizards who did most of the pushing to get a D20 version of the game made. Chaosium were more skeptical and felt D20 was targeted at a younger audience than they usually catered for. The Pulp Cthulhu supplement was originally intended to be written for D20 CoC, and it took them 15 years to get round to it for 7E instead. Sorta shows how they prioritized it!

 

[Michael O'Brien]

However, Chaosium appear to be aiming for the high end of the market in terms of games they sell, so the big slipcase editions is what they really want you to buy. Of course, if you then want to provide a less costly intro to the game, then this is where the Starter Set comes in, I guess.

Masks of Nyarlathotep is not cheap, but it does weight eight pounds, contains over 666 pages of material plus additional handouts and maps, and more, and will keep a gaming group occupied for many, many sessions of play. The equally epic Horror on the Orient Express (currently out-of-print) is also likely to return as a high-end slipcase in due course.

But there are Call of Cthulhu 7e releases at various price points, including the very affordable, including these (price = PDF/physical):

• Quickstart Rules (free/$9.95)
• Alone Against the Flames (free/$12.95)
• Scritch Scratch (free/$8.99)
• The Derelict (free/$8.17)
• Alone Against the Dark ($6.95/14.95 inc PDF)
• Dead Light and Other Dark Turns ($6.99/13.99 inc PDF - physical book will be released in Q1 2020)
• Gateways to Terror ($9.99/$19.99 inc PDF - physical book will be released in Q1 2020)

Most of the standard hardback releases for Call of Cthulhu (128 pages to 300 pages) retail for similar prices to what you'd pay for D&D, Pathfinder, and other similar RPG lines.

Chaosium uses a sales model where if you buy the PDF of a book directly from the Chaosium website, you the get full price of the PDF off the physical version if you choose to buy it later.

So yes, you can completely play Call of Cthulhu both Keeper and Player with the 7e rulebook. All the rules for experience and skills and everything you need are there. One book. For $40 on Amazon.

The rules in the Starter Set's Introductory Rules booklet are probably enough to go on too. Unlike some Starter Sets, the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set includes character generation so you create your own or use the pregens that are also provided.

 

[Fandabidozi]

<cough> Nemesis The Warlock <cough>

 

[Morrus]

<cough> Nemesis The Warlock <cough>

Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD Roleplaying Game <cough>

 

[Andrea Rocci]

My experience with the CoC7 starter set as an long time CoC player new to the 7th edition.

Alone against the Flames. Played it two times, barely surviving. It is short but very atmospheric. Liked it a lot. A great way to learn how the new edition work.

I have run Paper Chase for my son and he had a lot of fun. His policeman went temporarily insane (two times), while insane he shot at the "monster" killing it with a 04, and run away without saying goodbye or giving an explanation to his employer. He found that it was a great way to learn that CoC is not D&D: even in a low-threat adventure like this one your character is brittle and can have a nervous breakdown. As a Keeper, I did appreciate how this classic adventure had been rewritten to teach how investigation and skill rolls work in CoC7.

Edge of Darkness looks like a great adventure and I look forward to run it. Relatively simple, yet very scary. Yes, the "quest" structure may be simple, as the reviewer says, but the scenario has enough horrific surprises under its sleeve and novice CoC players would be very mistaken to approach it like a D&D adventure.
I have not yet fully read Dead Man Stomp, which is a bit more complex scenario, in what seems a nice progression (BTW the review does not even mention it).

The rules are those of the Quickstart. And they are clearly written and complete enough, with the possibility of creating new investigators. I have the Keeper's book for CoC7, but I'm not a huge fan of how it's written. I missed the more terse and concise style of earlier editions. The Starter Set reconciled me with the 7th edition and showed me that the changes to the rules play very smoothly.

So, I'm very happy of this product.