Another schedule change
They say that procrastination is the thief of time. Nope; its work. Work is stealing my time and there ain’t no time cops coming to recover my purloined hours or to clap Work in cuffs. This is the true crime of late-stage capitalism!
Seriously, though, I have a full time day job that has nothing to do with gaming, writing fun stuff or pretending to be other people. That’s how I can afford this luxury website (ooh la la) and all these RPGs I keep backing. Unfortunately, it does take up the majority of my waking hours. Very recently, I mentioned that I would be posting once every three days from now on. I have found this awkward in a few ways. Firstly, I often get mixed up as to what day I am supposed to be posting on this schedule. Secondly, it has meant a lack of a consistent day of the week that my posts appear. Lastly, it is still a bit of a struggle to keep up with this, I am finding, thanks to work and, you know, actually playing games.
So, instead, I have decided to switch to posting on Wednesdays and Sundays. I love writing this blog and do it mainly for my own satisfaction and I am going to continue to do that, just on a twice-weekly basis. To those of you who are regulars around here, thanks for bearing with my struggle to find the perfect schedule. I think this might be the one!
Anyway, on to the meat of the post. Our Halloween one-shot.
Roadhouse Feast
The trees loom above the rutted country road illuminated only by the staccato shudder of your headlights. This road will be the death of us, you say to your companions in the back seat of your Ford motor car. Just concentrate on getting back to Arkham, you think to yourself, as you trundle past Laura’s Roadhouse. A good, god-fearing woman, Laura. You know the family. You grew up not so far from here. You wonder how they’re doing now.
Crash, badump, badump
You shouldn’t have let your mind wander. You’ve hit something! The automobile! No! The Ford is pitched forward at an unnatural angle. The others have already bailed out. They’ve gone to inspect the carcass left on the road behind. One of them screams.
This is the opening, in my words, of the Cthulhu Dark module, Roadhouse Feast. It was written in 2023 by Linus Weber, with Monster-art by artgeek09 on Fiverr and cover-art by Eneida Nieves on Pexels although, the version I downloaded from itch.io did not have a cover to speak of.
I won’t go into the details of the module, the characters, the plot or the ending. Instead I want to write about our experience with it and general vibes.
The one-shot
There were four of us at the table on Halloween night for this one-shot, including me as Keeper. This was the ideal number, I believe. Numbers for a one-shot are critical to actually getting to the end of it. Any more than four and we would have struggled with that all-important goal. Instead, we played the module from start to finish with a little time over for epilogues. This is what I had been hoping for when I picked this module to run. The author designed it to be run in a single session of two to three hours and that’s exactly what it was. Tick!
The setup is pretty much as I narrated above. The investigators (this is a catch-all term for PCs in Cthulhu Dark. It does not necessarily imply that they are, in fact, in any way, detectives) are driving home to Arkham from a place called Thompson Village, late at night on 31st March 1923. They hit a deer on the road, damaging their car enough that they need to go and get help. This is all classic horror story setup stuff. The 1920s era and forest setting helps by removing the technological advantages of the present day and exuding a creepy, dark, dangerous atmosphere. Tick!
What do you want from a Cthulhu game of any kind? You want your PCs to experience some fucked up shit that has the potential to send them swirling down the plughole of madness at any moment. You want monstrous entities, cultists, forbidden philosophies and the mundane warped and twisted into something otherworldly and inconceivable. Roadhouse Feast has all this in a tidy little package. Tick!
The system
This was our first proper foray into a Cthulhu Dark game. This despite actually owning the book. Since we couldn’t actually find the book in time, I fell back on the original, playtest-style rules that Graham Walmsley published back in 2010 in the form of a 4 page pamphlet. All of the rules fit easily on those 4 pages with room to spare. It is the lightest of systems. I don’t think I have ever played anything lighter. Honey Heist approaches it, but I think Cthulhu Dark wins this contest by virtue of the fact that you only have one stat and no abilities of any kind. The one stat you have is called Insight (although in those original rules that I was using, it was called Insanity.) You can play this game sans character sheet by simply placing a d6 in front of you. It should show the 1 at the start of the game but every time you fail an Insight check, brought on mainly by seeing Mythos shit or using your Insight die to help succeed at actions, you gain a point and flip your die to the appropriate number. If it ever gets to 6, you’re screwed. Your investigator loses their marbles and is removed from the game. We had one investigator hit 6 Insight. She started a forest fire and stood in the road, worshiping the flames. It was a good time.
This mechanic was so good in a one-shot. It works perfectly to keep your investigators worried about what is just around the corner, or about having to use their Insight die to succeed at a check. Of course, the other great strength of the system is that, if they ever face an actual Cthulhu Mythos monster, they’re goners. They will not survive. This gives them the feeling of victims in a horror movie. You cannot fight, you can only run or hide or delay. In this scenario, delaying is a major part of survival and it led to some ingenious moments from the players.
In general, the lightness of the ruleset made for exceptional roleplaying throughout. There were no long breaks to add up dice rolls, no-one ever had to stop to look up rules and there were no character sheets or monster stats to worry about.
All in all, I would recommend the system and the scenario for a horrific one-shot experience, dear reader. Go pick them up if you would like that sort of thing.
The Dice Pool 