It Arrived By Mi-Go This Afternoon

Man, I have been waiting for this one! My interests have fallen largely away from sword-and-sorcery (exposure overload) in the past year and the Victorian Era is a favorite of me (sans Steampunk thank you very much). I may have to get a CoC Gaslight game going set in Wildwyck County once I take care of some big changes in my life. Now if only that Colonial Cthulhu source book that I've been hearing about for the last three years gets published, my archivist's heart could rest easy.

Hitchhiking through Lovecraft Country: Innsmouth

A long time ago, I started to reread the various Chaosium supplements dedicated to what Keith Herber christened “Lovecraft Country”—that area around northeastern Massachusetts that served as home for many of Lovecraft’s tales. Chaosium produced several supplements covering this area and I wanted to revisit them as an excuse to immerse myself in something other than dank dungeons and pointy-eared elves. The first revisit/review, H.P.Lovecraft’s Kingsport, covered the dual-stat supplement dedicated to the home of the Strange High House in the Mist and The Festival. Now, at long last, we move up the coast to visit decayed Innsmouth, a town that squats along the shore like a bloated toad seething with evil.

The Call of Cthulhu supplement Escape from Innsmouth was published in 1992 and is the fourth Lovecraft Country book produced for the game. Written largely by Kevin A. Ross with supplemental material by Keith Herber, Fred Behrendt, Scott Aniolowski, Mike Szymanski, Mark Morrison, Penelope Love, John Tynes, and Richard Watts, Escape from Innsmouth provides setting information for Keepers looking to introduce that sinister town into their campaign. Fittingly enough, it is a hybrid book with the first half serving to describe Innsmouth like H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport, Arkham Unveiled, and Return to Dunwich do, and the second half acting as a short campaign centered around the town. Escape from Innsmouth saw two editions (1992 and 1997), but never received the “dual system” treatment that was extended to Arkham, Dunwich, and Kingsport. Both editions are expensive on the secondhand market, with prices in the $75 to $100+ range being common. This article is based on the first edition of the book.

I must write that I approached with book with trepidation. The Shadow over Innsmouth is one of my favorite Lovecraft tales and I find the concepts and themes explored in the story both alluring and repulsive. Yet the power of the story is in its mystery and I had two concerns for the supplement: How would the town stand up to the harsh scrutiny a detailed supplement would put it under and could it retain its secrets when it was likely that the players themselves knew what went on in the shadows of Innsmouth? I had my suspicions that it would fail on both these accounts. But let’s see for ourselves, shall we?

Escape from Innsmouth is divided into several chapters:  Introduction, Mysterious Innsmouth, Welcome to Innsmouth, The Shadow over Innsmouth, A Guidebook to Innsmouth & Environs, Escape from Innsmouth, Raid on Innsmouth, Keeper’s Aids, Supporting Character Sheets, and Sinister Seeds.

The Introduction is but a single page, serving to inform the reader that the book is but one of several featured in the Lovecraft Country series, and that it takes much of its content from Lovecraft’s tale, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and the stories of August Derleth, with Ross adding his own creations to the mix. The introductory section also establishes the book’s place in the canonical Innsmouth timeline (after the events of The Shadow over Innsmouth but before the government raid on the town), with suggestions on how to use the included scenarios in conjunction with the rest of book to create a mini-campaign arc between those two events. Lastly, the author thanks various people for their contributions to the project.

Mysterious Innsmouth is dedicated to the history of the coastal town, presenting the reader with both the known history—what the general population knows about Innsmouth—as well as the secret history of the town. As always with CoC, the secret history is far more interesting, but there is little here that will surprise anyone who has read Lovecraft’s tale. A chronology of important events organized by year is also included for quick reference, as is a sidebar that introduces the Innsmouth Lore skill and twenty-five rumors (both true and false) about the town.

Welcome to Innsmouth is a mere two and a quarter pages, one of which is dedicated to new magic spells for the Call of Cthulhu. The rest of the chapter details getting to Innsmouth, surrounding towns, climate, town government, and crime and punishment. Although this information is standard for Lovecraft Country releases, I can’t say that I found this to be especially pertinent information for running an Innsmouth campaign. The book seems to be in agreement—the crime and punishment section could be summed up as “outsiders will be eaten if they attract attention to themselves.” Innsmouth is not the place for bureaucratic maneuvering or court room drama scenarios. The page on new spells, however, adds a lot to scenarios set in and about Innsmouth. That’s one of the aspects of Call of Cthulhu that I’ve always enjoyed: it’s not afraid to introduce new magic as background color, not mystic power. Why else would the spell “Lobster Charm” (which summons normal lobsters to nearby waters) be included in a game book?

The Shadow over Innsmouth covers the important Mythos topics needed to be known in order to properly use the setting. The Innsmouth look, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, an (ahem) in-depth look at Deep Ones and their society, and the effects of the Elder Sign on Deep Ones and Innsmouth hybrids are detailed. A short sidebar provides the reader with the Three Oaths of Dagon, which adherents to the Esoteric Order must recite as they are initiated into the different ranks of the religion, and a full-page sidebar lists for the Keeper additional sources of Innsmouth lore that the investigators might pursue. The archivist in me always enjoys such sidebars such as this one, which demonstrates that the best information can only be found in mildewed cellars, dusty display cases, padded cells, or over tea with little old ladies.

We now reach the chapter that makes up the lion’s share of the book: A Guidebook to Innsmouth & Environs. As Chaosium has done with previous Lovecraft Country supplements, this guidebook breaks Innsmouth down into neighborhoods and provides the Keeper with short descriptions of the major place of interest and people of note. Game stats, adventure ideas, and maps are all provided.

The Guidebook is what every fan is waiting to see. As The Shadow over Innsmouth was written from an outsider’s point of view, the reader never knows for certain what’s going on behind those shuttered windows and closed doors in Innsmouth and here Ross has the opportunity to inform him. Unfortunately, the results are neither surprising or particularly inspired. To be fair, however, given the subject of the supplement, he can’t stray too far afield for fear of upsetting the expectations of the audience. We get the expected Deep One hybrids shut away in attics and basements, the malicious Marsh clan, crumbling factories containing secrets, the Gilman House Hotel, and Joe Sargent’s bus. The occupants of Innsmouth are largely dangerous with a few rare allies for the investigators to befriend.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping for more here. There are a few dim lights amidst the shadows, notably the U.S. Treasury agent operating undercover within Innsmouth and the soon-to-be magical feud between the Marshs and another scion of old Innsmouth, but I can’t say I found much else that had me enthused. Compared to Return to Dunwich (which I’ll cover one day), Innsmouth’s inhabitants and (other) secrets didn’t do much to fan my creative fires.

This is unfortunate. As I mentioned above, most players will encounter Innsmouth the game setting long after they encounter Innsmouth the story and thus the catfish is out of the proverbial bag long before they set foot inside the town limits. They know the source of Innsmouth’s evil, and although there is some enjoyment to be had blundering about town waiting for the shoe to drop, there’s no other mystery to sink one’s teeth into. This is something that Return to Dunwich manages quite adeptly; even if the players have read “The Dunwich Horror,” the setting provides many more plots, secrets, and interesting NPCs to encounter than just Old Wizard Whateley and his brood. I wish Escape from Innsmouth had modeled itself more along that design than trying to stay within the established lines of Lovecraft’s story and the various pastiches.

One last gripe about the Guidebook is the art. Most of the NPCs have a thumbnail illustration and many of them exhibit the “Innsmouth Look.” Perhaps it’s merely my own preconception, but I always pictured the inhabitants of Innsmouth who show signs of their mixed heritage to display features more unsettling or slightly alien than truly monstrous. The illustrations in Escape from Innsmouth make the residents—even those who have yet to undergo full transformations—all look extremely inhuman. Like a trout with a human torso in some cases. I’m uncertain of who made the call to go this route, but I’m full member of the “Less is More Club” when it comes to horror and I found these illustrations to be overblown in most cases.

The Guidebook behind us, we now reach the adventures. There are two: one is a short introductory investigation that gets the PCs to Innsmouth and makes them familiar with the town, and the second is a long, multi-part scenario detailing the government raid.

The introductory adventure, aptly titled “Escape from Innsmouth,” is a mite atypical for Call of Cthulhu, but looks enjoyable enough. The investigators get called in to uncover the truth behind a crime committed in Innsmouth and soon run afoul of the locals, culminating in a race to get out of town before they end up as human sacrifices. My problem with the investigation is that it both introduces and ostracizes the characters in a single scenario. Played as written, the PCs will find themselves persona non grata in Innsmouth and that effectively makes running any other stories in the town nigh impossible—a very interesting choice for an introductory scenario, no?

The second, multi-part scenario, “Raid on Innsmouth” looks much more entertaining. Not only does it give the PCs a chance to be active participants in Lovecraftian canon (the government raid and the torpedoing of Devil’s Reef), but it is designed to give each individual PC a chance to shine as the star of their own mission.

The adventure is written as five, three-part adventures that include a raid on the Marsh Mansion, an attack on the Esoteric Order of Dagon, a commando mission into the tunnels beneath to town, the events on board a Coast Guard cutter assigned to patrol the harbor, and finally, the submarine mission against Y’ha-nthlei. The missions’ parts are divided up in varying order and each player’s PC is the “star” of one of those missions. The rest of the players assume the roles as spear-carriers and helpful NPCs that support the main PC. This is all unorthodox for adventure design, but also very entertaining provided your players can dial down their egos to give each other the spotlight from time to time. And any adventure that has a subtle Blue Oyster Cult reference is OK in my book, too.

The supplement ends with a section of adventure seeds: germs of ideas left to the Keeper to elaborate on and spin into full scenarios. They vary in quality, but many would make for a much better introduction to Innsmouth than the introductory scenario, especially if you want to be able to keep the PCs around town longer than a single investigation. Thankfully, there are also included scenario ideas set after the government raid, allowing the PCs to keep getting into trouble after the fall of Innsmouth.

I wanted to love Escape from Innsmouth, I really did. Unfortunately, it is somewhat of a disappointment. This response is likely colored by my own expectations and because it is so difficult to find these days, making it more of a quest than a purchase, but for whatever the reason the supplement largely disappoints. Unless you are a Call of Cthulhu completionist or a fervent fan of The Shadow over Innsmouth, I cannot in good conscience suggest you spend $75 to $100 on this book. There are good bits to it, and a Keeper could put in the intellectual elbow grease to make those bits truly shine, but he would be better off saving his money and creating the town from scratch with just Lovecraft’s tale and whatever ideas spring to mind.

We will now leave the stink of rotting fish (not all of which comes from the wharf) and head down the turnpike towards Arkham, itself. It might be a long journey to get there, but one day we’ll examine H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham before heading off to Dunwich. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there seems to be a batrachian mob after me…

Iä!!!

At long last I can break my silence since Dan Proctor has officially announced it.

Without saying too much about the supplement just to be safe, this is an incredibly cool book and I’m honored that I was asked to be a part of it. My response on seeing Dan’s manuscript was, “It’s like you took the Cthulhu Mythos chapter from the unexpurgated Deities & Demigods and turned it into a sourcebook of its very own!” Dan did an amazing job on this one and I think a lot of folks are going to impressed by the stuff in there. You’ll find it awful stuff, by which I mean you be both “full of awe” and hopefully disgusted too. I know I blew out the “weird gear” in my mental transmission doing my section of the book and I hope the pain and madness comes through in the text.

Pick this one up when it hits the market. The psionic system is worth the price of admission alone. Your players will hate you for it.

Hitchhiking through Lovecraft Country: Kingsport

In his writings, Howard Phillips Lovecraft created a handful of quiet, yet creepy New England towns. Witch-haunted Arkham is by far the most famous, but backwoods Dunwich, infected Innsmouth, and dreamy Kingsport occupy their own places in both his Mythos and the Miskatonic Valley. Of the four, poor Kingsport is the ginger-haired step-sibling of the bunch. This mist-shrouded town on the Atlantic coast appears in just a handful of Lovecraft’s stories, and those few are neither his most famous or complex tales.

Despite its low place on the Lovecraft Country totem pole, Kingsport has a special place in my heart. I grew up along the coast of Long Island and spent much of my early years in close proximity to both the ocean and those who made their living from it. Because of this familiarity, Kingsport feels more like home to me than any other of Lovecraft’s fictional towns and villages. I can identify with both the place and the people more than shadowy Arkham or backwater Dunwich simply because I’ve rubbed elbows with folks very much like the Kingsporters, and I see identical architecture and history everywhere on Long Island.

The Call of Cthulhu supplement H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport is the second edition of the previously-released Kingsport, which was published in 1991. Written by Kevin Ross, Kingsport was the third book in the Lovecraft Country series of supplements spearheaded by the late Keith Herber. It is the opinion of many CoC fans that Herber was responsible (either directly or indirectly) for some of the best source material ever produced for the game – an opinion which I, myself, share. In the early years of this decade, Chaosium updated most, but not all, of the Lovecraft Country books to incorporate the D20 version of Call of Cthulhu and were published with the “Dual System” logo on the cover. This retrospective is based on the 2003 update.

Like the other dual system re-releases, H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport begins with selections from the Old Gent’s work to set the tone. For this book, “The Strange High House in the Mist” and “The Festival” serves as the literary introductions to Kingsport. It is only after reading these stories that the challenge that Ross must have faced in writing the supplement become apparent. Unlike the other books in the Lovecraft Country series, Kingsport suffers from a lack of canonical material to draw from. That which does exist is lacking in much detail about the town itself. This must have been both a blessing and a curse for Moss. He had a great deal of leeway in designing the game version of the town, but a very limited palette from which to choose his colors.

With the introductory fiction out of the way, the reader encounters a broad overview of Kingsport. Subjects such as climate, business hours, employment opportunities, local government, and crime are covered. While some might find entries such as the climate of Kingsport to be inessential to the book, I believe it’s little details like this that help bring the town to life, and is especially useful to those unfamiliar with the seasons in New England.

The following two chapters cover the history of Kingsport, both the well-known and the secret. It’s unsurprising that the history of Kingsport resembles that of Marblehead, Massachusetts, its real-life inspiration. Founded by colonists from southern England and the Channel Islands, Kingsport became a busy seaport and shipbuilding facility. As a port of operation for privateers during the American Revolution, Kingsport was blockaded by the British Navy, a tactic which ended when one of the town scions hauled cannons up the Kingsport Head to fire upon the British ships. In the following decades, a time when many New England towns began to embrace the Industrial Revolution, Kingsport remained wedded to the sea - a choice that would ultimately lead to its decline. After losing its status as a port of entry, the shipbuilding trade slowed and the town’s economy relied on fishing to keep the money flowing. Even this trade began to fail when the commercial fish packing plants started dominating the industry. In the 1920s, Kingsport’s biggest source of income is tourism and the town has become a summer vacation spot for both the wealthy and the artistically-inclined.

Behind its formal history lies the obligatory Mythos cult that any CoC supplement must have. Referred to only as the Kingsport cult, this group of worshippers bent knee to Tulzscha, the Green Flame. The cult is derived from Lovecraft’s tale “The Festival” and is not extensively detailed in the supplement. Part of this has to do with the lack of concrete details provided in the story and is also partially because the cult is greatly reduced in the 1920s. The Keeper is given a few suggestions but not many hard facts, which is either a positive or negative aspect of the book depending on one’s attitude towards RPG supplements.

We next come to the heart of the book, “A Guide to Kingsport.” This chapter provides a breakdown of the town’s more interesting and useful locations, detailed on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. It’s this chapter (and its cousins in the other Lovecraft Country books) that truly shines. CoC doesn’t lend itself easily to sandbox-style play, but this chapter does its best to assist that method of gaming. Covering between three and twenty-plus locations in each of the nine areas of Kingsport, the chapter provides concise information about each locale. Most entries run no more than a paragraph or two, yet still pack all the pertinent information a Keeper needs once the investigators start making the rounds. My favorite part of these chapters is that the reader gets to play “Guess Where I’m From?” as he reads the entries. Minor characters and sub-references to other Lovecraft works are seeded throughout the chapter and it’s an Easter egg hunt to identify them all.

A chapter on using dreams in CoC, written by Mark Morrison, follows the guide. While not groundbreaking material, it’s nice that Morrison sprinkles his own personal experiences in the game throughout the chapter, providing the Keeper with more than just theoretical advice.

The book next provides three sample adventures which take place in and around Kingsport. These investigations are for both new and experienced investigators, and can be used as introductions to the town or as scenarios encountered by permanent residents. The adventures are “The House on the Edge,” “Dreams & Fancies,” and “Dead in the Water.”

“The House on the Edge” concerns the most famous of Kingsport’s attractions, the Strange High House. It quite literary starts off with a boom, destroying the High House with a lightning strike during a violent thunderstorm. On first glance, I thought this was very cavalier of the author, especially since this scenario is an introduction to Kingsport. Wiping the House out right off the bat is bound to disappoint some readers. Reflecting on it, however, I see the wisdom in it. Investigators, unlike the residents of Kingsport, are not going to be content to leave the House alone. This is especially true when you consider that any CoC player who’s familiar with Lovecraft’s work knows that the House is one of the more benign locations in Lovecraft Country. It’s probably for the best to address the issue of the High House immediately and move on. The investigation does have one wrinkle which might not appeal to all players, namely the need to cover the same ground twice, albeit with very different results. Some players, myself included, don’t like being forced to retrace our steps simply because the plot requires it.

“Dreams & Fancies” involves Kingsport’s close proximity to the Dreamlands and is design to reinforce the power dreams have here and sense of otherness that pervades the town. Starting with a seemingly mundane suicide, the investigators find themselves involved with Kingsport’s seasonal artist colony and the lines between dreams and reality quickly fade. This could be a very memorable investigation in the hands of an adept Keeper.

“Dead in the Water” is a refreshing change of pace from CoC’s standard Mythos menace scenarios. There’s strange things going on at sea and the investigators are hired to get to the bottom of matters. Some overconfident players might assume they know who’s behind the doings, given Kingsport’s seaside location and the fact that Innsmouth’s just up the coast, but never take anything for granted in Lovecraft Country. I suspect that John Carpenter’s The Fog might have been the seed from which this adventure grew, but that could be my own influences speaking. Properly run, “Dead in the Water” could be the best of the three adventures. Poorly run, it’s an episode of Scooby-Doo.

The book finishes with a chapter of D20 system stats for the various residents and creatures that call Kingsport home. I’m biased here, but whenever I read the dual system books for CoC, I’m always struck by how clunky the D20 rules look next to the BRP system. Obviously, the D20 rules are trying to conform with the original text, but its jarring for me nonetheless.

Being a Chaosium Call of Cthulhu book, H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport wouldn’t be complete without the fiddly bits. A poster-sized player’s map of the town and a tourist brochure issued by the Chamber of Commerce are included as hand-outs.

So what do we make of Kingsport? Is it worth shelling out some Innsmouth gold for? The answer to that question depends on what the Keeper has planned for the campaign. In a bog-standard “Ayeee!” gibber-gibber, Call of Cthulhu game, Kingsport is best suited as an investigation location rather than the PCs place of residence. Arkham has more to offer both in resources (Kingsport has no sanitarium) and adventure possibilities. A summer trip to Kingsport as a break from mind-rending horrors is a nice change of pace, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

If you’re planning on a campaign that’s more attached to the Dreamlands, however, Kingsport makes a great starting location for such a game and I’d recommend the book heartily. The dreamlike quality of the seaside town makes it the perfect threshold from which to enter the Dreamlands and to conduct further explorations of that realm from. It’s a shame that the supplement isn’t available in .pdf, as tracking down a print copy seems to be growing more difficult.

Join me next time as I head up the beach for a look at Innsmouth. Bring along your overcoat and fedora and start practicing your “Innsmouth Slouch.” It’s best not to stand out in that place.

Hitchhiking through Lovecraft Country

All of us are products of our environments. The circumstances of our upbringing influence our perceptions, our personal philosophies, our likes and dislikes, and even helps form the lens through which we view this hobby of ours. While not the most influential of all the aspects that forms our sense of self, it certainly is one of the more important ones. But environment is not just the beliefs and teachings of our parents, peers, and contemporaries – it also what we see when we look outside our window. It is the trees, the hills, the mountains, the cities, the wind-swept seas, and the grassy plains; all of these influence what excites our imaginations and colors our dreams.

In my own case, I’m a child of the American Northeast and the landscape of that place has had a profound effect on my choices of setting when comes to literature, history, movies, and games. My mental geography is composed of seaside villages, ancient mountain ranges, scrubby pine barrens, salt marshes, evergreen forests, deep lakes, sandy beaches, and bustling cityscapes. No matter how hard I may try to escape these influences, I always find myself returning home. This doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of enjoying works set in other locales, but these speak loudest to my creative ear.

Having admitted this, it is unsurprising that I’m drawn to H.P. Lovecraft’s Miskatonic Valley and Stephen King’s Castle Rock. Both of these locales are set amongst the geography that feeds my soul, and it is an easy task to superimpose my own memories on such settings to breathe more life into them than the authors’ writing alone could. In college, two friends and I created our own quiet town with dark secrets as a setting for a Halloween Vampire: the Masquerade game, a place that drew heavily on Arkham, Massachusetts, Castle Rock, Maine, and Antonio Bay, California. This fictional town was located, both in game and in reality, in New York’s Hudson Valley, allowing me to paint the setting with my embedded collection of geographical influences.

While working on my dreamlands idea, I pulled my copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport from the shelf so as to peruse it again for ideas. Although mining it for ideas was my original intent, I soon found myself enraptured by the supplement again and dove back in for another read-through. This second glimpse spawned the idea for a new series of posts here at the Society, one that I’m looking forward to doing.

Starting on Wednesday, the first of an occaisonal series of posts entitled “Hitchhiking through Lovecraft Country” will appear. In these posts, I’ll take a retrospective look at the Lovecraft Country series of supplements published by Chaosium. Part review and part contemplation, through these posts we’ll work our way through the Miskatonic Valley, stopping in Kingsport, Innsmouth, Arkham, and Dunwich as we go. This gives me the opportunity to reflect on things other than the dungeon for a while and to talk about one of my other RPG loves, Call of Cthulhu. It also permits me to wax philosophically on some of the quiet New England towns that I find myself drawn to. If interest warrants, we’ll expand the tour down to New York City and consider buying airfare to other exotic locales around the world.

So set your mental calendars for the 1920s, pack a star-stone of Mnar, and get ready for a seafood dinner as we prepare to disembark in the quaint seaside town of Kingsport on Wednesday. I hear they’ve got a house up on a cliff which is somewhat interesting…