7/20/2021

Free Quick-Start Rules and Adventure for Call of Cthulu

 

Free Quick-Start Rules and Adventure for Call of Cthulu
I'm officially back to work this week, which is waaaaaaay overdue, but also a source of some nervousness as I have to hit the ground running and pretend I'm not six-and-a-half months rusty doing something rather detail oriented for money.

I'm kind of triple-dipping on a subject this week, having blogged in general about Call of Cthulu over at Tenkar's Tavern and guest-hosting a podcast with this free adventure review as part of it.

Now, I have to admit that I am so not a fan of the free Quick-Start rules for 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu and the accompanying adventure The Haunting.

Obstinately this Quick-Rules and adventure is designed for new Keepers (GM's) and players who have never played a RPG before, and I will say that I think it utterly fails in this regard. There are clearly references to rules not included, too many throw-away bits of information that don't matter, and in several ways I felt dumber as a person reading this than I did before I started.

Now if you pick this up with the starter set or full-blown rules a lot of problems might make sense, but I looked at this as a stand-alone thing. I really think that there should have not only been a lot more editing, but they needed to get some people that have never played CoC (or possibly even any RPGs) involved.

Things is, even with the numerous flaws, I think there is some value to this freebie and if you wanted to introduce your gaming group to CoC you could use this if you put some serious time and effort to work out the kinks. Honestly I think the best use of this is as a guide to writing your own adventure and not what to do.

Personally I think that this is just a missed opportunity from Chaosium and I hope that they make some good tweaks in the next edition/printing to entice some players into the game.

1 comment :

  1. Did you ever look at the 6th edition CoC quick-start which also had The Haunting as the adventure? If you did, how does it compare?

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