Terrors From Beyond
Terrors From Beyond is Chaosium, Inc.’s latest anthology of scenarios for Call of Cthulhu. It brings together six adventures set primarily in the 1920s, but with one in 1930 – hence the 1920s and 1930s tag on the cover. What sets this collection apart from others is that each scenario is a one-shot, a scenario not written to be used as part of an ongoing existing campaign, but as a one-off or fill-in adventure. All come with their own set of pre-generated investigators, some requiring as few as four players, others up to six players. They vary in length from providing merely an evening’s worth of gaming to two or three sessions of play. In running these six, the Keeper will take his players from Scotland and New England to Cambridgeshire and Rhode Island via Arkham and Haiti. The aim of these adventures is to provide scenarios that connect the investigators intimately with the plot and “roleplaying challenges not normally available in most published material.”
Like so many anthologies before it, Terrors From Beyond suffers from the perennial problem of the format – unevenness. With six different authors, these scenarios vary in quality and tone. For example, one scenario does not involve the Cthulhu Mythos at all and instead deals with the aftermath of a distasteful situation (which some players might find too adult in nature), while another requires the Keeper to be heavy handed in corralling his players for the benefit of the scenario’s plot. There are some good scenarios in this book, the two set in the Haiti and the Asylum in particular, both because they put the players in unusual and interesting situations. Yet as a whole, Terrors From Beyond is far from a satisfying book.
Beyond the fact that the scenarios are one-shots, this anthology lacks a theme, which deprives the book of a sense of identity. The lack of advice on adapting its scenarios to proper campaign use decreases the book’s usefulness. Worse still, the lack of editing gives the book a rushed, desperate feel – which seems ridiculous given the fact that some of the scenarios are over a year old at time of publication. In its other aim, to provide roleplaying challenges not normally presented in Call of Cthulhu scenario anthologies, Terrors From Beyond is largely unsuccessful. Lastly, it certainly does not live up to its own claim – given on the back cover – of being an excellent adventure collection. If you are the type of Keeper who likes one-shot or tournament suitable scenarios, this is a reasonable collection and worth both your time and your pennies. If not, Terrors From Beyond might just be worth it for some of the ideas it uses, but that is all.
Ultimately, Terrors From Beyond has the feel of being a placeholder title, released because Chaosium had to be seen to be supporting its flagship title, and did so in lieu of something better and more interesting. The question is, how long do the game’s fans have to wait for that something better, something more interesting… perhaps even something grand? Or with the advent of licensed Call of Cthulhu material, is Chaosium just letting the other publishers do something better when it cannot?
So getting into the meat of the anthology itself, it would be churlish of me not to mention that this is a review of a scenario anthology and therefore is going to contain a spoiler or two… or a whole lot more. If you are not a Keeper or if your Keeper plans to run any one of the book’s scenarios, look away now.
Terrors From Beyond gets down to its first scenario without any fuss or introduction. Indeed, what this book is all about is described on the back cover: a set of scenarios designed for impromptu (well, impromptu if you forget the need to prepare a scenario, which any good Keeper should not) or tournament play, each with a set of pre-generated player characters ready to play and connected to the plot. The pre-generated investigators provide the reasons for the players to get involved – sometimes a problem in adventures of any type.
The first scenario is “Ghost Light” by the book’s editor, Gary Sumpter, and is the shortest. Designed for four players, it takes place in the North Atlantic, off the Scottish coast. News has reached the lighthouse tender Helios, that the Hallowsay Light has been out for a few days. One the pre-generated investigators is the Hallowsay Light’s relief lighthouse keeper, and with the Helios already on its way, he is joined by three sailors in going ashore to find out why. What they discover is that no one is on the isolated and windswept island of Hallowsay and that the lighthouse is empty, although there are signs of a struggle. The cause will soon make its presence known, though there are clues found the throughout the lighthouse. The problem is that the solution is too singular, and at odds with the straitlaced nature of the characters, forcing the players (if they are to follow this solution) to play as players of Call of Cthulhu and not roleplay their characters.
The second scenario, “A Method to Madness” has its origins in a tournament scenario and probably takes best advantage of the format. Written by John Almack, it casts the players as inmates at a New England insane asylum, each of the pre-generated investigators suffering from a malady such as drug addiction, paranoia, and shell shock, which the players will have to roleplay as well as investigating the odd goings on at the asylum. Behind the strange goings on is a traditional New England foe – well, traditional in Lovecraft Country, that is, one that will take measures to tidy up after itself. This does give the scenario a time limit. If there is one thing that does irk with “A Method to Madness,” it is the author’s decision to name its NPCs after famous horror authors and directors, and then change their gender. Clever it may well be, intrusive it probably will be.
The most traditional scenario in Terrors From Beyond is Glyn White’s “Death By Misadventure.” Set in and around the town of Wisbech in the English county of Cambridgeshire, the investigators are the friends and relatives of Charles Stanhope brought together by his recent death. This is about as traditional and as clichéd an opening for a Call of Cthulhu scenario as you can get. Fortunately, the scenario that follows is well written, and particularly heavy on historical and local detail. However, this scenario is a poor fit with the rest of the anthology. It presents nothing in the way a of roleplaying challenge, unless that is, the players have never played a Call of Cthulhu scenario before, because if they have, then they will certainly have played something similar before. So the question the scenario raises is, why is it in this collection? It is not a one-shot, and it feels shoehorned into the book.
Brian Cartemanche’s “Grave Secrets” is set in the small town of Stafford, Rhode Island, where the children of farmer Everett Bell are suffering from a strange wasting disease that looks like tuberculosis, but which is not responding to normal treatment. The investigators are outsiders, or have at least spent time enough away from the town to be regarded with suspicion, and include the town’s schoolteacher, a medical expert brought in by the town’s doctor, a writer, and a local returning home after serving in the Great War. All four will have to deal with the recalcitrant townsfolk and suspicious Bell family, the portrayal of which is eased for the Keeper by the inclusion of notes on how an NPC will react to each investigator. The threat to the Bell family comes from a wronged and recently deceased relative – the wrong done to her being incest (this the distasteful element mentioned earlier) and murder, and although the vengeful suffering she imposes on the young members of her family is itself wrong, it hard not to feel a degree of sympathy with her. Though the scenario clearly states it is a non-Mythos adventure and no Cthulhu Mythos entity is involved, one of the ways to resolve the situation does involve the Mythos. Nominally set in 1922, this might be an interesting scenario with which to begin a Lovecraft Country campaign that could run throughout the decade.
Where “Ghost Light” and “A Method to Madness” are successful in keeping the investigators in place because of the isolated nature of their locations, Brian M. Sammons’ “The Dig” is less successful. Its focus is a Miskatonic University field expedition to the small town of Dunlow, home to the Bigfoot-like creature known as the “Dunlow Creature.” The investigators are students at Miskatonic University, who are joining the archaeological department’s field trip for the extra credit they will gain. Also joining the trip are students and faculty members from the anthropology and botany departments. The author’s efforts to keep the investigators in place so they can be present for the scenario’s climax do feel heavy handed, more so because the investigators are placed on the back foot throughout. In too many instances they are reacting, not acting, and when they do have the chance to act, they will find themselves ill prepared given what little time they have. Like “Grave Secrets” before it, “The Dig” can be used to start a themed campaign, in this case one based at Miskatonic University. If the Keeper already has the Miskatonic University supplement, this scenario is also easily added to a campaign based there.
Fortunately, Terrors From Beyond saves its best for last. David Conyers’ “The Burning Stars” is the highlight of the collection, managing to meet the book’s lofty claims with aplomb. It presents an interesting roleplaying challenge in that the investigators wake up with amnesia and constantly suffer from blackouts. It is a true one-shot adventure, because its story could not be presented as part of an ongoing campaign – unless that campaign is coming to an end. Set in Haiti in 1930, the investigators will have to deal with strangeness of the culture there as well as numerous peoples who seem to know more about the investigators and what they have been up to in the last seven days. The truth of their situation will come as an awful shock. Another pleasure of reading this scenario is discovering how much of it is tied into earlier Call of Cthulhu scenarios and campaigns, the author taking the time to make it as much part of Call of Cthulhu canon as no other author does. It is refreshing to see an author acknowledge the history of the game in this fashion and it would be fantastic to see the author carry this into a full campaign – which David Conyers should be allowed to write…
One thing that Terrors From Beyond lacks is advice on running its scenarios in a normal campaign – that is, one not built around one-shots. Some scenarios do provide suggestions, but it can be argued that such advice is unnecessary, primarily because it falls out of its purview. It is a valid point, and even more valid in a volume such as Strange Aeons, a collection of Call of Cthulhu one-shots set in different eras, ranging from Inquisition-era Spain and on the Moon in the near future, which does make adapting them to other campaigns set outside of their times and places very difficult. Yet all of the scenarios in Terrors From Beyond are set during the game’s Classic period, the 1920s, so adapting them for inclusion in a campaign is less of a problem. So why not include the advice and increase not only the utility of the book, but the potential buying audience at the same time?
Worse still, then, is the fact that the book fails to give any advice using these scenarios for one of their intended purposes. The back of the book suggests that the adventure sextet in Terrors From Beyond can be used for tournament play. They can, but a Keeper will need to already to know how this done, because no advice is given to that end. In addition, some of the scenarios are probably too long for tournament play.
Terrors From Beyond faces further problems when you consider its aim of providing “roleplaying challenges not normally available in most published material.” In all but two of the six scenarios it fails to do this. The two successes are “A Method To Madness” and “The Burning Stars.” In the former, the roleplaying challenge comes not just from investigating the strange events at the asylum, but also in playing investigators who are mentally ill. In the latter, the investigators face the challenge of finding out both what happened to them in the past few days and who they are. Plus, the players have to deal with others who know more than they do, much more. The other scenarios do not offer this kind of roleplaying challenge. For example, “Death by Misadventure” has the investigators look into the strange death of a wealthy relative, and that is it. Nothing more, no roleplaying challenge, and considering the number of Call of Cthulhu scenarios with this set up (so much so that it is considered to be one of the game’s clichés), you have to wonder how this can fall under the category of providing “roleplaying challenges not normally available in most published material.” Similarly, “Ghost Light” offers the opportunity of playing sailors and a relief lighthouse keeper going ashore to find out why the lighthouse’s light has been extinguished. Where exactly is the roleplaying challenge in that?
In terms of graphics and layout, Terrors From Beyond looks and feels heavy-handed. The layout still uses the burnt page and bugs motifs that have been the blight of the Call of Cthulhu line’s look for far too long. Strewn randomly over almost every page, these motifs are absolutely irrelevant to this book, and have been to almost every Call of Cthulhu title they have been used in. Other graphic devices are amateurish, and were it not for the generally excellent artwork of David Lee Ingersoll and David Grilla, the book would lack anything approaching graphical sophistication.
Worse still is the editing. It feels as if the book’s editor has only looked at parts of the book. In one scenario, for example, whole paragraphs are repeated; in another, the stats for a pre-generated investigator are very clearly wrong; while in a third, both the name and the gender of another pre-generated investigator is wrong virtually throughout its pages. These are in addition to the smaller errors that litter the book’s pages.
Weirdly, the subtitles for one or two of the scenarios seem to have been imported from elsewhere. For example, the subtitles for “Grave Secrets” read “In which the investigators search out the secrets of a swamp in the Deep South, and descend into the lair of a being of passive disposition, but exhibiting an insatiable hunger.” This is curious, because the scenario is set in Rhode Island, which as far as I know is not in the Deep South. Nor does the scenario involve a swamp. Or a lair. Or a being of passive disposition. I suspect that the subtitles in question come from a scenario in Mansions of Madness. I could check, but since the editor appears not to have walked across the room to look, I do not feel like doing so either…
Take any single scenario in Terrors From Beyond and what you have is at least reasonable, and in one case, something very good. Put all six together and the anthology underwhelms. There is nothing wrong with publishing a collection of one-shots, but there has to be a reason that each scenario is a one-shot, and that is not so in too many cases here. Further, said collection has to live up to the claims it makes for itself, and that is something Terrors From Beyond fails to do because every scenario has to meet such claims, whether those claims are of providing a roleplaying challenge (only two meet these claims) or of being suitable for impromptu play (only one scenario does). Combine these factors with a lack of advice on using the scenarios either in standard campaign play, or worse, tournament play (worse because it is one the collection’s two intended uses); the far from perfect editing; and the feeling that the book has been rushed out – despite the fact that several of the scenarios were at least a year old even before the book went to print – and you have that feeling that Terrors From Beyond adds up to less than the sum of its parts.