Most good fantasy writers fall into a Lovecraftian black hole when they attempt anything out of the sword and sorcerer genre.
Unlike fantasy adventures, most historic and modern settings come off as unbelievable and unplayable when large chunks of combat are the focus. Thus, adventure writers need to have a good command of plot and player options.
Snows of an Early Winter, by Super Genius Games, is a new adventure for the Call of Cthulhu game system by Chaosium, Inc. Simply, it’s a textbook template of what adventures set in similar setting should be light. Never again will you want to plod through a straight line linear adventure.
What the 118-page adventure does so well, is allow players to really explore the complex characters that Call of Cthullhu allows you to create. To that extent, you can use this adventure in any similar horror system, such as unearthed arcane or a Supernatural RPG, and still provide your players a smart, fun experience. The game design techniques instituted in Early Winter implore the Keeper to have as many options available for their players. Most writers would not dare to use this style, because they would be so worried that a few of their encounters would not be used. However, this extra writing allows the players to investigate leads they want to pursue and chase clues that they have worked hard to gain.
Four plot hooks are introduced to draw in the players, each hook leading to a different starting location. From there, the writer uses a tier system to insure that a steady flowing plot is maintained, but provide an abundance of things for players to do. There are five tiers, each tier has multiple encounters. If the players follow certain leads, perform their own research or ask the write person, they may be led to other encounters. The adventure is so smartly written, that I can not tell you what the overall plot is, because, the exact details will change depending on what clues, paths and research the players decide to follow. What I can say is that the players will be traversing all over the city of New York to stop a huge evil that is to occur by Halloween.
Another technique utilized is a small chart that the Keeper maintains throughout the adventure. It has a few powerful figures on it. Depending on the evidence collected, who the investigators chatted with and where they go, some powerful beings may take more of an interest in the party. Another cool thing the writer adds is a way to integrate the players’ role-playing into the game. Depending on how the players ask questions they will receive different responses. Physical violence may result in one thing whereas being nice may provide a different response.
Unfortunately, Early winter sometimes feels like a prized show dog whose owners are horribly abusing it. Poor editing in places makes several of the encounters fairly hard to figure out. The same NPC is referred to by several different names, creating a bit of confusion when trying to understand a very detailed encounter. The layout is horrendous in places. Every adventure should have proper bookmarking. An adventure that requires you to continuously move to earlier presented encounters needs bookmarking. Even more confounded is the layout of designer notes and textboxes. They seem to be thrown in without any regard to the text. Some textboxes are clearly appendixes that have nothing to do with the main adventure. Some should be placed further in the adventure or earlier in the adventure.
For the Investigator
This is an investigator’s adventure. It will be one of the few times in your gaming life where you can do something on your character sheet and not feel like you are detouring the story or feel like you have broke the module.
For the Keeper
Outside of all the intricate game design techniques, the adventure provides fun handouts for the players. Newspaper clippings provide small plot leads, web pages show clues and other handouts provide crisp visual aids.
The Iron Word
Score the strong material one point over bad editing. I ran this adventure with several Cthulhu novices and one player who hates anything non-fantasy. It was pretty unanimous that it was one of the best times they have had gaming. Those who enjoy Lovecraft will eat up the absolute dread presented in every encounter. Fans of Clue, or, for that matter mystery theater, will find the mix of suspense and light game mechanics very fun. Whether its as an introductory adventure of a part of a longer campaign, Snows of an Early Winter captures the feeling of unknown famous with Cthulhu.
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