Years ago a common criticism of Call of Cthulhu‘s investigative adventures was “if the players fail a single Spot Hidden roll to find a clue, the adventure is over.” I think that’s mostly a lazy critique. It’s like saying if your D&D players never find the dungeon, the adventure is over. But there is some […]
Tag: call-of-cthulhu
At Gen Con this year, I played Night Mother’s Moon, a modern Call of Cthulhu scenario which sends the investigators on the hunt for a crazed man who is hiding from occult-obsessed gang members. While I had some problems with the adventure, there was an an exciting section where we had to plunge into abandoned […]
“The next time you see sky, it’ll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it’ll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what’s right for them.” I love the energy of action horror of the 1980s. […]
Horror makes for one of the best genres for one-shot RPG adventures. Horror adventures are usually short, with many of them easily able to be finished in just one night. Horror characters are usually archetypical and fun to play. Roleplay a crazy old cat lady for a campaign? No way! But for one night, where […]
Last year, I did a fun game design experiment where I asked Call of Cthulhu fans what some of the most underused and forgotten Lovecraftian monsters were. I then took one of those obscure creatures — the alien Insects of Shaggai — and wrote an entire adventure around them. Centering an adventure around a monster […]
I’ve written a lot of adventures for this site over the years – twenty-seven in all! Somehow, I also find time to run other adventures, too. I recently had a blast running Goodman Games’ Tomb of the Savage Kings for Dungeon Crawl Classics, my favorite OSR game, which was only improved by the appearance of […]
Those of you who have read this blog know that I’m a big fan of cliffhanging pulp action. I think it’s one of the best genres for one-shot adventures — exotic locales, big villains, and fast-paced action! Plus, players are already familiar with the conventions, since it takes place in the real world and everybody […]
I started this roleplaying blog over two years ago now! My mission has always been to make it as easy as possible for GMs to run an fresh, new adventure for their friends. As a result, I created this blog to give GMs an easy way to do something new, whether it’s run a game […]
This month’s free adventure is St. Cecilia’s Blasphemous Bordello. It’s a creepy, investigative horror adventure set in the old west. But I’m going to use this adventure to talk about the problem with all modern-era big bads. The problem is this. With magic and melee deemphasized, the toughest RPG boss can barely last a turn […]
I envy the evil overlords who are about to start construction on their newest dungeon. There are hundreds of fantastic blogs, Reddit threads, and books on how to best construct a world-class dungeon for roleplaying games. Sinister ghosts however get the short end of the stick. There’s sparse advice for GMs on how to create […]
