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| This year's RPGaDay (full text list here) |
A. Cthulhu City with the Cthulhu Hack
This is the one that got away because it didn’t have an easy way to categorise it. Back in October 2018, I ran Cthulhu City at Furnace. Now, this was one of the years I didn’t write an after action report on my blog, and I suspect that any update that I did has been lost in subsequent Gaming Tavern updates. I have found some notes that I called the session ‘Weeping for the Memories of Lives Gone By’ but I can’t find any photographs from the day itself. It was the very last session of the convention; always a risk running then as people tend to be tired. It was also memorable because it was the last time I played with one of the strongest GMs I knew, someone who has subsequently passed away. As an individual, they could be very marmite, but as a player and GM they were superb. Mostly. As a con organiser, they could sometimes be a nightmare.
Cthulhu City is a sourcebook for Trail of Cthulhu which didn’t quite hit the mark for me when I read it, as it lacked guidance in how to use it, but it intrigued me enough that I wanted to run something set it in. The set up is that Arkham is a huge metropolis where the Elder Gods exist and are openly worshipped. The book reminded me of a gazetteer. What it provides is a sandbox campaign space, which I then ran as a single adventure in a single session.
In preparation, I went through the book and took copious notes on organisations, their motivations and locations on index cards, printed an A1 map of the city on splashproof paper (and added it to the table when the players found a map) and then set up a kicker that characters from the University ended up finding themselves in Cthulhu City after an evening together. They ended up trying to find a way out.
I decided to run the game using the Cthulhu Hack, which fits my sensibilities really well. It’s lightweight, fun and just fades away into the background. I felt that it ran faster than either Trail or Call of Cthulhu.
I can remember it running with noir overtones, as the group desperately tried to find a way out of the City and back to their reality. I can’t recall if everyone escaped, but I do know that we had fun when it happened. It’s one of those games that comes back to recollection every so often.
I actually sold the sourcebook and map afterwards, as I figured I’d probably got the use out of this that I would, but every now and again I get tempted to pick it up again.
Anyway, I couldn’t work out which of the three days that this fitted in, so it’s got its own entry.
22 August 2024
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