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| Trail of Cthulhu: The Dying of St Margaret's |
$4.95 |
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Publisher: Pelgrane Press
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| by Indy Pete [Verified Purchaser]
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Date Added: 04/18/2009 07:09:56 |
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(Note that this review contains a big spoiler.)
"The Dying Of St Margaret’s" is a professionally presented and evocative Mythos scenario in the Purist vein. The third page presents all of the key facets of the scenario: the Mythos "antagonist" is a Colour [Out of Space]; the investigators will travel to a remote school and investigate strange occurrences; the scenario will most likely end with the discovery of the Colour and the death or madness of the investigators. Cheerful stuff, presented in a no-nonsense fashion... this is great, more scenarios and RPG-writing should be so direct.
I like that the author is playful in his choice of title: there is a lot of death and dying in and around the surrounds of St. Margaret's - the school under which the Colour exists - and a malignant effect of the Colour's presence is that those same surrounds are bleached or dyed of colour.
The majority of play will concern the unearthing of clues concerning the happenings at the school leading to the doomed discovery of the Colour. The author spends some time presenting good reasons for the investigators - who may not know each other beforehand - to travel to the school, and very nicely ties this into the Trail of Cthulhu's Drive mechanic with plenty of examples.
Other aspects of the the Trail of Cthulhu's Gumshoe-based system are well used and presented. Core clues are highlighted as such, and each clue has numerous examples of how it might be presented depending on which skill is used.
The author also takes time to describe techniques for effective portrayal of the various NPCs, such as "Slump; Sigh as you talk; Shrug [often]" in the description of the world-weary and Colour-drained Physics teacher Bartholomew Althorp. I dig this, and would like to see this aspect continued in future texts.
The cover art, interior art, and layout are by Jerome Huguenin, who is also the artist and layout bod for the Trail of Cthulhu game itself. "The Dying..." is an attractive and professional looking PDF. The art has a bleached, monochromatic, and somewhat diseased look about it, which has a pleasing synchronicity with the effect of the Colours malign presence upon St. Margaret's and the personages of the scenario.
The PDF is quite suitable for printing, although in my opinion you'll need to take care to exclude two full page pictures from the run since those pages are quite dark. I note that the second page of the PDF is entitled "Investigators", but is otherwise blank. Is this intentionally so, or is there content missing here (sample investigators? but such sample investigators are presented towards the end of the book), or is this just a wasted page?
Daniel Harms, of Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia fame, has already written a positive review, which has garnered some prompt feedback from the author and evidently (?) some changes have been made to the text.
This is a nice one-shot scenario that will provide an entertaining evenings play. Simon of Pelgrane Press notes that this is the first release in a trilogy: a trilogy of one-shot scenarios I should think, which is all good since I can see myself running this as a con scenario in the near future. Tick good.
Rating:  [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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