[OSSR]In Soviet Russia, Cthulhu Eats You
Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 2:40 am
This is going to be a bizarre sort of OSSR, as it's more like a multi-product rant stretched out over a period of days. Unlike most OSSRs, where I rant over a single product for a period of days. But let me start at the beginning.
Hah.
Okay, so Call of Cthulhu and it's umpteen third-party accessories, spin-offs, fan additions, etc. don't actually have even coverage of the world. Or different time periods. There's entire sub-game lines devoted to the United Kingdom, and entire continents that almost never get any coverage. Sometimes obscure corners get surprising amount of detail...
Lovecraft did not set any stories in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
ANyway, Russia has been on my mind recently for...reasons...
...and the thing is CoC & co. have devoted multiple supplements to Russia. It's just that they all...kind of suck...and...none of them actually go together. It's sort of amazingly dysfunctional. Some of it you can kind of understand why it doesn't work, and some of it you...or at least I...cannot.
Anyway. So, one post a day, one product a day, until I run out. Let's start out with:
"Glozel Est Authentique!" is a third-party (but Chaosium-approved!) set of adventures from Theatre Of The Mind Enterprises, Inc. Produced in 1984 when the height of RPG art and layout technology was halftone.
It consists of two scenarios: the eponymous "Glozel Est Authentique" (which takes the interesting case of the Glozel affair, and adds the Knights Templar and Shub-Niggurath cultists to somehow make it less interesting), and the one we care about: "Secrets of the Kremlin."
In 1928ish (the book is vague), and digging the foundation for Lenin's mausoleum has uncovered the "Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible," which includes a Greek translation of the Necronomicon, which Stalin has translated into Russian one Sanity-shriven Russian linguist at a time. He also found a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath down there and started feeding it the contents of insane asylums as he ordered Russian scientists to discover its secrets.
Scene two involves a stopover from <where ever they start> to Berlin, since they're taking the Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow railway. This is basically an excuse to let PCs make Library Use rolls. Then, on to Moscow!
...where the plot immediately gets complicated, because there are two competing cults in Moscow: the Nodens Brotherhood, and a rival Shub-Niggurath Cult ("the latter cult has a name, but it cannot be accurately pronounced by the human larynx.") Both cults know more than the PCs and are (by shenanigans) trying to suborn them into working for them. Through one contact or another, the PCs learn how to access the tunnels beneath the Kremlin.
At this point, the adventure effectively devolves into a dungeon-delve.
One slightly bizarre possibility is that the PCs actually stumble across an unguarded Stalin and his family. The Dark Young is guarded by 5-6 blind men with flamethrowers. I'm not sure how they thought that was supposed to work, but it seems like pretty D&D-ish thinking. Then we get "The Final Secret" - turns out Ivan the Terrible had a shoggoth down there as well, it smells (?) the Dark Young and the two collaborate by secreting their respective corrodants (?), and have scheduled a breakout for the morning after the PCs arrive in the tunnels. Which hopefully gets the PCs a chance to find the scientist they came for and escape Russia.
From a gameplay perspective: this is kind of late Cold War meets D&D, without embracing either. Remember, it's set in 1931, so WWII hasn't happened yet. The tunnels aren't actually detailed enough to do a proper dungeon delve. Railroady as hell getting the PCs to the tunnels too.
The Russian perspective: The whole scenario is filled with Russian stereotypes, including a GRU honeypot I skipped over because...fuck it. That said, lots of wikipedia-bait about the Kremlin and the historicity of its secret tunnels. Which works out fairly well. I mean, it's not enough to actually run a game in Moscow, but you're not exactly sight-seeing. You arrive on the train, do a press junket, talk to some cultists (who mysteriously disappear and never show up again) and arrive in the tunnels.
The Mythos perspective: Absolutely nothing in this scenario appears, as far as I can tell, anywhere else. It adds no new monsters or books (except an unstat'd Russian translation of the Necronomicon you can't find and loot anyway; if the PCs make it to Dungeon 5 they can steal the Greek Necronomicon, though). No new spells, the cults are essentially formless, and never appear again.
This is kind of understandable as it's a third-party product, but it feels like a disappointment. The idea of Stalin with a Necronomicon and Russians studying Mythos resources and competing cults in Moscow itself seems like an interesting setting. And kind of is, in a much later product...
Hah.
Lovecraft did not set any stories in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
ANyway, Russia has been on my mind recently for...reasons...
Anyway. So, one post a day, one product a day, until I run out. Let's start out with:
"Glozel Est Authentique!" is a third-party (but Chaosium-approved!) set of adventures from Theatre Of The Mind Enterprises, Inc. Produced in 1984 when the height of RPG art and layout technology was halftone.
Flash forward to 1931, and the actual beginning of the adventure: the PCs are anonymously hired to go to Russia, posing as journalists, to find a Russian scientist. Whom Stalin had kidnapped to find out what else is hiding under the Kremlin. Cue opening theme. Players should know shit is getting real quickly when they find out that the password for their Russian contact is "Nodens."He was convinced, however, that Ivan's tunnels held even greater secrets, in chambers and passageways as yet undiscovered. He brought in various Soviet authorities on the underground Kremlin, but none could help. They were all shot.
Scene two involves a stopover from <where ever they start> to Berlin, since they're taking the Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow railway. This is basically an excuse to let PCs make Library Use rolls. Then, on to Moscow!
...where the plot immediately gets complicated, because there are two competing cults in Moscow: the Nodens Brotherhood, and a rival Shub-Niggurath Cult ("the latter cult has a name, but it cannot be accurately pronounced by the human larynx.") Both cults know more than the PCs and are (by shenanigans) trying to suborn them into working for them. Through one contact or another, the PCs learn how to access the tunnels beneath the Kremlin.
At this point, the adventure effectively devolves into a dungeon-delve.
One slightly bizarre possibility is that the PCs actually stumble across an unguarded Stalin and his family. The Dark Young is guarded by 5-6 blind men with flamethrowers. I'm not sure how they thought that was supposed to work, but it seems like pretty D&D-ish thinking. Then we get "The Final Secret" - turns out Ivan the Terrible had a shoggoth down there as well, it smells (?) the Dark Young and the two collaborate by secreting their respective corrodants (?), and have scheduled a breakout for the morning after the PCs arrive in the tunnels. Which hopefully gets the PCs a chance to find the scientist they came for and escape Russia.
From a gameplay perspective: this is kind of late Cold War meets D&D, without embracing either. Remember, it's set in 1931, so WWII hasn't happened yet. The tunnels aren't actually detailed enough to do a proper dungeon delve. Railroady as hell getting the PCs to the tunnels too.
The Russian perspective: The whole scenario is filled with Russian stereotypes, including a GRU honeypot I skipped over because...fuck it. That said, lots of wikipedia-bait about the Kremlin and the historicity of its secret tunnels. Which works out fairly well. I mean, it's not enough to actually run a game in Moscow, but you're not exactly sight-seeing. You arrive on the train, do a press junket, talk to some cultists (who mysteriously disappear and never show up again) and arrive in the tunnels.
The Mythos perspective: Absolutely nothing in this scenario appears, as far as I can tell, anywhere else. It adds no new monsters or books (except an unstat'd Russian translation of the Necronomicon you can't find and loot anyway; if the PCs make it to Dungeon 5 they can steal the Greek Necronomicon, though). No new spells, the cults are essentially formless, and never appear again.
This is kind of understandable as it's a third-party product, but it feels like a disappointment. The idea of Stalin with a Necronomicon and Russians studying Mythos resources and competing cults in Moscow itself seems like an interesting setting. And kind of is, in a much later product...