The Day After Ragnarok

The Day After Ragnarok is a Savage Setting book written by Ken Hite for Savage Worlds published by Atomic Overmind Press. Post-WW2, post-apocalypse, and post-Ragnarok, the setting begins with Harry Truman dropping the bomb on the Midguard Serpent to prevent Gotterdammerung, the serpent’s body and toxic blood falling to Earth, poisoning everywhere, dividing Europe with the Serpent Curtain, and causing a super tsunami that ravages the USA as far as the Rockies. Now much of Europe and the Near East is in Stalin’s fist, the British Empire is based in Australia, Japan still has her empire, and the USA’s capital is in California under President Earl Warren. Both magic and psionics are recognized, while speleo-herpetologists harvest parts of the Serpent and develop Ophi-Tec, advanced technology like Marconi Guns, Neural Stimulators, Ophiline (better than gas!), and the RRAF’s delta wing rocket planes. Stalin has his own arcane allies, including engineered man-apes, used to infiltrate British Africa.

Most Savage Settings offer a Plot Point campaign, but this book is too big for that, instead giving 4 suggestions and sample outlines. These have the heroes as freelancers, working for a patron, rebuilding after the tsunami, and protecting their home turf in a city. Support includes city and adventure generators, and the brilliant Top Five lists, like Top Five Places To Stomp Nazis to Top Five Place Secret Bases. Describing itself as Conan 1946 or SMGs and Sorcery, The Day After Ragnaroak is rich in gaming detail, superbly imaginative, arguably the best Pulp setting.

Shadows Over Filmland

Shadows Over Filmland is an anthology of scenarios for Trail of Cthulhu, Pelgrane Press’ RPG of Lovecraftian horror designed by Ken Hite. Co-authored with Robin D. Laws, it presents 13 scenarios inspired by both the black and white horror movies of the 1930s and H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction. The movie inspiration is iconic: Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, and others. The fictional inspiration includes Lovecraft’s Under The Pyramids, Herbert West – Reanimator, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. For each scenario, the authors blend the two. For example, Death Across The Nile blends The Mummy and Under The Pyramids in a tale that sees Queen Nitocris reach across the ages for her lost lover.

The conceit of this collection is that each scenario takes place in the same place, the Backlot Gothic, a remote part of Europe or Albion in Hollywood and an in-game sub-genre. The GM should use and reuse the given descriptions to simulate the Backlot Gothic’s use of stock (clichéd) footage/imagery and enforce its similarity. Suited to irregular visits than an extended stay, this good collection does mostly pulp horror, but with psychological and weird diversions too. One scenario, The Final Reel has the investigators shutting down the filming of The Call of Cthulhu! As with other Trail of Cthulhu titles, this collection is easily adapted to other Lovecraftian RPGs. Whatever the system, the horror of Shadows Over Filmland’s Backlit Gothic is baleful and bucolic, a place to visit, but then get away from.

Terrors From Beyond

Terrors From Beyond is a new scenario anthology for Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium, Inc. It brings together 6 adventures set in the 1920s and 1930s (only technically, because one scenario is set in 1930) each designed as one-shots rather than for use with a Keeper’s own campaign. The scenarios need either 4 or 6 players with a strong stomach, some scenarios dealing with strong adult and in one case, distasteful themes. It opens without introduction to the very short Ghostlight, set on Scottish lighthouse with vanished staff and a single solution which will leave the investigators dead if not found. A Method to Madness is barely longer, and inventively has the investigators as asylum inmates beset by weirdness. The U.K. located Death by Misadeventure involves the traditional death of a relative and is the easiest to use in an existing campaign. Brian Courtemanche’s Grave Secrets is set in New England, does not involve the Mythos, but has the most tasteless theme.

Brian Sammons’ The Dig is about a Miskatonic University archaeological trip subverted by an insane cultist, with the players as students. It feels long and calls for the Keeper to be heavy-handed for the investigators to follow the plot. David Conyers’ The Burning Stars is the book’s best, set in Haiti 1930 and starts with the investigators waking up with amnesia. What happened in the last seven days? Terrors From Beyond is nicely illustrated, but poorly edited, and suffers without a theme. It feels rushed despite the long wait.

The Mysteries of Mesoamerica

The Mysteries of Mesoamerica is Pagan Publishing's supplement for Call of Cthulhu devoted to central America and the north of South America, detailing its ancient peoples (Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayans, Aztecs, etc.) and their cultures and religion, along with four dark and bloody scenarios. It is not a campaign book, the four scenarios being set in different years of the early 20th Century, but a Keeper can use them as precursors to a campaign that runs into the 1920s. Superbly and bloodily illustrated by Blair Reynolds, the book is information rich, but is not easily accessed. No index, and no easy organisation bar chapters, the book also lacks really useful information and maps for Mesoamerica 1914-1927, and worse, Keeper advice on using its contents.

A nice touch is the “P.C. R.I.P.” feature which describes and illustrates the playtest investigators killed in each scenario plus their last words. The scenarios are as dark and nasty as any Pagan Publishing scenario, and are the book’s best feature, showing how the Mythos exploited Mesoamerican religions, instead of Mythos figures being equated to Mesoamerican deities. All work as one shots or as intermittent adventures for investigators who are Mesoamerican archaeologists, the early ones introducing them to the Mythos, perhaps ready for any campaign. Not an easy book to use, The Mysteries of Mesoamerica is more theory than applied knowledge, the sourcebook being an interesting read, but feeling under developed in comparison with the scenarios. Worth a Keeper buying it for the scenarios than the background.