Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory

A group of young performing arts students are offered a summer scholarship at the lauded Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory. Graduates from the intense 4-week performance bootcamp will find doors opening for them, and a path to greatness laid at their feet. But at what price? Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is a limited campaign for Cthulhu Dark, but can be run in any Lovecraftian horror system. Clocking in at 68 pages, it contains 5 pre-generated characters, a map, and 17 handouts.

This review contains a lot of spoilers, so please keep that in mind if you think you might play in this campaign.

The Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory itself is an elite performing arts college, promising that graduates will be able to perform Quam Vestri Somnia, ‘beyond your dreams’. Entry is difficult, and so is getting through the course. But for those few who succeed, a glittering life awaits: fame, fortune, and the status that comes from being the best there is. But the college has a dark side: of those who don’t graduate, a high proportion fall into ruin afterwards. Nobody knows why, but there are some who are asking questions.

The pre-generated characters are all young artists who have a darkness in their lives, whether it be a past tragedy or a profound sense of lack. All of them are searching for something, and perhaps see becoming truly great at their art as a means of finding it. They are also Mythos-touched, meaning that they are connected to the Mythos, through susceptibility to dreams, their geographic origins (Kingsport, Dunwich), or ancestry. While they are all promising artists, that’s not why they were selected for the conservatory. The true reason is because of their proximity to the Mythos. More on that later.

The campus itself is on Prudence Island, located in the centre of Narragansett Bay, just outside of Providence, Rhode Island. It’s small but well-appointed, with state-of-the art facilities and modern accommodation. The campus has everything a student would need whilst undertaking rigorous coursework, which is just as well, because it’s on an island, and it’s a long swim back to the mainland. Really long.

The action starts at the pier on the mainland, prior to getting on the ferry to the island. The players encounter a disinterested journalist, and a social media influencer with an agenda. While it’s mostly an opportunity for the players to introduce their PCs to the group, the weird can appear even at this early point and, in any case, plot seeds are sown for high-grade weirdness later in the campaign.

On the ferry to the island, the players meet the orientation leader and, once they arrive, the players are whisked away in luxury cars to their accommodation, and the weirdness truly begins. But slowly.

The island campus itself is a small but well-appointed institution. Game-wise, it’s a sandbox with 10 locations. In the 4 weeks that they’re there, players are free to explore the island at their leisure.

The campaign is rolled out in three sections. For the first few days, the students are busy settling in, beginning their studies, and meeting staff and fellow students. They can visit the locations, but nothing untoward happens, It’s the calm before the storm. The next 2 weeks involve more exploration, but now the weirdness associated with the locations is ‘unlocked’, and things begin to get real. In the last days of the course, the reality of what’s going on is revealed, and players will have to decide how they respond.

In each of the aforementioned three sections, there are a couple of events that transpire. These events each reveal a little more of the island’s mystery, provoke investigation, add plot elements, and possibly blast the PCs sanity (or rather, increase their Insight, as the mechanic is called in Cthulhu Dark). But fear not, for the campus has Riley, a therapy dog! Riley can calm people down and restore them to mental equilibrium. But she cannot save them.

The way the campaign unfolds is that the players gradually uncover the truth behind the façade of the conservatory. This happens through experiences, interactions and events. Experiences happen when characters Insight increases (or SAN decreases). At these times, the characters experience surreal, dreamlike visions. These gradually build a picture of the reality behind the veil, and it isn’t pretty. There are also countless opportunities to interact with the staff and students of the conservatory. There are 12 NPCs (six students and six staff), but there are plenty of others on campus also. Many insights can be gleaned by talking to folks. Then there are the events. Some are formal, some just happen, but each adds a piece to the puzzle. After a while, the surreal, dreamy atmosphere starts to resolve into a concrete nightmare.

It’s not really your standard Cthulhu TTRPG experience. Part soap opera, part mystery, and part horror, Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory relies more on a personalised, psychological form of terror rather than horror. The characters experience terrifying visions that are mysterious but also highly personal. Bad stuff happens, but there no direct, obvious physical threats to the PCs. Gradually, the characters will come to realise that, while there is an external malign force at play, there’s something within them as well. There are perhaps two mysteries here—the first being that the conservatory is not what it seems, and the second that the PCs aren’t quite who they think themselves to be.

So, what’s the big mystery? Well, the staff conservatory staff members are all members of a Cthulhu cult, and if you want to graduate you have to join the cult. If you don’t want to graduate, you should probably join the cult anyway. If you would like to leave the island with a (mostly) intact mind, you should join the cult, because if you don’t join, your mind will be stripped of implicating evidence (i.e. memories), as well as the talents that have been imparted to you. If you dislike evil cults, you have a tough decision in front of you. If you try to run, you will fail. If you choose to fight, you will die. It sounds a bit mean, but remember: the characters are all Mythos-touched so, in a sense, they already belong to the Mythos. It’s part of who they are.

Nonetheless, the PCs do have a choice and whether they accept the poisoned chalice or go down swinging, they get to do it on their own terms.

Miskatonic Shoreside Conservatory is remarkable in that it takes seemingly mundane and cliched themes such as college horror movies and the Cthulhu cult and uses them in such a way as to make them feel fresh. Add to this a game structure that’s simple to run and a ruleset that takes 30 seconds to learn, and you’ve got yourself a winner.

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