Call of Cthulhu: Arkham

Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is a triumph, achieving a near-perfect balance between providing fine detail and allowing for Keeper improvisation. It is, all at the same time, a serious game reference, a sandbox, and a source of scenario seeds too numerous to mention. But it’s also much more than that: it’s a place, brimming with life and mystery, that your player-characters would be proud to call home.

What’s inside? Well, Arkham has 9 neighbourhoods with over 290 locations, and over 80 NPCs. There’s a bunch of handy tables, a sizeable newspaper prop, 4 big maps, a map for each neighbourhood, and floorplans for key locations. It’s detailed enough so that you can be confident to run any location or NPC, but it’s designed to be easy to use. The information is there, but you’re not forced to search through a wall of prose to get it; the text is concise and workmanlike. This is a book made to be used at the gaming table. It just so happens that it doubles as an excellent reference book.

Mike Mason and team have taken previous editions of Arkham and built on them; adding more detail, new locations, organisations, and NPCs, as well as a plethora of scenario hooks and play-aids. But their true achievement is that they’ve put all this in a book that is easy to use. So much so, in fact, that I feel that I could leaf through Arkham, scribble some notes, and be ready to run a one-shot in a few minutes. Not bad!

But I digress. One of the more notable changes in the new Arkham, is that the year of the setting has been changed from 1928 to 1922. That makes it easier to run existing scenarios, as well as leaving room for the Arkham-specific events in Lovecraft stories like The Dreams in the Witch House and Pickman’s Model, should a Keeper want to use them.

Chapter 1 begins with a history of Arkham, before moving on to describe the town as it exists in 1922. This section covers generalities like the weather, government and holidays. It then positions Arkham in relation to the towns and areas that surround it, grounding Arkham in a geography that feels real.

A section on Investigators then follows, with ideas on integrating player characters into the fabric of Arkham life. There are backstory tables, schools and societies for improving skills, an optional reputation mechanic (actions have consequences, old bean), and a list of clubs and societies for player-characters to join.

The third chapter outlines how to get by in Arkham: transport, how to find help reading that pesky manuscript, analysing a mysterious substance or, you know, getting a gun on the sly. There’s also a rumour table, which is essentially a big list of plot hooks, each linked to a location.

This might be a good time to mention that the pdf is extensively hyperlinked. If a reference number is in the text, clicking on it takes you to the reference in question. That includes the index, right at the back. Of course, chapters and sections are bookmarked too, so navigation is a breeze. That’s a big plus.

The last chapter, describing each of Arkham’s neighbourhoods, is the biggest, taking up 183 pages of the 274 page total. It’s a lot. Each neighbourhood has a map and a list of locations associated with it. Locations have sections with headings that make it easy to find the right information. NPCs are listed in the location they’re most likely to be encountered at, and anything associated with a given location is referenced with a hyperlinked page or reference number. Very handy.

Now, let’s talk about detail. As I’ve already said, the level of detail in these entries is extensive. The language used is concise and practical, meaning you’re not wading through acres of text to find the one fact you need. But the beauty of Arkham is that the level of detail gives you what you need while allowing for and encouraging Keeper modification. Events and NPCs are described, but space is left for Keepers to create and improvise. For example, an NPC may have a number of possible motivations. These are listed, and you can choose one or make up your own. This NPC may do something, or something may happen, in a location. The event is described, but leeway is given for the Keeper to say why it happens. The result of this is that the location and NPC descriptions are peppered with scenario seeds, inviting the Keeper to contribute and make Arkham their own.

In terms of what the entries contain, there’s a lot. You’ve got everything you’d expect to find in a good-sized town: shops, residential areas, docks, and the like. There are friendly people, people with secrets, and others who are servants of the Mythos. Avoid them. There’s Miskatonic University and a Psychiatric Hospital. There are secret organisations, gangsters, a creepy taxidermist, street gangs, and a network of underground tunnels. There are a few locations outside of town too. There may be a witch coven, but witches aren’t real, are they? A number of the locations and NPCs are linked with Lovecraft stories or existing scenarios that occur in the Call of Cthulhu classic setting, so the whole thing feels very integrated and believable.

The tome is rounded off with a series of appendices containing useful reference material, game aids like generic NPCs and a weather generator, a bibliography and, last but not least, a fully hyperlinked index. Nerds, rejoyce!

Mike Mason and team have pulled off quite the coup: taking a neglected but revered body of work, diligently restoring it, and finishing it off with a quiet little motor that goes from zero to a hundred in two seconds. Highly recommended.

Miscellany:

Get a copy of Arkham from Chaosium

If you’re looking for scenarios based in Lovecraft Country, take a look at Doors to Darkness, New Tales of the Miskatonic Valley, Mansions of Madness, and Blackwater Creek

RPG Imaginings interviewed Mike Mason about creating Arkham. He also did a nice pagethrough that I liberally stole from.

Chaosium is following up from Arkham with two new scenario collections, one of which is set in the Miskatonic Valley.

Graveyards of Arkham uses Arkham in a live play, it’s well worth checking out.