FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN: A Review of CHILL 3rd Edition

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”

― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

The Verdict

After twenty years out-of-print, Growling Door Games has resurrected the horror classic CHILL.  Keeping the best elements of the previous edition, CHILL 3e brings a streamlined version of the old percentile roll, a new "token" system to represent the struggle between the player characters and the Unknown, and character mechanics like Drives and Takeaways to flesh out the envoys of SAVE like never before.  Despite a few minor editing oversights, lacklustre creature art, and some missing iconic horrors, this is a game you are going to want and want to play.

Against the Unknown 

The Aspen Lodge had seen better days. It, and the entire town around it, had begun the slow and irrevocable slide into decay after the mines ran dry of silver. The three strangers--a journalist, a professional psychic, and a former park ranger--were the Aspen's only guests, and the only guests it was likely to see that winter. The trio had come to the Rockies to investigate a string of disappearances. Unknown to their friends, loved ones, or associates, they were members of the Societas Albae Viae Eternitata, or SAVE, a secret society dedicated to investigating and combating the global incursion of a hideous and terrifying force. The trio suspected those who had vanished here were its victims.

The investigators had dinner with Miss Colwether, the Aspen's spinster owner. So thrilled was she to have actual guests, she had gone all out to prepare a feast. After, full of venison and wine they retired for the evening, but the psychic couldn't sleep. Voices in her head kept pleading and whispering. Shadows moved over the walls of her room. She woke her fellow envoys and followed the voices downstairs.

There in he darkened kitchen, the whispers led them to the walk-in freezer. It was padlocked, and they ended up having to break it open. There in the dark, in the freezing cold, their flashlights scoured the icy walls in strobe like flashes, discovering horror. Bodies...dozens of bodies, dismembered, filleted, chopped up into meat.

Dawning horror spread across the faces of the players around the gaming table. In their preliminary research they had come across stories of the Black Tanamous, a creature that fed on the blood and flesh of cannibals. As their characters gaped in horror at this human butchery, the players suddenly wondered just what old Miss Colwether had actually served them...

In three and a half decades of gaming, that moment--and the look of horror on my players faces--stands out in my mind. ...The game in question was Mayfair's 2nd edition of CHILL, published back in 1990.

In three and a half decades of gaming, that moment--and the look of horror on my players faces--stands out in my mind. It was one of those times when a horror RPG worked, and worked extremely well. The game in question was Mayfair's 2nd edition of CHILL, published back in 1990. It was itself a remake of the 1984 Pacesetter game. Neither edition did as well as they deserved; the first came just after Call of Cthulhu, the second just before Vampire: The Masqerade. Overshadowed by these titans, CHILL 1 and 2 went out of print pretty quickly, though not before leaving behind some extraordinary supplements. The first edition's Venegance of Dracula was a brilliant campaign, easily on par with the far more famous Masks of Nyarlathotep. The second edition's Vampires, Lycanthropes, Apparitions, and Voodoo were some of the best monster guides a horror buff could ask for, and the CHILL Companion was a brilliant piece of work that allowed you to simulate all sorts of sub-genres. CHILL in either edition was probably the best horror game you never played.

Now fate, and Growling Door Games, is giving you the chance to remedy that.

The third time seems to be the charm. CHILL 3rd Edition is a slick, streamlined, updated version of the originals that manages to keep all the best elements of the game. It is not without its flaws, but it does an excellent job of capturing the original feel of the game and translating it for modern sensibilities. It still "feels" like old school CHILL, but it plays like a 21st century RPG should.

So what is CHILL? Since the game has been out of print of twenty years we probably should take some time to introduce the basics first.

The horror is not merely the vampire, but the fact that in the modern world vampires are not supposed to exist...

THE UNKNOWN

CHILL is a game of gothic horror. By "gothic" I don't necessarily mean crumbling castles, cursed bloodlines, and naive young governesses; I mean a sane and rational world under threat from the supernatural. Gothic, as a genre, emerged post Enlightenment (1764's The Castle of Otranto), when the medieval world of superstition had been banished by the modern world of science and reason. Whereas once the world was governed by fickle supernatural forces, it was now ruled by immutable laws. Whereas once the medieval peasant appealed to the supernatural with rites and rituals, the Intelligentsia of the 18th and 19th centuries strove to understand the laws of nature in order to better control them.

But gothic--a genre whose name is reference to medievalism--emerged to pose a horrifying question. What if, in the shadows outside the Enlightend world of logic and reason, the old world of supernatural shadows still existed... banished, but waiting to claw its way back in? The classic example, of course, is Bram Stoker's Dracula, in which the modern and rational world of Victorian England--with its telegrams and recordings, shorthand and solicitors--is invaded by a gothic nobleman, an undead relic of a medieval past. The horror is not merely the vampire, but the fact that in the modern world vampires are not supposed to exist.

In CHILL, the shadowy realm of the supernatural is called the Unknown. Variously described as a place, a force, or even a presence, the Unknown is separated from our world (the Known) by a Veil. That Veil is not as impermeable as we might wish it to be. Feeding on human misery, pain, and fear, the Unknown corrupts, infecting places, people, and objects and turning them into horrors. It bleeds through in places where the Veil is torn or thin...but its favored method of ingress is through the human soul. Humans who pay too much attention to the Unknown, or worse still welcome it in, are perhaps the greatest weapons the Unknown has. Once in our world the Unknown presents in any number of forms...a haunting, a lycanthrope, the Undead. But behind all of these lies an immense, inconceivable malevolence that shatters sanity and mocks the laws of nature.

SAVE

SAVE--the Societas Albae Viae Eternitata--was founded in Dublin in 1844. Dr. Charles O'Boylan's investigations into anomalous phenomena had led him to suspect the existence of a world beyond the one known to science, a world he dubbed "the Unknown." He believed contact with this world was responsible for what humanity called the "supernatural," and gathered like minded scientists, mystics, and explorers to investigate it. Alongside co-founders Lord Henry Boulton and Richard Arthur (Lord Strange), O'Boylan circled the globe for trace of the Unknown. In its early years SAVE was an above-ground organization, and its mission was to understand the Unknown and convince the scientific world of its existence. But as the society's investigations depened, the mandate slowly changed. Encounters with the Unknown led SAVE to believe it posed a threat to humanity, and that the only way to fight fire was with fire. SAVE took up practicing the Art...a way of harnessing the power of the Unknown and turning it back against itself.

O'Boylan was a man obsessed. He became convinced that there was a struggle within the Unknown between two distinct forces; a light or "white" side and a dark or "black" one. The Art could be used to tap the light side, producing beneficial miracles and countering the Evil Way, the powers of the dark. But within two years of its founding, and explorations of the Unknown, Charles O'Boylan died a hideous death, and his co-founders decided to take SAVE underground. It's goal was no longer to prove the Unknown to the world, but to protect the world from it.

By relentlessly hunting the darkness, SAVE might in fact have only been feeding it.

By the last decade of the 20th century, SAVE had offices and envoys (its agents) all around the world, and yet, the Unknown was stronger than ever. Many began to fear that O'Boylan had opened a door; though it had always existed on fringes of human civilization, the more you studied the Unknown, the more you thought about it...the stronger it got. Like the old legends of the Fae, speaking its name let the Unknown in. By relentlessly hunting the darkness, SAVE might in fact have only been feeding it. As the millennium drew to its close, this revelation, coupled with several devastating attacks by the Unknown and the infiltration of SAVE by its servants, tore the entire society to pieces.

SAVE Saved

With the third edition of CHILL, SAVE is back, albeit in three parallel forms. When players sit down to create their characters, they must decide which one of these paths to take.  

...the biggest catylst in SAVE's resurrection has been a short, to-the-point manifesto, emailed out to all offices through whatever links remained. It's author, Hayat Nejem, is a Syrian freedom fighter waging war not only against the Unknown, but also Bashar al-Assad...

Some SAVE offices remain isolated, continuing the fight alone, with no contact with any other branch. Many of them erroneously believe they are all that is left of SAVE, that the rest of the society has been wiped out.  On the other end of the spectrum, some offices have started reaching out again to other branches, trying to reorganize the society under its old, traditional lines...with shared information and resources and regional directors coordinating the efforts of the offices beneath them.  These traditionalists believe SAVE merely lost its way, and by returning to its past it can face the future. 

Yet the biggest catylst in SAVE's resurrection has been a short, to-the-point manifesto, emailed out to all offices through whatever links remained. It's author, Hayat Nejem, is a Syrian freedom fighter waging war not only against the Unknown, but also Bashar al-Assad. The two, she believes, are connected. As a child sensitive to the Unknown she saw shadowy wraiths whispering in Hafez al-Assad's ear. When she spoke to her mother of it she was beaten.  Years later, as a woman, she saw these wraiths place on the head of his son and successor, Bashar, a shadowy, writhing crown. The Unknown, she believes, is manipulating human society on a scale never seen before, and the only way to fight such an overwhelmingly powerful enemy is to go underground, and strike like a terrorist.  Her manifesto advises adopting a cell-structure, each office in contact only with the link in the chain before and after it.  She outlines methods of striking from the shadows, a guerrilla crusade against an Unknown that secretly runs the world.

These three styles of SAVE are one of the innovations of the new edition.  The players can select a traditionalist campaign where their SAVE is not unlike the Watcher's Council from Buffy, a more "alone-against-the-world" office like Angel Investigations, or an underground cell fighting a massive conspiracy.  Campaigns run the spectrum then from being part of a large, well-funded secret society to a desperate, backs-against-the-wall cabal.

Staring Into the Abyss

With CHILL 3e, Growling Door brings several other innovations to the table.  The most noticeable one is the new "Token" system, an embodiment of the dark tango SAVE dances with the Unknown.  The game starts with several Tokens in play; one for each of the players (including the GM or Chill Master) plus one.  These can be anything; coins, marked playing cards, etc.  One side is designated "Light" and the other side "Dark."  Two of the Tokens start the game Dark, the rest Light.

Tokens can be "turned" by either the Chill Master or the players throughout the game to activate special bonuses and powers.  Players can use them to improve rolls, activate their characters supernatural powers (see below), or even save a comrade from death.  The problem is, of course, doing so turns a Token from Light to Dark.  In other words, calling upon the Unknown feeds it, giving the CM more Dark Tokens to fuel the adversaries.  In the same way, the CM uses Tokens to activate the sinister powers of the horrors, inconvenience the players, or make allied NPCs suffer.  This in turns shifts the balance back towards the players by making the Dark Tokens Light.

By engaging the Unknown, SAVE has fed it, creating an even greater threat that paradoxically must be fought.  This is grist for excellent dramatic stories.

This is an excellent system, and it works a bit like "Tension" in Dead of Night or "Horror Mode" in the Cypher System.  When the Tokens go Dark, there is a palpable dread in the air, and the players know bad things are about to happen.  As they go Light, the players start to get a much needed glimmer of hope.  More importantly, it enhances the background story with an actual mechanic.  Before SAVE, the Unknown preyed on the fringes of human societies and people superstitiously looked the other way.  All the old legends of devils and fairies advised not to speak their names, to ignore them, to look away.  By engaging the Unknown, SAVE has fed it, creating an even greater threat that paradoxically must be fought.  This is grist for excellent dramatic stories.    

Agents of SAVE: The Envoys

CHILL 3e takes the old levelled percentile system of the previous edition and streamlines it.  d00 rolls are made to resolve all character actions, rolling against Attributes, Skills, and Specialties.  There are General and Specific checks.  General checks are simple pass/fails; roll under your score on a d00 and you succeed.  Specific checks, which account for most rolls in the game, are more detailed.  Rolling over your score is a Failure, rolling under your score is a Low Success, and rolling under half your score is a High Success.  Rolling doubles and failing is a Botch, a particularly nasty failure.  Rolling doubles and succeeding is a Colossal success.  Turning Light tokens Dark gives you bonuses.

Like the 2nd edition, character stats are all percentile.  The old "basic abilities" are now Attributes; Agility, Strength, Stamina, Focus, Personality, Willpower, Dexterity, Perception, and Reflexes.  Focus and Reflexes are new to this edition, and Luck has been dropped.  In case you are wondering (I was), Agility is full body control, Dexterity is fine motor skills, and Reflexes is pure reaction time.

The skill list has been pared down from about 40 non-combat skills and about 25 combat ones to just nine...one for each of the Attributes.  These extremely broad skills--Movement, Prowess, Close Quarters Combat, Research, Communication, Interview, Fieldcraft, Investigation, and Ranged Weapons (corresponding to the Attributes in the same order as those listed above)--are not meant to cover everything, but to represent what envoys of SAVE are trained to do.  These skills are either trained or untrained.  Training in a skill means you can use it at the same value as its linked Attribute.  Untrained means you use it at half that.  For example, Katrina Davenport has a Willpower score of 48.  If she is trained in Interview, its linked skill, she would have a score of 48.  If her Interview was untrained, the skill would be 24.

Each of these skills has additional Specialties.  Specialities are rated Beginner, Expert, and Master, adding +15, +30, or +50 to the base skill score respectively.  You can be untrained in a skill and still take a specialty. 

All this makes character creation far more streamlined than 2nd edition CHILL, in which each and every skill was figured by averaging two or more Attributes and adding Beginner, Expert, or Master to it.

In addition to Attributes and Skills characters can take Edges and Drawbacks, things that give their characters various advantages and disadvantages.  These cost (Edges) or return (Drawbacks) "Character Points," the currency CHILL uses in character creation and as experience.  Depending on how ambitious you are, you can start play by modifying one of several ready-made characters, selecting a mostly complete professional template and adding 10 CPs of your own choosing, or start from scratch with 80 CPs and build exactly the character you want.

Drives and Takeaways

Like the Token system, Drives and Takeaways are new to the 3rd edition.  A Drive is the psychological impetus the character has to fight the Unknown.  It explains why he or she is an envoy of SAVE.  "Protect Humanity," "Learn the Truth," and "Avenge a Loved One" are examples.  The character's Drive comes with a Light and Dark box next to it. Once per case (the story or scenario) the player may check the Light box, calling on the positive aspect of the Drive to gain a bonus similar to turning a token Dark (without actually darkening a token).  Likewise, the player may chose to check the Dark box once per case, turning a Dark token to Light but suffering a setback or complication from the Drive.

Example: Cedric MacAlister's Drive is "Protect Humanity."  Struggling to save an innocent bystander from a werewolf attack, he checks his Light box to gave a bonus from his Drive...it inspires him to fight harder.  Later in the game, he is successfully hidden from a pack of lycanthropes but sees another person in danger.  Checking the Dark box, he steps out and exposes himself to lure the creatures away.  The CM turns a Dark token to Light for his heroism.

Takeaways are things the character has learned from previous cases.  A Takeaway might be something like "Fought a Carpathian Vampire," "Saw a Child Killed," or "Exorcised a Ghost."  They come in two flavours, Personal and Arcane.  You can add a new Takeway at the end of every case, but you can never have more than three (discarding old ones in favour of new).  Like Drives they have Light and Dark boxes, and can be used in a similar fashion, either for or against your character.

The Art

Akin to magic or psychic powers is the Art, techniques used by SAVE to tap the supernatural power of the Unknown to use against it.  SAVE strictly codifies and regulates these powers to prevent the risk of being infected by the Unknown while using them.  To employ the Art, the character must first attune to one or more of its "schools;" Communicative, Incorporeal, Kinetic, Protective, Restorative, and Sensing.  This allows the character to then learn specific Disciplines associated with that school.  A character attuned to the Communicative School might learn disciplines like Calm, Telepathic Empathy, or Telepathic Sending.  A character attuned to Incorporeal could learn Leave the Body or Astral Attack.  Disciplines are rated like skills, Beginner, Expert, and Master.  Activating them requires turning a Light token Dark, a skill roll against the Discipline, and (except in cases of a Colossal Success) the expenditure of Willpower.  

Fear Itself

CHILL 3e handles physical and mental damage in much the same ways.  Injury measures physical damage and comes in six levels (the last being Lethal).  Each level inflicts an increasing penalty on the character's Stamina score.  Trauma is the mental equivalent, and is rated in five levels that inflict increasing penalties on Willpower.  Reducing Stamina to 0 exhausts a character.  Reducing Willpower to 0 overwhelms her.  In both cases, rest and recuperation--as well as medical treatment or use of the Art--is required to replenish them.  Healing Trauma is called Integration, the slow acceptance and reconciliation with the horrors or shocks the character has suffered.  In CHILL, Trauma comes in three types; Horror, Terror, and Revulsion depending on the stressor.  Terror comes from threat to the character's life and limb.  Horror comes from shaking his faith in the world or humanity.  Revulsion is being exposed to rot, gore, or filth.  though they come from different sources, they affect the same Trauma scale.  When confronted with the stressor, the character makes a Resolve check, which depending on the level of success can reduce previous Trauma or inflict new.  Whenever Trauma is suffered, the character temporarily loses control, attempting to flee, panicking, or retching violently.

Devices of the Enemy

One of CHILL's best features has always been the Disciplines of the Evil Way.  These are a group of around 70 supernatural powers, ranging from the atmospheric and disturbing to downright lethal, that creatures of the Unknown possess.  A vampire might have Change Form (Bat), Erase Memory, and Influence.  A haunted house might have Blackout, Haywire, and Change Temperature.  Using these sometimes turns a Dark token Light, and occasionally a roll is required, especially in the case of attacks.  These powers codify the weird and scary phenomena we have seen in horror movies and novels, and combined with the new system of Aspects (see below), allow CMs to create all sorts of new horrors with ease.

Aspects are divided into four categories; Survivability, Combat, Movement, and Special.  They represent the special characteristics of supernatural beings that are not, strictly speaking, powers.  A ghost's Incorporeal form, a vampire's dependence on blood and aversion to crosses, even a cobra's poison are all aspects.  

Aside from Evil Way disciplines and Aspects, monsters possess only an Evil Way, Reflexes, and Stamina scores.  They might also have their own Injury scale.  The Evil Way score measures its general power and its ability to use disciplines.  Reflexes and Stamina are used much as they are for characters.  This simplicity is a refreshing change from the previous edition, where monsters had full stats just like player characters, and is in line with the general design trend of games today.  It lets the CM focus on pacing and horror rather than detailed statistics.

Last Words

While Call of Cthulhu captures the alien, materialistic horror of Lovecraft's writings, CHILL offers a slightly more traditional form of supernatural terror.  A great deal is left up to the Chill Master and players.  What sort of organization is SAVE?  What is the true nature of the Unknown?  Is it an alien elder god?  Another dimension?  Satan?  The game also pits players against more familiar terrors...ghosts and hauntings, vampires and werewolves, animated dolls and masked serial killers.  And yet, the way horrors are designed makes each of them unique.  This vampire may feed on blood and shun sunlight, but that one might drain youth by touch and be unable to cross a line of salt.  This ghost might create horrific illusions and needs to be destroyed by laying its remains to rest, while that one can assume corporeal form and can only be destroyed by exorcism.  Even with relatively familiar monsters the fun in CHILL come from investigating what you are dealing with.

3e delivers where it counts, bringing back a superb horror game and making it faster to play and easier to run...

There are flaws in the third edition.  Some iconic monsters are missing, like the Bat Lord and the Black Tanamous I mentioned in the story above.  There are several little editing mistakes (two of the sample characters have exactly the same Drives and Takeaways, with the second female character being referred to as "he").  And the art is, frankly, uneven.  But 3e delivers where it counts, bringing back a superb horror game and making it faster to play and easier to run.  Brimming with backstory and a detailed history of SAVE and the world it exists in, CHILL 3e serves up a compelling reason to go out and fight horrors each week, something many other games struggle to do.  Whatever the future holds in store for this edition--and fingers crossed we will see revised versions of classics like the Vampires, Lycanthropes, and Voodoo supplements--CHILL is back and deserves to be played. 

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CTHULHU SHRUGGED: A Review of Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition

"Nor is it to be thought that CHILL or KULT were the oldest or the last of the horror roleplaying games, or that the common bulk of the World of Darkness was shelved alone.  Call of Cthulhu was, Call of Cthulhu is, Call of Cthulhu shall be.  Not displayed among the most popular titles in the game store but between them; it sits, serene and primal, unaltered through editions and left largely unchanged..."

Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror," Chapter 5

(or something like that)

THROUGH THIRTY-FOUR YEARS and six editions, Call of Cthulhu remained one of the most celebrated, influential, and imitated RPGs of all time.  While other popular game systems went through violent and dramatic transformations--yes World of Darkness and D&D, looking at you--Cthulhu remained by and large unchanged.  Instead of adapting itself to shifting industry tastes, it spawned imitators...a GURPS conversion, a pair of d20 conversions, a Savage Worlds conversion, a futuristic cyberpunk version and Ken Hite's brilliant Gumshoe adaptation (among many others).  Like its namesake, Call of Cthulhu was a relic of an earlier age that reached out to touch the mind of dreamers and artists, compelling them to spawn new board games, RPGs, card games, video games, and (Elder Gods help us) plush toys in its honour.  All the while it remained untouched by such things, "serene and primal."

Until now.

Because with the seventh edition Cthulhu has shrugged.  Or possibly more to the point, "blinked."  It seems to have given in to years of chat room trolling about its antiquated percentile system, and by trying to steer through the Scylla and Charybdis of detractors and die-hard fans, ended up giving us it's first major overhaul in decades that really, in the end, changes nothing.  It's been divided into two gorgeous, full colour tomes, the Keeper Rulebook and Investigator Handbook.  It has had new bells and whistles added to its percentile system.  But the good news and bad news is that none of the system changes really amount to anything.  If you liked Cthulhu before, you will probably play this and see little difference.  If you are one of those who hated the percentiles, nothing here will change your mind. 

        

A Very Brief and Obligatory Interlude for the Gentle Reader who Stumbled into this Review with no Idea what Call of Cthulhu is

First published in 1981, Call of Cthulhu was the first explicitly "horror" roleplaying game.  Based on the writings of celebrated American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), Cthulhu depicts a incomprehensibly vast cosmos occupied by utterly alien, often god-like beings, in which mankind and its concerns are insignificant.  There are no beneficent deities, humanity wasn't created in anyone's image, and there are no universal standards of good and evil. It is a brutal, uncaring universe where men struggle mainly to prevent the more powerful alien occupants from wiping out the human race too soon.  It's charm was in inverting most other RPG tropes.  You didn't create a first level character and watch him ascend to greatness...you created a capable professional and watched him slowly descend into madness.  You didn't boast about your character's heroic exploits...you bragged about the horrific way in which she met her untimely end.  It was a scary game, and a blackly humorous game.  And it became an instant classic.

As a final note, it was also a very flexible game.  Generally played in one of three time periods (1890s, 1920s, modern era) it could easily be adapted to more.  Probably the best adaptation was Delta Green, which introduced X-Files elements of modern conspiracy.  And for those who thought Lovecraft's cosmos was too bleak, Call of Cthulhu could also handle standard tales of ghosts and ghouls, vampires and werewolves.

What has been Changed

Call of Cthulhu has always been about Investigators, normal men and women who get drawn into the mysteries of the Cthulhu Mythos and attempt to contain, banish, or destroy its horrors.  The usual course of a game is to find clues and determine a way to deal with the threat.  This seldom involves combat.  Indeed, more crucial to a character than Hit Points are Sanity Points, a trait rated on a scale of 0 to 00 with higher being better.  As you encounter the horrors of the Mythos, you are at risk of losing Sanity.  Lose enough, you go temporarily insane.  Lose it all, and your character is mad forever.

The system used to work like this; your Investigator had nine characteristics, each determined by a 3d6 roll or some variant.  These also determined Hit Points and Magic Points and a trait called Sanity.  These were your innate attributes.  In addition to them you had learned skills, rated on scales of 0 to 100%.  To use these skills you rolled against them on a d00.  A result of 96-00 was a Fumble, a catastrophic failure.  A roll above your skill percentage was a regular failure.  A roll below your percentage was a success, and a roll of 01-05 was a critical success.  Sometimes, rolling below 1/5th your percentage was a significant success as well.  It was all fairly simple, and rolling against characteristics was done by multiplying them by 5%.  

Detractors have long complained about the d00 roll.  Compared to something like the Cypher System, it's pretty stark.  In Cypher (which I use as an example solely because I just reviewed it), if the GM wants to see if players can spot a clue he assigns finding it a difficulty, and the players can lower that difficulty by spending certain character points if they like.  But in Cthulhu, you rolled those percentile dice against your "Spot Hidden" percentage and that was that.  This works, I think, perfectly for a game set in a cold, uncaring universe where human action is ultimately insignificant.  But gamers like to win.  Hence the complaining.

This isn't to say some f the complaints aren't valid; Ken Hite's Trail of Cthulhu is in part an attempt to address the issue.  But people who have run Cthulhu for decades usually just house ruled things when necessary, or for really vital clues made sure the player's found them.  It was never that big of a deal.

7th Edition seems to be an attempt to address the "problem" as well.  The first fix lies in "pushing."  Now if you fail a roll, you are able to try again, but this time failure brings with it a significant risk of something dreadful happening.  The second lies in modifier dice, a concept which feels straight out of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  For certain rolls now you get positive or negative modifier dice; these are additional "tens" digits.  For a positive modifier, you roll and take the lowest tens digit.  For a negative, you take the highest.  Neither of these are bad ideas, but they feel like house rules that could have just been implemented into your Sixth Edition game.

A bigger change perhaps is that Characteristics, like Skills, are now all rated on a scale of 0 to 100.  I'm not entirely sure what this was meant to "fix."  Yes, it does save you the trouble of multiplying your POW x 5 to determine Sanity...but now your Hit Points have to be figured by adding SIZ and CON together and dividing by ten.  Nothing seems to really be gained by the changes.

In another change, Skills and Characteristics all have several ratings on the sheet now.  There is the full percentile, then half that, then 1/5 of the original.  So if a skill is 50%, it is also written 25% and 10%.  The Keeper now calls for rolls based on their difficulty (regular, hard, and extreme).  It also allows the quality of successes to be rated.  This matters mainly in the exorcism of the old Resistance Table, which has now been replaced with straight forward opposed rolls.  If two characters arm wrestle, and one gets an extreme success, he beats his opponent who only scored a hard success.

Again, these are not bad mechanics, but it is hard to see what they really change.  

The Rest

As I have said, the game is still Call of Cthulhu.  It keeps the same tone, lists the same spells and creatures, and most of it works the same way.  There are all sorts of new essays and ideas to help Keepers (the GM) run the game, and the Investigator Handbook is essentially the old with edition 1920s Investigator's Companion, with expanded character creation options and details on life in the 20s.  The latter volume also includes the story "The Dunwich Horror," replacing "The Call of Cthulhu" as a sample piece of Lovecraft fiction (a good choice, "Dunwich" reads and feels far more like a typical Call of Cthulhu adventure).  The Keeper Rulebook contains character creation in brief as well in addition to all the rules, monsters, and spells in the game and a new (lengthy) chapters on Chases.  

So what to make of the 7th edition?  The bottom line is there is nothing here to persuade fans of 6th Edition to trade up, but nothing to deter them either.  The rules changes are in essence on the level of house rules that could easily be implemented in previous incarnations.  Likewise, there is nothing here that will convince Trail of Cthulhu or Realms of Cthulhu fans to switch back.  In the end, the big, fresh, Kickstarted Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition is just the previous game with a fresh coat of paint, much like any of the other previous editions.  The only difference this time is that the shade is a bit different. 

SAVAGE CYPHERS: Savage Worlds meets the Cypher System (Sort of)

One of the key features of the Cypher System is right there in the title; the cypher.  Cyphers are "...one-use abilities that characters gain over the course of play.  In the majority of games, these come in the form of items, like magic potions or alien technology..." (CSR, p. 340).  Cyphers are meant to be discovered and used frequently, giving players a steady stream of tricks up their sleeves in addition to more permanent abilities and talents.  They allow player characters to make that sudden escape, turn the tables on an adversary, or get that crucial edge in battle.  In this sense, they function exactly like Savage Worlds' "Adventure Deck," or its even earlier predecessor, the TORG "Drama Deck."  The key difference is that these cards existed outside the game as a player tool, while in most Cypher settings, they exist inworld for character use.

A portion of the old TORG drama deck.  One side

of the cards where used for initiative.  The opposite, 

with names like "Seize Initiative," "Action," and "Master Plan"

let players pull stunts and make changes to the game.

But nothing says they have to, and in some settings--where magic or super-science doesn't exist--they aren't appropriate.  This is where something like your Savage Worlds cards come in handy.

The principle is simple.  At the start of the game session deal out two Savage Worlds Adventure Cards to each player, or two TORG Drama Deck cards if you have them.  Alternatively, make your own (see below).  These can be played at any appropriate time.  They function like a guided Intrusion sans experience and generally in the player's favour.  The GM simply changes the plot to accommodate the card description.  Others might act as an asset for a combat or skill roll.  Once used they are spent and tossed away.

A sample of Savage Worlds Adventure Deck Cards

Players earn new a new card after major plot points or discoveries, or after rolling a 20.  The character type will determine how many cyphers the player can hold, and additional ones must be discarded without being played.

The Subtle Cyphers

If you want to make your own, start with the Subtle Cyphers from the core rules.  Grab a deck of playing cards and write the name of the cypher on them.  Feel free to add to these GM "Intrusion" cyphers like Love Interest, Escape, Second Chance, Ally, or whatever else you can come up with.  Your deck can grow over time. 

      

NUMENERA: JIHAD, "THE WITCHES"

“I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, send the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer's sky.” 

― Catullus

Click to enlarge

Meet the Witches

The Ninth World of the "Numenera: Jihad" campaign is very definitely a quasi-medieval fantasy setting.  Sure, there are strong elements of post-apocalyptic survival, space opera, and weird horror, but medieval fantasy tropes are front and center.  The Order of Truth, for example, is a bit more religious than it might be in other campaigns, with a pseudo-deity and Aeon Priests that come off a tad "Bene Gesserit."  The Magisters of the Convergence are very "wizardly," with secret handshakes and Masonic rituals and a whiff of the Renaissance alchemist about them.  There are nobles and serfs, plagues and superstition, and in episodes three and four...the curtain draws back (at last) on witches.

When I decided to introduce witches to the Ninth World, I was determined that they wouldn't just come off as just female Magisters but as something unique.  The Sisterhood, as they came to be called, needed to be bound to the depths of the wood, to ancient prehuman gods, to secret yearnings of the heart and dancing under the moon. These drives formed the core of episode three, "When the Woods are Made to Whisper," and its sequel, "The Sisterhood of Wyr."

When the Woods are Made to Whisper (Episode Three)

During her strange reign, Queen Whenith Sarromere had become convinced that by using a variety of numenera secrets, she could harness the power of dreams to control the minds of all who might oppose her, inside and outside her borders. Eventually, she gave up on this scheme, but only because she began to believe that within dreams lay an entirely different realm that she could rule instead of the corporeal land of Iscobal...

Numenera, p. 158

Having killed the lady Anatrea, the characters find their welcome in Draolis worn out.  They are fleeing south into Iscobal across the Wyr River, with city guards from Qi and one of the biomechanical peace-keeping Zhev in hot pursuit.  They are mounted on Lopers (my warm climate cousin of the Snow Loper), in an overland chase through a blinding storm.

The nano Emerson uses a cypher to slow time, and with a lucky roll of 20 manages to take the Zhev out.  After a few of the other pursuers are shot down, they give up the chase, leaving the PCs to continue south towards Mulen, Iscobal's capital.

The storm all but forces them to shelter at an inn they come across, the Queen's Rest.  Once called the Green Ghi-Bird, it was renamed forty years ago, when the young Queen Sarromere made the journey north from Mulen specifically to stay there.  Or so the landlord would have it.  A truer version of the story emerges that she came to investigate the Whisper...a strange wood nearby.  Rumor has it that after she entered the Whisper, she emerged alone, her retinue vanished, and from that day forward the Queen had a mad obsession with dreams.

There are weirder stories about the wood, which the characters discover passing through the neighboring village of Obeth the next morning.  Sleeping on its borders is said to grant strange dreams; a youth might catch the image of his or her future betrothed, while an elder might see himself young and hale again.  Those who enter the wood return dazed, as if drugged.  Some never emerge at all.  And one girl in the village, Ara, started entering he Whisper after her fiancée tragically drown.  Four months ago her belly began to show she was with child...a child she swears was fathered by her lost love, who now lingers in the wood...

Their visit to Obeth comes with a plea for help.  A young peasant boy known for a dangerous and unhealthy attraction to children has vanished, along with a little girl.  A mixture of curiosity, greed (who knows what numenera the Whisper might hold?), and heroic instinct pushes the group to go in pursuit of them.

Before entering the Whisper they stop at Chapel Green, an Order of Truth chantry on the edge the wood.  There they consult Sister Anass, who tells them what she knows of the wood.  It is, apparently, a near perfect circle three kilometers in diameter.  Legend holds it sprang up rapidly after a star fell from the sky.  It is said no bird or beast will enter it, and that a shadowy coven of witches worships there.  Armed only with this, the characters enter.

At this point they are actually in the belly of the beast...

The Njarshan Vkshii                                        Level 7

aka "Witchwoods," "Wood Gods," "Old Ones"

Each of the Njarshan Vkshii appears to be a small, circular forest, 2 to 6 kilometers in diameter. Closer inspection of the various "trees" and "underbrush" (Level 2) makes it apparent they are all a single species, and digging around (Level 3) beneath the soil reveals the truth...they are all connected, the entire forest in fact a single organism.  

A race of ultraterrestrial, they arrive in the Ninth World when one of their seed ships crashes to the earth.  A single massive "tree" sprouts up from the seed ship overnight, and in the nights that follow thousands of smaller "trees" spring up in a circular forest around it.  According to the Sisterhood (see below), the Njarshan Vkshii once ruled one of the previous worlds, and today still cover the entire surface of the Moon (in my campaign the moon is green, in yours, the Vkshii might come from blue-green Mars instead or elsewhere).

The Vksii feed on psychic energy, preying on those who come under their boughs.  They are known to recruit the service of women--and only women--by "seeding" them.  The exact mechanics of this act are unclear (the Sisters will not discuss it), but it always results in the Sister becoming pregnant and giving birth to one of the monstrous human/Vkshii hybrids known as Green Men.  Ever after, the Sister is psychically bound to the Vkshi and her other Sisters.  They can communicate through images and sensations (not actual words) over any distance and telepathically when in line of sight. The Sisters are also able to peer into the minds of others and cause hallucinations, like the Vkshi itself.  The Sisters age very slowly, living centuries, growing more twisted and bark-like as the centuries pass.

Motive: Feed on psychic energy, retake the world someday.

Environment: 13 are known to lay scattered around the Steadfast and the Beyond.

Health: 120

Damage Inflicted: 3 Intellect points in the outer ring, 5 in the middle ring, 7 in the center (see below).

Armor:  4

Movement: None

Combat: A Njarshan Vkshi (Vkshii is plural) attacks only those who enter it, and only to feed.  Attacks come in the form of hallucinations that increase in strength and intensity the closer to the center you go.  In the outer rim these are only level 3 (9) attacks, increasing to 5 (15) in the middle ring and 7 (21) at the center.  The player rolls Intellect to resist.  Failure means losing 3, 5, or 7 Intellect points and suffering a hallucination.  As the Njarshan Vkshii are telepathic, the hallucinations are drawn from the victim's own secret desires or worst fears.  Attacking the Njarshan Vkshi means going to the center, and striking at the core "tree."  The difficulty to hit the creature is actually 0, as it doesn't move, but with 4 points of armor and 120 health it is hard to destroy...especially as it continues making level 7 attacks on your psyche each turn.

Interaction: The Vkshii do not speak save through their Sisters.  For centuries, they seemed quasi dormant, seeding women living near them and preying on stragglers.  But over the last century, the Order of Truth has launched a Shadow Inquisition against the Sisterhood (for the false heresy of worship and impure relations with the alien) and the Vkshii are fighting back, seeding women in positions of power (such as the Order or the nobility) in pursuit of an agenda no one can yet be certain about...

Loot: Any number of cyphers, oddities, or artifacts may lay under the leaves of these witchwoods, left by unwary victims.  If the creature is killed, it will wither to dust and exposing the seed ship.  At least four to six cyphers should be found within, as well as an artifact.   

Intrusion: No escape.  Using its powers of hallucination, the forest keeps turning the characters around so that they can't find their way back out.  It might even appear to blot the sun and stars from the sky, or make them stand still.

It doesn't take the player characters long to know something is very wrong in the forest.  They are attacked by guards from the city of Qi, and later by Lady Anatrea herself...the woman they killed and Beatrix's mother,mseemingly alive and well.  As they figure out the forest is causing them to hallucinate and try desperately to leave, it becomes clear the wood will not let them, so they press on to its center.  Along the way they manage to find the boy they were hunting and the child he took captive.

The Whisper eventually turns them against themselves, sending Lugar into a berserker rage and forcing Emerson to paralyze him with a mass increasing cypher.  Eventually they realize the only way out is to go in...and they make for the center.  Fighting the "core tree," Beatrix contemplates using his dagger...an artifact that kills whatever it wounds and transfers its DNA back into the killer, healing his wounds but also mutating him.  Not certain he wants to attempt it against so massive a being, Emerson takes the blade and does it for him...his player rolling another 20.  The entire forest convulses and withers into a yellowed tangle of husks...and Emerson collapses into a coma, green tendrils starting to writhe beneath his skin...

The Sisterhood of Wyr (Episode Four)

With Emerson in a coma, they decide to avoid the village and make for Mulen as quickly as possible.  

Arriving at Isobal's capital, they take a room in an inn and fall into an exhausted sleep.  They had been lost in the Whisper for days, and after struggling against its psychic predations, are damaged physically and mentally.  

But it isn't over yet.

The miracle-working charismatic Nano in the party (as of yet he has not revealed his name to his comrades) decides to bathe before bed, and Myrna decides to keep watch.  They are spared then when the attack comes...

The sleepers suffer the same dream.  Lying beneath the boughs of the Whisper, the green moonlight bleeding through the shadowy leaves, they are paralyzed by the incoherent chants, hisses, and screeches of unseen women...or what at least sound vaguely like women.  One voice starts whispering to them through the dark.  "You have taken from us.  Now we take from you.  You have wounded us.  Now we wound you.  You have torn the heart from our breast, no we come for yours..."

A female figure, all in black, with a pale face and obsidian eyes, a crescent shaped mark on her forehead and a mass of wild, tangled hair, crawls slowly over the sleeper's prone body like a lover.  She kneels on the sleeper's chest, making it hard to breathe, and gripping him by the face bends to kiss him.  A slimy tendril, rough and hard as bark, slides down the sleeper's throat, strangling him.

The sleepers turn blue and start convulsing.  Myrna and the Nano leap into action, trying to rouse their comrades from slumber.  The hardest to awaken is Beatrix, who is nearly killed.  Once all are revived, they understand they suffered the same identical dream.

They go to the Order for help, and are put in contact with the blind Aeon Priestess Sister Yaevadra.

Yaevadra knows what is happening to them; they have been marked for death by the Sisterhood of Wyr, the human women who made their pacts with the Njarshan Vkshi the party destroyed.  

Yaevadra knows the Sisterhood well, because she used to be one of them before repenting.

Emerson, meanwhile, has awoken, and everywhere he goes, a shadowy presence follows that only he can see.  She is the dark woman from the killing dream.  She whispers to him, and Yaevadra figures out the terrible truth.  The numenera he used to kill the Njarshan Vkshi has, by infecting him with its DNA, "seeded" him.  He is, for all intents and purposes, one of the Sisterhood now.  The only male in history.  Worse, he carries the nucleus of the witchwood in him.  If he returns and is planted in the ground, the Whisper will sprout up again.

The group explores several options.  Lugar suggests returning to his tribe and the Cloud Crystal Sky Fields, because there is a living god in the desert who might be able to purge this. The idea is rejected, and the only thing to be done, they determine, is to return to Obeth, hunt down the Sisterhood of Wyr, and eliminate them.  After that, they can concentrate on a way to extract the Njarshan Vkshi from him.

Yaevadra accompanies them to lend her expertise.

Along the way, she tells them all she knows.  

Iscobal is a land tearing itself apart from within. The palace intrigues start with the royal family led by King Noren tiKalloban. His father, Rabbar, seized the throne about forty years ago from Queen Whenith Sarromere whom most believed unfit to rule. She died in exile in the land of Ancuan.  Now her sons Bren and Kor want Iscobal back in the name of their house. They plot against the king both openly and in secret.

Numenera, p. 158

Queen Sarromere was not merely found unfit to rule.  When, as a young queen she went into the Whisper, she was Seeded, the beginning of her obsession with magic and dreams.  The Order of Truth supported tiKalloban against her; a witch could not sit upon the throne.  This is part of what they learn from Yaevadra.

They go first to the Chapel Green to speak with Yaevadra's fellow Aeon Priestess, Anass.  It is, of course, a trap.  Both Yaevadra and Anass are members of the coven, and they launch into an attack...

The Sisterhood

Sisterhood witches are levels 3 to 5.  Their main method of attack is the Hex; a psychic attack doing their own level in Intellect damage.  The victim suffers potent hallucinations, animating their darkest yearnings or most horrible fears.  It takes an Intellect roll to resist.