Edge of Darkness and how characters turbo-charge Cthulhu plots

Edge of Darkness is one of my favourite Call of Cthulhu adventures and I'm not surprised to find it included as one of the scenarios in the RPG's starter set. I've refereed it twice and on both occasions it went swimmingly.

I've now had the opportunity to participate in it as a player, during a three week hiatus in the D&D campaign I'm currently playing in. As I know the adventure like the back of my hand, I had some trepidation going into this as a player, but the Keeper assured me that she had done some re-writes. As it turned out, there were a few changes of direction, but fundamentally the adventure remained the same.

I love Call of Cthulhu and it remains one of my all time favourite games to play, but it does creak a bit at times, showing its age compared with newer and frankly slicker systems like Numenera and Monster of the Week. But what distinguished this adventure was the characters, which reminded me that ultimately RPGs should be about the characters, not trying to shoehorn two dimensional characters into an established linear narrative.

We had a brilliant and colourful cast of characters in this group, all pre-gens but all played to the hilt by the participants...

Doktor Breite Offnung was a blind Austrian psychologist/alienist, Keiko Cain was a Japanese American student at Miskatonic University, who bizarrely carried around her brother's silver plated revolver, while Sister Greta was a German nun. Accompanying them was Dr Ray DaSouza, another alienist, this time from Salem, and Peston Fairmount was a dilettante and a gambler.

This motley crew were assembled in Arkham by the dying Rupert Merriweather to help him undo the sins of his past.

The German and the Austrian character were played in character for almost the entirety, complete with accents, with the blind Offnung becoming more a liability than an asset as the mission continued. Fairmount was played as an utterly corrupt and self-seeking womanizer and boozer, which was brilliant. In the later stages he was worrying more about how damage being inflicted on a backwoods cabin was going to harm its resale value.

I was playing Keiko Cain as the quiet and somewhat nervous student who was more than a little intimidated by the larger than life characters she was forced to associate with.

The game broke into three sessions almost perfectly. The first two occurred in Arkham, with the finale taking place in the village of Ross's Corners. To give you an indication of the style of play, it took the team about 1.5 hours of the first session to even exit Merriweather's hospital room, as the scene was almost entirely played in character. It was an excellent example of players using the opportunity to really explore and shape the personalities of the pre-gens before they went anywhere. The Keeper had to work at times to get things back on track.

As someone who understood the plot very well, I had to be hesitant about pushing the plot in the right directions, or re-rerailing it, but did jump in a couple of times when I thought the investigation was going down a blind alley. I'm hoping the Keeper can forgive me for that!

I did find myself at times just listening in as if to a radio play, which might also have contributed to the impression that my character was a bit on the quiet side. One of the problems with one shots is that just as the players are getting comfortable with their characters, it is time to finish. With this crew, I could see them going on further adventures in the future, although by the end of the investigation Offnung was dead, and Sister Greta was indefinitely insane already. I think Cain was due a phobia.

It was a dramatic ending, with a desperate battle against the odds, magic points going down to the wire as we tried to complete a banishing ritual, zombies bursting through doors and Cain trying to wrestle a mad Greta to the ground before shooting Offnung as he sought to break a binding circle in a fit of insanity. Sadly she scored a critical and killed the blind psychologist. But it was quite the finale.

But there was plenty of humour too...

For example, Red Jake, a hobo, was hiding in a barn on the farm the characters were investigating in the middle of the night. Howls on the wind had told them that there was something nasty in the vicinity. Offnung insisted on sending Jake back to the village 'for his own safety' (to avoid him getting underfoot).

Keeper: "You watch as Jake trudges hurriedly off into the darkness, in the direction of the village."

Offnung: "Excellent, zat is zat. Now ve go back to painting ze house."

Keeper: "You resume painting symbols on the cabin; and after five minutes you hear a terrible cry of pain and terror coming from the direction of the village, suddenly cut short."

Offnung: "Vot voz zat?"

Cain: "Did it sound like Jake?"

Keeper: "As a matter of fact, yes."

Offnung: "Ah, zo. How sad. Maybe ve should zink about going inside now my dear?"

Much fun was had by all. We usually play D&D and it is probably fair to say this is a dedicated D&D group, but they do enjoy the occasional excursion into Call of Cthulhu, although perhaps not in the conventional sense. It comes across more like Black Adder Goes Forth or Downton Abbey at times, but at times like this, I think we all need a laugh or two...