New York, New York, It's a Hell of a Town
Continuing with my recent Cthulhu/modern adventure kick, I decided to take an offer to look at a free review copy of the new Super Genius Games adventure, “Snows of an Early Winter” for Call of Cthulhu.
Adventure premise is simple: it’s New York, modern day. An election is coming up. Some bad guys are conducting dark rituals to try to steal said election by sacrificing creatures in Brooklyn. Those dark rituals, it turns out, were a favorite of Hitler’s. The King of the Homeless is trying to prevent his people from being sacrifices (and being all shook up in the process.) A typical day in the Big Apple, right? And in the process of investigating, the PCs get a tour around New York… but not the nice, tourist kind of tour.
On my first read-through, it looks like a neat adventure, and very indepth. There’s a lot of places where it’s very non-linear and has a lot of “if… then” sections that dictate what happens based on the PC’s actions.
I’m a big fan of horror and weirdness sitting side by side in an adventure, and setting the whole thing in modern New York is an extra great touch to get your players immersed right away, and giving them the chance to say “Hey, Deep One, I’m walkin’ here!” Plus there’s tons of handouts included that add to the whole setting, including a print-out of the bad guy’s Outlook calendar (truly terrifying.)
Layer the political backdrop on top of it all (giving it shades of Ex Machina), and you’ve got the recipe for an awesome-sounding adventure.
If you’d like to hear more about “Snows of an Early Winter”, check out the latest Atomic Array.
TheGame is Dave Chalker, a lifelong gamer, freelance game designer, Master of Arts, and son of Jack L. Chalker. Dave is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Hits and so runs the place. He is the envy of geeks everywhere because he's dating e, the Geek's Dream Girl. (Email Dave or follow him on Twitter).
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Glad you like the look of it, and thanks for the kind words. Hot to know how it runs for you if you play it. Happy solstice!
- Lou Agresta