To D&D players, it can take some explanation of why I like modern gaming and put it on my list of favorite gaming genres. I like that there’s no buy-in, and I find that it’s easier to pull off horror and weirdness stories since the characters are closer to the players. Even in a 1920’s Cthulhu game, there are these same issues of needing to know what has been invented (buy-in) and playing characters that are harder to relate to (hard-drinking, smoking pulp archetypes.)
That’s why, in addition to working on a modern game, I’m always on the lookout for solid modern adventures. But many of them fall into the more cinematic style where everyone is an action hero, spy, or both, thus making the subset of adventures I’m looking for even smaller.
That’s why I was happy to be provided with a review copy of Our Ladies of Sorrow, a new adventure collection for Call of Cthulhu RPG by Miskatonic River Press. In it you get 4 modern adventures, all based around the Ladies of Sorrow based upon the “Three Witches” mythology, that can be used as single scenarios or tied together. You don’t get the alien bad guys that are typical of Lovecraftian adventures, so they have a distinctive style of horror.
In fact, the first adventure is right up my alley, suggesting that it take place near a college campus and kicks off with the PCs sitting in a coffee shop (which could even be Damn Fine Pi.) The players, just mere witnesses, are drawn into a mystery surrounding a haunted apartment building, filled with various characters.
The book is about as no-frills as you can get, all in B&W, limited art (and all of it just sketches), but there are still maps and handouts so it should be plenty to run the game. While it does use CoC rules, it’s so rules-lite that I can’t imagine it would be tough to convert to another system. I haven’t run it yet, but I’m very much planning on using it for my 4th Power playtest campaign.
I’ll just have to watch out if exactly three women show up to play…
Want to learn more about Our Ladies of Sorrow? Read on…
- Atomic Array: Our Ladies of Sorrow (Atomic Array 033)
- Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
- All Games Considered: A More Intimate Horror
- Apathy Blogs: Modern Maidens of Myth
- Gnome Stew: by Matthew Neagley
- Bartleby: Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow
Drop by Miskatonic River Press today!
I like modern games, in theory at least. My biggest problem with them is what to do with it. I’ll sit there looking at one of the WoD books and think “AWSOME!” and then when sit there trying to do up game I just stumble.
Miskatonic River Press is getting good press from a number of sources lately. They may be my entry into Cthulhoid roleplaying books.
.-= Tyler´s last blog ..[Mage: The Suppressed Transmission] Another Turn of the Screw =-.
Hey, Tyler…we’d be honored! Just don’t forget to use the “atomic” promo code for $5 off, and if you hurry, you get a free DVD chock full of gaming goodness from the people behind yog-sothoth.com, the premier CoC Forum on the web!
Hmm, “Our Ladies of Sorrows,” any relation to the three sorrows (Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum, and Mater Tenebrarum) in the Dario Argento films? (Suspiria, Inferno and The Mother of Tears)