Chaosium has in recent months issued 2 new books for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, the sourcebook Cults of Cthulhu and the full length campaign A Time to Harvest. A Time to Harvest came at a great time, as I am currently wrapping up a Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign with my group, and trying to figure out where to go next so I’ll start with that. A Time to Harvest began life a few years back as part of Chaosium’s organized play series for friendly local game stores to participate in.
The campaign itself takes place in rural Vermont, totally within the confines of Lovecraft Country. This is not a globe-trotting campaign like so many other CoC campaigns keeping specifically to one geographic location (With the exception of the AMAZING Pulp specific final chapter). This makes it feel tonally different than other CoC campaigns. It begins a year after the disappearance and death of a group of students of Miskatonic University when another group of students and teachers is sent into Cobb Corner, Vermont for a field trip/expedition. This ends with the group running into bizarre, otherworldly circumstances.
A Time to Harvest is a fantastic campaign book. I absolutely love that we finally have a campaign that is squarely in Lovecraft Country alone, and the atmosphere of this location is fantastic. Not alone that, but the book kind of acts like a great location sourcebook for this area of Vermont. The campaign itself is split into 5 chapters (6 if you’re running Pulp), and is extremely tightly written with each location feeling quite alive with NPC’s and locations being well detailed so that PC’s have lots of options of where to go and who to talk to (this of course leaves a bit of work for Keepers, but if you’ve run a CoC campaign before this is par for course).
The writing from the usual Chaosium crew (Brian M. Sammons, Glynn Owen Barrass, Mike Mason, and Lynne Hardy) is fantastic. The artwork container in the book really brings it to life. This is an easy recommend to Keepers looking for a new experience to bring to their playgroups.
Cults of Cthulhu is a book I didn’t know I wanted or even needed, but now that I’ve had it in my possession, and read it, I don’t think I’ll ever let it go. So if you’ve played Call of Cthulhu or read some Lovecraft, you know that Cults play a huge deal into this universe. They are the groups of people that tend to spend their time trying to pave the way for the return of the Cthulhu or open dimensional gates so that the world can end and the Old Ones can rise again.
Cults of Cthulhu basically gives a complete overview of the Cults (most specifically those dedicated to Cthulhu himself), and in doing so created one of the most entertainingly readable RPG sourcebooks I’ve seen in years. I am not exaggerating, I was not reading this to deepen my campaigns, or have something to run, I was reading this for sheer fun for about a week after I got.
The way the book breaks down is like this, the first chapter deals with the timeline and history of Cthulhu Cults. This might be my absolute favorite part of the book. It touches on the distant past, and goes all the way to the present. Each section is a little capsule story about the cult, and what they did in worship of great Cthulhu. So many of these were little slices of sheer horror entertainment, and I could see providing great background for games.
The second chapter goes in deeper into 5 Cthulhu Cults, the Elevated Order of Morpheus, the Louisiana Swamp Cult, the Society of the Angelic Ones, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the Church of Perfect Science. These sections give background details, main players, and story seeds on how to use these in a potential campaign setting. The third chapter is interesting, but probably the section I am least likely to use myself, and that is creating a Cthulhu Cult. This section details how to create a cult from scratch for your own game.
Chapter 4 is a section on Monsters, Cultists, and artifacts. This gives stat blocks, and background details on some of the creatures and entities that are mentioned in conjunction with the cults such as the Deathless Masters, and also artifacts, spells, etc. The final sections of the book are 3 short scenarios that can be played over a handful of sessions each using a different cult and taking place in a different time period. These are Loki’s Gift (Elevated Order of Morpheus, 19th Century), Angel’s Thirst (Society of the Angelic Ones, 1920’s), and a God’s Dream (2017, Church of Perfect Science).
Both new releases from Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu line are utterly fantastic, and easy to recommend for fans of the game. A Time to Harvest is a creepy addition to the CoC canon, and Cults of Cthulhu is one of the most entertaining RPG sourcebooks I’ve ever read. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!