Review of a Miskatonic Repository scenario:❄️ COLD HUNGER ❄️by Paul Dimitrivech

Miskatonic Repository Guest Review for RPG Nook

RPG Nook is a You Tube channel and discord server for those wanting to play Call of Cthulhu and other horror orientated RPGs.  Keepers on the server have been given the opportunity to play and then review some scenarios written for the Miskatonic Respoitory.  This is my Keeper review that appears on the RPG Nook You Tube channel of the scenario 'Cold Hunger' written by Paul Dimitrivech.

https://tinyurl.com/ColdHunger (affiliate link)

When is a scenario ready for publication and when is it not? There is, of course, no correct answer as one person’s bones of a story are another’s ghoul’s feast.  This brings me nicely onto the scenario ‘Cold Hunger’. This scenario was created via the RPG Writer Workshop process. The story starts in the offices of The Watcher magazine and a meeting with the magazine's editor. One of his journalists has gone missing looking into missing hobos in a city called Kamloops in British Columbia and he has asked the investigators to go and find out what has happened to the missing journalist.

So, let’s start with the good stuff

1 - The location is great, British Columbia in January 1926 conjures up freezing snow-covered bleakness. The main locations are well chosen, including a train, the forest and a ‘creepy shack with a trapdoor’. 

2 - The premise ties in nicely to the freezing feel to the locations – a train engineer found a ghoul’s skull that emanates the ‘Endless hunger’. This starts to transform the unfortunate engineer into a ghoul. The engineer has set up an altar in a shack in the forest that he intends to trick the investigators into visiting so he can eat them and satisfy his ‘Endless hunger’.

So now onto why I believe this scenario has been published without enough meat:

1 - The story arc and the potential issues described are bare bones. This is probably due to it being written as part of the workshop writer’s process. It would have been very useful to have more details of what the play testing groups had done. This would give additional help to the Keeper on potential encounters or scenes.  The investigation at the start of the scenario is unnecessary, as you can give the handouts to the investigators via the Editor they meet in the first scene. If an investigation scene adds impact to the game play and is interesting, fine. But in this case it doesn’t and isn’t.

2 - The written motivations and the unfolding story in the scenario don’t always correlate. For example, the half ghoul engineer is trying to get the players to the shack. So, he could sabotage the train to get it to stop in order to carry out his wicked plan. In the scenario it is described as pure coincidence that the train breakdown occurs. It may have been more satisfying if this was deliberate sabotage and could give the element of investigation the first scene lacked.

3 - The hook that started this journey is not satisfactorily explored. The journalist they are going to find has got lost in the forest and his leg got trapped in a man trap. He crawled into the shack, found the altar and is now insane. It could improve the story if the engineer has kidnapped the journalist and taken him to the shack, or even has him captive on the train. The investigators then find clues and do some investigation while on the train. As it is, they just go inside the shack and find him.

4 - The train journey should have been the main scene.  As it is you can hand wave it and just go to the train breakdown, but that would be a mistake in my view.

When I ran this scenario the half ghoul engineer was a leader of three others on the train (the conductor, the cook and the driver) who were all cannibals due to the effect of the Endless hunger from the ghoul skull.  This was hidden in the restaurant car of the train, such that when anyone was having their meal they had to make a POW roll.  Failure turned them into a raving mad cannibal who attacked their fellow diners.  Halfway through the ensuing battle a ghoul arrived and assisted the cannibals.  This made for a high intensity, high risk game with plenty of tension and SAN rolls all round.

5 - For me there was not enough meat on these bones,  I’d recommend this scenario to experienced Keepers only as the story needs to be significantly fleshed out.

So there you have it, a review of a scenario that requires work for The Keeper but has plenty of potential for lots of lovely cannibalistic horror.  Enjoy, and remember Parrying is for wimps!