The Prisoners Dilemma - Cthulhu with a dash of DnD.....(beware there are spoilers!)

Lets start with a confession.....

Back in the good old days there was nothing I liked more than rolling up a DnD character.  As I was about 12 or 13 I was probably a bit ‘loose’ with the dice rolls ending up with an 18 in the key stat and probably a 16 in the next key stat (17 would have been too obvious).  It then got more complicated when I started playing Advanced DnD and the concept of having an additional percentile STR (if you were lucky enough to ‘roll’ an 18) came into play.  Of course, there was no use in having STR 18 + 13% naturally those rolls always resulted in 90%+.  At the time we didn’t own a copy of the rules and had to rely on other people to let us peek at the rules at the local Saturday RPG club.  Imagine our horror when we were told that the percentile add on wasn’t for each of the six stats and rolling 90%+ for all six stats was pretty unlikely……I still smile at my CHA 18 + 100%...............

What has this to do with the Cthulhu scenario ‘Prisoners Dilemma’?  Well for one thing I feel now I have owned up to my past manipulated dice rolling (admittedly this was nearly 40 years ago) so feel like my immortal soul will be favoured once it gets presented to whatever pearly gates await it and secondly I was thinking about DnD as this scenario kind of reminded me of a Dungeon bash but with a Cthulhu twist.

I dare say T. A. Newman (the author) will be horrified by this statement but let’s be clear – I quite enjoyed running it and the feedback was very positive from the players – so no need to be concerned and I would recommend it to others to try.

So let's get into the scenario…

Setting

The players start the scenario on January 31st 1919, so a nice classic era setting.  Also the location is none other than HMP Dartmoor Prison and the nearby town - Princetown.  Having been to Dartmoor and the surrounding areas for a family holiday a few years ago (and we visited the HMP Dartmoor Prison Museum) i was intrigued as to what would unfold as I read through the scenario and the Keepers notes.  

The background and history as to why all this is happening is clever and plays on the history of the location and the architect of the prison Daniel Asher Alexander.  Daniel was the principal architect for HMP Dartmoor and other items of note in the 18th and early 19th century, but unlike in the scenario he did actually pass away in 1846.  In the story for the scenario Daniel came across a strange box during excavating works for the London docks and this then turned him into a expert in arcane lore, giving him unique insights into the cosmos and extending his natural life hundreds of years.  So this artifice is why The Great Architect is still alive and kicking and welcoming the investigators into HMP Dartmoor in 1919 at the start of the scenario.

The other item I liked was the use of the layout of HMP Dartmoor as a plot device.  Luckily I have never had to stay in a prison and I don’t know that much about them, but Dartmoor is set up in a certain way with prison wards fanning out around a central point.  This design lends itself to being utilised in this scenario – Daniel Asher Alexander designs the prison to represent the elder sign he found in the items he retrieved when excavating for the London Docklands.  This design forms a protective ward around the prison.  You see, Daniels machinations in the cosmos have come to the attention of the Great Old Ones.  He dreams of random individuals that if not stopped will attempt, in the future, to bring the Great Old Ones to the earth resulting in the end of humanity.  To stop this happening, he lures and sacrifices those who will be involved with the Great Old Ones release to the prison with a promise of a fortune to be claimed.  Thereby stopping the said Great Old Ones from reappearing on the earth.  Those unfortunate enough to be lured are to be devoured by the Crawling One.  The Crawling One was birthed from the remains of an old witch called Vixana whom Daniel discovered in underground caverns on the moors when looking for a location to build the prison back in 1806.

The problem for The Great Architect is that the Great Old Ones having been made aware of him are looking to prevent him from stopping others summoning them.  So, they have released The Hounds of Tindalos into the moors and they stalk the area looking for a way to bypass the elder sign and devour Daniel Alexander Asher and put a stop to his meddling.

The hook to get the players to the prison is that they receive a letter from an inmate who has information that can lead to the return of a Blake painting and the claim of a substantial reward – all they need to do is come and meet him and he will give them the information as he was hired by their grandfather to do ‘a job’.  The inmate is trying to right a few wrongs and pay his dues by passing on the fortune to the descendant of someone who looked out for him. 

Preparation

With this need for financial help in mind I then generated 5 characters for the players to choose from, each with a low credit rating score to reflect the fact that they were desperate for some money.  Each player then receives a copy of the letter – this presented me with a minor problem.  The scenario envisages a slow burn introduction with the players meeting to get a bus to the prison and having some time to talk and meet each other.  I felt this was going to potentially derail the scenario as if the players divulged that they all had the same letter from the same person it would immediately become clear that something is not quite right and influence the players behaviour from scene 1, or result in them getting off the bus!  So instead I had each player arrive individually, had a bit of interaction with the prison guard and then haughtily put them onto the bus.  Once onto the bus I described the bus journey and arrival at the prison.  The first time the players actually got to talk to each other was after the guards had left the visitors room and locked the door.  Although this was a bit ‘railroady’ you have to get the scenario started at the right point and with the correct information available to players so I thought this was justified in this case.  Now if they found out that they all had the same letter from the same inmate it would seem weird, strange and downright spooky – but it didn’t matter as they were all in the locked visitors room anyway…..

What I liked about this setting was that it was contained.  Which can be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage depending on how you like to play your games and how open you want them to be.  This is a closed location, after all it is set in a prison – but players are pretty much left to explore the prison how they want as the Prison Ward that they are locked into, and where all the action takes place, has been sealed off for renovations and isn’t actually in everyday use.  The Great Architect and his minions use it as a drop off point for those who respond to the letter and the prison authorities don’t know anything about it.  This isn’t really explained in the scenario and as Keeper you just have to imagine that there are spells or similar strange things in play that prevent the normal prison authorities from realising they have this sacrificial camp on their prison grounds and that only a few people have access to it.

This brings me nicely back to my comment at the start about DnD.  The players have to search the prison ward they are located in and come across encounters (monsters) and other items (treasure) that will hinder or help them to escape.  They come across other NPCs who will help them to escape.  They also have to enter a caverns system and navigate various obstacles (traps) in their way to leave the prison and escape to the Moors. The scenario presents all this with useful maps and descriptions of what is in each location.  As I read it and then we played it, it did feel like the players were on a Dungeon crawl like you’d find in a DnD module.  There was little in the way of investigation needed as the overriding requirement for the players was to escape – the how, why and when of what was going on were just not important to the running of the scenario in terms of the players getting the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible. I don’t think this demeans the scenario in anyway.  There are plenty of other scenarios that are ‘sandbox’ or open world play, there is nothing wrong with having scenarios like this available to play in Call of Cthulhu.  In fact, I’d say many scenarios that claim to be open world or sandbox are not actually of this type.  The author actually states in the sequence of events that the scenario is linear, but allows for free form play when investigating the different parts of the prison and the NPCs they will come across.  That for me is absolutely ok.

What doesn’t come across so much in the linear descriptions provided is that the environment the players enter is evolving and dynamic.  So in each of the dramatis personae descriptions the NPCs are moving about, or doing other actions but it would be impossible in terms of the gaming environment to keep these NPC actions from having an impact on the gameplay.  For example the players escape the visitors room and enter the prison ward where the cells are on a open mezzanine floor above them.  It will be impossible for them not to hear at least one of the NPCs and go and investigate.  There are other subtle points in the story that maybe didn’t come up during playtesting (like the letters situation I described above), for example the entry door to the ward is accessible but locked, why can’t the players pick the lock and escape and get help?  In this instance I just said that the door was magically warded so they couldn’t get out.  For a Keeper there is a lot going on in terms of the environment and the NPCs so you need to be able to keep track of these events and ensure they fit together in a way that seems to make sense in the story the players are exposing as they interact with it.

I played this scenario as a one shot – but it clocked in at just over 4 hours.  There is a lot to this scenario – the initial set up, the escape from the visitors room into the prisoners ward, the investigation, identification of how to get into the caverns, travel through the caverns, the final encounter with the Great Architect and then finally the escape into the Moors. If I were to do this again I would run it as two sessions of about 2 – 3 hours each.  As it was the constrained time to actually play worked partly in my favour as the pressing need to escape the craziness in the prison meant it was kept high tempo and decisions had to be made pretty quickly.  The players gave feedback that it felt like this need to escape had an urgency that fitted with the scenario and it didn’t feel like we were speed playing just to get to bed at a reasonable hour.  One of my colleagues on RPG Nook who played in a actual play of this said it took them three sessions and they did spend far more time looking into the background and set up of the scenario hook, so it can be played quickly or at a more reasonable pace.

The Dilemma is a nice twist on being able to escape relatively easily or not.  I won’t spoil it here, but suffice to say the investigators I played with didn’t go with what would be a difficult decision and instead we ended up with a TPK. 😁

Final thoughts

• Lots and lots of descriptions.  There is a lot of text for the Keeper to use if they so wish.  Descriptions of rooms and advice about the type of atmosphere to generate.  When I ran this I used some of the descriptive text but it is not always needed and you can riff on the ideas presented as needed.
• There are some parts of the story which you can bypass as they don’t really add anything to narrative – if the narrative is escape at all costs.  I felt like this was the best way to play the scenario so it was fast paced and added a sense of urgency.
• The SAN losses are pretty heavy, even early on.  I did manipulate these a little to reduce them at the start and then slowly build them, so that that the potential for bouts of madness and insanity was left till the players were entering the cavern and the finale.
• The monsters used are pretty heavy weight and contact with them by the players will probably result in deaths (also refer to SAN losses above!).  Not a bad thing par-se, but certainly if you were playing this as a ‘inbetweeny’ scenario in a ongoing campaign you would need to carefully think about its impact on the investigators if you want your campaign to continue after the Prisoners Dilemma.
• There is a great opportunity to really lean into the chase rules while the players are in the caverns.  I am kicking myself that during game play I didn’t utilise this to maximise the suspense or excitement.  I would definitely suggest that if you run this scenario you consider how to use those rules to maximum effect.
• Jump skill becomes pretty important if you want to get out – lol.
• It is pretty much impossible to survive this scenario!  Expect a TPK or at least only one player to actually get out.  I was being kind with the SAN losses and damage but still managed to kill the party. Which was nice.  We had one player make it out, but then the deadliness of the Moors comes into play and if they don’t get you the Hounds will.
• Bonus points for having a print friendly version of the scenario!  I wish more would do this…..

Anyway – a fine scenario that I recommend you go and look at for yourself and run or play in.  Until next time, Parrying is for wimps!

Acknowledgements

• RPG Nook - go here to play in Cthulhu and other horror related games.  It really is a great friendly place with games running and a fantastic community.
• The Players: Azimov / Orf / V for Vino / Joey T and Joey G. A great group.
• Tools: RPG Nook Discord Channel or voice and Roll20 for scenario and rolls.
• Drivethru link to The Prisoners Dilemma.