Camp Hollow Lake by Daniel Stephens is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. through the Miskatonic Repository Community Content Programme for use with Call of Cthulhu, the horror role playing game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The adventure is set in the modern day.
The supplement is available as a 28 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers and three the front and rear matter and Contents.
Camp Hollow Lake explains that this is a modern-day scenario intended to give the feel of a slasher film. It gives some brief details on the town of Riverfall in Maine, Hollow Lake and the background to the adventure. The villain, who is a pretty sympathetic character, had a whole bunch of bad things happen, was thought to have been dead and is now seeking revenge. It also explains that the pre-generated characters all have ties to the adventure, and if they are not used the Keeper should use them as NPCs so that they can provide the background information they have.
Chapter 1 – The Arrival has the characters arrive in camp and participate in an assault course, which is played out but serves no real purpose.
Chapter 2 – The Slasher has the villain attack. In this chapter, the characters need to work out who the killer is and how they got the powers they have. Various locations in the camp are mapped and detailed, including people who are killed by the slasher whilst the characters are in them.
Chapter 3 – Horror has the final confrontation with the villain as well as various encounter ideas for the camp and how to build tension.
Chapter 4 – Stats & Handouts has stats for the villain, a map of the camp, backstories for the pre-generated characters, other handouts and finally character sheets for the pre-gens.
Camp Hollow Lake in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough that these would have been useful. The Contents covers the various sections and is hyperlinked. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and some minor errors were noticed. The only illustrations are colour maps of the various locations. Presentation is adequate.
This is in many ways what it’s intended to be, a typical slasher story in which a lot of people die, though in many cases these are deliberately not the characters but others at the camp. Perhaps the biggest difference is how sympathetic the villain is; in truth, they became what they are thanks to other people and what happens to them is hardly pleasant. The villain may truly be a victim in this. Having said that, this is a serviceable little adventure and perhaps best suited for a one-shot, though the characters can gain information that has no use in this scenario but could become useful later down the line. Camp Hollow Lake can be found by clicking here.
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