Costume Party by Leth Brownlee 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 supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 10 page Pay What You Want PDF. One page is the front cover and credits and one the Table of Contents.
The Introduction explains that this is a Halloween adventure set in a small New England town in the 1930s but it can be placed in other locations. The scenario has the investigators dealing with a curse that has caused children to become the creatures of their costumes; combat, therefore, is to be avoided.
Recent Events contains the background material for investigators, explaining about the opening of a new costume shop, The Costume Cabin, and the passing of a resident.
Keeper’s Notes explains ow the curse works and how it can be broken. It will affect anyone with a costume; children generally quicker. The investigators could play police, but they would be all of the police force if they do.
Dramatis Personae has four NPCs. Each has connections to the crime, roleplaying hooks and what happens if that NPC placed the curse – it seems that choosing the person responsible is up to the Keeper.
Locations is the final section and has six different locations, the homes of the four NPCs, The Costume Cabin and the home of the person running the shop.
Costume Party in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and these are not essential. The Table of Contents covers the major and minor sections. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two column two colour layout and a number of minor errors were noticed; in particular, the headings called this A Wealth of Knowledge, not Costume Party. There are no illustrations.
This is more of an adventure framework than a fully-fledged scenario. The Keeper will need to decide the responsible party, there are no maps of the locations and no stats for any creature. Combat is stated to be avoided, but what might happen if the characters get mobbed by transformed children isn’t considered. Some random events might have helped. Most of the impetus of the adventure seems to come from players deciding what to do and, for some of the NPCs, the Keeper will need to come up with some way of the investigators hearing about them, for there are no clues leading to many of them. Costume Party is a scenario that will probably need a bit of work doing to it to properly run it and it can be found by clicking here.
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