Dark Designs by David Hallett, Kevin W. Jacklin and L. N. Isinwyll is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror roleplaying game system based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This particular supplement is for use with the 1890s Gaslight setting and is a collection of three adventures set in Victorian England. The adventures are largely separate, but it suggested they could be played as a campaign, and the third adventure uses a surviving non -player character from the first as the primary antagonist (although he could optionally be replaced).
The supplement was originally printed as a perfect bound softcover and copies of this are still available through sites such as Amazon. It is now available in PDF from RPGNow. The original softcover is the version reviewed. Of the 128 pages, 4 pages are the front matter and General Contents, 1 page is the Expanded Table of Contents, 1 page is the Introduction and 1 page a map of locations in London that appear in the scenarios, 4 pages are two 1890s Investigator Sheet, 2 pages are 1890s Investigators: A Guide and 1 is page Skills: Personal Attacks & Selected Weapons (the latter are duplicated from the section in the book and are intended for players ) and there are 9 pages of Player Handouts, which are printed on each side. Separate from the page count there is a 3 page foldout map of southern England and Wales and a 6 segment foldout map of circa 1897 London.
Eyes for the Blind, the first adventure, involves the players when a man is murdered on the same train as them whilst it is in a tunnel. The apparent murderer is missing his eyes, and has been dead for some time. This scenario embroils them in a cabal’s attempt to summon the life-spirit of Britain. The adventure sends the players to a number of sites around southern England.
The Menace from Sumatra, the second adventure, starts in a manner rather similar to the first, with a man missing his eyes dying in front of the investigators. It is suggested that, if the players have already played Eyes for the Blind, that the Keeper could allow them to think that the two scenarios are connected – even though they are not. This scenario plays out entirely within London as a fungal menace brought from overseas by an insane scientist threatens to infect the entire population.
Lord of the Dance has, as its primary antagonist, a major non-player character from the first scenario, who is again attempting to influence England’s life-spirit, by summoning part of it into a created form. This final scenario again sees investigators traipsing around southern England, and has a brief section set in the Dreamlands, although ownership of that supplement is not really required.
The final, brief section, 1890s Investigators is three pages long and is duplicated in the handout section. This provides details for creating 1890s investigators, with some minor changes, primarily raising investigators to Upper Class status so that they can effectively deal with investigations in the period; the lower classes may not have the access required. This does convoy a social danger on investigators, as getting caught doing deeds that may be misinterpreted can devastate their position in society. A suggestion is for players to create a second, lower class investigator, to do the things that an upper class one shouldn’t be caught doing.
Dark Designs in Review
The book has full colour front and back covers, and the front illustration is apparently of a Hound of Tindalos (which are always pretty tricky creatures to illustrate, as they don’t look like hounds), a creature which is relevant to one of the scenarios. There are various interior illustrations, which range from the customary portraits of various non-player characters to full page in size, all of which would appear to be relevant to the associated text. These are in black and white, as are the maps. These latter either have a hand drawn appearance or, in the cases of such as the London maps, would appear to have been reproduced from period sources.
Navigation is better than usual as, although the General Contents provides the usual, quite poor, level of detail, only covering the main sections, the Expanded Table of Contents details other sections, maps and illustrations. The format is two column, and only a few minor spelling or grammatical errors were noticed.
Although this supplement is an addition for the Gaslight setting, owning Cthulhu by Gaslight itself is stated as not being required, as this supplement has revised rules on 1890s investigator creation in the last section; however, the second adventure does refer to Gaslight as a source of information on 19th century London, as that scenario is played in the city, so having Gaslight would be to the Keeper’s advantage. The core rules are still required. There are a number of new spells, and primarily one new creature.
There is a flaw in Eyes for the Blind, which is actually acknowledged in the scenario and some suggestions are made regarding it. The problem is that the opposing non-player characters messed up their spell, meaning that it will fail anyway, and making the players totally irrelevant to the outcome. The only effect that they have is that their attempts to intervene stops them being killed or seriously injured by an annoyed goddess figure. Simply not turning up for the climactic confrontation would have had exactly the same effect. Failure, death and insanity are all accepted consequence for playing Call of Cthulhu; total irrelevancy isn’t.
In general, this is quite a decent supplement for Gaslight, and it could be possible to run the three adventures as a campaign as suggested. Should the investigators survive, of course – never something guaranteed with the game. The biggest problem is with the irrelevancy of the investigators in Eyes of the Blind; it is suggested to hide that from them, but perhaps a Keeper would be better rewriting the ending a bit to actually make the investigators relevant. Apart from that, Dark Designs is a decent collection of adventures.
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