A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Dateline Lovecraft EXTRA! – Help Wanted

Dateline Lovecraft EXTRA! – Help Wanted by Jo Kreil is a role playing game supplement published by Cthulhu Reborn. This is a generic supplement that is intended to be used for 1920s horror role playing games based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The supplement may lack stats, due to IP restrictions, but it is clearly designed for Call of Cthulhu.

This is a nineteen page PDF that is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want supplement. It is intended to be used with Dateline: Lovecraft #1: Arkham, 1928. The latter is a newspaper prop that is designed like an issue of the Arkham Advertiser in a period-appropriate manner, combined with instructions on how to use it. Help Wanted is a scenario built around one of the ads found in the prop.

The adventure is built around an ad in the current, prop, issue of the newspaper, and two related ads for previous issues. Anyone who answered the ad was never seen again, and once an ad was answered, it was stopped. Each ad required a respondent with a specific, and different, skillset.

There are actually three different motivations for the adventure. Most of the scenario, which involves investigating the disappearances and tracking down the location of the villain, remains the same no matter what the motivation. However, each of the three motivations has a different primary villain, or villains, and some differences to the end game. This means that there are different ways of drawing investigators in – and not just the ‘someone you know has died’ hook often seen in Call of Cthulhu adventures.

Dateline Lovecraft EXTRA! – Help Wanted in Review

The PDF is very well bookmarked for its length, although it lacks a table of contents. Navigation is decent. The text maintains a two column format and appeared free of errors. There are a number of black and white illustrations, at least some of which look as if they are custom. Presentation is very good.

The concept of the prop newspaper as a source of potential adventures is an interesting one, and this supplement expands one of these into a full scenario. It also references other articles and content from the newspaper, and these can provide extra information. It is certainly possible to run the scenario without Dateline: Lovecraft #1, but having the full prop will improve the experience.

Help Wanted is an interesting scenario with multiple options, all Mythos related but different in nature, and an interesting way of expanding an already interesting concept. Dateline Lovecraft EXTRA! – Help Wanted can be found by clicking here.