Down New England Town by Michael LaBossiere is a role playing game supplement published by Chasoium Inc. through the Miskatonic Repository community content program. This is a modern day scenario for Call of Cthulhu, the horror role playing game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and is an updated version of a scenario originally published in 1992.
This is a ten page PDF that is available as a Pay What You Want supplement from RPGNow. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Contents and one page is About the Author.
There is a brief one-paragraph Introduction that simply states that the adventure is against ghouls and that other adventures are available. The Background is also brief and says that a pack of ghouls, of a type specific to New England, moved into a small town two years ago and have been stealing corpses.
Getting the Investigators Involved has them in New England when they are stopped at a police roadblock. The police are looking for a recently stolen body, and an investigator will recognise one of the officers as someone they went to school with. If the investigators agree to help, the officer will introduce them to the police chief.
The investigation should eventually lead the characters to a ghoul warren, which can be explored to recover the most recently stolen possessions – the most recent body had a lot of valuable jewellery. If the investigators get stuck, the police chief will suggest setting a trap for the body snatchers, which will turn into a combat situation.
Around one and a half pages are the various NPCs used in the adventure, one page has the stats for the new ghoul type and one page has a colour map of the warren.
Down New England Town in Review
The PDF is bookmarked, with the various sections linked, and the Contents is to a similar level of detail, for the main content, and is also hyperlinked. Navigation is very good for a supplement of this length. The text maintains a two column format and a couple of minor errors were noticed. Bar the map, there are a couple of tweaked photographs for the a couple of the primary NPCs. Presentation is okay.
The hook for getting the investigators involved is a fairly common type for Call of Cthulhu – “Here’s a person you never heard of before that you actually know.” This really is not a good type of hook, so if the Keeper can actually create a genuine link, this would be better. Call of Cthulhu does have the problem that it’s difficult building up long-term relationships before NPCs are met, because investigators can end up insane, dead or worse very easily.
There are a couple of red herrings that can throw investigators off track, including one deliberate stereotype. This can make the scenario less straightforward than it appears. It also has a blend of investigating and probable combat. Bar the problem with the hook, which a Keeper may be able to get around, this is a perfectly decent small adventure. Down New England Town can be checked out for free by clicking here.
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