A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing

Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing by Joseph D. Salvador is a role playing game supplement published by Raven God Games. This is an adaptation of Swords & Wizardry to a horror game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The supplement is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

This is a 219 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $9.99 but was purchased for the reduced price of $6.89 during a sale. One page is the front cover, three pages are the front matter, one page is the Forward, two pages are the Table of Contents, one page has a map of Lovecraft Country, two pages are character sheets and two pages are the Open Game License. The PDF comes in two versions, one low-res and one hi-res.

The Introduction explains the date for the setting, namely the 1920s, gives an overview of the time period and gives brief overviews of Lovecraftian locations in and near New England, including a map of Arkham.

Chapter 1: Basics gives an overview of standard matters such as dice, attributes, attribute feats and class skills.

Chapter 2: Character Creation runs down creating a new character and describes the four character classes, Antiquarian, Combatant, Opportunist and Socialite. There is also a d20 table that can be used to create relationships between different characters on creation.

Chapter 3: Contacts explains these as being individuals who characters can request aid from. Characters begin the game with one or more contacts and can gain – or lose, if the contact is abused – others during play. There are broad categories of different types of contacts listed.

Chapter 4: Equipment has lists of 1920s equipment, together with price, weight, and, where appropriate for armour and weapons, defensive and offensive capabilities.

Chapter 5: Skills is a list of skills used in the game with brief descriptions of how they are used.

Chapter 6: Occupations is an entirely optional chapter. Classes were defined in Chapter 2; this chapter gives 30 different occupations, from labourer to professor, from criminal to soldier. These occupations give various occupational specialties, that improve their ability with certain skills, as well as possessions and a weekly income.

Chapter 7: Playing the Game covers game mechanics such as gaining experience, time, movement, climbing, hiring assistants, investigating, negotiating, combat, damage, dying, healing, insanity and saving throws.

Chapter 8: Running the Game is information for the referee on awarding experience, designing adventures, the Lovecraftian campaign and Lovecraftian ambiance.

Chapter 9: Magic has spells in the game. These are a combination of standard spells, such as cloudkill and detect magic, and new ones, such as elder sign and powder of Ibn Ghazi. The way spells are handled is, however, different. Any class can learn a spell and the spell level indicates how many days learning a spell will take, assuming the feat to learn it is successful. Once learned, a spell can be cast at any time, as long as the character has the requirements and the ingredients. Success is not guaranteed, and failure can have some dangerous consequences. Spell casting is therefore rather different to how it would normally be in D&D-derived games, and also more dangerous, which is as it should be.

Chapter 10: Adversaries, Beasts and Monsters is the bestiary. It has new monsters, of the Mythos type, animals and various different types of human, these being defined by what they do, such as civilian, cultist, soldier and gangster. There are a couple of paragraphs on creating new adversaries and a table that can be used as a guideline for, hit dice, base attack bonus, saving throw and XP awarded.

Chapter 11: Eldritch Artifacts is Mythos-related gear. There are Mythos Tomes, which lists seven of the most well known, Weird Science, which is the technology that the more scientific Mythos creatures, such as Mi-Go and the Great Race of Yith, use, and Sorcerous Items, which has some magic items.

Chapter 12: Mythos Secrets has brief overviews on Mythos-related geography, cults, Great Old Ones and other gods.

Chapter 13: The Tupilak is a starting scenario based in Arkham, where the characters deal with an item that appears to be, but isn’t, a tupilak. The item is connected to Great Cthulhu and a cultist wants to get his hands on it. This is an okay adventure, but perhaps not brilliant; even if the cultist succeeds in his plans he basically loses.

Appendix I: Eras of Mythos Earth is a single page on using Eldritch Tales in other times, or using it to add a Lovecraftian edge to a normal Swords & Wizardry game.

Appendix II: Inspirational Material has a list of authors, books and websites that can be used to gain ideas, and a bibliography.

Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing in Review

The PDF is bookmarked, but not to the depth it could be. Only chapters and major sections are linked and the appendices are missing entirely. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth, but does include the appendices, and is also hyperlinked. Navigation is okay, but it could be better.

The text maintains a single column format with a page edge and appeared to be almost free of errors. There are a variety of black and white illustrations, up to a full page in size. Some of these are stock but others appear to be custom. Presentation is decent.

There are quite a few optional rules in the book. Most of these either increase complexity or danger, although the optional pulp rules gives characters more of an edge. There could be more spells and perhaps there are a few too many of the more standard ones rather that the truly Mythos-style ones. Spell ideas could easily be scavenged form other systems such as Call of Cthulhu though, and then adjusted to fit this game.

D&D is often not the best type of framework to build a horror role playing game around; Cthulhu would not be an eldritch abomination, simply a boss fight. It does require a bit of tinkering to make it suitable. Eldritch Tales does still use levels, but they don’t have quite the same effect as they would in other variations. Levels only go up to six, but more could be extrapolated on. Each class has the same hit dice; some simply have more of them, but no character is going to have the amount of hit points that would commonly be expected. Saving throws and attack bonuses, as well as some skills, also improve with level gains, but sometimes quite slowly. Characters are therefore a lot more vulnerable than is normally the case, which is only as it should be in a Lovecraftian horror game. This is a good conversion of the base system. Eldritch Tales: Lovecraftian White Box Role-Playing is a different way of approaching Lovecraftian horror, but one that works pretty well, and it can be found by clicking here.