Fatal Experiments is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror role playing game based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This supplement is set in the 1920s and contains three scenarios as well as some new rules.
The supplement was originally published as a softcover book, copies of which can still be found on Amazon. It is also available as a watermarked PDF on RPGNow. The version reviewed is the original printed book. This has 128 pages, of which five pages are the front matter, one page is the Contents as well as supplementary, much larger, index, Illustrations, Plans, New Spells, Entities, Skills, & Things, there are fourteen pages of single-sided player handouts and two pages are a 1920s Investigator’s Sheet.
The first section is New Weapons for Call of Cthulhu, and this isn’t an adventure at all. Instead, it’s a collection of new rules and a new skill related to black powder weapons. There is a collection of some of the more unusual weapons that could possibly still be found at the time (in later periods, they would be rarer and be collector’s items) as well as several contemporary (for the 1920s) military weapons and some more unusual types of ammunition. This section finishes in fold-out pages of illustrations of various guns, which are equivalent to four pages but are not numbered.
The first actual adventure is Tatterdemalion. This is nominally set near to New York City, but could be moved to most other major cities with a strong theatrical element. A producer whose latest stage play was ill received by both critics and the audience descended into madness and read The King in Yellow (the fictional play, not the book of the same name by Robert W. Chambers). He plans to stage a version of this play in his home, inviting various people. Investigators can end up confronting the King in Yellow himself in Carcosa.
The Songs of Fantari is set in the Mediterranean on an Italian island near to Sicily. The island has suffered a number of disappearances of fishermen recently. They have been abducted by a group of Deep Ones who are carrying out various experiments on them. The characters are approached by the count whose island it is, who wishes them to investigate and stop the disappearances.
The Lurker in the Crypt is the final scenario and the longest one, being, at about 52 pages, roughly double the length of the second longest, Tatterdemalion. This is set in and beneath New York City, where the descendants of a former member of the Arkham Witch Cult who fled Arkham and follower of the Great Old One Nyogtha are continuing breeding experiments between themselves, ghouls, Nyogtha and humans, to create a new race. The descendants own a cemetery and, as well as the aforementioned creatures, players can also expect to encounter zombies and the walking dead. There’s a copy of the Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society which can be found; this was something that was included in Terror From the Stars (although the two adventures from that supplement were included in Cthulhu Classics, the Field Manual was not).
Fatal Experiments in Review
The supplement has full colour front and back covers, whilst the internal illustrations are all in black and white. There are illustrations of the various weapons from the first section on the fold-out sheets, as well as portraits of non-player characters, maps, which have a hand drawn appearance, and some other illustrations relevant to the associated text, up to full page in size.
The Contents simply lists the page for each of the four sections, plus the handouts, but the other index is much more useful, as it gives the page numbers for many more of the additional features. This makes navigation superior to that of most Call of Cthulhu supplements published during the period. There is a notable error, where there is a line, that by the looks of it was intended to be a placeholder marking where an image should be placed, that has been left in even after the image was added, and there are some other grammatical errors, but overall, it isn’t too bad.
The first section of this supplement is, rather weirdly, a collection of new rules and equipment, which doesn’t seem to fit into what is essentially a scenario book. This is the sort of thing that you would expect to see in supplements such as the Keeper’s Compendium or perhaps the Cthulhu Casebook, not a collection of adventures. Having said that, this is an interesting assortment of more unusual weapons, which could liven up the game, for those players who like weapons. Whether or not they will be useful against Lovecraftian horrors is a different story, and is mostly up to the Keeper in question.
The three adventures don’t quite fit in with the title of the supplement. The second and third adventures fit the title most closely; The Songs of Fantari is based around Deep One experiments and The Lurker in the Crypt is based around some breeding experiments between humans, ghouls and a Great Old One. The “Fatal” part of title does, however, fit all three scenarios quite well; this being Call of Cthulhu, there is an excellent chance that some characters will not make it through to the end in one piece. The scenarios are not intended to be used as part of a campaign. The adventure set on Fantari is intended for novice players and investigators; the final adventure is definitely not. Tatterdemalion falls somewhere in between, having the potential to be quite lethal. The Lurker also makes references to the forces of law and order in New York; players are expected to gain their help, which will make the scenario rather more survivable.
As is the case with most of the supplements, this one contains a number of new spells, skills, creatures and minor Mythos books. The new rules and items in the section of guns may be interesting to some Keepers and players, and the three adventures can be slotted in to an existing campaign without too much difficulty in most cases. Fatal Experiments is an interesting collection of rules and potentially lethal adventures.
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