A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Lost Symmetry

Lost Symmetry by Benjamin Schäfer is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. through the Miskatonic Repository Community Content Program for use with Call of Cthulhu, the horror role playing game supplement based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft. This is a scenario for the 1920s set at Boston University.

The supplement is available as a 12 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and one the front matter. A zip file has PNGs of the three handouts.

The scenario starts by explaining that a mathematics student, James Bryant, has gone missing. The investigators, who are fellow students and friends of James, notice when he fails to attend a lecture, something unknown for him.

The investigators will speak to other students, try to get into James’s dorm room and visit the library, in the process hopefully working out where James has gone. They will need to head there and stop what he, though it is not truly James any longer, is in the process of doing.

The Appendix has a list of characters, names for the characters in German, if it is placed in Germany, a new Mythos tome and a single NPC.

The final four pages have three handouts and a map of the final location.

Lost Symmetry in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, though short, has enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two-column format and a number of minor errors were noticed; primarily, a number of proper nouns were not capitalised. The primary illustrations are the handouts. Presentation is decent.

As is, this adventure seems more suited to being a one-shot than part of a campaign; even success has major campaign-changing consequences – assuming the Keeper decides to use them; they may not. It could, with a bit of work, be moved to the more thematically appropriate Miskatonic University, though a number of changes would need to be made to use specific characters and locations in Arkham. Perhaps the worst part is the unfortunate “person you are friends with but have never heard of before” adventure hook. That might work if this is the first adventure in a campaign or a standalone; during a campaign it is highly annoying. Lost Symmetry isn’t a bad adventure and it can be found by clicking here.