A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Nightmare to the Sanitarium

Nightmare to the Sanitarium by Rudy Peverada is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. through the Miskatonic Repository Community Content Programme for use with Call of Cthulhu, the horror role playing game supplement based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

The supplement is available as an 11 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and one page the Table of Contents and front matter.

The opening paragraphs explain that this is a one-shot in which the characters awaken in a sanatorium after a dream and need to find their way out. This is complicated by something being after them and one of them being a traitor. There are some optional rules, as this is essentially an escape room with little in the way of investigation. There are details on the traitor, the entity and the players and on reading the map. It’s recommended that the traitor role be given to a player capable of handling it. Each character has a dream before awakening; the traitor’s dream is different.

The sanatorium itself is then covered. It has two levels with various hazards to encounter on each. Finally, stats are given for the various creatures.

Nightmare to the Sanitarium in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and has enough sections that they would have been useful. The Table of Contents covers the major sections. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two-column format and a lot of errors were noticed (the author does not appear to be a native English speaker). There are a couple of colour maps as illustrations. Presentation is okay.

This is a rather different adventure and with one of the players having to act as a traitor, it is definitely not suitable for every group. Groups need to be able to handle one of their number betraying them; if this will cause problems, the scenario should be avoided. Though there are suggestions for using it in a campaign, this is written as a one-shot and probably shouldn’t be used as anything else. The number of errors in the text is problematical; it definitely needs a proofreading and editing pass. Nightmare to the Sanitarium can be found by clicking here.