A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Great Old Ones

The Great Old Ones 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 – although many of the adventures in this supplement are actually based on the creations of other authors. This is a collection of six separate adventures that can be played as a campaign, or used separately. The adventures are set in a variety of different locations in the 1920s.

A scan of the cover of the original printed book.

The supplement was originally available as a printed book, but it is now available as a watermarked PDF from RPGNow for $9.87. The printed book, which is the version reviewed, can still be purchased from sources such as Amazon. The book is a softcover book with 176 pages. Four pages are the front matter, one is the Contents and index of Illustrations, Maps and Plans and two pages are the Introduction. The Introduction explains that, of the six scenarios, five deal (directly or indirectly, with the Great Old Ones and the sixth with an avatar of an Outer God. It also considers the Great Old Ones and their nature, as well as the changes made by August Derleth to their nature (a change that is often controversial to readers).

The first adventure, The Spawn, is set in a small mining town in New Mexico, where the players are called to help investigate the death of a Wobbly who was infiltrating one of two mines by a compatriot of his who was investigating the other. The enemy is a group of chthonians, primarily from Brian Lumley‘s The Burrowers Beneath, and their human cat’s paws. New information is provided on the chthonians, and the players will also encounter representatives of the Great Old One Yig. This scenario is specifically set in 1920, due to the involvement of the Wobblies, or the International Workers of the World, an organisation that was struggling to exist by that time and would not last much longer as an effective group.

Still Waters takes place not too far away from New Orleans. The players are supposed to be retrieving a book for a professor at Miskatonic University, but tangle with a couple of incredibly hard to kill Cthulhu cultists who are no longer human.

Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? takes place in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festival, where cultists (related to those in the region from the Lovecraft tale The Call of Cthulhu) are trying to bring Hastur to Earth. There may be indirect references to Lovecraft’s work, but this is primarily influenced by The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (although Hastur, Lake Hali and Carcosa are all creations of Ambrose Bierce), and to a lesser extent by Karl Edward Wagner‘s The River of Night’s Dreaming.

The original printed book version of The Great Old Ones.

One in Darkness is set in Boston, and assumes that investigators are either in that city, or are commuting from Arkham, where they may have recently delivered a book to Miskatonic University. This sees the players going up against an amateur sorcerer who has conjured up a lesser avatar of Nyarlathotep (an Outer God, not a Great Old One), which they will more than likely have to directly confront.

The Pale God is directly influenced by Ramsay Campbell‘s story “Before the Storm” which can be found in the book Cold Print. Although this adventure starts in New England, it finishes up in Gloucestershire in England, and the players may directly confront a Great Old One – which is often fatal.

Bad Moon Rising is the final adventure and starts off in England, where the players may now be following the previous scenario, where there is a minor influence by a character from “The Gap in the Curtain” by John Buchan. This is the longest scenario in the collection, and the investigators get enlisted in helping the Royal Navy with something that has been left behind by the Great Race of Yith. This adventure should be carefully considered beforehand, for the ending has many possibilities for radically altering any continuing campaign (this final adventure may, possibly, have been indirectly referred to in Charles Stross‘ Laundry Files novel The Jennifer Morgue).

After the adventures there are six pages of character sheets, one double-sided standard one and four single-page foreign language sheets. There are 28 pages duplicating handouts from within the book itself, although these are all single sided. There are three pages of calendars and a fourth page which has instructions for the calendars and an index for the Handout Section.

Inside the original printed version of The Great Old Ones.

The Great Old Ones in Review

The Contents has only the page numbers of each scenario and the second index, Illustrations, Maps and Plans, does exactly what it says and gives page numbers for these. There are plenty of other sections that could have done with being in the index that aren’t. There is also an index for the Handout Section in the rear of the book. As a result, navigation is, as is common for Call of Cthulhu, not as good as it could be, but, with the second index and handout index, better than it is in some supplements.

The book has full colour front and back covers, with black and white illustrations inside the supplement itself. These illustrations are primarily portraits of non-player characters with some maps, which give the appearance of being hand-drawn, and the occasional illustration relevant to the associated text, from small portions of a page to the occasional full page. As is typical for Call of Cthulhu supplements, this is primarily comprised of text, with the writing being the main feature, not the illustrations. The text as a whole is in a two column format, and any errors are quite minor.

Half of the adventures are related to content created by authors other than Lovecraft. Each adventure has a link to the next one, but these are quite minor and easily ignored if the Keeper wishes to play them separately. In each case, a minor contact or location that they are in can direct them to the next adventure in the series. There is the usual selection of new spells, new Mythos books and the occasional new creature that can be found in most Call of Cthulhu supplements. The Great Old Ones is a typically deadly selection of adventures for the game, that can be used as a loosely-connected campaign, or as a series of fillers for a larger campaign.