Too Close to Home by Benjamin Schäfer 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.
This is a 12-page PDF that is available as a Pay What You Want supplement from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and one the front matter. A separate zip contains pngs of the four maps for the scenario.
The opening paragraphs explain that the adventure is set in the American town of Roselawn in the modern day, but it could be transferred to other places or times. The local sheriff found a body in the woods north of town and sent it to the funeral home for cremation. The owner of the funeral home discovered that the body wouldn’t burn, and couldn’t even be damaged, so went exploring and disappeared. This is the point where the investigators get involved.
There are a couple of hooks for involving the investigators, one being the local sheriff having a few too many drinks, the other being the owner of the funeral home leaving a message for some old friends (a standard for Call of Cthulhu; here’s a message from an old friend or family member you’ve never heard of before).
The investigation will lead to the funeral home, the house belonging to the body and the sheriff’s, should the investigators be able to get that individual to cooperate. This will lead them to discover a ritual and a place in the forest north of town where it is to be carried out, whereby the investigators travel to another realm where a being will offer to grant them wishes. In the absolute worst way possible. There is a potential hook for another adventure, if not dealt with in this, whereby the investigators could deal with the dead wife and daughter of the owner of the funeral home, who wished they would be brought back to life.
Finally, one page has stats for NPCs and four pages have maps of the various locations, the same maps that are available in the separate png files.
Too Close to Home in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks or a table of contents. It’s short enough that these are not essential, but they would have been appreciated. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column two colour layout and appeared to be almost free of errors. There is a single illustration, of marks needed for the ritual, and the four maps for the scenario. The maps have a hand drawn appearance and give the impression of being photos. Presentation is decent.
This can be run as a purely investigative scenario; unless the zombie relatives are used in the adventure, there is no combat. The orb cannot be fought, only spoken to, and that could be a very bad idea. As such, this can provide a bit of a break from more deadly scenarios, as it’s possible for investigators to avoid anything but mental harm. Which could, of course, drive some of them insane. Too Close to Home is a nice little investigative scenario and it can be found by clicking here.
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