Cthulhu by Gaslight by William A. Barton is a 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 is the primary sourcebook of the 1890s Victorian Era Gaslight setting, which has a stronger focus on Britain than the usual 1920s era supplements.
The supplement is a perfect bound softcover book that is still available from sites such as Amazon, or an updated version can also be purchased as a PDF from RPGNow. The book has 128 pages, of which four pages are front matter, one page is the Contents, which is followed by a full page map of the county of London and a page devoted to the Introduction, although the latter only takes up a small portion of the page, one page dedicated to the book’s deceased artist, one page a period map of Europe, one page a period map of the world, a one page Bibliography and four pages are 1890s investigator’s sheets. There is also a fold out map of London at the rear of the book, which isn’t included in the page count, and which is approximately two pages in size.
An 1890s Sourcebook is the first section of the book and, as it says, is the sourcebook for the 1890s. This section covers investigator creation, including the more important for the era social class, new occupations, weapons and related information. There is also period information for the 1890s, focussing strongly on England, the British Empire being the pre-eminent world power of the time, and on London. Some details, including maps, are given on some major buildings and areas of London, as well as prices and communications.
Time Travel covers several different ways of using time travel as a means of getting investigators into a different era from the 1920s, including Gates, the Great Race of Yith and, of course (given that this is the era in which Wells wrote a novel about them), actual time machines. This includes other time periods, and the section isn’t aimed simply at getting investigators into the Gaslight setting, but from any period into any other, including the future. As a consequence, this is a more general chapter than one aimed simply at the Gaslight setting; indeed, there are more mentions of other time periods than the Victorian Era.
Scenario Suggestions includes a timeline for Sherlock Holmes in the 1890s, both details on cases which were actually written about and those that were mentioned in passing. Summaries of the cases are provided, as well as some suggestions as to how they may integrate with the Mythos. There is also information on some of the writings of H. G. Wells, including details on new races, Martians and Morlocks, and suggestions as to how the players could encounter them, including in a War of the World type scenario. Holmes is treated as a ‘real’ non-player character for the Gaslight setting.
The Yorkshire Horrors is the single scenario, and takes up around half of the book. The investigators are hired by Sherlock Holmes to help Sherrinford Holmes, the (doubly fictional) elder brother of Mycroft and Sherlock, who has a manor in Yorkshire and has been accused of murder. This naturally involves a plot by Cthulhoid cultists. This is all part of a plot by Professor Moriarty, who survived the Reichenbach Falls through the use of knowledge he had acquired of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Cthulhu by Gaslight in Review
The book has full colour front and rear covers and, like a number of Call of Cthulhu supplements published by Chaosium during this period it has a number of full colour plates, six in total, one of which folds out and is a bit larger than the others. These colour plates are not included in the page count and tend to have very little relevance to the text, either associated or anywhere else in the supplement. The internal illustrations and maps are black and white and do tend to be associated with the text. The illustrations range in size from part of a page to full page and one double page illustration.
One of the illustrations stood out, as it is intended to be of an old church in Yorkshire, yet it doesn’t resemble British churches and appears to be made of wood – something not seen very often in permanent buildings in Britain – resulting in an illustration of a supposedly British church that appears to have been misplaced from the American Midwest. The two period maps at the rear of the book haven’t reproduced that well. Throughout, the supplement maintains a two column standard, and mostly appears free of spelling or grammatical problems. The Contents is better than many Call of Cthulhu supplements, covering a greater extent of the book, but it could have been better.
Gaslight is not a standalone supplement; it is an addition to the core rules, not a replacement for them, and they will be required. It is a combination of a period sourcebook, covering to a large extent London, which was the most important city not only in Britain but the world at the time, and adventures. There are the more general details on time travel, scenario suggestions and a single scenario set in the 1890s.
The scenario takes up around half of the supplement and, given that the period sourcebook is substantially focused on London, it’s rather odd that the actual scenario in the supplement is instead set in Yorkshire, rather than making use of the background information actually provided. This does give the impression that the book has been assembled from essays and a scenario that were originally separate, as very little of the period information in the first half of the book is truly useful in the adventure.
The scenario, although interesting and involving the players with what is one of the most famous fictional characters of the era, could perhaps have been better set in London, one way or another, although it is doubtful that the scenario as it exists could be adapted. Instead, a completely new scenario would need writing.
Cthulhu by Gaslight provides an interesting entrance to a period not quite the same, although not that much distant in time from the 1920s, but like a number of Call of Cthulhu supplements of this type it feels like a bit of a mash up of different types of subject matter, rather than a coherent whole.
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