A Review of the Roleplaying Game Supplement The Keeper’s Companion Volume 1

The Keeper’s Companion Volume 1 by a variety of authors is a roleplaying 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. This is a collection of essays, rules and information for Keepers, and a fair proportion of the book was originally published in the Keeper’s Compendium, although in this version it has been revised and the book itself is around three times the size.

The book is available as a PDF or print on demand softcover book from DriveThruRPG, or in the original printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF version is the version reviewed and has a regular cost of $11.95 but was purchased at the discounted price of $9.63. The PDF has 212 pages, of which 2 pages are the colour front and back covers, 5 pages are front matter, 3 pages are the Table of Contents, 1 page is an Investigator Sheet, 1 page is the Apparent Natural Death Form, 1 page is an advert and 1 page is a filler graphic duplicated from the front matter.

Good Cthulhu Hunting, ten commandments for investigators, was originally published in Cthulhu Casebook, and is a list of ways in which investigators can try to stay sane and alive for longer.

Suggestions for Keepers is thirteen suggestions for how Keepers (or GameMasters, to use the more generic term) should run games and make them more enjoyable for all involved. This section is followed by the essay, Brief History of the Written Word, originally from Keeper’s Compendium, but revised.

Occult Books lists genuine books on the occult, divided into three sections by date, 1900 and Earlier, 1901 to 1940 and 1941 to the Present. These are non-Mythos books and each has the name, author, details on the subject, whether it is in print (in the modern era) and game stats, namely Sanity loss, Occult skill bonus and spells, if any of these are relevant. This section ends with an optional rule, Feverish Study.

Forbidden Tomes is a collection of Mythos books and is one of the sections that was originally in the Keeper’s Compendium, although the descriptions and details on the books themselves has been expanded. It starts with languages and scripts, many nonhuman in nature, alternative resistance rules and suggestions on handling books. The section then covers the books individually, with details on the tome, the different versions, if there are any, where they might be found and spells and knowledge contained in each. There are also sidebars providing details on the authors of some of the books. The section then has new spells, which are asterisked in the descriptions of the books, and a short list of more mythos tomes, which just give a line of stats for each book. This list was also in the Keeper’s Compendium, but for some reason it has been reduced in number in this book.

Arcane Antiquities has a selection of artefacts from Call of Cthulhu adventures and Mythos stories.

Secret Cults is another section that was originally in the Keeper’s Compendium and details cults from scenarios, Mythos stories and, in one case, a genuine occult society.

Forensic Medicine is an extensive essay on forensics, including things such as coroners, medical examiners, causes of death, DNA, trace evidence and firearms. It is linked to the Apparent Natural Death Form at the rear of the book and, at the end of the essay, has a listing of sources, a law enforcement timeline and a table on the circumstances of death arranged by U.S. state.

Alien Races is another section that was in the original Compendium and would appear to be largely unchanged. It covers a handful of different races, some native to Earth and some closely related to humans, that may be encountered.

Mysterious Places is the final section from the original Compendium and details lost continents and cities, underground realms, star systems and planets all mentioned in Mythos stories. None are covered in much depth, but some have more detail than others.

Skills Revisited has details on skill usage, a revised list of all the skills and ends with some alternate rules on Sanity loss from reading Mythos books. There is another optional rule, Brainstorming, which can be used for players trying to solve something when none of them has a suitable skill.

The Keeper’s Companion Volume 1 in Review

The Table of Contents is very thorough, but the PDF lacks any bookmarks. In the printed form, navigation is therefore above average but as a PDF navigation is comparatively poor. The book has colour front and rear covers and black and white illustrations inside. Most of the internal illustrations are the sidebars used in the various sections. These are filler which take up quite a lot of space and, while they may be relevant to one particular piece of text in the section they are in, they are repeated throughout. There are rather unnecessary and pad the book out. Layout is a single column with few errors; however, there are frequent gaps where it seems there should be a dash, but it doesn’t appear.

In Arcane Antiquities, although the title of where the antiquity in question originated is given, it isn’t made clear as to whether this was a story or an adventure. Those familiar with Chaosium supplements and Mythos authors will be able to identify the sources easily enough, but it should still possibly have been made clearer what was fiction and what was a supplement (the supplements referenced are usually, but not always, relatively easy to determine).

The Companion is, to a large extent, more of a collection of separate essays than a coherent whole. Quite often one section doesn’t reference relevant material in another, and some information is spread across multiple chapters. For instance, there are new spells and books, not just those in the section on Forbidden Tomes, but in other places throughout, as well as some new creatures.

Forensic Medicine is an extensive essay on the subject, including crime scene investigation. It is very thorough and detailed, but it seems a bit out of place. Its relevance seems rather debateable, and it takes up a noticeable percentage of the book. It does seem well researched, and there are multiple sources referenced; Keepers may or may not find it useful.

The alternate Sanity rules in Skills Revisited is a more realistic way of running Sanity loss from reading – loss doesn’t necessarily occur when reading the books, but only after evidence supports what was read. They are, however, potentially rather crippling in combat situations; Sanity loss from creatures can turn from mildly damaging to insanity-inducing. They are probably best kept optional.

Although a substantial proportion was originally in the Keeper’s Compendium, this material has been rewritten to the extent that much of it is essentially new. The Keeper’s Companion Volume 1 is a useful addition to any Keeper’s toolkit, although the utility of different sections does vary from useful to simply interesting to possibly irrelevant.