The Man in the Maze by Will Sainty 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 based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
The supplement is available as a 24 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover, one the front matter and one the Table of Contents.
The Note explains the religions and peoples used and to use fictional versions if this is a problem.
The Overview gives a brief description of the adventure and that investigator frameworks are provided with relevant motivations.
The Timeline So Far has major events from an unknown time through to the present, 1972, and the characters investigating some disappearances to make a film about it.
The Article is the article that starts the characters’ investigation.
The NPCs has brief descriptions of many NPCs of varying importance.
The PCs explains why the author came up with the frameworks and describes the six and their roles.
Linear Play list the events and when they happen on the various days. There is time put aside each day for exploratory play, when the characters can perform their own investigations.
The Maze describes the maze itself, the route through it, the final confrontation and different endings. One of these endings is a seriously major apocalypse; this one should be avoided for anything but a one-shot.
Exploratory Play has a table of clues and where they’re found, and the various points of interest in the town and what is happening there at different times during the day and night.
Handouts covers the last three pages and has the various handouts.
The Man in the Maze in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. The Table of Contents covers the major sections. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of colour and black and white illustrations, photos for the handouts. Presentation is okay.
The character frameworks lack stats, so characters will still need rolling up for them. This is also not a combat adventure, so lacks any enemies to fight; it mostly consists of various events happening whilst the characters investigate around them. It’s also not really written as anything other than a one-shot, especially if the world-destroying ending is used, and lacks rewards for completing it. The Man in the Maze can be found by clicking here.
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