The Cthulhu Companion [Book Review]

The Cthulhu Companion was a 64-page black-and-white book published by Chaosium in 1983 for use with the company's famous role-playing game. Material for the book came, in part, from player submissions to Different Worlds magazine.

Although long out-of-print, the book is available for a reasonably-priced download from the Chaosium website.

Chapter 1, The Cthulhu Mythos in Mesoamerican Religion, is a quite well-done melding of the Cthulhu Mythos with the real world religions of the Mayans, Atztecs, and other Mesoamerican civilizations. Written as if the Cthulhu Mythos were real, this would be a handy resource for anyone setting an archaeology-based campaign in this part of the world (though it's probably too detailed to be needed for just a session or two). The chapter includes an unrelated section, Further Notes on the Necronomicon, which is a fictional discussion of the etymology of the common names attributed to beings in the Cthulhu Mythos, with a focus on Latin, Greek, and Arabic histories. Some of this material has been included in the sixth edition of the core rulebook (and perhaps other editions; I haven't checked).

Chapter 2, Sourcebook Additions, is a hodgepodge of different material. There's a discussion of fictional prisons in various countries around the world, but it's not particularly interesting and there are no maps or stats provided to help the Keeper. Two new skills are introduced, "Photography" and "Lock Picking", but of course these are been integrated into the core game. Finally, there's a "Lovecraftian Timeline" which places the various incidents from Lovecraft's novels on to a calendar--this could actually be pretty handy for those who want to make sure their games mesh tightly with the published stories.

Chapter 3, Rulesbook Additions, begins with a list and description of over thirty new phobias. Many of these are listed in the 6th edition core rules, but the Cthulhu Companion provides a better explanation of how they might work in the game (a couple of them, Quixotism and Panzaism, seemed quite clever). Next, there are statistics and descriptions for several new beings from the Mythos: Abhoth, Atlach-Nacha, Cyaegha, Ghasts, Ghatanothoa, Gnoph-Keh, Gugs, Lloigor, Moon Beasts, Zhar, and Zoth-Ommog. Again, some of these have already been included in later editions of the core rules, so milage may vary.

A very short Chapter 4 is titled "Excerpts and Prayers" and consists of passages from famous books in the Mythos; I'm not actually sure whether these are wholly original or taken from published stories.

Chapter 5 is "Paper Chase", the first scenario in the book. It's designed to be played by a single Keeper and a single Investigator, and involves a ghoul with a propensity for book theft. It's a short scenario and I haven't run it, but I can imagine it would serve as a nice introduction for a new player who wants to get a feel for the game.

"The Mystery of Loch Feinn" serves as Chapter 6 and is a much longer scenario. Set in Scotland, the investigators are tasked with solving the murder of a paleontologist who thought he had stumbled upon the equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. The scenario involves the Lloigor, a strange race of beings who are normally invisible but occasionally take reptilian form. A particularly violent clan of Scots worships the Lloigor, and present a real risk to the investigators. I like the addition of a ruined castle and the mysterious dungeons underneath; this could be a quite atmospheric adventure and holds the potential to serve as a sort of "side quest" to investigators who happen to be in Scotland during part of a longer campaign.

Chapter 7, "The Rescue", is a scenario involving that classic menace: werewolves! The body of a State Department lawyer is found in the Appalachians, and the investigators are set on the trail to find his missing daughter. NPCs and the story's setting are described well, and there's several paragraphs of rules for dealing with lycanthropy in a CoC game. Werewolves aren't really my thing, but some Keepers might really like this one.

The last scenario, constituting Chapter 8, is "The Secret of Castronegro." This one requires the investigators to visit a small New Mexico town in order to investigate several weird disappearances. It's a very open-ended, unstructured scenario, with a lot of different leads for the investigators to follow up on. It's also rather deadly in spots, with a pack of wild dogs and an ambush by six armed villagers seeming especially fatal for unwary investigators. The major miscreants are a 300-year-old immortal wizard and his family.

The book concludes with some of Lovecraft's Mythos-related poetry and a "Sanity Quiz" which is actually a list of adjectives Lovecraft often used in his writing, along with some others, that may help a Keeper describe the indescribable.

As much of the supplemental material in the book has since been republished or integrated into later books, probably the best reason for downloading The Cthulhu Companion is if the premise of any of the longer scenarios (which are, to my mind, about average in quality) particularly strike your fancy.