Miskatonic Monday #94: Take the Kangaroo Route!
Posted by Michael O'Brien on 9th Sep 2024
Take the Kangaroo Route to check out these new indie Call of Cthulhu releases in the Miskatonic Repository!
The Kangaroo Route
Royce Wilson ($7.99, 56 page PDF)
In the late 1930s, an air route was established between Britain and Australia. Known as “The Kangaroo Route”, the service used flying boats to connect the far-flung reaches of the British Empire in style, offering a first-class experience involving luxury hotels, decadent meals, and stopovers in exotic locations in the Middle East, India, and Asia along the way.
This sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu and Pulp Cthulhu can help you recreate that experience.
Echoes in the Mist: A Regency Cthulhu Story Guide
Bridgett Jeffries, John Casey ($6.99, 86 page PDF, plus print options)
Once you realize that there is no hope... how do you live out your life?
Atmospheric disturbances caused by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia has caused a global catastrophe of famine, disease, and death: “The Year Without a Summer.” However, something much more sinister awaits the investigators. A blue comet passes overhead. It brings with it Echoes from the void... and an irrefutable offer. Their lives will change. Their sanity will be tested. And yet, the spring coming-out balls must continue...
CoC Solo: Dead Man's Peak
5e Solo Gamebooks ($9.99, 191 page PDF)
This solo scenario takes place at a CCC worker’s camp during the Great Depression. Investigators will face many horrors as they try to uncover a disturbing mystery surrounding the mountain from which the camp gets its name: Dead Man’s Peak. To reveal too much about the story behind it would be spoiling the discovery that will happen organically within the scenario, but suffice to say that investigators will be tested to the utmost.
If you enjoyed the Solo Investigator’s Handbook, and would like something a bit more fleshed out by the same author, then this book will provide what you’re looking for - an immersive solo experience where your investigator is dropped into danger and pitted against forces beyond their control!
Festival Of Terror
Keith DEdinburgh ($2.99, 69 page PDF)
This year there will be no encore ... It is August 2023 and the world-famous Edinburgh Festival is in full swing. The city is full of colourful sights, weird & wonderful acts, and visitors can expect the unexpected at every turn!... and it's the perfect cover for the depraved and debauched schemes of a madman.
Investigators are enjoying a show during the Festival when the finale proves to be much more horrifying -- and more final -- than anyone expected. Soon they find themselves uncovering the details of a plot being enacted in and around the packed venues and streets of Scotland's capital city -- a plot that could end in the most tragic and terrifying way imaginable. Can the investigators avert disaster before the curtain falls for the last time, or will they succumb to the earthly delights of the largest and most unpredictable arts festival in the world?
Japonism 2024 - 3 Modern Day Japan Call of Cthulhu Scenarios
Lom, Aka, Byoushin ($7.95, 39 page PDF)
Originally released in Japanese in 2019, now translated into English, Japonism 2024 is a collection of three one-shot scenarios set in modern day Japan. New and unique to the English version is a primer on modern day Japan with information applicable to Call of Cthulhu.
The Retreat
Anthony Langley ($8.00, 54 page PDF)
Two brothers went in… one came out, or so the Crow legend goes. The Iiwaaxw Valley is home to an ancient evil.
Late summer present day, your Investigators are attending a week-long grief therapy retreat in a remote Montana valley when they stumble upon a mystery and an ancient horror. The scenario is designed for about nine hours of game time not including character creation. The scenario is also easily modifiable to a six-hour convention-type length if needed. Note that most playtests of this scenario saw at least one investigator's death! The creeping isolation, the hints of wrong, and the growing mortal danger lead from slow burn to an explosive finale!
Snake Oil Salesman
Chris Tatum ($3.99, 43 page PDF)
The swamps of central Florida harbor a dark secret. It is late November of 1929 and the managing doctor of the Harris Corners Sanatorium, in Winter Haven, is supposedly developing a miracle cure for tuberculosis. A wealthy benefactor who lost his investments in the doctor's schemes is sending some affiliates to the institution to discover the truth and the state of his investments. Each of the affiliates has their own stake in determining if this doctor's promises are true, as well, or just another dose of snake oil.
Elixir of Death
Peter Wilbur ($10.00, 125 page PDF)
The investigators are brought in by the police to examine a heinous crime. They discover a cult making a magic elixir. Does it really heal or kill? Is it being driven by greed or nefarious forces?
Fargo 1884
Dustin Olson ($5.45, 50 page PDF)
The wild west is nearing its end and frontiersmen have established themselves just before the great expanse of the prairie. An evil stirs in the stars. People have begun having terrible dreams that keep them inside at night. Open flames bring chills to the citizens of Fargo, Dakota Territory.
In this Down Darker Trails one-shot, the players take on the role of investigators, seeking a friend who mysteriously disappeared in Fargo, Dakota Territory. It's now up to them to find clues, witnesses, and locations that might bring to light the last moments before their friend's disappearance. Little do the investigators know that a great danger lurks in the town of Fargo. Can the investigators find their missing friend? What is haunting Fargo? Who is friend and who is foe?
Ectoplasmorphia
Hyacinth (Pay What You Want, 20 page PDF)
Ectoplasmorphia is a one-shot scenario set loosely in the United States in 1926. It focuses on two very different households and the ways in which these interact with the people visiting them. Being chased through a forest will result in them having to pick sides at a crossroad: each path leads to either a house to the left or one to the right, and as they’re about to find out upon exploring, these are both corrupted, and won’t take so kindly to intrusion.
Smoke on the Huangpu
Matthew Morris ($4.99, 32 page PDF)
Shanghai 1931 – in the wild bustle of Old Shanghai, something is breaking the minds and souls of opium smokers. When the investigators are called to the scene of a mutilated corpse on the muddy banks of the river, they follow a trail which leads to madnesses never meant to be disturbed. One shot set in the seedy underbelly of the most cosmopolitan city of the early 20th century - a city where a fistful of dollars sufficed for a visa, a shotgun barrel sufficed for negotiation, and a mish-mash of overlapping international jurisdictions sufficed for governance.
God's Tears
Keith Craig (Pay What You Want, 14 page PDF)
The investigators are attending a birthday party for their good friend, when a strange man attacks their friend. This leads to a search into a strange cult in a hope to save their friend and even themselves from a fate worse than death.
Modern scenario fset in Omaha, Nebraska, featuring a rarely-used Great Old One.
The Missing of Dunver Island
Donovan Robert ($5.00, 30 page PDF)
When a group wakes up in the middle of a house, with no idea where they are or how they got here and no memories from the past several weeks, they have no other choice but to investigate what happened to them and why. They quickly realize they are on a small island, where they will have to embrace the mystery to find the answers they are looking for.
Fortunately, they began this 1920s investigation before suffering from amnesia, and it is with the help of the notes they took that they are about to dive back in the investigation.
Tomes of Eldritch Lore - Expanded
Peter Charron ($12.99, 72 page PDF)
Rare is the scenario which doesn’t involve, or at least name-drop, a Tome of Eldritch Lore. Encountering them is always a two-edged sword, bringing investigators excited anticipation and a sense of foreboding. Weighing power at the risk of madness, they almost always peek inside the covers. Too often, they might not have a choice. This resource greatly expands on the tomes listed in the Keeper’s Handbook. Each comprehensive entry includes publication date, language, author, editions, and translations. Included is a physical description, binding materials, topical contents and historical information about the work and author. The Game Statistics portion offers base study times, Mythos percentiles, Sanity Loss and more. Most profiles include an image of the book’s binding or frontispiece.
MEGA NPC Pack – 70 Arts
Ivo Eduardo Zanin (Pay What You Want, 33 characters and 37 tokens)
Illustrations of Egyptians; Italians; Latinos; General. All files are images in PNG format.
Codex Alchemica
Peter Charron ($14.99, 110 page PDF)
Since it emerged in ancient Egypt and China 2,300 years ago, scholars have pursued the potential of Alchemy. It is an Art that combines opposites and channels natural philosophy, chemistry, astrology, mysticism and magic into a single cohesive discipline. Although its methods have changed over the centuries, the goal has always remained the same: transmutation.
The Codex Alchemica provides the Keeper with a suite of new tools to adapt and incorporate alchemists, their compounds and tomes into Call of Cthulhu investigations working within the existing Seventh Edition framework of magic. The Codex also provides a wealth of world building and plot inspirations. It serves as a robust resource, and also a jumping off point into further research into this deep, endlessly fascinating topic.
Night of the Frizzi-Nocs
Andy Miller ($5.99, 62 page PDF)
Something is very wrong in Twinkletown – As a group of dreamers passes through The Dark Forest of Gloon on their way from Ulthar to Zakarion, they learn something terrible has gotten loose in the village and wiped out most of its inhabitants. Now the thing has trapped the dreamers there. But circumstances aren’t exactly as they appear in the tiny village and the creatures aren’t the only danger.
Dreamlands scenario that can be placed almost anywhere in a remote area of the Dreamlands.
Dracula, the Great Old One handout pack
Marek Golonka, Piotr Kozioł, Keith Mageau (Pay What You Want, 9 page PDF)
This release contains those materials from Zgrozy's Dracula, the Great Old One supplement, namely cards with bout of madness effects and maps of sample rooms in Dracula's castle.
Miskatonic Repository Best-Sellers - Summer 2024
Nick Brooke (Free, 7 page PDF)
A free catalogue listing the 40+ best-selling English-language Call of Cthulhu scenarios and sourcebooks from Chaosium's community content programme, based on sales from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.
WANT TO TAKE PART IN THE MISKATONIC REPOSITORY COMMUNITY PROGRAM?
Under the Miskatonic Repository community content license, Call of Cthulhu fans can make their own work for use with the game line available to the public, using guidelines, templates, and art provided by Chaosium.
Whether you share your content for free or put it up for sale, this program is a digital home for terror that joins the dreamscapes of all who peruse it.