{"id":8808,"date":"2023-10-28T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-28T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8808"},"modified":"2023-10-16T08:38:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T12:38:22","slug":"the-wolf-in-the-labyrinth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8808","title":{"rendered":"The Wolf In The Labyrinth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Malcolm Harbrow
Self Published
Call of Cthulhu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howard Elbridge, a writer of weird fiction, has disappeared. Looking into his disappearance, the investigators will uncover his links to Miskatonic University’s “daring” set, and the history of a mysterious painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This 22 page investigation is \u2026 the usual Call of Cthulhu stuff? The usual adventure with the usual wordiness and lack of care in usability. Yeah? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We haven\u2019t check in on the big boy for awhile. Let\u2019s see what he\u2019s up to! Here\u2019s one that is, quote \u201ca Refreshingly different mystery… Excellent low-key investigation with a claustrophobic feel” according to another review site, as quoted by the product blurb on DriveThru. I\u2019m sure the marketing is correct. It must be, right?! Off we go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve got a nice timeline, along with when recent newspaper stories appear. That\u2019s good! And a nice selection of handouts. I always appreciate handouts in adventures. More adventure, D&D or no, should include them. They\u2019re fun. Soak them in tea and burn the edges! The main plot is \u2026 fine, I guess? People get trapped in a painting. If you stare at it long enough them you can get trapped also. Or, maybe, swap places with someone in it. There\u2019s a line or two in the adventure which does a good job conveying a wolf-like creature chasing people in a maze. Indistinct, eerie, a nice little job of conveying that. That is, alas, the last  nice thing I have to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the usual Call of Cthulhu mess of an adventure. Everything done in paragraph form and just tossed in willy nilly. Repetition beyond belief. \u201cAs noted above (in \u201cfirst impressions of the painting\u201d), the painting is striking and disturbing, depicting a number of tiny yet terrified human figures fleeing through some sort of angular labyrinth, pursued by the shadowy impression of a wolf \u2014 or maybe a wolflike beast?\u201d That description must be repeated about eight times int he adventure. I get it, man. I get it. Everything is just tossed in. The painting, murders, newspaper offices, breaking, a faux secret society and pi \u2026 it\u2019s just all THERE, in their own sections. So, eventually, you get to a section heading for the secret society, or onefor the pi. These are nearly the last pages of the adventure. There\u2019s absolutely no attempt to integrate things in to the adventure, to make it a cohesive whole. I can\u2019t imagine the amount of page flipping required to run this. What\u2019s the PI doing now? How about sticking it in the main text with some suggestions? Or, you can just say there\u2019s a gruff PI and let the DM do everything else \u2026 as the adventure does.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seriously, it\u2019s the designers job to assist the DM in running the adventure. I don\u2019t HAVE to do what you tell me, but, also, its up to you, as the designer, to stick something in that I CAN use if I so desire. Give me something to work with! This is all abstracted ideas.
They might show at the apartment and ask questions\u201d Well then have he two fuckers do that in the text for the apartment. Fucking Christ man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, of course, it\u2019s the classic Call of Cthulhu \u201cjust write a paragraph\u201d style. No use of whitespace or bullets or bolding or anything else to help call attentinto things and\/or make the judges life easier when running the adventure at the table. Just write a paragraph and hoe someone printed this out and used a highlighter, I guess. There\u2019s offset boxes to describe people, but, really, its all the same information that is also presented in the main text of the product. \u201cIf persuasion fails, they could try their luck with Hans Trager, Schneider’s underpaid assistant.\u201d Well maybe tell us about him when you\u2019re describing the shop, not at the very end of the description when we\u2019re talking about success rolls? Jesus. Have you never set a scene? Have you never Run a Cthulhu adventure before? Do you think somehow that this mindless vomiting of text is somehow conducive to running things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adventure, proper, is pretty straightforward. Once you get in to his house, which is pretty immediate, you see the painting and his journal and its immediately obvious what is going on. It’s gonna take seven days, in the presence of the painting, for anything interesting to happen. This seems like a loooooonnnngggg time, given the depth, or lack thereof, of the investigation. This doesn’t seem to me like it will work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worry not, OSR crowd, Just about everything ever produced by the OSR at this than every Call of Cthulhu adventure ever made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is $5 at DriveThru. Your four page preview shows you nothing of the adventure, making it impossible to judge ot before buying it, which is the purpose of a preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/417454\/The-Wolf-in-the-Labyrinth?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Malcolm HarbrowSelf PublishedCall of Cthulhu Howard Elbridge, a writer of weird fiction, has disappeared. Looking into his disappearance, the investigators will uncover his links to Miskatonic University’s “daring” set, and the history of a mysterious painting. This 22 page … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/wolf.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8809,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8808\/revisions\/8809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}