Reviews and Recommendations

I have written enough reviews that finding one has become a minor archaeological expedition. This page is intended to spare you the digging.

I am mostly interested in what happens when a game or scenario leaves the book and reaches the table. A beautiful book can make a disappointing game. A relatively unassuming adventure can produce a magnificent evening. And sometimes an excellent scenario has a flaw so irritating that I feel compelled to take it apart and rebuild it.

You will find enthusiastic recommendations, complaints of varying degrees of severity, and a few attempts at constructive vandalism below. Most articles begin without spoilers, but several move into detailed discussion intended for GMs; check the warning in each post before reading on.

Browse by subject: Call of Cthulhu & Delta Green · Vaesen · Trail & GUMSHOE · Other games & books · Campaign remixes & close examinations

Call of Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu & Delta Green

One of my oldest RPG obsessions, and still the one I return to most often. I have run some of these adventures many times, which tends to expose both their virtues and their unfortunate assumptions about what investigators are supposed to do.

• Call of Cthulhu Scenario Recommendations — a substantial starting point: campaigns, classics, introductory adventures, modern horrors, and convention scenarios, with advice about running time and difficulty.
• The Two-Headed Serpent — why I consider this gloriously excessive Pulp Cthulhu campaign one of the most entertaining things you can run. Based on four runs, not mere wishful thinking.
• Convergence: Reviewing and Improving the Best Scenario Ever — John Tynes's classic of paranoia and body horror, discussed with admiration, reservations, and suggestions for making it even nastier.
• The Order of the Stone — a critical look at a modern Call of Cthulhu campaign, especially how its intended story affects the investigators' freedom.
• No Time to Scream — a review of Chaosium's three shorter scenarios and how well they deliver horror in play.
• The Sutra of Pale Leaves: Twin Suns Rising — a striking and philosophically ambitious interpretation of the King in Yellow, whose scenarios do not always fulfil the promise of its ideas.
• Arkham Sourcebook — examining the latest treatment of Lovecraft's most famous fictional town as a setting to explore and use at the table.

Vaesen

I have run a great deal of Vaesen, including most of the official mysteries and several pieces of community content. The distinction between an evocative folkloric premise and a good playable investigation is particularly interesting here.

Official mysteries and books

• Published Scenarios: A Roundup Review — the place to start if you want to choose an official mystery. My impressions after running a long sequence of them, arranged around the seasons.
• Scent of a Killer — an unusually intricate, urban investigation in Stockholm, with notes from running it and spoiler-filled advice for the GM.
• City of My Nightmares: Beta Review — early impressions of a connected set of Stockholm mysteries. This is an assessment of an unfinished version; I had run the opening adventure but not the remaining three.
• Mythic Carpathia: Beta Review — a first examination of Free League's Carpathian expansion, its folklore and scenarios. I ran one of the scenarios, Treaty of Blood.
• A Treaty of Blood — what happened when I ran the first Mythic Carpathia scenario, and how I altered a strong premise to make the investigation work better.

Community content

• The Author and the Sea — community mystery review.
• The Double — community mystery review.
• Linnunlaulu — community mystery review.
• The City That Drowned — community mystery review.

Trail of Cthulhu & GUMSHOE

• Trail of Cthulhu: Some Favourite Scenarios — the companion to my Call of Cthulhu recommendations, and a guide to some especially good investigations.
• Battle of the Cthulhus: Trail vs Call — advantages and frustrations of the two systems, and why I think mystery and horror make different demands on rules.
• Swords of the Serpentine: Why I Absolutely Love This Mess — an affectionate but not uncritical examination of a wonderfully exuberant GUMSHOE fantasy game.

Other games, adventures & books

• Degenesis Is Really Good — a post-apocalyptic setting that earns its strangeness through culture, identity, and the human search for meaning. Impressions from both reading and play.
• The One Ring RPG: Review After Nine Sessions — deep affection for Tolkien's world meets a rather less affectionate assessment of the game's systems.
• Blade Runner: Electric Dreams and Fiery Angels — a two-in-one review of Free League's first case files, their mysteries, moral dilemmas, and opportunities for dramatic play.
• Winter's Daughter — a remarkably elegant introductory fantasy adventure, and an example of how much a well-organised little dungeon can accomplish.
• The Book of Unremitting Horror — an old, grotesque, inventive bestiary whose monsters are still worth stealing, preferably when nobody is looking.

Some arguments with game systems

These are critiques rather than conventional product reviews, but they belong here because they explain what I look for when assessing a system.

• The Problem with D&D 5e — what bothers me about the game's design, despite its undeniable success.
• Why PbtA Is Not My Kind of Jam — why some of the assumptions behind Powered by the Apocalypse games clash with what I want from roleplaying.

Campaign remixes & close examinations

Some books are too good to leave alone, particularly when I have run them several times. These posts move beyond reviewing: they explain changes I actually made or would make, often with substantial spoilers. If you are preparing to run the material, this may be the most useful shelf.

• Tatters of the King (NyOr Remix) — a campaign I have run four times. Reworking motivations, restoring meaningful choices, and dealing with a second act I find considerably less inspiring than the first.
• Berlin: The Wicked City Remix — four posts on turning a collection of excellent scenarios into a connected campaign, and on the things I changed along the way:
  1. Campaign overview and first scenario
  2. Second scenario, part one
  3. Second scenario, part two
  4. Third scenario
• Running Masks of Nyarlathotep: Tips and Advice — practical guidance from three campaigns; not a review, but certainly relevant if you are contemplating the undertaking.
• Masks of Nyarlathotep: Reconciling Cosmic Horror and Pulp Adventure — a closer look at the campaign's metaphysics and the tension between adventure and cosmic horror.
• What Makes a Horror Setting Work? — comparing Berlin: The Wicked City with The Sutra of Pale Leaves, and asking why one historical setting feels so much more immediately playable to me.

This is an index of the reviews, recommendations, and substantial revisits currently published on the blog, not a promise that I have exhausted the world's supply of bad scenarios or good arguments. I expect both to keep arriving.

If you came looking for advice on running games rather than choosing them, see Gamemastering. If you want to build better investigations, start with Designing Better RPG Mysteries. Or return to Start Here and let me decide what you should read first. My omnipotence is somewhat more reliable here than at the gaming table.