Thursday, April 5, 2012

A Review of the Black Drop


Shortly after reading The Black Drop, I knew it was one of the first Trail of Cthulhu adventures we had to play.  It has the right blend of exotic locale, real world history, weird horror, and moral difficulty to generate a memorable horror game.  Plus - for the D&D and fantasy gamers out there - the ideas behind this one make for a great inspiration in your fantasy or weird horror game, if you don't mind filing off the serial numbers.

The adventure involves the Kerguelen islands, a small cluster of islands in the far south of the Indian Ocean just outside of the Antarctic circle.  A steamer (with the characters on board) is headed to the islands to retrieve a failing French colony of shepherds, while across the islands are littered encampments from the age of whaling.  Unbeknownst to the players at the start of the adventure, a sinister group of Nazi scientists are on their way to the islands as well.

The Kerguelens are the topmost remains of the sunken Kerguelen plateau, which was home to the ancient Lemurian empire; as the players explore the island, they even encounter Lemurian artifacts.  The adventure revolves around the stirring of an ancient god, a 30 year astronomical cycle, ambiguity whether the colonists or the scientists can be trusted, and some difficult moral choices that force horrible decisions on the players.

The scenario is fairly open ended, and the players have a lot of choice around where they want to go and how they want to explore the island.  Time is a factor, as there's an impending astronomical event that drives some of the action, and antagonist reactions also drive some events, but otherwise this is a freer structure than many investigations.  It also offers a lot of interesting role playing situations for the keeper.

Some groups don't like body horror, or psychological horror, or having to do bad things, and this adventure confronts the investigators with decisions concerning the latter, so there's some fair warning.  My own group is not comprised of horror enthusiasts, and they thoroughly enjoyed the scenario, although the body count was quite high.  I'd recommend using the pre-generated characters and running this one as a one-shot, rather than integrating it into a campaign.

I highly recommend the scenario, it's one of the strongest in the Trail of Cthulhu line, and the investigation ends up feeling quite epic and action oriented for such a short jaunt.  I've often called it the "lite" version of Beyond the Mountains of Madness.  It's written by Jason Morningstar, an RPG designer in his own right (Fiasco), and the PDF format makes it a great way to test drive Trail of Cthulhu - the adventure is 40 pages, with 6 pre-generated characters, maps and handouts, and should cover two nights of gaming (6-8 hours).

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review, Beedo. I've heard so many good things about this scenario, I'm going to pick it up. Thanks again for the excellent summary.

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  2. I bought the scenario collection Out of Time just yesterday, mainly for The Big Hoodoo. Great to hear there were some other goodness in the book!

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  3. Sounds good, BUT...I feel like Indiana Jones because I want to say: "Nazis. I hate those guys." Or more accurately, to paraphrase, "Why did it have to be Nazis?" I'm sort of getting really tired of the default 20th century big bads being Nazis, no matter the context. Gimme a good old fashioned, entirely fictional nemesis any day.

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  4. From what I recall there's not much in the adventure that requires the scientists to be Nazis. I agree that it would be a bit more interesting to have them be... something else.

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  5. The Nazis are great fodder for 1930's occult games - the Ahnenerbe are a frequent villainous group for Cthulhu gaming. Keeping with the Indiana Jones theme, they could always be... Russian.

    In The Black Drop, the Germans are used because it creates intrigue with the French colonists - their status as Nazis is secondary - they could easily be switched out for another nationality (even 'allied' countries like Great Britain) and the scenario would work just fine. There are menacing Japanese agents in "Shanghai Bullets", from Stunning Eldritch Tales.

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  6. Also, Nazis are a natural when you're going Antarctic. Ken Hite has a whole thing about Antarctic Space Nazis.

    Man I love Kerguelen. And now that's enough pimping my blog. I'm just glad you brought this product to my attention, and a little shamefaced I didn't know about it if I was going to be writing Kerguelen Plateau blog entries... For overlooked crazy villainous dabblers, though, check out the Nazi-sympathizing Siamese king in the 30s (have to check name... Rama VI? The one who wrote that screed about the Chinese being the "Jews of Asia").

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  7. Just played this with my group during April/May 2020, have to agree this was a great scenario and the perfect follow up from The Kingsbury Horror, as a new GM it was quite tough to manage, but that is because there are so many elements thrown into it and timings are sometimes left vague (to allow GMs freedom). I admit to have become a little bit obsessed by Kerguelen, now on my bucket list to visit! If anyone is interested, I have a Play Report on The Black Drop, on my blog, see https://justanotherpipeclue.blogspot.com/

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