Very short review of the solo Call of Cthulhu scenario Alone Against the Flames, written by Mike Mason, Paul Fricker, and Gavin Inglis, part of the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Starter Set (or as a free pdf).
In-Short: A quick little choose your own adventure story with just enough Call of Cthulhu mechanics worked in to help accustom players completely new to the system.
Spoiler-lite for Players and… Well, There’s Only Players Here:
I’m not deep into solo roleplay games at all, so I can’t compare this to anything else, but I’d put Alone Against the Flames in the choose-your-own-adventure book category over a true solo gaming experience.
For someone one-hundred percent new to Call of Cthulhu, Alone Against the Flames is where most prospective Keepers should head to first before running a scenario. While strictly player-only gamers tend not to buy starter sets, I’d encourage Keepers to lend out Alone Against the Flames to interested new players as well, or for interested players to give the free pdf a download. It’s a straight-up old school choose your own adventure book, only differing by requiring an investigator sheet and sprinkling in some Call of Cthulhu mechanics. It’s also extremely short, taking me less than an hour to play multiple times until I hit a ‘successful’ conclusion. There are very few barriers to entry, making it ideal for players who haven’t glanced at (or refuse to read) the formal rule set.
The story and setting are nothing ground breaking, but the familiar tropes work towards the book’s main goal – teaching people how to play the game. And keeping in the spirit of both classic choose-your-own-adventure books and Call of Cthulhu scenarios, there are a wealth of end states, the vast majority ending with your unfortunate investigator perishing in fun ways. The short play time encourages multiple runs until you hit one of the few survivable ending, which shouldn’t take very long. And by the time you do hit a successful ending, you should have the general idea of how the game works.
Alone Against the Flames isn’t the standout part of the Starter Set, nor is it something to search out all on its own, but as a first step into Call of Cthulhu, and roleplaying in general, it works exactly as intended. It familiarizes you with the core gameplay systems and the mood of Call of Cthulhu in well under an hour, and that’s all it needs to do.
The Alone Against the Flames pdf is completely free on DriveThruRPG or Chaosium’s site, and is also part of Starter Set, once again found on Chaosium’s site, DriveThruRPG, Amazon, or your local game store if they’re cool enough to stock Chaosium products.
Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios
