This is a review for the Call of Cthulhu scenario Amidst the Ancient Trees, produced by Chaosium, written by Matthew Sanderson with additional material by Mike Mason.
In-short:
If you already have the Keeper Rulebook, recommended for a one or two session game for beginners, but there are better introductory scenarios available, including free ones. Still fun for experienced players if you don’t have another scenario ready, though it could use some tweaking to keep it interesting.
Spoilers-lite for players and Keepers:
Amidst the Ancient Trees is one of the two scenarios included in the Keeper’s Rulebook, and as befitting the first scenario a new Keeper would come across after purchasing the book, it is quite straightforward and introduces most of the systems that players and Keepers will use across their CoC careers. It covers 17 pages with four pages of background details, one page of handouts and one page of NPC stat blocks – there are no pregen characters provided. Our group took two three hour sessions to finish, including a quick-fire character generation.
The scenario follows a clear three act structure, with each act having more systems to play with and more options for the players. For new players or Keepers, this gives a nice gradual build in complexity, and lets them get a feel for the game’s systems early on before using them in more complex and dangerous situations by the end. There are a few features of the system that the scenario does not dip its toes in, namely the newly-added chases, and library/newspaper/records investigation. Chases can of course (and for my group, indeed did!) organically occur. The most notable absence is any real opportunity to hit the library or newspapers as is so common in Call of Cthulhu scenarios, but taken as one of a pair with the Keeper Rulebook’s other scenario, Crimson Letters, it makes sense that this scenario leaves that aspect aside to focus on its more adventurous strengths.
Being so focused introducing the game system does mean it can suffer from excessive hand-holding, with the first act of the scenario being a literal single path with little means of deviating from it. For players experienced with TTRPGs in general, much less Call of Cthulhu itself, it can feel like the scenario isn’t trusting you enough to let you find your own way. Other introductory scenarios, notably the two free scenarios for seventh edition, “The Lightless Beacon” and the ever-popular “The Haunting”, do not suffer in the same way, and allow experienced players to tackle things in their own fashion, while still keeping a narrow enough focus to help new Keepers and players find their feet. The single path also means rerunning it as a Keeper may not be as varied as reruns of the Haunting or Beacon, or even the Gateways to Terror scenarios, though it does start branching mid way through and has a largely open-ended final encounter.
The linear path does serve to bolster a ratcheting tension. There are plenty of descriptions in the text to help the Keeper draw the players into the spooky-forest atmosphere, along with progressively weird or intense NPC encounters. Four investigator motivations are available to ground the players in the setting, and some of them have the possibility to really change the party dynamic depending on how the players interpret them. With roleplay-loving players taking full advantage of these motivations, the opening scene could be greatly expanded with NPC interactions, offsetting the upcoming railroaded section.
Overall, if you have the Keeper Rulebook already, there is plenty of good in the scenario to make it worth a run. It can give new players and Keepers a clear vertical slice of what seventh edition has in store for them, though for experienced players it may be worth changing, or at least condensing, the opening act to get to the more interesting bits. The group I ran through it were fairly comfortable with TTRPGS, though only one was experienced with Call of Cthulhu 7e, but they still all had a good time with the scenario. As a fairly experienced GM, though with only a dozen Cthulhu games under my belt, the first half of the scenario did drag a touch as my players didn’t have many opportunities to get into the hijinks you expect players to get into, but by the end everything went wonderfully off the rails.
I do think The Haunting and Lightless Beacon should be a group’s first stop for getting into CoC 7e, but if you’ve already played them and have the Keeper Rulebook, might as well give Amidst the Ancient Trees a go, but it’s still best to know your audience and adjust accordingly.
You can find Amidst the Ancient Trees in the Call of Cthulhu Seventh Edition Keeper Rulebook, available on DriveThruRPG, Chasioum’s website, Amazon, or your local game store.
Before you go, though, maybe you would be interested in reading some other scenario reviews?
MJRRG: Branches of Bone – Cthulhu Dark Ages, A Chill in Abashiri – A 1920s Taisho-Era Japan
Seeds of Terror: Series Overview, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, Endless Light, One Less Grave, Hand of Glory, Tickets Please , Fish in a Barrel
Miskatonic Repository: Dossier 1 – The Maw
Chaosium: Amidst the Ancient Trees, Gateways to Terror Overview, The Necropolis, What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder
Japonism: Do Gods Dream of Digital Drugs?
Bibliothek 13: A Cup of Horror, Erich!
The first four or so pages are background info before the actual player-facing start. It’s quite nicely laid out, with Keeper-directed background information the first two pages, followed by a short NPC list (I wish more scenarios had the same kind of Dramatis Personae section, just a sentence or two each, at the start of the book, in addition to the big detailed NPC stat blocks at the back), timeline, and optional investigator motivations.
Much of the background information could be missed by the players though. Depending on if they do or don’t talk to the surviving gangsters, they won’t hear about any of their run-ins with the baddies, and if they skip a cabin containing an old Civil War era-Union soldier’s diary, they won’t have a clear understanding of what is actually going on in the forest. What is going on, of course, is Great Old One weirdness, with Gla’aki as the star of the show. I was lucky in our run, with the players interrogating the first gang member they ran across, finding the journal, and talking with most of the Servants of Gla’aki before getting violent, giving me some time to go on weird ramblings about the God in the Deep and such. If your players manage to miss everything, having the Servants try to convince the PCs to willing join them is a last-ditch, but still fun, way to get at least some of the juicy background info across before things get nasty. And if any of the PCs are insane by that point, which is very well possible with the abundance of SAN tests lined up for them, maybe they’ll actually entertain helping out ol’ Gla’aki.
We used the suggested investigator motivations, and while I think they all have some good potential, when I ran the game only one really came into play – the investigator as an ex-member of the gang who left on bad terms and is now out for revenge. I also added that one of the gangsters was still a good friend (Eugene, the first gangster the group runs across on day two). This worked out well, giving an excuse to the players to not murder him outright, as players are wont to do, and get some information out of him. If I ran the scenario again, I’d make that change again.
The scenario is broken into three ‘acts’ across three days. The first day gives opportunities for questioning, shopping, crime-scene investigation, and NPC interaction, all in a fairly linear path. The second day starts out linear before giving an opportunity for branching paths, as well as more in-depth investigation, hostile NPC interaction and combat, and the first real Mythos weirdness. The final day is much more open ended with multiple paths to a final encounter area which can be handled with whatever scheme the players come up with, and giving plenty of opportunities for investigation, NPC interaction, combat, and insanity.
Of course, players being players, it is possible for them to break the time table, though the scenario is dead set on keeping things on time. If the players do fall a day behind it could ruin the game as they won’t be present for the finale, so I’d suggest holding off the events of day three until whenever they PCs arrive.
The first day starts with a briefing from an NPC to go find a kidnapped girl in the woods, then the players are given some free reign to gather rumours around town. My players did not take any time to do this, only stopping by a shop to pick up some weaponry before heading out. As the book suggests, it would be much better to seed in foreshadowing about the forest and lake, so if your group is like mine and just wants to gear up and get right into the action, a store clerk or other volunteers could be used to deliver the rumours. It may also be a good place to add in a local newspaper, giving a chance to use the always loved Library Use skill to find stories about missing persons in the woods, or even an old story about a posse of deserted Union soldiers from the Civil War supposedly having fled through the area, never to be heard from again. Maybe the old store-keep rambles:
“You’re heading into the woods, are ya? Don’t know much if a rifle is gonna stop what haunts those trees, but no harm in taking an extra rounds now is there? Half off a second box a’ rounds, how ’bout it?”
The party then meets up with other volunteer posses before getting a chance to look over the scene of a shoot-out between the kidnappers and police. Outside of setting the mood and finding the trail that the party will be locked into for the next hour or three, there’s not much useful to discover at the scene, so I rewarded successful skill checks investigating the scene to work out how many gang members there were, what kind of weapons they were using, and some sense of how skilled they were.
Following the kidnappers trail into the woods, the players will be locked into a more or less steady forward movement until the end of the scenario, with only a few opportunities to choose different paths. As the PCs must follow the trail, or else the scenario simply doesn’t work, the book gives suggestions for failed pushed tracking rolls that look fun, though my group didn’t fail hard enough for me to try any of them. There is a bit of an issue though, as if a player fails their tracking test, but doesn’t push the roll, the game will more or less grind to a halt. Beyond outright and awkwardly telling the players they must succeed or push their rolls for the game to continue, there isn’t any other options as the scenario is time sensitive. One idea to motivate them to push the roll could be to let the party continue on with a failed roll, but let them know that they’ll be exhausted and suffer a penalty die until they sleep next.
The first of many small encounters the party will come across on their three day trek is a run in with a father-son hunting party. Most groups shouldn’t have any problems noticing the hunters and calling them over to talk, but the encounter can turn more interesting with some bad rolls, causing the hunters to mistake a PC for an animal and taking a shot at them. The hunters’ meaning in life is to lay on some foreshadowing about other NPC groups deeper in the woods that are no doubt completely fine and healthy.
Spooky dreams for POW-weak PCs come with the first night. These short texts are the scenario’s only handouts, though they are pleasantly creepy, and pay off wonderfully in the end. My group played in two sessions separated by a month of down time, meaning most of the foreshadowing had been lost on them, making me want to try running this again either in one longer session, or with a shortened version of the scenario. There is another night coming up though, so if you also have to break up your play time, there is still another chance to get in some set-up before the coming payoff. Besides the dreams, some distant sounds of trucks and gunfire also heap on the foreshadowing.
While the first day began with a single path, the second day gives opportunities to branch out a little more with multiple encounters that can occur at different times. Fair warning that my group started talking about splitting up here when they came across a branching trail. I’m not great with handling split parties in general and so just out-right warned the players as much. Thankfully they heeded my warning and stayed together, but that also meant that when they decided to continue along their original path, they missed out on a scene, though it could just be slotted in at a later time. Looking back, with a bit more experience with split groups, I would have been more on board with them separating so they could explore every scene, and just swapped focus between them more often, and then contrived some way for them to meet up again.
The final event for the day, and one I highly suggest forcing to happen even if your party is otherwise split, is an encounter with one of the gangsters. Without some good rolls, the wounded gangster Eugene will get a shot off with his rifle. If your party is split, you could use this gunshot as a way for the further off group to link back up after hearing the blast. Eugene isn’t the best shot in the world, only has three rounds, and the investigators have ample cover in the woods, so this isn’t likely to be a fatal scene. In my game, one investigator had Eugene in their background as a close friend and talked him down after a tense standoff. This gave a good opportunity to let the players in on the story so far from a different point of view.
The second night comes with automatic dreams – no POW rolls this time. Makes sure to use the worst dreams first if you have less than four players. If anyone is standing guard they have a slim chance of spotting a Servant of Gla’aki watching them in the woods. My group didn’t see it, but if they had and managed to shoot it the Servant would flop over and play dead (deader). I was planning to have the investigators need an Extreme Success in Spot Hidden / Medicine / First Aid to realise the creature was still alive, while lower successes would notice something was strange about the corpse, like the blood was already congealed or something weird.
The third day is when events can occur in any order, areas can be skipped, and the final encounter can play out in anyway depending on whatever hair-brained plan the players come up with. There are three locations – a cabin where the now-insane gang leader is hole up with a shotgun, a spooky cabin full of coffins for the Civil War-era Servants of Gla’aki and where two are waiting out the day, and the work camp by a lake where hostages are being held and a giant crystal is being excavated. There are also scenes identical to the dreams the investigators have been seeing – SAN rolls for everyone!
If the party deviated the previous day, it is entirely possible to miss the gang leader’s cabin, and they could also ignore the path leading off the road to the work camp that leads to the Servants’ cabin. This would be unfortunate, as both cabins have fun and possibly enlightening encounters in them. Lucky for me, my players went to both cabins before the work camp.
Thanks to his 12-gauge shotgun (unspecified if it’s one or two-barreled, so I of course went with two) the gang-leader could very well be the most dangerous opponent in the game if the investigator’s can’t talk him down. One investigator got a full double-barrel, Critical success, close range blast to the face. It would have been enough to kill him four times over, but as we didn’t have time to roll a new character, I let him use the luck-burning survival rule from Pulp Cthulhu. The investigator lived, the gangster did not, and the party had 1% group Luck rolls from then on.
The second cabin is comparatively less lethal. Only two Servants are in there during the day and they are more inclined to talk than fight. I imagine most players will be ready to start blasting when zombies start bursting out of stone coffins, but my players were pleasantly confused and uneasy when the zombies put their hands up and started talking rationally. As the conversation shifted more to the God in the Lake the players had enough and shotgunned the Servants to their permanent graves. Assuming your players are armed, they shouldn’t have much trouble either. Various trinkets can be found in the cabin, the most important being the Union deserter leader’s journal. I find the journal to be a bit too direct, so I paraphrased and obfuscated a bit too make it suitably creepy.
There are two approaches to the excavations site, but if at all possible guide your group along the beach, as it is a far more horrific scene. A number of people are impaled on Gla’aki’s spooky spines along the shore, slowly having their slows drained to become new Servants, unnaturally kept alive through the process and screaming for death. Creepy. If your players are merciful and pull out the spines, letting the victims die, the ruckus will alert the remaining Servants a bring on the final confrontation. My players by this point knew these last servants obviously weren’t normal humans and were ready to start shooting, but with two of them now insane and facing constant bouts of madness, and one investigator with 1% luck, they didn’t want to start a fight as long as the servants didn’t appear hostile. I had the servants split up the investigators by tempting the insane ones, managing to disarm and lead one away, before violence finally broke out. They also explained the last few unclear bits of what was going on, though in suitably mystical ramblings.
The Servants are not particularly difficult opponents with no firearms (the book recommends giving out some civil-war era weapons for an added challenge) and only the leader has a few spells. Their main strength lies in surprise, but my party had already discovered enough weirdness to know not to trust them. Our game ended once bullets started flying and the players fled into the woods, despite hearing the screams of the hostages in one of the work sheds. They all survived, thought two were indefinitely insane, and Servants completed their objective, bringing their God closer to freedom.
The scenario text gives plenty of guidance for the final encounter with different possible endings and approaches to the camp, such as the PCs being jumped and impaled to become Servants themselves or sneaking in and freeing the hostages. While the scenario is a bit long in the tooth to get to the ending, I’d like to run it again to see how another group would approach the excavation site. Having pregen investigators ready may be enough to shorten the game to a single session, or just plenty of direction to keep the players moving.
While not a bad scenario, I’d really only recommend it if you don’t have any other scenarios on hand. There are better introductory scenarios out there, both free ones like the Haunting, and the brilliant ones included in the Starter Set or Keeper’s Screen. But, if you only have the Keeper’s Rulebook and already played The Haunting (or don’t have a computer or printer on hand), Amidst the Ancient Trees will still be a fine enough entry into Call of Cthulhu Seventh Edition.
You can find Amidst the Ancient Trees in the Call of Cthulhu Seventh Edition Keeper Rulebook, available on DriveThruRPG, Chasioum’s website, Amazon, or your local game store.
Before you go, though, maybe you would be interested in reading some other scenario reviews?
MJRRG: Branches of Bone – Cthulhu Dark Ages, A Chill in Abashiri – A 1920s Taisho-Era Japan
Seeds of Terror: Series Overview, The Mummy of Pemberley Grange, Endless Light, One Less Grave, Hand of Glory, Tickets Please , Fish in a Barrel
Miskatonic Repository: Dossier 1 – The Maw
Chaosium: Amidst the Ancient Trees, Gateways to Terror Overview, The Necropolis, What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder
Japonism: Do Gods Dream of Digital Drugs?
Bibliothek 13: A Cup of Horror, Erich!
