Erich! Review – Call of Cthulhu (Bibliothek 13)

Review of the Japanese Call of Cthulhu scenario Erich! (エーリッヒ！), written by Seto Eiji (瀬戸エイジ), the second entry in the Bibliothek 13 (ビブリオテック１３) scenario collection. Currently only available in Japanese.

Erich! Review – Call of Cthulhu (Bibliothek 13)
This is a review of the Japanese Call of Cthulhu scenario Erich!, by Seto Eiji, the second entry in the Bibliothek 13 scenario collection. You can find the written review on mjrrpg.com. You can purchase the book from Amazon Japan or the stores listed on the KADOKAWA site. It is currently only available in Japanese.

In short: A short and very linear beginner investigation with ties to an under-utilised Lovecraft story (for CoC) and a couple of nice scenes, but without much meat on the bones and an out-of-left-field ending.

Spoiler-lite for Players and Keepers:

Like the previous Bilbiothek 13 scenario, A Cup of Horror, Erich! is a short scenario aimed at beginner Keepers and players. But while A Cup of Horror was a single location ‘dungeon-crawl’ in the vein of Chaosium’s Gateways to Terror scenarios, Erich! is more of an introduction to location-hopping investigation.

I’m not sure it succeeds at that goal, as its rigid linearity doesn’t give players much to actually investigate or deduce, with the few clues to be found directly pointing to the next location, but it does have a couple neat scenes that may be worth the 2 or 3 hour ride.

Like all Bibliothek 13 scenarios, Erich! does not come with pregen investigators, and also lacks handouts or maps, but does have a few pieces of character art and illustrations. While nominally set in modern-day Japan, nothing about the scenario really requires it to be or makes much use of its setting, and it could be adapted to any location or modern-ish time period. Any kind of investigator would work with the scenario, though one or two with a music skill of some sort would get the most out of it.

The music theme is the best part of the scenario, as fitting it being a sort-of kind-of sequel-ish thing to Lovecraft’s The Music of Erich Zann. I wish music had played a stronger part of the climax, even if necessitated musically inclined investigators rather than the generic investigators the scenario seems to be designed for. In the spoiler section below I have an idea for how the final scene could be adjusted to more directly use its themes and Lovecraft’s story.

Overall, if you’re looking for a short introductory scenario, there are better ones out there, including A Cup of Horror just a few pages earlier in the same book. If you’re looking for musically-themed short scenarios… there are still better ones out there – for example the delightful Seeds of Terror #11, Flute of the Gods. But if you are hunting for a short scenario, maybe for a convention, directly related to The Music of Erich Zann, this does fit the bill, and it is still fun if rough around the edges. A Keeper could also life the most interesting scene and place it in another scenario, or use it to base a fully new scenario around. It’s a very neat little scene.

Bibliothek 13 can be found on Amazon Japan, among most other major Japanese online shops or bookstore. It is currently only available in Japanese.

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!

Spoilers for Keepers

The general outline of the scenario is a linear progression between three locations. Investigators receive a job and briefing from a classical music collector in search of a complete set of sheet music for a piece by Erich Zann. They can hang around the store for a bit to ask questions to the collector or his assistant if need be, but won’t gather much of use.

From there they follow a very obvious lead to a local university to find a student that made a recording of Erich Zann’s music – there isn’t much in the way of explanation how or why the student has Erich Zann’s music, he just has it. On the way they meet an odd man who is very, very obviously the scenario’s villain. In the student’s dorm room they find the student dead, having passed away mid-performance.

Following the weird guy, they find him at his ‘office,’ which turns out to be a crashed Shan spaceship powered by an ‘engine’ that is a broken off bit of Azathoth that is itself fueled by Erich Zann’s music… Huh? The investigators proceed to either escape or stop the ship from taking off.

The ending is thoroughly bizarre with almost no foreshadowing, but in a way is kind of fun with how weird it is. The Azathoth engine is a bunch of root-like tentacles flailing around the office and a bunch of Shan flitter about out of the guy’s head while the investigators try to stop the music that powers the ship. I also kind of like that if the investigators just stayed out of the way the Shan would have just taken off and left without any trouble.

There are two main changes I think could be made to the scenario to improve it. One I got from a kind Keeper on Twitter and I included it in my run. The other I thought of afterwards and would use if I run the scenario again some day.

The first is to have the investigators witness the death of the student. As written, they find the student dead sitting upright, still holding the violin. Instead, the investigators enter the disgusting dorm and hear the crazed playing, triggering immediate SAN rolls. As the fight through the sound and the filthy room, the music suddenly stops, and they find the student completely motionless, gripping a violin so tightly the strings cut through bleeding fingers. Touching him, they find he’s dead, and a First Aid roll gives an even creepier impression that he’s been dead for a few minutes or even hours, as if his body kept moving even after he’d died.

For the last scene, as written the investigators just need to stop a recording to end the music and prevent the Shan spaceship from lifting off. I find it a little odd that the music powers the ship, as The Music of Erich Zann made it seem like Zann’s music was an effort to stop some eldritch nonsense rather than feed it. If I ran the scenario again, I’d make it weirder – the Shan themselves would be playing music on their own bizarre instruments, but the music would be the exact inverse of Zann’s music. To stop the ship, the investigators would either have to try killing all the Shan directly (difficult as the bugs flit around the ceiling or dive-bomb the investigators with their nervewhips), or they could find Zann’s sheet music and play it themselves, overpowering and Shan’s song and causing Azathoth-engine to dry up and die. Maybe with a series of opposed Music rolls in a sort-of cosmic Battle of the Bands.