Review of the Japanese Call of Cthulhu scenario No Breaking Off (私には止められない), written by Uchiyama Yasujirou, from the modern-day sourcebook and scenario collection Cthulhu 2020 (クトゥルフ2020).
In Short: A very linear scenario that trades player agency for a somewhat unique structure, spooky atmosphere, and a neat set piece.
Spoiler-lite for Players and Keepers:
No Breaking Off (weird English title instead of just going with ‘I can’t stop it’ or some other translation, but whatever) is the third scenario in Cthulhu 2020, written by the prodigious Uchiyama Yasujirou. I’ve written reviews for a few of Uchiyama’s other scenarios (A Cup of Horror, Black Eyeball, and my favourite, Three Requests) and quite like his style, though this one strays from the others a tad. It’s much more linear and with a heavier emphasis on NPCs, compared to the freeform or puzzle-solving nature of its sibling scenarios. The book suggests a three hour play time, and when I ran the scenario last year at Chaosium Con, it did indeed finish in about three hours. As with all Cthulhu 2020 scenarios, it does not come with pregenerated investigators, but almost any character types will fit in with little extra effort.
The other three Uchiyama scenarios I’ve written about all had fairly similar structures – investigators are introduced to a restricted setting, a ticking clock, and a partially obfuscated problem to work out, then are let off the leash to learn about and deal with the issue. No Breaking Off is very different. It is more interested in telling a story, with the investigators (and players) along for the ride. It’s still an RPG, so Keepers can obviously change and emphasise different parts and players can do what players do, but if run right off the page, you basically have a three act play that the players go through the motions of up until they roll dice to see how the ending turns out.
That sounds rather negative, and it is, as even though I enjoy a certain amount of ‘stage direction’ in the scenarios I run or play (or write…), this goes a bit beyond what I’m used to. There are neat set pieces and the atmosphere is nicely creepy, though, and that, along with the slightly odd structure (see spoiler section), are why I chose to run this scenario. I’ve noticed these sorts of almost ‘visual novel’-esque scenarios are fairly common in the Japanese Call of Cthulhu community, and I wanted to give one a go, but without going too far into the ‘GM reads the players a story’ direction. I thought going with something written by Uchiyama would be a comfortable in-between, and in that regard, it served its purpose nicely.
Physically, the scenario takes up 14 monochrome pages of fairly dense text pleasantly broken up by frequent side boxes and illustrations. Like most of these modern official Japanese scenarios it also comes with a little flow chart – I quite appreciate these as they give a nice visual feel for the structure a session can take, though I can understand why some might find them a bit presumptive and restricting, especially with such a ‘guided’ scenario as this. The illustrations are somewhat sparse, but still contain the manga-lite character aesthetic, a very nice to look at map, and an evocative piece of Mythos-spookiness. The scenario is aimed at multiple players, and I ran it for three players and it went well, but I think a pair of investigators might work best.
There are some awkward themes going on, but they play out to a satisfying enough conclusion, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to modify them if necessary. Hard to say more without getting into spoilers, though.
Overall, No Breaking Off is a very ‘on rails’ scenario that requires player buy-in to get the most out of it, but its set pieces and general creepy vibes are interesting enough to carry it should the group want to try out this sort of play. No Breaking Off can be found in Cthulhu 2020, unfortunately only available in Japanese and in print, but amazon japan can usually ship overseas. If you do get a copy, I’d be happy to share my translation notes.
No Breaking Off revolves around a manchild loser who’s so tired of his baby-hungry wife-mom smothering him with love and support he turns himself into a monument to Shub-Niggurath. More or less.
The investigators are friends of the Ishara couple, who moved into an old mountain house so the unsuccessful artist Bunrei can get his mojo back while his wife, Akiyo, supports him. The first scene takes place during a barbeque at the Ishara house, giving the investigators some time to talk with the couple and get accustomed to the property. Nothing dangerous happens, and the text goes so far as to suggest explicitly telling the players that so they don’t make their investigators act like paranoid weirdos and to just enjoy the roleplaying.
This goes against a lot of traditional RPG GMing instincts and can feel weird outright telling players how the scene will play out and how to feel and roleplay, but if the Keeper and players agreed to go along with the ride from the beginning, this slightly awkward concession does make the scene smoother. Otherwise, yeah, players will be suspicious of everything and try to stop the very obvious bad shit about to go down when they or the NPCs uncover a spooky old idol in the Akiyo’s vegetable garden and Bunrei becomes immediately and obviously obsessed with it.
Then the scenario jumps a year or so ahead, with an investigator getting a suspicious email from Akiyo. Worried, the investigators go to check on the Isharas, but they find the road blocked by a crashed truck, the driver saying he hit a tree that seemed to come out of nowhere (Dark Young, obviously), and have to walk the rest of the way, conveniently removing their vehicle from play.
Arriving at the property, the investigators find it in disrepair, the garden overgrown with weird plants, and the big tree in the backyard missing. After poking around a bit, maybe going into Bunrei’s shed and seeing his crazed notes and sketches, an oddly calm Akiyo pops out and invites the investigators in for tea. Drinking the tea causes a psychedelic trip, but also imparts a spell needed to solve the climatic scene, so if no one drinks the tea they’ll probably be in for a rough time later on. The tea time is a fun little bit of social interaction, with Akiyo taking offence if they don’t drink, making it more difficult to get information out of her.
Eventually the investigators either learn where Bunrei went from Akiyo, or somehow subdue her and find Bunrei’s tracks. Bunrei built a monument around the ancient idol in a clearing further up the mountain, and used his own body as the monument’s finishing cornerstone piece, dying in the process. There’s some fun creepy atmosphere stuff on the way to the clearing, with hypnotised people wandering in the woods drawn to the monument, mutated plants, a Dark Young creeping around, and a phone call from the police at the crashed truck getting interrupted and killed by said Dark Young.
When the investigators find the monument, they quickly see it is summoning something spooky and have to stop it. In their way are Akiyo (who thinks the Bunrei’s artwork is dedicated to her) and bunch of weird finger-like appendages growing everywhere. The idol is in Bunrei’s mouth and needs to be physically torn out, which can be made easier if any investigator learned the spell from the tea. It’s a bizarre final confrontation, with Akiyo crazily breaking her own bones fighting beyond her physical means against the investigators, cultists singing in the woods, and weird little fungoid fingers snatching at whoever tries to yank the idol out of Bunrei’s mouth. Again, not much actual decision making or creativity allotted to the players, but it’s a hell of a thing to picture.
And that’s the scenario as a whole, really. Each scene has some interesting things going on, but the players don’t really get to do much with it. Reading and running as-is, there’s enough atmosphere and weirdness to have a good time, assuming everyone buys in and knows what they’re getting into. But I also think there’s enough cool pieces that could be rearranged into something more open and interesting.
A more open version of the scenario could start midway in, with the investigators, potentially completely unrelated to the Isharas, being drawn to the mountain as reports of strange occurrences start spreading on social media and the news. Bunrei is already in the monument, acting as a beacon and mutating the mountain. The investigators can ask around at a village at the base of the mountain, learning about the one house on the mountain, as well as the old man in the missing truck, and maybe the rumours of weirdos wandering into the woods. Akiyo is still hanging out at the house, but is eager to tell anyone and everyone about the amazing work her husband made, and investigators can work out the backstory by talking with her and looking over Bunrei’s notes. Or the investigators could avoid the house entirely, scouting through the woods towards the potential epicentre of the weirdness, and coming into conflict with the cultists or Dark Young, and after retreating need to formulate a plan on how to get through the woods to the clearing. Helicopter? Getting a posse of hunters together, or the police, or even the self defence force?
This might give players a bit more of a sense of agency and problem solving, even if there’s less of a direct connection to the Isharas. Which might not be that big of a loss, because their whole thing is kind of gross. It could be interesting, dysfunctional relationships make for good horror, but the scenario doesn’t really play with it enough. Bunrei is a tortured artist who is explicitly good at his work but bad with people, while his wife is extremely supportive but smothering and just wants them babies. Bunrei running away from his mom-wife into the arms of Shub-Niggurath, the big mommy of the Mythos, is actually pretty funny, and Shubbies end goal being to scoop up the mutated mountain and impregnate a new world with it is also a nice bit of ironic nastiness, but again, the investigators have no way of learning this and I’m not sure the scenario is cognisant of the symbolism going on here.
The text feels like it’s written either to be completely neutral on the relationship, or even in Bunrei’s corner, what-with the description of Akiyo’s baby-hunger making him feel uncomfortable and pressured. But even taking the text as-is, Bunrei comes across as a big piece of shit, and that’s a more interesting read of the story anyways. Bunrei is a manipulative layabout, stringing along Akiyo to keep him housed and fed so he can fuss about with his art that he refuses to learn how to sell to people, and when he gets spooked Akiyo might finally get fed up, he runs off and shoves himself in a giant phallus to get his tentacled monster mom’s attention so she can make babies on a new planet with him.
I do wonder if a fun twist would be to give Akiyo a bit more agency, depth, and craziness, by having her to be the one to finally put Bunrei into the monument and cram the idol down his throat. Instead of her finding Bunrei already dead and going insane, Akiyo could follow Bunrei to the clearing after worrying over his evasiveness, and seeing the monument be driven mad by Shubs’ influence, and in that madness jam the idol down Bunrei’s throat to complete the monument, satisfying Shubs’ plans, making Bunrei’s art finally successful and justifying all of her effort supporting him, and subconsciously getting revenge for Bunrei essentially cheating on her with a gross alien god-mom.
Overall, a train ride of a scenario, but with enough atmosphere, spooky imagery, and NPC shenanigans going on to make it worthwhile for a group willing to give up some agency in exchange for the ride, or for a Keeper willing to do some heavy restructuring to get at the juicy bits while giving the players more freedom. Again, No Breaking Off can be found in Cthulhu 2020, unfortunately only available in Japanese and in print, but amazon japan can usually ship overseas. If you do get a copy, I’d be happy to share my translation notes.
