Review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario Stone’s Throw From Atlantis, written by Phil Anderson and Allan Carey, the eighth title in Type40’s Seeds of Terror series.

In Short:

One of my top 3 Seeds and of the weirder ones, Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is a neat and very focused ‘puzzle’ scenario with a unique setting and one of the most fun ‘ticking-clocks’ across the series, though requiring a fix for the puzzle to work smoothly.

Spoiler-lite for Players and Keepers:

Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is the eighth entry in the Seeds of Terror series, and the second written by Phil Anderson (and the second in Anderson’s sort-of ‘Idol’ trilogy within the Seeds series). It is also one of the ‘weird’ scenarios in the series, along with Scream of the Mandrake and Flute of the Gods, and it’s my personal favourite of the three as well as my third favourite of the whole twelve Seeds titles. It’s one of the most focused scenarios, and for some may be too focused to the point of linearity, but I personally find plenty to do within its narrow confines, and all three runs I’ve done have been notably different.

Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is one of the longest Seeds, coming in at whopping… 8 pages of text, along one stat page, four hand outs, and six colourful pregenerated investigators. As always, the handouts are well produced and nice to look at, though one is difficult to use as-is. More on that in the spoiler section. The setting of Spain’s southern Doñana wetlands is unique, tied to the central mystery, and provides great atmosphere, though 1920s Spain unfortunately isn’t explored much, and while the investigators are nicely fleshed out with plenty of roleplaying hooks, having some more direct connections to the country’s political situation could have been a nice touch.

The Seeds of Terror series has a wide variety of situations, themes, and atmospheres, but overall not many of them are actually all that deeply scary, mostly being on the more actiony or pulpy side of Call of Cthulhu. Keepers can of course expand on any of the scenarios to emphasise the horror – these are seeds, after all – but as written, I find Stone’s Throw From Atlantis to be the eeriest of the lot. The atmosphere is uncomfortable and grows stranger as the scenario progresses, and the common frantic second and third act shared by most Seeds is more desperate and existential here than in others.

While there is a fairly glaring issue the Keeper will need to deal with, Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is still a standout scenario not only among its sibling Seeds, but as a convention-length scenario, and is one of the first I’d recommend when looking for a very different sort of single session one-shot.

Stone’s Throw From Atlantis can be found individually on DriveThruRPG, or as part of the Idol Pursuits bundle along with Crushed and Children of Chaac.

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

Like most Seeds, Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is straight forward and easy to run, though there is one bump Keepers should smooth over beforehand, as well as a couple points that could be emphasised.

The scenario starts with the investigators arriving at a dig site in southern Spain’s Doñana wetlands where an archaeologist believes she may have uncovered ruins of the fabled city of Atlantis. They find the site eerily empty though. After poking through some tents to find a few clues and an idol, which gives anyone that touches it a brief and odd vision, and then the party finds an entrance to an excavated temple. Inside they do find the dig team. Sort of.

The team are all insane, self-mutilated, and phantoms. Only the head archaeologist is named and described (she clawed her own eyes out), and it may be worth fleshing out the others just a little, if not to add a touch more horror by detailing their self-inflicted injuries.

Most of the scenario will likely take place in this room, which features a five sided star on the floor with a phantom archaeologist at each tip along with an odd stone, and in the centre of the room a giant skull sunk into the floor. A skull that seems to be rising out of the ground little by little every time one blinks or looks away… As the investigators piece together what happened and what they are supposed to do, the situation gets stranger as they hear phantom sounds and sights.

What’s happening is a convergence in time as the sinking of Atlantis and the rising of R’lyeh merges with the present, and a Star Spawn of Cthulhu emerges to summon its dreaming lord. A ritual can stop this from happening, and on paper is easy to do. Say a sequence of phrases in the correct order while standing in the correct points of the star. The problem comes from one of the handouts pretty much explicitly giving the opposite hint to the players.

One of the handouts is the head archaeologists notes about the ritual, with two sequences written down, and one crossed out with big a ‘No no no!’ scrawled across it. But this is the correct sequence. I believe the implication is that she thought this was wrong, and so crossed it out before trying it, but as the investigators have three tries to do the correct ritual, it makes it seem like she tried and failed with this sequence.

I have three ideas for how to solve this problem, one requiring some handout editing, one some extra hints in play, and the last a big old hand wave that may or may not annoy players if they figure out what the Keeper did.

• Editing the handout to make it clear the archaeologist thought the crossed-out sequence was wrong and hadn’t tried it yet. Maybe a note on the other, incorrect, sequence along the lines of ‘this one has to be it!’ Then when the investigators conduct the incorrect one first it won’t work, and they’ll have two more tries. This might be the easiest, but it also might be too easy, as it doesn’t require the players to think much beyond just trying both sequences already written down.
• Have both of the archaeologist’s sequences not work, with the correct sequence being the reverse of the scratched-out result. To give extra hints, the visions investigators get from touching the idol can give small snippets of the correct order, but only one part at a time, and with the consequence of extra SAN losses each time. The phantom archaeologist could also be repeatedly moaning ‘backwards, backwards, backwards!’ or something similar. This is my preferred method, as it doesn’t require any extra editing, and requires players to think through the puzzle a little bit more.
• Hand wave the problem entirely, and just have the investigators automatically fail the ritual twice and succeed the last time no matter what they do. This may result in the most dramatic ending, as the party always succeeds at the last minute, but if the players find out you just let them win, they’ll likely feel dejected. This is the laziest solution, but if you’re a straight-faced liar it might make for the most exciting and simplest method.

I also highly suggest finding some way to lure an investigator or two out of the temple so they can witness the mixing of times. The best run I had was when the party didn’t take the idol out of one of the initial tents, requiring them to walk through a transparent, ghostly Atlantis on the way to the tent. Once they pick up the idol, though, the ancient city becomes fully physical, with the inhabitants able to see and interact with the investigator, who then has to navigate through this foreign city in the grip of tsunami, rushing down narrow streets flooding with water and crowds of frightened people crying out in dead languages, and the great twisted spires of R’lyeh rising up out of the churning ocean to loom over the drowning Atlantis. It’s one hell of a spectacle to miss out on.

Overall, Stone’s Throw From Atlantis is what I consider the ‘sleeper hit’ of the Seeds of Terror series. There are tighter, more complex, more exciting, and more flashy scenarios, but this one I find has the perfect balance of a unique setting and problem to solve, creepy and weird scenes and atmosphere, and a non-violent puzzle to solve, all in a tight two to three hour package. Very highly recommended.

Again, Stone’s Throw From Atlantis can be found individually on DriveThruRPG, or as part of the Idol Pursuits bundle along with Crushed and Children of Chaac.

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