The Dead Boarder Review – Call of Cthulhu (Gateways to Terror)

Review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Dead Boarder, by Todd Gardiner, from Chaosium’s Gateways to Terror.

The Dead Boarder Review – Call of Cthulhu (Gateways to Terror)
This is a review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Dead Boarder written by Todd Gardiner, and published by Cahosium as the third and last scenario in the Gateways to Terror book. You can find the written review on mjrrpg.com. You can purchase Gateways to Terror on DriveThruRPG, Chasioum’s website, Amazon, or your friendly neighbourhood game shop.

In short:

Sporting well-made pregen investigators and an extremely concise setting, The Dead Boarder is the best suited of the Gateways of Terror scenarios for beginners needing a game to fit into a very tight schedule.

No Spoilers for players or Keepers:

Todd Gardiner’s The Dead Boarder is the third and last scenario in Chaosium’s Gateways to Terror, taking up 26 pages including art, handouts, and investigators sheets, with the main scenario text filling 19 pages. As with its sibling scenarios, The Necropolis and What’s in the Cellar?, The Dead Boarder is designed for beginner Keepers and players, full of plenty of direction and advice. It is also the most concise of the three, taking place almost entirely inside a single room, and is the easiest to fit into the one-hour time limit each scenario is supposed to be able to fit into.

Its single handout is simple, but still nicely thematic. The map is in the same detailed and colourful vein as the others in the book, showing every object the investigators can interact with in the scene, though not as intricately as The Necropolis’. There are also some insert art pieces that could be extracted and show to players to get a feel for the situation.

While The Necropolis has the most ‘gameplay’ of the three, and What’s in the Cellar? hits more of the beats of a full Call of Cthulhu scenario, The Dead Boarder has by far the best pregen investigators. All four have direct connections to the scenario giving them different personal goals and motivations, some even conflicting with each other, and meaty backgrounds and traits to give new players plenty to chew on. Even players completely new to TTRPGs should be able to get into the roleplaying groove, and interplay between investigators should naturally arise.

The Dead Boarder may not be the most investigation-heavy or varied scenario in Gateways to Terror, but it is the best to introduce new players to actually roleplaying characters that will interact with and bounce off each other, and it is also the easiest to fit into a very tight time limit.

You can purchase Gateways to Terror on DriveThruRPG, Chasioum’s website, and Amazon,

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!

Keeper Review and Suggestions

A simple read through of the scenario will be enough to run it without issue, and nothing really needs adjusting to play it out as written. There is only really one potential issue to keep in mind, and its an issue that most scenarios will eventually run into, so its probably for the best to get used to it in a beginner-focused game.

The progression of the scenario is very simply. The investigators check in on a fellow boarder for various private reasons and find the poor guy dead and brutalised. They poke around the room, putting together the lead up to his death. After enough time, the dead man rises as a spooky monster with his face peeled off the skull like an orange. Fighting ensues, and enough bops to the head will kill the thing, or it’ll escape, or the investigators might run away.

Players are thrown right into the investigation after an explanation of who they are and where they are, leaving the bulk of the scenario to looking around the room. Luckily, there’s lots of fun things to see, and figuring out the grisly cause of death, while fairly obvious to anyone who’s played a couple games before, is still suitably creepy. The creature is gory, and the fight in a small room should be frantic and blunt.

Unfortunately, the mystery of the man’s death doesn’t play too much into the ‘solution,’ and that solution is also very straight forward. Hit the thing in the head until it dies, or let it take its magic book and run away. There is no ritual to undo, no way to trick the creature, nothing but simply hitting it in the obvious weak point until it stops moving, or giving up. One potential addition could be to have a spell in the magic book that could dispel the creature, but at some great cost that almost ensures an investigator will go insane or be horribly injured. As the titular dead boarder had to carve various symbols into his own body to perform his ritual, maybe the investigators would also have to carve up their own bodies, as well as expend a massive amount of MP (or substituted HP) to have a chance at banishing the creature?

But the main potential issue is if one or a couple of the investigators flee. If all of them flee its not an issue, and the scenario text gives suggestions in that eventuality. But if only one or a couple flee while the rest continue fighting, those the left are basically out of the scenario. There should only be fifteen or so minutes left once the creature rises, but it still might be a bit anticlimactic for some players to simply sit in silence and watch the others play out the ending.

Of course, the players should be interested in, well, playing the game, but to avoid the problem it may be worth going over beforehand that their investigators are not the sort of people to run away from excitement. And if a player is about to leg it, a gentle warning that they’ll be running out of the game might help. Or just let them go, dooming their allies to a brutal death. That could be a fitting ending in itself.

If your players are used to combat-heavy games, it’s also worth noting that the creature could be taken down in a single round. Its weak point is fairly obvious, and if all the players burn through Luck to get Extreme Successes, especially if the Business Associate pregen is in play with their gun, the creature will be pulverised before it can get a swing in. If playing with experienced gamers, or players you expect to know how to kill a spooky monster, it may be worth lowering their starting Luck to 3d6*3 or so, or potentially boosting the creature’s DEX or HP.

While I may overall prefer What’s in the Cellar? as a full introduction to Call of Cthulhu, and The Necropolis for a pulpier session that might be what new players are expecting, The Dead Boarder is in no way the runt of Gateways to Terror. Its pregen investigators alone carry a ton of weight, making it the best scenario to introduce new players to actually roleplaying a character, and its conciseness makes it the easiest to slip into a constrained timeframe. Well recommended.