The Necropolis Review – Call of Cthulhu (Gateways to Terror)

This is a review for the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Necropolis, written by Leigh Carr, published by Chaosium in Gateways to Terror.

The Necropolis Review – Call of Cthulhu
This is a review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario The Necropolis, written by Leigh Carr, and published by Chasioum as the first 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: Highly recommended to introduce any beginner groups to Call of Cthulhu 7e, or to fill a short time block with some quick excitement for any group.

No Spoilers for players or Keepers:

The Necropolis is the first scenario in the Gateways to Terror scenario book for Chasioum’s Call of Cthulhu 7^th edition. The scenario takes up 20 pages including handouts, artwork, and pregen character sheets, with the actual scenario text covering about 13 pages. As with the other two scenarios in the book, it is a tight introductory scenario aimed at new Keepers and players, providing ample advice for the Keeper and detailed notes of its single location and the events there-in.

It is designed to be runnable in a single hour, with handy suggestions for keeping time, though my group took about an hour-and-a-half to get through it at a more leisurely pace. One of our players was completely new to TTRPGs in general, the other two only had a couple sessions of 7e under their belt, and I myself am fairly new to GMing Call of Cthulhu, so we took our time get comfortable, though once things took off I tried to keep things barreling along a good clip.

It includes a couple simple text handouts and a very nice map, with both player and Keeper versions. I like in particular how the small details on the map are almost all referenced in the scenario text, letting the players point out whatever little object they want to interact with.

There are also four pregen characters with neat roleplaying traits and hooks, as well as advice on how to build player characters that fit with the setting if there are more than four players, or if your group decides not to use pregens.

Without giving too much away, I’ll say that Necropolis was a blast. It has just about everything a good CoC scenario should have packed in, giving a sample taste of almost all 7e mechanics. It manages to give a good deal of player agency and options while still being essentially a tiny dungeon crawl. The only aspect missing is NPC interaction despite being a core aspect of the game, but it can be introduced easily enough by including any unused pregen characters as NPCs, or inserting one.

All around it is an impressive way to give a vertical slice of CoC 7e in a tight timeframe, and my group and I had a blast with it.

You can purchase Gateways to Terror on DriveThruRPG, Chasioum’s website, Amazon, or your friendly neighbourhood game shop.

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!

As befitting an introductory scenario, Necropolis can be run straight out of the book with little-to-no improvisation or preparation. Pre-reading at least once is of course recommended, but in a crunch you can get by with a quick skim as the players read over their character sheets.

Before I give a short walkthrough of the scenario, one suggestion I have is to throw in an NPC so the players can get some use out of their social skills and for you to use as needed. When I ran the game I had three players, so I included the remaining pregen (the Ex-Soldier) as an npc. The scenario includes suggestions on how to make more PCs that would fit into the scenario, but they would make for useful NPCs as well. If I ran the game for four players, I would include as an NPC one of the labourers who knew a little bit about the tomb’s background, so they could be interrogated for some information.

The group begins cut off in an Egyptian tomb, and have to start exploring for a way out before it collapses around them or they run out of air. Unknown to the party, their local labourers intentionally trapped them in the tomb as a sacrifice to a beast that lives within. If using the NPC labourer I suggested above, he could be a relatively new worker, not fully ingrained into the cult and was discarded due to having second thoughts. He doesn’t know the truth about the tomb, only that the cult sends foreigners into it, never to return. The group could notice him sweating profusely/praying/being generally a panicky wreck, and some social skill use could get him to reveal what little he knows.

The scenario gives advice on how to give a sense of urgency – crumbling walls, thinning air, etc. My group was fairly calm and didn’t try digging out or busting down the walls, so an NPC could be used to show that off. Maybe the labourer desperately claws at the crumbled exit, bring down rubble and threatening a further cave-in until the PCs calm him down or drag him away.

After the entrance way are a pair of rooms, the Antechamber and Annex, with lots of goodies to poke around, roll some skill tests, cause some sanity loss, and piece together what this tomb might contain. The text explains things well and the map is easy to read. You can basically give as much fussing about time to the players as you want, and once you feel the time is right you can move things on by having the Abomination start waking up in the hidden room. One thing worth emphasising is how cluttered the Antechamber is, really stressing that there are dark corners hidden behind piles of junk. This will hopefully both make the players antsy, while also strongly hinting that hiding is very much possible.

Once they hear the Abomination waking up, they have some time to decide what to do next. Hopefully they got the hint that they can hide! I suggest doing this in real time – keep interrupting their planning with increasingly loud sounds through the wall, up until it starts breaking through, maybe with some sudden bangs on your physical table to make your point.

Between the various evidence they found in the Antechamber and Annex, the party may have worked out how to defeat the Abomination without having to directly fight it. Through the now broken wall there are two more secret rooms, one of which contains the creature’s heart. Destroying the heart in turn destroys the creature, and all they have to do is somehow get passed the beast. Assuming your group figured this out.

Mine did not.

Luckily, the scenario is in no way railroaded with only one way to ‘win.’ There are plenty of suggestions for how the conflict and conclusion can play out, ranging from a complete TPK to the party escaping and in turn freeing the beast. Along with the evidence and hints that could help the party defeat the Abomination, they also find some dynamite. Players being players, they will find a way to use that dynamite.

In my run, the NPC Ex-Soldier was torn apart by the beast, giving two of the PCs time to sneak past into the secret rooms, but they didn’t have time to find the heart. The last PC (the Dilettante) tried to sneak, failed horribly, and as the beast turned from its meal, the dynamite came out. A failed luck roll resulted in the Dilettante setting off the dynamite immediately, collapsing the tomb. A few dodge and luck rolls later, the dust settled with the beast and the Dilettante blown to smithereens, and the other two PCs safe and sound in the Abomination’s sarcophagus and under an overturned canoe. Unfortunately, they were still trapped beneath dozens of tons of rubble, and unable to escape their new coffins, asphyxiated. Defeating the beast with a TPK is a reasonable success for a one shot, eh?

You can also read my short replay of this scenario to get a feeling for how the session may go for your table.