Review of the Call of Cthulhu Gaslight scenario The Phthonus Cabinet, written by John Crowdis.
In-Short: An investigation-heavy scenario romping through the 1890s London dockyards with a novel Mythos threat.
Spoilers-lite for Players and Keepers
The Phthonus Cabinet is John Crowdis’ second scenario, following up Al-Azif Unearthed: The Unraveling (they are unrelated, separate stories). While the scenario has a similar feel to its predecessor, with a stock of detailed NPCs, prominently featuring an auction, and featuring a beautiful layout, the actual structure is very different. The Phthonus Cabinet is a classic investigation, with investigators going from location to location and person to person to track down the eponymous cabinet through the 1890s Limehouse district. The setting is moody, and the text gives advice on how to describe the narrow, foggy streets to great effect.
As with The Unraveling, Crowdis supplies a huge amount, almost overwhelming so, of scenario support. Besides the colour scenario pdf, you get printer friendly version, 6 pregenerated investigator sheets, separate handouts, separated maps, and every piece of art in the book separated out and formatted for VTTs, in particular the maps are formatted for FantasyGrounds, Foundry, and UniversalVTT. Opening the zip file can be a bit confusing the first time, but Crowdis helpfully includes a Readme that describes what everything is used for.
The main scenario file is a whopping 71 pages, but the actual scenario text with frequently inserted handouts, maps, and art pieces takes up a more reasonable 31 pages, with remainder being stat blocks, full page art pieces, credits and the cover, pregenerated investigators, handouts, and a nice little one page short story to kick things off. The quality of art throughout is fantastic, with colourful character portraits and scenes, a wonderful cover and some interior pieces by Paul Carrick, and stylised stock photos to set the mood. The layout of the scenario is once again fantastic, with evocative header text and various flourishes, and frequent cutout boxes to break up the text. The document is overall very sleek and just like The Unraveling, among the best presented on the Miskatonic Repository. A few issues are present though, with the pdf bookmarks having a few errors, a lack of a clear summary of the scenario, and a handful of typos or grammar issues (though few, the stellar presentation otherwise makes them stand out more than they otherwise would). These are all small issues, with the bookmarks and typos being easily fixed in a future update. While a summary isn’t necessary, I would be very happy to see a paragraph or two that would outline the general course the investigators are likely to take (something like the beginning of the following spoiler section).
In my run, I tried to cram those 31 pages into a four hour session, which I found was not enough time to do the scenario justice. While the main investigation portion progressed at a natural speed (my ‘natural pacing’ is still a bit quick, as I prefer giving information and suggestions freely and often to players to keep them moving), we ended up rushing the finale. Even an extra hour would have allowed for a consistent pacing through to the end, though I suspect that Keepers who prefer a more laid back style would want to split the scenario into two four-hour sessions.
There is also a Roll20 version of the scenario, which I used for my run despite generally avoiding that particular VTT in favour of Foundry, or just not using a VTT at all. My discomfort with Roll20 didn’t much change, but the scenario resources were very well organised, allowing full and quick access to all the handouts, art, and scenes. An ‘investigation desk’ scene was particularly nice, allowing the players to see and organize all the handouts they had received, as well as the portraits of all the major NPCs they had met. That little feature alone feels like something any VTT version of a mystery game should have, and its something I wish I could replicate in my current Foundry WFRP campaign, as I don’t see a good way of making handouts visible objects that players can manipulate around the scene. It gives a very ‘hands-on’ feeling, and I imagine it could be used to great effect in a larger scenario or campaign where players are organising dozens of clues and character pictures into a big conspiracy web.
The scenario structure is an open investigation, with most of the locations and relevant characters given to the investigators right at the start, leaving the order of events up to the players. A cabinet has gone missing after an auction, with the buyer never receiving it and now suing the auction house. Cue the investigators, called in to find the cabinet. There are plenty of handouts to find and pour over, locations to poke around in, and people to talk to. Going much more into it will spoil things, so I’ll just leave it saying the scenario is a nice node-based investigation, balancing the normal Call of Cthulhu clue trail with player-driven pacing.
You can find The Phthonus Cabinet on DriveThruRPG in pdf or Roll20 formats.
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
The Phthonus Cabinet is deceptively simple to run. The page length and lack of a concise summary make it seem difficult at first, but after a read through the structure of the scenario comes together into a neat collection of nodes that inevitably lead to one place. It is not entirely necessary to go to each node, but the players will get a better picture of events, and allow their investigators to be better prepared for the finale. On the other hand, a very focused group could go on a straight line to the finale (a bit more on that later).
The scenario starts with the most classic of Call of Cthulhu intros – the investigators are hired for a job and go to their employer’s office to get their starting clues. The group is hired to hunt down the Phthonus Cabinet, which was sold in an auction but wasn’t delivered to the client. They are given a number of leads, including the names of the competing bidders, the warehouse the cabinet came from, and the address of the delivery driver.
The truth is the cabinet holds a particular Terror from Beyond within it that causes those nearby to desire it desperately and avariciously. One of the losing bidders bribed the delivery driver to give him the cabinet, keeping it in a secret storehouse. By the start of the scenario, the delivery driver has died having torn out his own eyes in madness, and the thieving bidder reduced to a near-undead husk protecting the cabinet.
The only direct way to find the hidden storehouse is through the thief’s wife or butler, who both know the location of the hidden storehouse. They won’t offer that information unless presented with proof it may be there in the form of a note to the delivery driver written by the thief with a shorthand script that only the wife can decipher. That being said, if convinced that her husband was in mortal danger, or threatened with heft legal repercussions should she hide her potentially-criminal husband, I imagine she would share the storehouse location. Should this happen, the additional locations become largely moot, and the investigators can head straight to the storehouse to find the cabinet.
This isn’t necessarily an issue, as they could encounter the cabinet and the horror within and then flee, leaving the remainder of the scenario as the investigators decide what to do with the cabinet, and potentially visiting the unexplored nodes to find anything helpful (like a particular Mythos tome). But if a Keeper would rather front load the investigation, as well as prevent a linear discovery of the cabinet, a simple change would be to make the thief’s wife and butler unaware of the secret storehouse, and so out-right requiring the note from the delivery driver, which contains a short-hand. Alternatively, only the wife or the butler is aware of the storehouse, but will not give away the location as they are a partner-in-crime with the thief. Once convinced that the thief is in danger after the investigators arrival, they eventually go to the storehouse to check in, themselves becoming enthralled by the cabinet. The remaining ‘innocent’ wife or butler could trail them, and then go back to the investigators for help. This could also be a failsafe in case the investigators get stuck at some point.
Despite my run ending somewhat abruptly as we ran low on time, it actually led to a conclusion I greatly enjoyed, and hadn’t expected to happen given the usual way Call of Cthulhu scenarios unfold, as well as this potential conclusion’s brief description in the text. Rather than try to destroy the cabinet or exorcise the Terror within it, with a little bit of psychic nudging by the Terror, the investigators decided to simply return the cabinet to its buyer, dooming him to becoming an enthralled-husk, along with however many future generations of unfortunate owners. An appropriately bleak conclusion that I like so much I might bend the scenario towards if I ever run it again, perhaps by removing the ability to banish the creature, instead having the Mythos tome explain the creature’s mechanics a bit more, so the players are left with a more informed decision of how to risk disposing of the cabinet and the potentially immortal threat within it.
The Phthonus Cabinet is a solid investigation, as well as a good introductory scenario for the Gaslight setting and a potential campaign starter, with enough freedom to let the players set their own pace, but enough structure to keep the story focused and the playtime reasonable, and comes with a versatile Mythos threat that could be repurposed for personalized use. And the layout is fantastic, once again something any MR writer, or TTRPG community creator in general, should take a look at for inspiration.
Once again, you can find The Phthonus Cabinet on DriveThruRPG in pdf or Roll20 formats.
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
