Tickets Please Review – Call of Cthulhu (Seeds of Terror)

Review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario, Tickets Please, written by Allan Carey of Type40, and the fifth title in the Seeds of Terror series.

Tickets Please Review – Call of Cthulhu (Seeds of Terror)
This is a review of the Call of Cthulhu scenario Hand of Glory, by Type 40, the Fourth scenario in their Seeds of Terror series. You can find the written review on mjrrpg.com You can purchase the scenario from DriveThruRPG individually, or as part of a 3-title bundle Airship, Lighthouse, Speakeasy along with Endless Light and Fish in a Barrel.

In-short: A pulpy, action-packed scenario taking place on an airship that offers a cinematic session, but it does requires some preparation and alteration to run smoothly.

Spoilers-lite for players and Keepers:

Tickets Please is the fifth title in the Seeds of Terror series, and the most action-packed of the lot, and feels like a pulpy-little movie set up. Like most of the Seeds of Terror games, the scenario takes place in a closed location with a ticking clock element, ensuring a focused and fast-paced session. My run of Tickets Please ran the longest of the series, a little over three hours, which could be a boon or bane depending on your group. It also requires the most preparation and alteration of any of the series, with one of its key elements not really working as written.

The airship is certainly a unique setting, its main selling point compare to its sibling scenarios, and it is well utilised. There are plenty of ways to interact with the airship throughout the scenario, and the blueprint handouts are great. The pregen investigators are some of my favourites in the whole series and fit very well into the various ways the scenario could play out.

Players and Keepers should be aware that Tickets Please is the most scenario of the series likely to feature combat, and possibly prolonged combat. It doesn’t necessarily have to, but as written it is very likely to happen.

Tickets Please is a fine addition to the series with a very unique setting and a more pulpy and action-packed pacing than the other Seeds of Terror scenarios. While I generally recommend most of the other Seeds first, when taken as part of the whole, Tickets Please does stand out as a colourful addition.

If you’re already convinced, you can find Tickets Please on DriveThruRPG individually, or in the Airship, Lighthouse, Speakeasy bundle along with the fantastic Endless Light and Fish in a Barrel.

If you are a player, stop here! Spoilers haunt below, along with Keeper suggestions. You have been warned.

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!

Tickets Please gets right into the action, with a only a short conversation setting the scene before an NPC starts trying to eat a fellow passenger. From there, it’s a race against time to find out what is going on as more and more passengers go mad. It takes a very ‘Zombies on an X’ B-movie type setting and tone and has a lot of fun with it. The twist also has a neat weird-science vibe to it, with a Star Spawn egg being used to power the airship.

The various climaxes are also very fun. Escaping the airship on a plane with investigators hanging onto the wings for dear life, crashing the ship into the ocean, dealing with the power issue long enough to land the ship, just in time for the Star Spawn to pulverise everything in a mile radius, to not escaping in tie and being sucked into the void.

The scenario’s main issue comes with how it implements its ticking clock. As passengers go insane due to the Star Spawn’s funky gas, the Star Spawn grows more powerful and eventually escapes. But the scenario asks for a 1D3-1 roll every ‘turn’ to see how many NPCs go crazy, and once 15 are gone the Star Spawn hatches and blows up the ship. I’m awful at math, but I believe that averages to 1 NPC a ‘turn.’

Ignoring whether it should be a ‘turn’ or a ‘round,’ I’ve never played a scenario entirely in turn order, so right out of the gate this doesn’t work for me. Even if a group did laboriously play in turn order for the entire scenario, fifteen rounds would go by extremely quickly. In-game that should only be about ten seconds a round, so we’re looking at a two and a half minute window before the airship blows up.

The easiest solution, and the one I went with in my run, is to do a roll every ten real-time minutes, of course allowing for quicker or longer periods depending on the desired pacing. This allowed for much more flexibility and easier control of the game’s length.

There is also a potential risk of the excessive combat if the passengers end up turning violent. Depending on the group, this could be entirely okay, leading into a very pulpy battle across the zeppelin. For less combat-oriented groups, this may seem like a slog. If you don’t want much, if any, combat, I’d suggest changing the four types of madness (violence, recklessness, madness, egg protection) to just three, removing the violence. More NPCs end up gibbering on the floor or running about hurling themselves at sharp objects, or congregating around the egg, rather than outright attacking the PCs throughout the scenario.

Overall, Tickets Please is the most action-packed of the Seeds of Terror series. If your group wants a three-ish hour romp in a Mythos-powered zeppelin fighting off crazed zombie-like passengers, well, this is certainly that.