Pyramid Review
Cthulhu Dark Ages
Published by Chaosium
Written by Stéphane Gesbert, Lynn Willis, Brian M. Sammons, & Charlie Crank
Edited by Charlie Crank, David Mitchell, Lynn Willis, Hannes Kaiser, Frank Heller, & Brian Courtemanche
Based on the book by Pegasus Spiele
Art and graphics by François Launet, Stéphane Gesbert, Andy Hopp, David Grilla, Meghan McLean, Björn Lensig, Gero "Zodiak" Pappe, & Kostja Kleye
176-page b&w softcover; $23.95
Since the strange alien gods that populate the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft are themselves timeless, you ought to be able to play an RPG about them no matter the setting. Perhaps spurred on by the success of those White Wolf products set during the period, Chaosium has provided players with Cthulhu Dark Ages, a self-contained roleplaying book. The bad news is that anyone in the (ahem) dark about this time period isn't going to come out feeling much smarter about it than they were going in.
The self-contained part is on-target. The Basic Roleplaying System (or BRP) is included, and contains all the rules you need for period equipment and character creation. Modern chaff has been removed, and there are numerous occupations written up with suggested skills and possessions. You have combat and action resolutions (and a Resistance Table with errors aplenty), and a magic system that encompasses some suitably disturbing spells. It isn't a replacement for the core book, since some sections have been left out for space concerns or because they were anachronistic . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 23, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.