Pyramid Review
Terror (for Call of Cthulhu)
Published by Chaosium, Inc.
Written by Troy C. Wilhelmson
Illustrated by Todd C. Wilhelmson
Cartography by David Conyers & Carolyn Schulz
32-page b&w tapebound softcover; $10
When a scenario opens with their characters under interrogation by the NKVD, it should be clear to the players that they are in a very bad situation indeed. Since they also know that they are playing a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, they are equally justified in knowing that their situation is undoubtedly going to get worse.
This is the opening set-up in Terror, a monograph from Chaosium that marks a return visit to the Soviet Russia of the 1930s last seen in the atmospheric one-shot, Machine Tractor Station Kharkov-37. As a monograph, Terror is available only direct from Chaosium, but it marks it as something that the publisher believes to be of interest to the Call of Cthulhu devotee, but for which it does not have the resources to fully publish and make available through the normal distribution channels. This means that the publisher has given it the minimum of attention prior to limited publication, leaving the editorial and layout chores to the author. In the past this has meant that some monographs have been a little rough around the edges, but with Terror, the production values are surprisingly reasonable. The writing is overall error free, and the illustrations -- if not of the best quality -- are dark, murky, and interesting.
Where Machine Tractor Station Kharkov-3 . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 1, 2007
Copyright © 2007 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.