Call of Cthulhu: Arkham Review - Supplemental Strangeness

A long-time favorite of tabletop RPG players, Call of Cthulhu brings the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft (and his successor storytellers) home. First released in 1981, and currently on its 7th edition, the game continues to innovate on the horror genre. Now, Call of Cthulhu creator Chaosium has released an all-new guide to the famous Lovecraftian town of Arkham with Call of Cthulhu: Arkham. I got sent an early copy for review by Chaosium, so read on for my thoughts!

What Is Call of Cthulhu: Arkham?

Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is a hardcover supplement for Call of Cthulhu (and the Pulp Cthulhu supplement), providing everything (and more!) a gaming group needs to set their adventures in the New England town of Arkham. Included in the book are, as the back of the book proudly proclaims:

• A sandbox campaign setting for Call of Cthulhu.
• The history of Arkham and the Miskatonic University.
• Details of 9 neighborhoods, with over 290 locations described.
• New rules and skills for Arkham investigators.
• More than 80 fully-detailed NPCs.
• Gossip and rumors to use as scenario seeds for original stories.
• Street and neighborhood maps, as well as numerous floorplans of key locations.
• Two Arkham city map posters—one for players, and one marked with information for the Keeper.
• A poster-sized newspaper prop of the Arkham Advertiser.

As you'll see as this review unfolds, the sheer depth of detail presented in this book really makes it stand out. There are points of inspiration for Keepers (that's Call of Cthulhu's version of a Game Master) on every single page, and its easy to start crafting coherent campaign adventures with just a bit of reading and research in this book.

Player Options in Call of Cthulhu: Arkham

First, I think it's worth taking a moment to explore the various ways you can customize your characters to fit into a game set and focused in Arkham. Along with random generator guides for creating significant people and meaningful locations connected to your PC in Arkham, there are also several new or adjusted skills for your character unveiled in this book.

There's the Navigate (Arkham) skill, which "embodies a character’s knowledge of Arkham in terms of finding their way around the streets and knowing where key landmarks or important buildings/areas are located." There's also the History (Arkham) skill which allows residents of Arkham to have a sense of the town's past.

Then there's the Reassure skill, which allows a character to attempt to restore a bit of lost sanity to their compatriots through calming words. There's also the Religion skill, which is hard to believe wasn't a part of the original ruleset. This skill allows players to "know how to enter or identify a sacred space, respectfully join in a ritual, know the correct way to address a practitioner, the purpose of a ritual, understand key mythologies, and so on."

There's also an extended segment around using different business, locations, and services in Arkham to continue to develop your character's skills. Even here, the mere suggestion of ways to increase skills gets the imagination churning. Will you take ballroom dancing lessons for a month before you have to try to pass for high society in the midst of a daring heist of forbidden knowledge? Do the players need to take a bookkeeping course to better understand how a local politician's been cooking her books? Everywhere you look in this book, there's room to explore.

Locations and NPC's in Call of Cthulhu: Arkham

This is truly, truly where this book shines. The section on locations in Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is nothing short of revelatory. Divided by the town's nine different neighborhoods, each area is numbered, clearly mapped, and nothing is left for the reader to divine on their own.

While some more important locales have longer entries, even something as mundane as the local bus depot is full of information that can spark your creativity.

Just take a look at the below blurb about the Innsmouth bus stop - not only do we learn about options for our characters to travel to nearby towns, but we learn that there's something a bit fishy about the bus driver.

Every single location is like this, just bursting with character: there's the movie theater run by a strict owner and manager who prefers documentaries to sensationalism, which often runs newsreels that could include strange new beliefs from the Amazon. There's Ballard's Auto Lot that sells new and used cars and offers driver's lessons. There's Anderson's Chemical Supply, which - buried in its records - shows what was sold to Herbert West (in case someone wants to try their hand at Re-Animating the dead).

The list goes on and on (and on, with 290 entries like this), and makes this an absolutely indispensable source of inspiration.

Scattered throughout these location descriptions are notable NPC moments. Complete with a small portrait, character traits, core skills, and any relevant combat blocks, these NPC's are easy to quickly bring to life on the table.

I especially appreciate that they're attached to their relevant locations, this is a seamless approach that doesn't leave me running from the entry on the Tower Professional Building to a separate section to find the stats for the lawyer who works there.

Gossip and Rumors in Call of Cthulhu: Arkham

Finally, and very much worth calling attention to, is a long list of possible rumors to help kickstart a campaign. From pointing the players toward a psychic who helped a woman find a lost ring, to rumors of strange, unnatural dogs near the train yard, this section of gosspi and rumors could easily be adapted into a full jumping off point.

And while there's a set of general rumors - a man caught something strange in his fishing net, a meteor in the sky looped around and around - the real treasures here are the Arkham-specific rumors - as they're tied to specific neighborhoods and locations (and even include the location's number entry for easy reference).

What are Our Final Thoughts on Call of Cthulhu: Arkham?

Call of Cthulhu: Arkham is, simply put, a triumph. This is the gold standard for what an RPG supplement should be. Whether you're going for a physical, hardcover copy (which includes multiple handouts, as you can see in this article's header image), or a PDF (which is all hyper-linked to bounce you around to relevant sections - VERY handy for such a massive tome), this book will absolutely keep you and your party entertained, engaged, and adventuring further into the unknown.

It perfectly captures that 1920s Americana small-town feel, while also letting all the wonderful Lovecraftian weirdness seep into every fissure and crack. This is a perfectly thought out, well-developed product that has clearly had so much love go into it. A triumph, there's no other way to put it. If you run games of Call of Cthulhu, you need this book.

The copy of Call of Cthulhu: Arkham used in this review was provided by Chaosium. All photos (save the header image) screengrabbed from the official PDF and courtesy Chaosium.