Alone Against the Flames

YOU become the star of the movie The Wicker Man, more or less.

You catch the bus to Ossipee, on your way to Arkham for a new job. It’s not exactly wide eyes full of hope, but it’s a change. As is the way of horror stories, the bus breaks down and leaves you at a creepy little town with creepy people who talk only about their creepy little customs regarding bonfires. Are you here for the Festival? Nope. Turns out that not a single person in town knows of another car, and the broken bus wasn’t too broken down to drive away and leave you stranded.

Nope. You’ve seen movies.You know how this works. Peter Cushing or Nick Cage, either way – nope! Get the heck out of there!

But it won’t be easy, because COC is never easy. This annual “Festival” has been going on since times immemorial, and it didn’t get that way by their prey succeeding skill tests and escaping.

Review and Opinion

Alone Against the Flames is the single-player tutorial adventure provided with the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition starter kit. It walks you through creating a character one step at a time, using the simplified quick start rule set. So that’s a cool way to introduce people to the basics. Things go downhill once the adventure starts (page 267) because you’re bound to fail almost every skill test and end up as this year’s human sacrifice. Call of Cthulhu’s percentile-based system, combined with the pathetic low scores that investigators have, means that you can never pass every roll – and failing even one spells certain doom. I’ve played it a half-dozen times on the first day, and honestly wonder why they bothered adding the other 200 sections with a map and mention of books – you’ll never get to those pages AND make the strength roll AND make the hard dodge roll AND have passed that track roll earlier… Call of Cthulhu is all about celebrating the tragic deaths and grisly dooms, but here it’s always the same ending (die in the fire, every time) so there’s not even that variation.

Hints and Tips

Errors

Maps

Publication

Written by Gavin Inglis

2018

Other Playthroughs and Links

• Chaosium’s solo adventures