Call of Cthulu: Keeper's Companion: 1 (Call of Cthulhu) [Paperback]

Call of Cthulhu is best played, not people who know the genre cold, but rather by novices who understand the mechanics, not the genre. Lovecraft's world is a mundane one, intruded upon by the not-so-mundane, whether it be something relatively minor as an encounter with a solitary Deep One or a sanity-blasting encounter with Yog-Sothoth, the all-in-one god, it is the character's imperiled peace of mind which will be steadily chipped away by the stuff of nightmares and that which mankind is best to ought not know. Players kept in the dark, fed only what they need or discover on their own, are the best players of all.

There follows the advice section, pages on books of the occult, most or all are actual books, some of which can be found on Amazon, but that you would be better of not reading. Exciting sounding tomes like `The Book of the Dead' or the `Golden Bough' are deadly dull and won't do anything except upset your parents and Tipper Gore. However, it is a nice lexicon for GMs who may want to throw non-Mythos books at their players from time to time. Following that is a handy little section on languages, real and Mythos-related, and their origins. It also includes some badly drawn examples of things like Mi-Go runes and R'lyeh glyphs.

The next section is an expanded and detailed listing of those oh-so-wonderful mind melting pages of actual Mythos tomes- those great books that burn through your sanity, but also give you spells your characters can use. It also adds a few new spells and creatures taken from additional stories written by other authors. Next up is Arcane Antiquities, which is basically magic items and happily it bears little or no resemblance to the back of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Magic items in Call of Cthulhu are extremely rare. There are a couple of mirrors, a dagger, a ring, and a few other odd devices, so don't expect any +4 swords of dimensional shambler slaying.

Let's face it, cults make life interesting. Even in real life cults provide annual entertainment with their suicidal comet worshiping antics. In Call of Cthulhu they are a somewhat less self-destructive and instead are bent on summon up some moldering nightmare to screw with mankind's mojo. Cultists are great fun, both for Keppers and player alike. As bad as it was, the guys resurrecting Imhotep in the The Mummy Returns were great, if comical and somewhat inept, examples of cultists. Cultists can come in any flavor and hardly need to be justified since they're nuts.

Forensics has always been a hobby of mine. One of the aspects of Call of Cthulhu I have always admired is their inclusion of real world details to really give Keepers and players a sense of how it all works. While Cthulhu Now pretty much gives anyone a brief history of forensics, from the first documented coroner inquests in England right up to DNA evidence- it's all here as well in easy to read and understand terms, complete with bibliography. From the ways people die to firearms and drugs, it's all distilled down into a handy reference.

From the mundane we arrive at Alien Races, a collection of beings and their origins from Deep Ones to the fungi from Yuggoth to the Voormis of the Hyperborea, this section gives the reader a little more detail than the standard entries in the creatures section in the main rule book. Next is Mysterious Places and includes Atlantis (bleah!), Hyperborea, unknown Kadath, Lemuria (also bleah!), unfortunately, they only give us a scant three paragraphs on R'lyeh, the sunken city and tomb of Great Cthulhu. Finally, the last section is on Skills, adds some new ones and explains all in great detail.

All in all a welcome addition to my growing Call of Cthulhu collection, a game that I have played for nearly twenty years. I miss the late eighties/early nineties covers and don't much care for the cover art. However, this is a good addition for Keepers who may want to add a little more detail to their campaigns. Like most of Chaosium's publications, it is well researched and exceptionally well written while being very readable, fun and occasionally funny. It may lack detail in some places, and this is probably it's only real flaw- the alien creatures and places section could have had a little more meat in them, but other than that it's a solid addition...