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Chaosium Digest Volume 20 Number 03
Chaosium Digest Volume 20, Number 3
Date: Sunday, June 22, 1997
Number: 3 of 3
Contents:
Review: The Complete Dreamlands (Frank Sronce) CALL OF CTHULHU
Review: Hero of Dreams (Frank Sronce) CALL OF CTHULHU
--------------------
From: fsronce@tcac.com (Frank Sronce)
Subject: Review: The Complete Dreamlands
System: Call of Cthulhu
I just recently purchased the new _The Complete Dreamlands_ supplement
from Chaosium, so I have prepared the following review for others
considering it. Having run a Dreamlands campaign for several years
now, I consider myself decently well-qualified to appraise the new
edition.
Kiz
_THE COMPLETE DREAMLANDS_
For those of you unfamiliar with the Dreamlands, Lovecraft wrote
several stories (most notably "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath") set
in a fantastic realm which only a few humans are capable of sending
their dream-selves into. The supplement outlines the major areas of
the earth's Dreamlands, creatures found there which are not found in
the waking world, important NPCs whom you might encounter there,
spells which exist (and function) only in the world of dream, some
adventures set there, and even a section on designing a dreamlands
native as a player character.
Almost all of the original material from the previous edition has been
kept, except for a couple of the adventures. Apparently these were
cut to make room for the new material.
Let's take the sections one at a time.
The article on ways to reach (and leave) the Dreamlands is an
improvement over the original write-up. For those of you unfamiliar
with it, the previous version said that the only requirement was a
certain level of Cthulhu Mythos + San, which never really fit with
Lovecraft's writing. Now, having too many scientific or technical
skills can prevent you from dreaming your way there, which fits in
perfectly with Lovecraft's writing.
There is a very good, albeit short, article on evoking the atmosphere
of a dream, which even brings up the fact that the material here is
based upon three main authors, each of whom have a very distinctive
and different style: Lovecraft, Myers, and Lumley.
Incidentally, I'm very much a Myers-style GM. My ongoing Dreamlands
campaign is called "The Children of the Worm" and is based heavily
upon Myer's _The House of the Worm_. I mention this as it may explain
some of the opinions that I expound below.
Now, something that I found disappointing. A decision was made to
exclude all of Lord Dunsany's writing as belonging to a similar but
wholly separate realm, and not belonging in Lovecraft's dreamlands.
So, there is no new Dunsany material to be found here. The author does
admit that some people wanted more Dunsany material and explains this
decision in his introduction.
As a rabid Dunsany fan, however, I certainly hope they aren't ruling
out the possibility of one day publishing a Dunsany-oriented
supplement, since his writing inspired Lovecraft's dreamlands.
Next is a 23-page summary of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". It
summarizes Randolph Carter's wanderings thoughout the lands of Dream.
This is an excellent addition to the text and manages to cover most of
his journey while glossing over such surprises as would otherwise
spoil the book for new readers. It also veers off into tangents at
several points to mention things that Carter "did not encounter" in
those areas. Most of these are new additions by recent authors.
Of course, I'm not really sure how much real *use* there is to this
section. It makes an interesting read, but like a piece of fiction
included with a gaming supplement, it doesn't really do anything else
besides (hopefully) provide inspiration.
Then there is the Gazetteer, a semi-alphabetical listing off all the
named places to visit in the Dreamlands. The city and location
descriptions have been greatly expanded. Not only are there new areas
described, many of the old areas receive much more attention and
longer entries.
Here my personal opinions come into play: the authors have decided to
take the work of several recent authors as "canon," by which I mean
that where they contradict older works the older works are described
as "inaccurate." At least one city was used in one of Lumley's books
wherein he reveals that Lovecraft's original description was only a
"false legend."
Now, I haven't read any of Lumley's Dreamlands books. Indeed, the few
times that I've considered them, a skim of the back cover convinced me
that they were more along the style of pulp-adventure stories. At
first I was pretty disappointed that they had taken a large portion of
the new material from his books.
But really, I can see the problem. The various writers who have
contributed to the Dreamlands setting aren't completely compatible.
Different people have taken very different tacks on things. I think
they should have admitted that, and broken things up according to
their source/style. For instance, Lovecraft was big on beautiful
landscapes and fabulous places. Myers had a darker Dreamlands, where
the influence of the Outer Gods is actually more present than in the
waking world, for here they are more easily reached. Lumley seems to
have a swashbuckling, heroic version, where brave men might be seduced
by depraved monsters disguised as beautiful women.
Tather than admit the inherent contradiction, they have tried their
best to combine all of the sources into some sort of coherent
whole. It works... sort of. Just be prepared to cull the bits you
don't like.
And I do have one minor gripe with the arrangement of this section: it
is broken up into several subsections based upon what continent the
location lies on. So to look up Ulthar, which lies in the West, you
must first flip to the West section, then skim through its
alphabetical list to find "Ulthar." Of course, if you didn't remember
which continent Ulthar lies upon, you'd have to skim through every
subsection until you got to the right one.
So if you want to read about a particular area, it works well because
all of the important locations there are grouped into one list. If you
want to use it as a reference to look up a name found elsewhere, well,
try the index first.
But, as I said, overall I *like* the expanded entries. And several of
the new ones are interesting enough that I may try to find the stories
that they come from.
Next is a section on various NPCs found in the dreamlands. There are
lots and lots of them, compared to the 4-5 in the previous
edition. Some of them are Lovecraft or Myers characters who were left
out of the previous version; the rest of the new ones are from more
recent authors. Each character has a decent-quality facial sketch as
well. The writeups are also fairly good, although naturally there are
a few of them with skills or stats that I find questionable, but those
are easily changed if you dislike them.
Next is the Dreamlands Bestiary, which also has a number of new
entries. Most of these are taken from the more recent authors,
naturally. Not having read any of Lumley's books, I can't really fault
or praise their writeups of his creatures. They have now given entries
to all of the "obscure" monsters mentioned in the _Petersen's Field
Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands_, so if you were wondering what a
Sloblubikik looks like, they've got an entry for one now.
Any creature which already had an entry in the main Call of Cthulhu
rulebook, however, only gets a couple of sentences and a note to see
the entry there. This can get annoying if you don't remember which
ones are from where. In particular, I think it's kind of silly that
they didn't reproduce the entry on Gugs, who should never have been
included in the main rulebook's bestiary anyway.
Lumley has apparently invented a number of critters which either hunt
or parasitize dholes. I presume that the hunters only go after the
very smallest of dholes, because the stats for them don't make them
powerful enough to take on an "average" dhole, even in groups of 100+.
Oh, and there are a few "unique" creatures who probably should've been
in the NPC section rather than the Bestiary, but that's a minor point.
After that comes a separate section on Gods. It's probably a good idea
to list them separately from the monsters, although it might've been
better to further split them up into multiple types. Anyway, they
include all of the old dreamlands deities and add writeups for several
new ones. Again, any creature listed in the main rulebook just gets a
note to see the entry there. But at least they are in the alphabetical
list, rather than being left out.
They have included some of the Myers deities previously undescribed,
such as N'tse-Kaambl and Sthood. I dislike the first writeup and love
the second, but this is doubtless influenced by the fact that I had
written up a *very* different version of N'tse- Kaambl for my
campaign, long ago [See Chaosium Digest V17.2-17.3].
Then, the Grimoire. They include several new magical artifacts, and a
bunch of new Mythos tomes. The artifacts are all taken from Myers's
works. Then, there are the dreamlands spells, of which only 2 are new,
although a few of them have been slightly modified.
Like a lot of CoC spell-lists, it suffers from the fact that there is
a no standardized format. Important information, such as the maximum
range at which the spell works, or whether or not the victim gets a
resistance roll, may or may not be included. But this is a small
complaint.
An odd note: in several places in the text, the authors expound a
strange new rule. A dreamlands-native spellcaster can cast any spell
from the regular rulebook (not dreamlands spells) at the minimum San
cost. Apparently they justify the San loss from spell-casting as being
entirely based upon the psychological effects of seeing magic happen
and feel that since most waking world spells are subtle that
dreamlanders won't be as disturbed by them. But spells out of the
dreamlands section cost their regular San cost for both natives and
waking world dreamers who learn them.
I don't think that this new rule makes much sense: a dreamlander can
cast Dread Curse of Azathoth for less San loss than Crystal World (a
dreamlands spell which encases the caster in a life-sustaining
bubble)? Anyway, it's easy to use (or ignore) this rule.
Then they have the adventures, both of which are reprints from the
previous edition. It's worth noting that the previous edition had 6
adventures included. Only 2 have been kept as "examples." Alas, "The
Land of Lost Dreams," which in my opinion was the best of the old
adventures, has been dropped, probably because it was incompatible
with Lumley's interpretation of the fantastic realms, particularly
Xura. Which has been renamed Zura, now, apparently a Lumley change.
It's kind of odd. They've made the Captain of the White Ship into
something of a mystical entity, then apparently see no contradiction
in throwing out the original descriptions of the fantastic realms,
which were described by the Captain himself in "The White Ship." As
I've said, the various authors are not very compatible.
Finally, there is a short section on creating a Dreamlands native as a
player character. This is very nice. The stat-generation is slightly
different (lower Education, but they get those points back in their
physical stats) and there is a nice list of potential occupations they
could've belonged to previously. There are suggestions as to what sort
of PCs different cities might generate.
There are a number of sensible skill changes. Most of the scientific
skills have been dropped or converted to some more primitive
equivalent. There is a table of primitive weapons common to the
dreamlands, as well as an armor table showing the protective values of
medieval armor. This is a very nice addition, because it was a notable
lack in the previous version.
Unfortunately, there are no assigned costs for these items, so the GM
must come up with his own prices if anyone decides to purchase
them. Furthermore, they don't suggest any penalties which the GM might
use to limit the utility of dressing up in platemail all of the time,
so the GM is on his own. Oh, and wearing a shield apparently just
stops two additional points of damage when you are attacked; no skill
or dice roll is necessary to block with it. On the plus side, they do
mark one item as being particularly rare, which is a step in the right
direction.
There is even a new "Dreamlands" character sheet, to reflect these
changes.
After that, there is a bibliography and an attempt to organize some of
the stories in chronological order (of events, not when they were
written). And, of course, the index, which looks decent. I haven't
used it enough to discern if any of the entries are wrong (always a
painful thing to encounter).
Now- the overall quality. Well, there are a number of typographical
errors and minor goofs. For example, there is one creature which can
drain CON from a victim, but this ability is listed among its attacks
as a "POW drain." There's something nasty which can happen to your PC
which causes 1d4/1d0 San Loss. But I haven't found any errors that I
couldn't easily figure out what should've been there.
The art is of variable quality, but there are no painted color plates
this time; it's all strictly black and white except for the cover art
and the map. Some of the art is good, but many of the small sketches
are actually of very low quality- it looks as though a decision was
made that every creature and god was to get a picture, even if that
meant rattling off a sketch in five minutes. I'd have rather seen
them leave some of the creatures without pictures and include some
more useful text.
Is is worth getting? If you don't already own one of the older
Dreamlands supplements, definitely. If you already have one of the
older versions, as I do, well... it does have some useful new
material. If you like Brian Lumley's work, then you should probably
snap up a copy as soon as possible. All in all, I'd say that I'm glad
to have it, but that I won't be using as much of the new material as I
had hoped to.
Kiz
PS: I'm now mildly interested in actually reading one of Lumley's
books, if only so that I can opinionize about it honestly. I'll
admit that when I first purchased the new supplement, I ranted
quite a bit to my friends about the new parts that I would never
have included.
I will admit that the Lumley entries have potential adventures built
right in. If you feel comfortable including things like the "evil
ter-men" (termite-men) and their depraved queen, then there is a lot
of new material available. A running theme seems to be handsome heroes
threatened by the "unspeakable sexual lusts" of alien
As far as Lumley's version of the eidolon Lathi, I can only assume
that Lumley was unaware that the word "eidolon" means ghost or spirit.
Oh, well. Anyway, I'll be sticking to my own Dreamlands material in
cases of conflict. My advice to new purchasers is: don't be afraid to
dump/change anything that displeases you, or which seems to violate
the atmospheric style you are trying to create.
--------------------
From: fsronce@tcac.com (Frank Sronce)
Subject: Review: Hero of Dreams
System: Call of Cthulhu
I mentioned in my review of the new Dreamlands supplement that I
wanted to buy one of Lumley's Dreamlands series so that I could give a
more honest appraisal. I just finished _Hero of Dreams_, the first of
the series. Here are a couple of notes on it.
1) Lumley's version of the mythos
I'd give this summary: The forces of evil are referred to as Cthulhu
and his Cycle, making Cthulhu the main force of "evil" on earth. They
are referred to by the author as "demon gods." They still have some
power to reach into the world(s) of man, but they can't do much
because they were magically imprisoned by the Elder Gods long ago.
Ancient races such as the Elder Gods and another called the "First
Ones" use recognizable technology mixed with magic. They travel from
world to world in spaceships, but also use devices like magic wands.
Lumley even puts a sentient computer on Earth's Dreamlands, left there
by the First Ones.
The Elder Gods are also apparently on the level where they can
interact with humans on a one-to-one basis, because he makes mention
of Titus Crow being given a home on the hidden planet of Elysia, where
the Elder Gods live, in reward for his efforts in stopping the last
major take-over attempt by Cthulhu and his minions. When the main
characters talk to that aforementioned computer, it uses contractions
and has the standard set of human emotions: surprise, anger, fear,
etc. They have no trouble dealing with it as an equal.
There is no mention of any Outer Gods in this text, but I get the
impression that they should all be considered associates of Cthulhu,
and like him, barred from direct action.
2) The style of the book
I suppose "swashbuckling adventure" is the best way to refer to it.
Our brave warrior heroes face untold odds again and again but emerge
with only cuts and scratches thanks to their amazing skill and daring
(and a very large amount of luck). I'd call it Conan-style, but
really, most of the Conan stories were much grimmer and grittier than
the imitators who came later. The book definitely has "larger than
life" heroes.
I'd say that the author is more concerned with telling a "rousing
story of adventure" than in keeping the plot believable. It's a
fanciful adventure story; the characters even make references to the
idea that things are just more possible in the dreamlands than they
would be in the waking world.
3) Rewriting Lovecraft: Particularly Thalarion
He *does* make mention of the word "eidolon," including the fact that
the characters aren't sure why the eidolon Lathi was referred to as
such. He defines it as an "ideal or image," whereas my dictionary said
it was a "ghost or spirit," but I've now seen another dictionary which
included both definitions.
Lumley explains away the false rumors of Thalarion by saying that it
looked like an enormous city, at least from a passing ship. Having dug
out my copy of "The White Ship," I would have to state that Lumley's
Thalarion could not match the description given there. If nothing
else, the enormous buildings inside of Thalarion are supposed to be
visible over its walls and adorned with "rich friezes and alluring
sculptures." In Lumley's Thalarion, there are only a few crumbling
towers that give an illusion of great size because of their thinness.
4) Enjoyment
Well, I *would* like to say that the books aren't tripe. It's a
decently entertaining story, if taken on its own virtues. The heroes
emerge victorious (and there was *never* any doubt of that) and the
villains fall. When all seems lost, fortune smiles upon them and a new
chance for victory appears.
As an example, early on the pair of heroes are captured by an evil
wizard. But lo! When all seems lost and they are doomed to be
sacrificed, they are rescued by the evil wizard's beautiful
slave-girl, who frees them in return for being rescued herself.
So, it's more of a "two-fisted adventure" book. If you like that,
you'll probably like the series. If you find that kind of book
annoying and unfulfilling, you'll hate it. There is no real fear or
horror. Nice people don't get killed, but all of the bad guys get
their just desserts. So if you can read and enjoy an adventure story
without stopping to question the odds of two men actually emerging
alive and unmaimed after fighting dozens of scythe-armed Ter-Men,
that's fine. Also, you probably shouldn't question exactly how the
main characters have heard of "Lathi's hive of horror in Thalarion"
when supposedly no one has ever made it back out of the city alive.
5) Mythos References
One thing that always turns me off is a mythos writer who uses too
many references. The main characters, even before the book begins,
both know about: Thalarion, Ulthar, Celephais, Ilek-Vad, Dyath-Leen,
Oriab, most of the monsters in the Dreamlands, Cthulhu & his minions,
etc. It's a small point, really, and it's not overdone to the point
where I couldn't believe it, but the characters are surprisingly
familiar with these things. I don't know, I just prefer those stories
which include little or no "name-dropping," and where the names of the
gods are little known instead of widely recognized.
Don't get me wrong. At least the discussion where they exchange all of
this info is justified. The two waking world men are comparing notes
on the dream-realm that they have both been exploring.
6) Utility for Call of Cthulhu Role-playing
If you *want* a high-adventure campaign, then this is probably a
useful reference. If you prefer a "low-fantasy" atmosphere where any
man who faces a dozen swordsmen will be cut to pieces in short order,
regardless of how skilled he happens to be, then you probably won't
want to use it.
In particular, if you don't like the Derleth-ish approach to the gods,
then you won't want to use it at all. In my campaign, which is very
Myers-ish, the Great Ones of Kadath are the only gods that a mortal
could actually deal with as an equal. The Elder Gods are themselves
pan-dimensional to the point that even when they speak to you, or show
you something, you are dealing with only a tiny part of their being.
But, at least they are capable of picking out one human from a crowd
and recognizing him as an individual; the Other Gods aren't even
capable of that, except for Nyarlathotep.
And, you might well choose to throw out the "science" references. I'd
never put a computer in the Dreamlands in my campaign.
One other thing that makes it poor role-playing material: too much
sex. Not actual, on-camera copulation (there isn't any of that) but
the characters are often ruled by their libidos when female villains
with naked breasts start showing up. Most players don't role-play that
sort of thing well. They either feel completely uncomfortable with it,
or they overdo it.
It's a sharp contrast to the more victorian attitude you find in
Lovecraft's writing. The narrators in his work never flirt, nor dwell
on the beauty of women encountered. And, if Lovecraft's writing is too
prudish in this context to be realistic, I'd say Lumley's goes too far
in the other direction. The heroes quickly forget all of the warnings
they've heard when they finally see Lathi's handmaidens, and thus are
easily captured by them.
7) The End
Anyway, I'm glad I bought it. Lumley does *not* discard Lovecraft's
writing casually, but bear in mind that he has a very "cheery" take on
the gods and the nature of the universe. I can certainly see why
Lovecraft's original version of Thalarion could never fit into his
cosmology. The original Thalarion was the city which held all of the
secrets man has striven in vain to fathom, and any man who actually
learned them would be driven mad and quite possible die from horror.
In Lumley's version, Mankind is in danger, but isn't doomed, has
powerful allies who are there to support him, and is otherwise
actually important in the scheme of the cosmos.
Be seeing you,
Kiz
--
