"Short Stabs of Cthulhu" Topic

"Fear's Sharp Little Needles: Twenty-Six Hunting Forays into Horror is an anthology of scenarios published by Stygian Fox for use with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published following a successful Kickstarterter campaign, it follows on from the highly-regarded Things We Leave Behind in being set in the modern day, in dealing with mature themes, and in containing contributions from a number of tried-and-tested scenario authors from the last decade or so. What sets it apart though, is that Fear's Sharp Little Needles contains some twenty-six scenarios, all but one of them, short, sharp stabs of horror—typically each five or six pages in length and thus the length of a magazine scenario or so. All twenty-six can work as one-shots, all but the last can work as convention scenarios, and all but the last require minimum preparation—the latter feature making Fear's Sharp Little Needles a useful anthology for the Keeper to pull off the shelf at the last minute and have something ready for her gaming group with relatively little effort. In many cases, the scenarios would also work with just the one player and Investigator and the one Keeper. However, with a little more effort, many of the scenarios in the campaign would also work in an ongoing campaign, and in fact, some of them would work with Arc Dream Publishing's Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and some of them are actually linked together.

The design and the shortness of the scenarios in Fear's Sharp Little Needles means that none of them are lengthy, sophisticated, or convoluted pieces of investigation. They are direct, straightforward pieces of horror—in other words, ‘sharp, little needles', each with a quick set-up, a relatively easy mystery to investigate and explain, and a solution. Each follows the same format. This starts with a one-page, full colour illustration as a frontispiece, and an introduction followed by a guide to ‘Involving the Investigators' and ending with ‘Rewards and Repercussions'. In between which is the scenario itself. The frontispiece includes the scenario's title, author, and four tags for the scenario's four elements. So, for Brian Courtemanche's ‘Do Not Call Up That Which You Cannot Put Down', these are ‘Sea Monster', ‘Summoning', ‘Cover-Up', and ‘Martin's Beach'. The ‘Rewards and Repercussions' covers the possible Sanity rewards and losses for a successful or unsuccessful conclusion of the scenario respectively as well as any consequences. This section is also where the monster and NPC stats are listed. Lastly, some scenarios contain an extra box marked ‘Track Marks', not only keeping in theme with the anthology's title, but also making connections between some of the scenarios in Fear's Sharp Little Needles. Not every scenario has a ‘Track Marks' section, and even those that do can still be run as standalone scenarios rather than being linked in some way…"

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