Call of Cthulhu (7e) Starter Box Set

[Necron 99]

Chaosium has finally released their Starter Box Set for CoC 7th. I already have the core rule books, but decided for the price, why not grab the starter set also. It retails for $24.99, which IMO is a good price, considering you also get the PDFs, for an intro to CoC.

Link to Chaosium's site: HERE

Here's what you get:

Inside This Box

• Book 1: Introduction and Alone Against The Flames—a solo introductory adventure, teaching you the basics of Call of Cthulhu as you play through a mystery.
• Book 2: Call of Cthulhu Starter Rules—the essential rules, everything needed for starting play.
• Book 3: Adventures—three starter adventures for your players to explore.
• Ready to Play Investigators—five ready to play game characters.
• Blank Investigator Sheets—ready for creating your own investigators.
• Roleplaying Dice – a set of six polyhedral dice for use in the game.
• Player Handouts – a set of ready to use props.

Adventures!
This box comes packed with four classic adventures for over twenty hours of game play.

• Alone Against The Flames
• Paper Chase
• Edge of Darkness
• Dead Man Stomp

[Captain_Blood]

That looks pretty good for $25. What's the quality of the books and handouts?

[Necron 99]

I don't have it in hand yet, though I received notice it should be shipping out. Hopefully I'll have it by next week.

[Necron 99]

My CoC 7e box set arrived on Friday.

The first thing to remark on is the box, it's seriously sturdy, but it's also very tall, more so than most RPG core hardback books. Fitting it on a shelf might take some work.

Inside is everything mentioned in the post above.

It comes with a couple of single sheets, one for a brief intro to the set and the other an advert for some CoC app/game. After those you have some character sheets, a nice handful of blank sheets for rolling up characters and a selection of pregen characters to be used with the adventures in the set. There is also a full set of polyhedral dice, nothing remarkable, they don't even have a symbol or anything on them for CoC. Personally i think they are pretty ugly as dice go, but for a new player with no dice, they get the job done. Next is short booklet of handouts for the Keeper to give to the players for visuals, whether it's strange objects with writing, letters, maps, or whatever.

The three booklets in the set are made with, imo, a cheaper, glossy, thin textured paper. I would have much preferred the heavier paper like the character sheets with a matte finish. I get the feeling that improper or long term use would definitely wear these booklets out quick. The first book is an into to playing CoC as a solo adventure titled Alone Against the Flames. It gives a very brief overview of the game and then jumps the player into the adventure which plays out like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure or Fighting Fantasy book. Book Two is an actual introduction to the CoC game rules with a page count just over 20. It seems like it's a good fit for teaching the basics to players unfamiliar with the game. The third book is a short introduction and then three full adventures through which the Keeper can run players. The scenarios all seem to be pretty cool, though I haven't read through them in depth.

All in all, for the price I think it's worth getting to break into the new edition of CoC, but otherwise anyone not looking to upgrade from older editions wouldn't find much use in the set and would probably be better served just buying the core rule books.

[Necron 99]

Chaosium released the 40th Anniversary edition of the Starter Box set and I decided to check out the PDF, just to see what was new and/or changed. Unfortunately, I don't think they brought their A-Game with this one. I couldn't even get into the first booklet because the artwork just appeared, at least to me, to be horrifically bad. And bad not in a good Mythos way, either, just plain bad. See the example below.

Ugh. They all have this ridiculous look of terror, unusually large mouths agape, the female in the middle is holding up her skirt with one hand, the other almost looks like she's grabbing her cheeks in an attempt to not sh*t herself. I actually laughed when I saw this, which in no way inspired the dread of the Mythos, what-so-ever.

All of them just look so poorly drawn.

And then in one of the adventures from the Scenario PDF, there's this image:

This looks like something from the Sunday comics of the newspaper, or some random B-Grade comic book. I feel like CoC should have much more evocative and fear inspiring artwork, not whatever this is. Nothing about this makes me feel "cosmic horror".

Finally, though, this is probably the ONLY piece of artwork among the three PDFs that was remotely worth looking at. All of the artwork in the set should have been in this style or something similar. Yes, it could just be "any generic horror art" but at least it has a feel to it that doesn't draw a laugh or "wtf?". This was in the solo module, Alone Against the Flames.

I feel sorry for anyone getting into CoC and picking up this box set, when so much of it is just awful to look at. Not sure why Chaosium went this route, but I'm definitely not a fan and would never consider picking up the printed product after seeing this.

[Ancalagon]

Chaosium released the 40th Anniversary edition of the Starter Box set and I decided to check out the PDF, just to see what was new and/or changed. Unfortunately, I don't think they brought their A-Game with this one. I couldn't even get into the first booklet because the artwork just appeared, at least to me, to be horrifically bad. And bad not in a good Mythos way, either, just plain bad. See the example below.


Screenshot 2022-07-29 174221.jpg


Ugh. They all have this ridiculous look of terror, unusually large mouths agape, the female in the middle is holding up her skirt with one hand, the other almost looks like she's grabbing her cheeks in an attempt to not sh*t herself. I actually laughed when I saw this, which in no way inspired the dread of the Mythos, what-so-ever.

Emphasis mine.
Scared shitless, I reckon.

[grodog]

Finally, though, this is probably the ONLY piece of artwork among the three PDFs that was remotely worth looking at. All of the artwork in the set should have been in this style or something similar. Yes, it could just be "any generic horror art" but at least it has a feel to it that doesn't draw a laugh or "wtf?". This was in the solo module, Alone Against the Flames.

Screenshot 2022-07-29 174650.jpg

Now that's got a solid "John Constantine is going to sell your soul to Nyarlathotep" vibe to it!

Allan.

[Necron 99]

Now that's got a solid "John Constantine is going to sell your soul to Nyarlathotep" vibe to it!

Allan.

Lol, yeah I thought the same thing,