Cthulhu Confidential

Dear Cthulhu Confidential,

You turned my head at Dragonmeet 2016. You had a clever premise: one on one games that focused on a single protagonist. It felt like you would fit the tone of Lovecraft’s stories much better than the party-based games that Call of Cthulhu got us used to.

But the truth is you were an impulse buy and you languished unread for a long time. Then when I did get round to you it felt as though you weren’t that different from the other Gumshoe adventures that were published. Sure your line editor had tried to smarten up the diversity of your characters but the plots and their point to point investigation was all still the same old, same old.

Having a single protagonist didn’t bring us any new approaches to the game as each character was carefully pre-genned for the scenario. Essentially the choice on offer was left or right in a branching narrative that always brought you back to the same conclusion.

There was nothing new about running two player games, which I have found to be much more intense than games with more players. Instead the idea is that the scenarios have a lot of prepared material so the GM isn’t under as much pressure to create a mystery.

The gameplay still consists of the same-old pinata bashing until the truth emerges. Spend your points, roll your dice.

You were a bold attempt to try something new and I respect you for it. But the time has come to set you free so that you can try to find someone who is just more into you than I am.