Minireview: The Fungi From Yuggoth (Call of Cthulhu)
The Fungi From Yuggoth is a Call of Cthulhu campaign from 1984 (later reprinted three times, with two renamings). I’ve only read this first version and cannot compare with the later ones, but this one is quite a mess. To start off, it has almost nothing to do with the Fungi from Yuggoth… only one chapter out of eight features them. That’s probably the reason they renamed this later, first to “Curse of Cthulhu” and later “Day of the Beast” (with that last one being the most fitting title). The subtitle here is “Desperate Adventures Against the Brotherhood”, and that one at least has some bearings on the contents.
Utterly inappropriate title aside, the bigger problem here is the contents. The campaign, such as it is, consists of eight chapters loosely linked by dream-visions from a psychic. Now, in a smaller scale this might even work as the main plot driver, but here it’s supposedly the justification for the PCs to suddenly go to places like Peru, Egypt and suchlike. It makes no sense, and would require massive GM railroading in practice. The chapters themselves are a mixed bunch. Some are actually pretty good, while some go way out to the campy/pulp side, with the end chapter being especially pulpy. That’s not a bad thing as such, but I feel the play quality here is very uneven.
The main plot consists of foiling the schemes of a large, global cult called “The Brotherhood”. The cult itself is ok; while not the most original of plots, some of the details are nice.
You’re probably best off treating this as a collection of one-shot scenarios instead of a campaign, as such. As noted, some of the individual scenarios are quite decent. I think some of them were revised and expanded in the later editions, so the campaign thing may work better with those.
Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:47 Posted in Books, Games
Tags call of cthulhu, cthulhu
