Chaosium sent me a copy of their most recent Call of Cthulhu campaign book A time for harvesting. It is played over 5 chapters with a 6th chapter bonus adventure taking place after the events of the main campaign. The whole campaign is compatible with both normals Call of Cthulhu And Cthulhu pulp rules. This book is incredibly detailed, and while overwhelming at first, it is well structured and comes with a lot of help in the PDF.
First, we need to look at the content notice. This campaign deals with issues that people may find distressing in a way that will make you unwilling to participate in this campaign. The main theme is suicide and violence against children by and against children. Other disturbing scenes include animal cruelty and a male NPC obsessed with a female NPC. These are all things you should be aware of that will happen in this campaign if you plan to purchase the book and publish it, so if any of these topics are you don’t even want to read about, this book is not for you. If you can at least read these topics, we strongly recommend that you discuss with your players what their comfort levels are before you even begin. Each of these aspects can be changed, for example with child abuse you can simply age cultists. There are tips throughout the book on how to deal with these things while playing, so pay close attention to those moments to make sure everyone at your table is comfortable and enjoying themselves. Again, be sure to discuss these things and have tools in place to allow your players to voice concerns or inconvenience while playing.
This campaign will be a master class on NPCs for anyone who decides to run it. There are a lot of people and moving pieces to keep track of throughout the game as there are a few different settings your investigators will go through. Fortunately, the PDF has a reference guide that breaks down which characters and monsters are where, but I highly recommend some sort of extra help to use as a quick reference and to jot down notes for things that emerge in the game. This is what makes me say this is a better campaign for a more experienced goalkeeper. As someone just getting started with Call of Cthulhu, the number of NPCs is absolutely daunting, but if you’re someone who loves a complete, well-built world to play in, this is definitely the one for you. I don’t want to dissuade newcomers from trying this one, just know that you will want to consider running some other Cthulhu games before this one. That said, this book does a great job of helping new goalkeepers know how to lead players where they need to and how to counter or delay them as needed.
This campaign has an incredibly detailed setup and tons of extra resources to use. Even if you decide not to publish this particular story, this book would only be incredibly useful as a setting for a different campaign, particularly one that at least partially takes place at Arkham’s Miskatonic University. There are many good building guides for students and other academic researchers.
One of the best parts about getting this book is that it comes with a PDF at no extra cost. Of course you can get a PDF-only version for a lower price than a physical copy, but I really appreciate the fact that Chaosium includes PDFs with their physical copies. I assume this is mainly due to the fact that Call of Cthulhu has so many handouts for players, but it’s still really great to have both digital and physical copies of the books.
This campaign book, while very detailed and daunting at first glance, is incredibly well done. With tons of maps, detailed NPCs, extra resources, and lots of help for new and experienced keepers, it will provide hours of play for a group. Just be aware of the very mature themes contained in the story. I give this campaign book a 10/10, I’m excited to be able to publish it in the future when I have time to do it really well.
by Anna Williams
Source: Geek Tyrant
