Pyramid Review
Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (for Call of Cthulhu)
Published by Chaosium, Inc.
Written by John Carnahan, John Scott Clegg, Ed Gore, Marc Hutchison, Randy McCall, Sandy Petersen, & Ted Shelton with Lynn Willis, Jeff Carey, & Don Coatar
Cover by Tom Sullivan
Illustrated by Tom Sullivan with Mislet Michel & Andy Hopp
Cartography by Charlie Krank & Badger McInnes
176-page perfect bound black and white book; $23.95
Editor's Note: This review has a number of spoilers relating to the adventure, and those who are expected to play through it are advised not to read it. In addition, it is rumored that reading this review aloud will force an ancient ritual further along its inevitable progression, leading no doubt to a world that is a twisted, barren shell of its former self.
Do with this information what you will.
In the annals of scenario and campaign design, the importance of Chaosium's Shadows of Yog-Sothoth should not be underestimated. The very first release for Call of Cthulhu in 1982, it paved the way for what are regarded as campaign classics. Not just Masks of Nyarlathotep and Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but also Pagan Publishing's Walker in the Wastes and Realm of Shadows, as well as The Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. What it introduced was the concept of the onionskin campaign. As the player characters or investigators played through each part of the campaign, it stripped away another layer of the onion or information. This revealed more of the evil . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 8, 2005
Copyright © 2005 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.