Where is my mind?
Thro’ Centuries Fixed is a recently released second-edition version of a scenario for The Cthulhu Hack. Cthulhu Hack is based on The Black Hack by David Black and has been a mainstay of my gaming since I came back to the hobby, the second edition went to Kickstarter and many are just receiving their books, so exciting times.
Buy Cthulhu Hack 2e here
Buy Thro’ Centuries Fixed Redux here
So what is Thro’ Centuries Fixed about? It’s hard to explain as your character wakes up knowing nothing and I don’t plan to give away spoilers in this review. So it’s set in modern times unless you want to change that and you basically know your name, where you live, and who you live with. That’s it!
The scenario then takes a few liberties with traditional character creation, you don’t flesh out your occupation or skills and abilities just yet, you see what the players come up with as they riff the situation and throw in their ideas.
For our first run out, predominantly improvised - along with some pre-game hints, we ended up with Lizzie, fit, average height, a swimming teacher living with her best friend Jo, in a house that they jointly rent and also in town is Lizzie’s aunt Sarah, a nail technician (Supremely disappointed we didn’t get Sarah into the game, next time!).
Next is Beatrix, a middle-aged lady, thin and wiry and often wired due to her caffeine intake. She is an experimental dancer, working with a travelling troupe and holed up in a commune/squat with her best friend; loud, brash Aussie Katt and a pair of fellow travellers, a tight couple, Terry from Scotland and Margery.
Finally, there is William “Bill” Money, a bearded and dreadlocked digital nomad, whose parents have passed away. He’s on the road in his converted van. When his parents died, he dropped out of university, where he was studying computers and audio, but these skills have allowed him to have a decent career in remote computing support and allows him to put out his semi-regular podcast on music and current affairs. His number one listener, and “friend” is Shelley, always online with an encouraging comment or two.
There was a lot of thought and fun as players rounded out their characters, I pushed a little bit on this as we only had three hours, but for a multi-session, I’d have liked to explore more the dynamic between these characters and their family and friends.
With Skeleton PCs loosely established, we then start to focus on clues, what do the housemates, nail technicians and the rest of the cast of characters tell the PCs and what do the PCs have in their pocketses or on their smartphones, in their rooms?
A great deal is established in a short period, with loads of hooks and leads to follow up on, but why should they? Well, fundamentally everything is a bit hazy, memory loss, fogginess, what is this town? Why am I here? The fundamental of human nature is to find our place in the world, but how can we do that when we don’t know who we are? A little prompting is still needed and eventually, connections are made and one of the PCs messages the others… because there is a mystery to be solved and at least one of the PCs has a veritable Mystery Machine…
At this point, to reflect on what worked and didn’t for “Act One”; I probably should have set more ground rules on what I wanted from the PCs, but also, the value of hindsight, suggests that where the PCs are is less important than who they know. Interaction with NPCs (via Smokes, interpersonal investigative checks) is where the most fun and the best clues can be found, the more hooks I get, the easier it becomes. One of the players said his PC was a loner, living out of his campervan (alarms bells, what do I do with that), but I pushed this a bit and he came up with his number one fan Shelley, cue Stephen King thoughts!
Afterwards, one of the players suggested the scenario would run quicker with pre-gens, it’s a thought although the primary premise is that you build up your PC as you play, but maybe skeleton pre-gens to get the creative buds flowing. There is certainly some level of scope for things to go awry based on PC selections and the actual location they find themselves in, but a bit of backstory tweaking can account for most eventualities.
Moving on to the rest of the scenario, this is where it gets trickier to review without giving away too much, suffice to say, the various hooks created by the players begin to point in a multitude of directions, although ring-fenced by what is essentially a mini-sandbox. There are key encounters, that the Keeper has full reign in inserting at any point and there is flex in bringing the players to the conclusion, depending on how much time you have to run this scenario.
So overall, reflecting back on running this for the first time, this is an excellent modern-day Cthulhu scenario, it introduces not one but two protagonists and there are many moral and ethical decisions for the players. The protagonists could easily form the backdrop to a campaign and the designer cleverly provides future hooks, which may just be red herrings in a one-shot or a critical piece of information for a future scene. If your PCs want action from the start, they may find the initial scenes slow, but for those who wish to use their creative, narrative and investigative skills to develop a character, interact with NPCs and slowly build up tension and uncover the mystery, this is a wonderful platform to do that.
Keepers need to be on their game to make this work well, there is deep thought needed to understand the setup and to juggle the various PC interactions with NPCs and then, like an angler jiggling their bait… strike - i.e. to throw in the conclusion in a seamless way, for me, this didn’t really work when I ran it, but I am now much better prepared as to how this should work. I ended up railroading the PCs into a final scene/battle, which worked but was a little unsatisfactory, it’s very hard to build up the mystery and tension in a three-hour one-shot and the optimum approach, for me, would be to spread this over two or even three sessions or even a campaign given the additional hooks that the designer has scattered throughout the scenario.
A fully recommended scenario that outlines the best of Cthulhu Hack 2e, modernises a lot of familiar tropes and the brilliant starting premise, whilst it may not appeal to everyone, is unique and exciting, giving players with a love of Role Playing so many opportunities to shine. Super value for money too with the possibility to expand this one-two shot into an ongoing campaign with some work from the Keeper.