Childhood is a nightmare. There's hair growing in new places. You don't fit in at school, and your parents don't listen to you. They especially don't listen to you when you tell them there's a cult of Deep Ones taking over the town.
That's the premise of Chaosim's newest tabletop RPG book, Campfire Tales: Scouts Against Cthulhu. You're still an eldritch investigator, but you're also a plucky, youthful, badge-collecting Scout. Knot-tying and wild camping are suddenly crucial tools in stopping unknowable horrors from encroaching on our world.
I'm a former Girl Scout (or, as we call them in the UK, Girl Guides). Campfire Tales' charming childhood angle sent shockwaves of nostalgia through my brain - and instantly had me wanting to play. According to Call of Cthulhu's creative director, Mike Mason, I'm not alone.
Joshua Hoyt, the book's primary author, first developed the adventure anthology for his real-life Scout troop. "He started off with one scenario on one camping trip, and they had a great time", Mason says. "So he did it again." "Every time they had a campout, he'd bring a new scenario to play."
Hoyt eventually approached Mason (also a former Scout) with the scenarios. "Immediately I thought it made sense", Mason tells me. Company President Rick Meints also happens to be a Scout troop leader, so there was a wealth of experience and enthusiasm within Chaosium.
Mason hopes this enthusiasm can be shared by all kinds of players - though he mainly expects adults to engage with this childhood-themed anthology. "In my experience, it's usually older people who want to roleplay as children", he tells me. "As a 13-year old roleplayer, the last person I wanted to play at that age was a young kid - but older people like to put their rose-tinted spectacles back on and relive a bit of vicarious youth."
Campfire Tales presents additional rules, plus four adventures, that allow you to play as Scouts between 11 and 17 years old. You're brave, resourceful, and (importantly for Scouts) prepared. Investigations have a distinct Scooby Doo, Hardy Boys feel to them.
This is still a cosmic horror game, though. In fact, Campfire Tales' opening adventure is the most frightened I've felt in a Call of Cthulhu game in years.
It opens with a jaunty hike gone wrong, where your young, very vulnerable Scouts see their leader - the only adult for miles - swallowed by something not of this world. The Scouts must then fend for themselves in the wilderness and find their way home.
Call of Cthulhu has always used the powerlessness of its heroes to create dread. You're no fantasy adventurer; you're just a regular Joe who spends a lot of time at the library. When your regular Joe still hasn't finished middle school, that anxiety is heightened even further. You might be practicing animal calls and collecting badges, but Scouts Against Cthulhu pulls no punches when it comes to horror.
That being said, playing as helpless children has its drawbacks. Chaosium had to make some significant rule changes to give the players some agency. "In terms of mechanics and structure, this version of Call of Cthulhu features kids who, like in ET or Stranger Things, are pretty self-reliant", Mason says. "It's down to the player group to be the heroes - the spotlight is on them."
"We didn't want players running to the local police for help with the Deep Ones", he adds. "That's no fun for the players, so it's down to the kids."
All this meant taking adults out of the picture. Each camper has a single trusted adult they can go to for advice, support, and roleplay, but their overall impact is minimal. All the investigating has to be done by your Scouts - including the scary, violent parts.
Regular Scouts often have to face the wild, unpredictable elements, and Campfire Tales accounts for this with new adversity rules. "These have various mechanical impacts", Mason explains. "If you're cold and hungry, you might not regain hit points as quickly." "Or if you're overburdened, it's going to affect movement."
Sore feet are a given for a wilderness explorer, but they still have to reckon with hostile monsters, too. Combat is an interesting topic in Scouts Against Cthulhu. 11-year-olds aren't known for their brute strength, and their stats must reflect this.
You'll roll up your character in a similar way to regular Call of Cthulhu games, but your Strength, Size, and Education depend on your age. Wielding weapons like fire axes or bulky guns come with a penalty, because there are dog breeds bigger than you.
All of this means you're extra vulnerable in the face of danger. Luckily, the Scouts are well-prepared. Campfire Tales introduces Fighting Maneuvers to make your battle against eldritch monsters plausible.
These are cooperative maneuvers that allow a lead fighter to increase their Build by several points. That means you have a chance of actually succeeding on your rolls against a creature significantly bigger and more experienced than you.
That being said, combat is still less brutal and biting than usual. Scouts typically use Fighting Maneuvers to trap a creature, restrain it, or, at their most violent, trip the enemy down some stairs. There's less gunfire and more Scooby-Doo style trap-setting. Plus, healing is more generous, and Scouts have opportunities to share resources and improve their buddies' chances of successful roll.
Sanity is similarly less punishing in Scouts Against Cthulhu. In fact, it technically doesn't exist. Chaosium has replaced it with Cool, a stat equal to a character's Power that, unlike Sanity, doesn't change in value. Failing a Cool roll invokes a panic response rather than total mental breakdown.
"It just made more narrative sense to modify the sanity system a bit", Mason tells me. "The outcomes are similar, but it makes it easier for people to decide how they want to portray their character."
"We give them a series of options they can picture", he explains. 'Fight' encourages you to lash out in panic, while 'Flop' suggests collapsing, for example. "Again, we're trying to give the player more agency rather than the old-fashioned 'this is what happens to your character'."
Mason hints that Chaosium "has been looking quite deeply at sanity in the last couple of years". "Attitudes towards mental health representation have dramatically changed for the better", he says.
"When Paul Fricker and I put together seventh edition Call of Cthulhu, we made a conscious effort to move away from real-world depictions of mental health conditions, and we moved towards a more cinematic style of mental corruption." "We weren't quite as pronounced as perhaps we could have been, and we've been looking at ways of altering the language of sanity so it's more in tune with how things are portrayed these days", he adds.
Scouts Against Cthulhu innovates in many ways, making the tried-and-tested system feel exciting again. I was at my most gleeful when exploring its new Badge system. After all, what's a Scout without their badges?
Each Scout gets a single rank badge based on their age and experience. Wayfarer Scouts are the greenest of the bunch, but their badge lets them improve another player's skill roll by spending Luck points.
Wanderers get a guaranteed skill roll success once per scenario, while Rovers can refresh their Luck points for free. Lastly come the 15- and 16-year-old Rangers, who can add a bonus die to a skill roll once per scenario, and then the almost-adult Wardens, who can gift that bonus die to someone else.
There are also 20 ability badges that, once earned, buff a specific skill. If you've got the Hiking badge, you're much better at Survival checks, for example. There are Swimming Badges, Code Badges, Public Speaking Badges, and so on. No Mythos Badge has appeared yet, but I'm sure some plucky Scout troop will invent one soon.
Because the mini-campaign presented in this book presents plenty of opportunities for eldritch horror. The four scenarios can be played separately, but they offer a connected thread for your Scouts to follow over the years.
Chaosium has basically given us the perfect prequel to a regular Call of Cthulhu game. You play out the early years of an investigators' life, exploring everything from their first encounter with the cosmic to their regular soccer practice sessions. It establishes key relationships and offers a detailed hometown for you to explore. By the time you turn 18, you've got the motivation - and the skills - to become a proper eldritch investigator.
Scouts Against Cthulhu makes me feel like a kid again, in more ways than one. It reminds me why, when I first dipped my toe into tabletop RPGs, I fell so deeply in love with Call of Cthulhu. Its adventures are novel and genuinely exciting. It's versatile enough to cover any place on earth, at any time, with any cast of characters. Scouts Against Cthulhu is fresh, fun, and worth picking up.
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