Arkham Now

Details

檔案:Arkham Now.jpg

Front Cover

Publisher: Chaosium

Product Code: 23116

Publishing Year: 2009

Pages: 176

Cover Price: $27.95

Author(s): Brian Courtemanche, Matt Sanborn, Gary Sumpter, Sandy Antunes, R.J. Christensen

Artist(s): David Grilla (cover & interior), Joe Rossomanno (fold out map), Andy Hopp, Marco Morte

Setting(s): Modern

Format(s): Softcover

ISBN: 1-56882-321-5

Contents

This book aims to present gazetteer-based source material for modern-day Arkham, using largely the same form as Arkham Unveiled did to describe the city in the 1920s era.

While the modern-day Arkham has many connections to its earlier incarnation, there is no direct borrowing of material from the earlier book.

As with previous location sourcebooks from Chaosium, this book begins with several short sections providing general descriptions of different aspects of the social or cultural life of modern-day Arkham residents. Most of the remainder of the book is made up of a series of gazetteer entries that describe different locations and individuals which may be useful when running Call of Cthulhu scenarios in the setting. For this book, the city itself is described in eight "neighborhood" gazetteers with an additional section describing outlying sites. Three scenarios round out the book.

The book includes a 16" x 21" foldout map of the city.

The chapters of the book are:

• Introduction
• Welcome to Arkham
• Town Directory
• Northside
• Downtown
• East-Town
• Merchant Section
• Rivertown
• Miskatonic University Campus
• French Hill
• Uptown
• The Outskirts
• Scenario: Lonely Hearts (Taste Great)
• Scenario: Lost in a Book
• Scenario: I Did What The Virgin Asked

Scenarios: Lonely Hearts (Taste Great), Lost in a Book, I Did What The Virgin Asked

Front Cover Text

Revisiting the Legend-Haunted City

Back Cover Text

Arkham Now

ARKHAM NOW updates to modern times the famous and fabled city of Arkham for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.

Most residents believe there is only one horror lurking in this legendary haunted town — the urban sprawl slowly eroding Arkham’s old New England beauty. Rushing by neon signs and mega-marts to obtain even more material possessions, no one notices the more disturbing, underlying qualities of the city: the grotesque vegetation sprouting in some places, the sometimes-odd taste from the reservoir’s drinking water, the disturbingly high rate of birth defects, the too-frequent child abductions.

Those who make inquires are scoffed at by citizens, and rebuffed by local and state officials. The truly brave continue to put the pieces together, posting their thoughts on the Internet. Many of these individuals disappear from cyberspace eventually — often due to the effects some of these discoveries can have on one’s mental health. Though they would never admit it, many of the long time residents of Arkham know there is something not quite right about their town...

Comments / Trivia

This book is the first new sourcebook in Chaosium's "Lovecraft Country" series in 17 years; it is also the first book which aims to produce an updated (in this case "future") version of an existing sourcebook without being a direct revision of the original material.

Chaosium sell the fold-out map of modern-day Arkham as a separate item; it can also be purchased as a PDF (which has, at times been given away as a promotional item).

The printed version of this book has several paragraphs omitted due to a typesetting error. These are part of the scenario "Lost In A Book" and occur on page 142. To rectify this mistake, Chaosium has made the entire scenario available as a free PDF download from their website.

The purchased PDF version of the book does not have this error.

Links

• Free download of "Lost in a Book" scenario (including fix to layout error in page 142 of printed book)

Spoilers - Keepers Eyes Only

Players should not read any further.

References to Mythos creatures, tomes, artifacts, and Lovecraftian locations that appear within this book's scenarios are described in the pages detailing these scenarios. There are, however, numerous such references made in the source sections (and thus not associated with a specific scenario). These references are detailed below.

Source Material References

Locations:

Creatures:

People:

Tomes and Artifacts:

Sourcebook New Rules

New Spells:

New Skills:

New Creatures:

Comment here to Keepers about this book. Comments on specific Scenarios and Campaigns go on their respective pages. Keep DISCUSSION on the talk page.