In Praise of: Snows of an Early Winter

Snows of an Early Winter is Call of Cthulhu Modern adventure written by Louis Agresta and published by Super Genius Games (Available in print and PDF). It covers the quest for local power by a Librarian in possession of an unnatural book.

The adventure its self is well written with no investigative dead ends or stumbling blocks. Additionally the adventure is well paced with a good mixture of investigation and combat. The combat is scales to larger and larger fights as the adventure nears it's climax.

Louis Agresta created two Adventure layout innovations that I feel compelled to share:

1. A NPC template that assists the referee in the characterization and dissemination of NPC knowledge.
2. Trigger Tracker - A tool for tracking the attitude and response of interested NPC's and Groups.

NPC Template

Name, Age, Profession/Role

Stat Block

Volunteered:

In character Statements, facts, warnings and threats given freely during the encounter.

Friendly

If the PC's act in a friendly manner they may receive the answers to:

Question 1: Response

Question 2: Response

...

Confrontation:

Skill checks (psychology, Fast Talk, or idea rolls) that must be passed to coerce the individual into answer:

Question 1: Response

Question 2: Response

...

Physical:

Skill checks or amount of damage that must be done before the individual is compliant enough to answer:

Question 1: Response

Question 2: Response

...

Consequences

A discription of how the actions of the pc's change the values in the trigger tracker table. Examples would include

If the PCs made contact add a mark to group 1

If the PCs were mean to remove a mark from group 2

Trigger Tracker

Personality	Marks	Threshold	Event or Action
Npc/Group 1		2 4 6	Name of Event 1 Name of Event 2 Name of Event 3
Npc/Group 2		4	Name of Event 4 Special: The event only applies on after other events or at a specific time.
...

These two innovations would be very useful to mystery/investigation games; and would have utility in non-linear open plot (Sandbox) style campaigns.