The Keeper's Companion Vol. 1

Call of Cthulhu RPG

by Keith Herber, William Deitze

[CALL OF CTHULHU ROLEPLAYING] "The Keeper's Companion" is an invaluable resource for gamemasters. The material includes advice for new keepers, a lengthy study of Mythos artifacts, a learned discussion of many occult books, an up-to-the-moment description of every facet of forensic medicine, a thorough revision and expansion of the game skills (including nearly two dozen new ones), and the entire text of "The Keeper's Compendium," somewhat updated -- forbidden books, secret cults, alien races, and mysterious places. Additional short essays and features round out this book -- more than 100,000 words!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Games, Horror, Gaming, Cthulhu Mythos

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

Reviews

[Benjamin]

How? Finally trying to read through more of my non-7th edition CoC collection, I turned to the Keeper's Companions (and their first iteration, the Keeper's Compendium):

1. Keeper's Compendium (1993)
2. Keeper's Companion, Vol 1 (2000)
3. Keeper's Companion, Vol 2 (2002)

What? These are collections of essays and resources from a largely pre-wiki (or pre-wiki ubiquity) period. So the Compendium includes forbidden tomes, alien races, secret cults, and mysterious places. (The introduction says that this information presented here expands on and replaces info from the 5th edition core book.)

Companion 1 includes the compendium (occult books, secret cults, alien races, secret places), as well as advice for GMs, info on different languages (real and fictional), arcane objects (taken from stories and other adventures), info on forensics, and a new discussion of skills.

Companion 2 includes a long essay on Prohibition (here's where I started to wonder about how prevalent Wikipedia was), an itemized list of published scenarios, an essay on guns, some more occult tomes, a fake forensics report on a dead Deep One hybrid, some alien technology, and an essay on Lovecraft and Satanism.

Yeah, so? So... I can see these books having their use, though these days I am less inclined to reach for a Cthulhu book to learn about Prohibition UNLESS there is a specific Cthulhu-bent to the info, which there isn't. Lists of books and monsters and magic items have their use, though I have always recoiled a little bit from the compilation of material that you've already published, i.e., magic items you have in other adventures, especially where those magic items fulfill very specific purposes.

If I decide to limit my Cthulhu collection, these are probably going on the chopping block. (I did just send off a solid chunk of my TSR D&D collection, including my Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master set to Noble Knight -- so nothing is safe!)

[Daniel M · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot of good material in here, but there is absolutely no cohesion. Much of the material isn't all that useful for most games, so I don't see why it is in what they describe as a core rule book.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grab-bag of useful information for Call of Cthulhu. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...

[Ramón Nogueras Pérez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Básicamente, si eres un árbitro en La Llamada de Cthulhu, este es un libro casi imprescindible. Quizá no al 100%, pero justifica plenamente su precio.

Este libro contiene artículos muy interesantes sobre buenas prácticas a la hora de arbitrar partidas de La Llamada de Cthulhu, además de toneladas de información sobre razas de los Mitos, obras de ocultismo, un capítulo sobre libros de los Mitos donde POR FIN te explican de qué hablan cada uno de los principales libros de los Mitos Y QUÉ PUTOS HECHIZOS TRAEN, y muchas pequeñas reglas muy útiles sobre cómo cambiar la tabla de resistencia para que sea más interesante, o cómo similar un estudio febril y obsesivo de un tomo, o cómo se debe simular la pérdida de COR por leer un libro en vez de perder una cantidad de una vez al acabarlo.

Si vas a arbitrar este juego, este libro te ayudará mucho.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basic Premise: A general reference guide for people who run the Call of Cthulhu RPG.

I love how well the various CoC books work together regardless of edition. Seriously, there's next to no differences in rules there. Because the game is much more about the role-play (rather than the roll-play), the amount of "fluff" over "crunch" in this book is very valuable. Keepers have to know how the world/story works far more than they need extra rules for how to roll the dice. This book is very helpful for all of that.