Call of Cthulhu – Nameless Horrors- 2nd Edition. RPG Review

Call of Cthulhu – Nameless Horrors- 2nd Edition, by Chaosium, c2023, Price: £17.71, Website

Review by Seth Stauffer

No matter how terrifying the horrors investigators may experience in Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, there will undoubtedly be a canny few that somehow preserve their sanity long enough to become grizzled veterans. It’s those stalwart few that Nameless Horrors was created for. This is an updated collection of six modules designed for players that think they’ve seen it all. Maybe they had what it took before, but these new missions will, without a doubt present new challenges.

This is for experienced, and mature players only. Some of the content here is brutal, even by Cthulhu standards. One of the missions even goes so far as to boast that it’s unlikely that ANY of the investigators will make it through to the conclusion intact. That’s Chaosium throwing down the Lovecraftian gauntlet. 

To their credit, this is a high-quality book from start to finish boasting a great diversity of missions for a variety of preferences. One of my personal favourites involved living artwork. (Sorry! No spoilers.) Whether it be length, theme, time period, difficulty, or something else this text has a good mix of ideas within its pages. That includes some very fun and original concepts that remain faithful to the original lore but will challenge players to think outside the box. 

An idea that stood out to me as important for this book is the importance of familiarity. This collection of modules is for people that have played enough CoC to be able to “think” the game a particular way. For a player to be able to have this ability requires a lot of experience with this system, the lore, and probably even the fiction. While it’s the right thing for Chaosium to do because there’s undoubtedly a range of fans at varying levels of knowledge of the game, this supplement is aimed at a small fraction of those players, perhaps even to a fault. Unless a player is very predisposed to what to expect, they may be at a loss during these investigations, and that’s not a positive.  

This is a fantastic collection of unique and challenging adventures for experienced players. Everyone else should probably pick up a different Chaosium product. If you think you’ve seen it all as a player in CoC, then this is a great product for your shelves, but only for the most undaunted.