David Waldron sent me a copy of this Call of Cthulhu adventure to review.  No other compensation was made for my time.

Though rooted in events from the mid 1800s, this scenario is set in contemporary Ballarat, Australia.  It deals with some pretty sensitive subjects (which are outlined in the book’s intro), so you should definitely warn your table of what to expect before running it.  This is especially important, because it is likely to be a high roleplay session, with less focus on combat and die rolling.

While reading, I was reminded of a session of Unknown Armies I played in, back when that game was new.  Each of us was given a character with a very specific history, then thrust into a situation and allowed to face it, each in our own way.  We were playing escaped prisoners who were deeply troubled characters, from an abusive drunk to a wrongly imprisoned victim of racism, to my own character, a known mob hitman who was secretly a serial killer.  What followed was one of the best single sessions of a game I’ve ever been involved with.  I could see that sort of thing happening with The Last Dance of Lola Montez, if folks are on the same page and willing to dive into the dark side.

As this is a review of a scenario, I assume readers are likely to be Keepers, not players, but just in case, I’m about to drop in some spoilers.

I know I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but I have opinions about Call of Cthulhu, the Mythos, and how I run the game.  One opinion, which is apparently not shared by the folks at Chaosium, or many other Keepers, is that traditional cryptids like werewolves, ghosts, and vampires really don’t belong in Call of Cthulhu.  I would, for example, rewrite everything about the vampire that appears in Horror on the Orient Express.  That said, my “rules” for a one-shot are very different.  What I would put into an ongoing campaign and what I’d be OK with for a single session are two different things.  So, while I normally am not a fan of putting a vampire in Call of Cthulhu, I still think it works in this scenario.  And in fact, I think that if you’re looking for a cool Halloween adventure, or just in the mood for some classic horror, this would be a good option.  It kept making me think of vampire media that was coming out at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s.  Stuff like Near Dark, Forever Knight, P.N. Elrod’s The Vampire Files, Concrete Blonde’s album Bloodletting, and the original release of Vampire the Masquerade, before it became what it became.  So much so, I might consider setting this in the early 90s if I ran it. 

Author David Waldron has, as in William Bailey’s Haunted Mansion, taken a dive into local Australian history and found a fascinating bit of real world conflict to root this story within.  This time around, Irish/faux-Spanish performer and personality Lola Montez apparently caused quite the to-do when she was traveling through the town back in the mid-1800s.  Per the history presented here, her life was quite the wild journey, and she was quite the piece of work.  Now I want to track down one of the movies or TV series that have been made about her.  More than 150 years later, those events haunt the town.

The set-up is fairly simple.  The characters are gathered in a mandated grief counseling meeting, things go sideways, and they come into contact with an ancient evil.  How the players handle things is largely up to them.  The Keeper is provided with a few NPCs, particularly the villain of the piece.  There are plenty of handouts and bits of history that can be learned, if investigators do some investigating.  The well fleshed out pre-generated characters each have their own reasons for being there and so their own drives for finding the truth.  It’s really up to the players how things will proceed, once the stage is set and the action begins.

This is why I say the game could be fantastic if your players are on the same page.  If you’ve got players who need a bit more guidance, or who are uncomfortable with thinking about things through the perspective of their character, it may require extra work for the Keeper, or it may not be the best option for a scenario. 

Overall, while this scenario is not really my cup of tea, I think it is very well done, has the potential to be great at the table, and produce some very memorable games.  There’s a lot packed into a small package.  If you are into vampires, and I mean vampires as monsters, this is definitely one to check out.  It’s also very much a one-shot.  There’s really no set up or expectation for things to continue after this.  And it’s definitely not meant to be dropped into a pre-existing campaign.  Sometimes, a one-shot is just a one-shot, and that’s not only OK, it’s great. 

Here’s a little first look video I did for The Last Dance of Lola Montez.

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