Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Twitch
    Game on Aus
    • News
      City of Gangsters and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider featured image

      City of Gangsters and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider are the free Epic Games from February 3rd 2023

      February 3, 2023

      EPIC Games have announced their free games for the 3rd of February 2023. City of Gangsters and Dishonored: Death of…

      What’s coming to PlayStation Plus in February 2023?

      What’s coming to PlayStation Plus in February 2023?

      February 3, 2023

      TODAY, PlayStation Australia is happy to reveal the PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for February. Take on demonic Deadites in asymmetrical…

      The Sims 4 Expands with the Growing Together Expansion Pack

      The Sims 4 Expands with the Growing Together Expansion Pack

      February 3, 2023

      [This press release has been provided by EA Games and is presented by the GOA team for your information] Electronic…

      Samsung Galaxy S23 range announced

      Samsung Galaxy S23 range announced

      February 2, 2023

      [This press release has been provided by Samsung PR and is presented by the GOA team for your information] SYDNEY,…

      Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Delayed

      Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Delayed

      February 1, 2023

      DIRECT from the EA Star Wars Twitter account this morning, it has been announced that the much-anticipated sequel to Star…

      View All
    • Reviews
      Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review

      Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review

      February 4, 2023

      HAVING a decent gaming headset is all well and good, but it helps to have somewhere to store it when…

      Auro Of Worlds Key Art

      Aura Of Worlds Review: Change My Mind About Rogue-Lites

      February 4, 2023

      I don’t like rogue-lite games. It’s a weird way to start a review of rogue-lite game Aura Of Worlds, but I need to give some perspective.

      Inkulinati review – the art of war

      Inkulinati review – the art of war

      February 3, 2023

      IInkulinati is an ink-based strategy game where you play as a master of the secret art of Inkulinati – the art…

      Victoria 3 reviewed

      Victoria 3 reviewed

      February 1, 2023

      READERS of my writings over the years will hopefully be aware that I am very fond of Grand Strategy Games…

      Playing the OG Xbox console on modern TVs with Xedusa

      Playing the OG Xbox console on modern TVs with Xedusa

      February 1, 2023

      IT’s now been over 20 years since the Xbox hit store shelves and I’ll admit it, many games on the…

      View All
    • Podcasts
      Nuts & Bolts Hero Card Ep 72

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 72: Jim Has A Spreadsheet

      February 4, 2023

      In this episode of Nuts & Bolts Jim and Natty talk about a threat to the DOTA Lima Major in…

      The Weekly Show Hero Card Ep 269

      The Weekly Show Ep 269: Is E3 Worth It?

      February 3, 2023

      Doomcutie joins Stormie and Jim as they talk through mods, leaks and so much more! Plus our Bloody Good Game Of The Week thanks to Aussie Broadband.

      Nuts & Bolts Hero Card Ep 71

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 71: 2023 Starts With A BANG!

      January 28, 2023

      Natty and Jim have their work cut out for them catching up on all the esports news! From ESL launching…

      The Weekly Show Ep 268 Hero Card

      The Weekly Show Ep 268: Out With The Old, In With The New…Year

      December 16, 2022

      Doomcutie joins Stormie and Jim as they talk through mods, leaks and so much more! Plus our Bloody Good Game Of The Week thanks to Aussie Broadband.

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 70 Hero Card

      Nuts & Bolts Ep 70: Farewell 2022

      December 10, 2022

      In their last show for 2022 Jim gets fired up about an incident in Argentinian Valorant, Natty laments the end…

      View All
    • Categories
      • BY PLATFORM
        • Playstation
        • Xbox
        • Nintendo
        • PC
        • Mobile
        • VR
        • Retro
      • BY GENRE
        • Action
        • Action-Adventure
        • Battle Royale
        • Fighting
        • FPS
        • Horror Games
        • RPG
        • Simulation
        • Sports
        • MMORPG
        • MOBA
        • Platformer
        • Strategy
        • Survival
        • Indie
      • GOA ESSENTIALS
        • Esports
        • Conventions
        • Tabletop
        • Hardware
        • Funny
        • Streaming
        • Win
        • Podcast
        • Video
    • More
      • About Us
      • Contact Us
    Game on Aus
    Home » Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    GAMING REVIEWS

    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors

    Royce WilsonBy Royce WilsonNovember 27, 2022
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    I HAVE to admit I was surprised to see a Regency England setting for the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG; it’s such a strangely specific era and not one I associate with anything serious horror related.

    Whereas traditional Call of Cthulhu takes place in the 1920s, Pulp Cthulhu is the 1930s and 1940s, Regency Cthulhu takes players back to the early 19th Century in the days of ladies in bonnets, tea parties in garden gazebos, duels, and elaborate balls in candlelit ballrooms with dancing and arcane social rules.

    Historically the Regency era lasted from 1811 to 1820, but in a broader sense covers an era from roughly 1800 (the turn of the century) to 1837 (when Queen Victoria ascended the throne).

    The obvious benchmark for the era – and the one the book itself uses – is the work of Jane Austen, but if you want to get creative (and you should, because that’s the point of role-playing games!) then the era encompasses the Napoleonic Wars, early convict era Australia, the building of the first steam railways, and plenty of other things.

    Regency Cthulhu­ – written by Andrew Peregrine and Lynne Hardy and coming in at 224 pages – essentially has three elements: A general sourcebook/background setting for the era, the new Social Reputation rules, and lastly, a mystery adventure. It also seems pretty clear to me that there’s at least some inspiration from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies here too for obvious reasons

    The Regency era backgrounder is well done and researched, as Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks invariably are – there’s everything from the typical makeup of a landed gentry’s estate to the costs of clothing and accessories and wages in the era, along with a general overview of the social mores of the day.

    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    The new Social Reputation rules have some interesting roleplaying possibilities.

    The first section also deals with the new (and optional) Social Reputation mechanic, which represents how the investigators are seen in the local community – someone who is known to avoid paying back their debtors, make advances on other people’s spouses, or get drunk and behave boorishly is not going to be held in nearly as high regard as someone who doesn’t have financial issues, has a stable family life, and doesn’t generally act like a Industrial Revolution-era version of Rick Sanchez.

    How investigators are perceived means people may be more or less likely to give them information or help them, or a have various other effects as the Keeper sees fit.

    One of the challenges the era brings is that it was historically not a great time to be a woman,  LGBTQ+ person, or Not White, and pretty much the best way around that is to go for a The Great or Bridgerton– style approach where those prejudices don’t exist.

    I could see the diametrically opposing camps permeating the book – on one hand, being a gentleperson of leisure and spending your days reading, painting, going to fancy balls and taking tea in gazebos with other gentlepeople of leisure is an appealing fantasy for a lot of people (and a big part of the appeal of the Jane Austen aesthetic), buuuut gentlepeople of leisure – particularly gentlewomen of leisure – historically had few opportunities to do things like “investigate eldritch horrors”.

    The sourcebook does offer an alternative approach to this issue via includes some ideas for playing a “Downstairs” campaign where the investigators are members of the household staff trying to juggle keeping their posh employers’ estate running smoothly while investigating horrors from beyond.

    Personally I think this aspect has quite a lot of potential and would have liked to see a bit more focus on it, although I understand the creative choice to go for the High Society lens instead. The sourcebook also contains some information for taking a more Sharpe-esque approach to things via the Pulp Cthulhu rules too, which is another appealing option for people who like their battles against the agents of horror to involve more musket-fire and swordplay than wordplay and social maneuvering.

    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    There is a lot of information in Regency Cthulhu – everything from historical background on the era to pregenerated characters to not one but two adventures, with hooks for more.

    Chapter 2 introduces the town of Tarryford, complete with Dramatis Personae in the form of local residents, story hooks, intrigue hints and plenty of other information to use the town as settings for investigations, mysteries, and campaigns.

    Regency Cthulhu is rounded out by two adventures – the first entitled The Long Corridor and the second entitled The Emptiness Within.

    A fancy ball is the main centrepiece/backdrop for The Long Corridor (because, let’s be fair here, it’s what most people think of when they’re thinking of the Regency Era in England), and tasks players with investigating a portal to a dark dimension which opens once a century and happens to have chosen that night to do it, while The Emptiness Within is a more traditional “Discover the horrifying secret and try not to go mad while you do it” scenario – in this case, involving a mysterious sleeping sickness with otherworldy origins and dire consequences for the town (and the rest of the world) if not dealt with.

    Both adventures are well done and make full use of the material the sourcebook offers; The Long Corridor is intended to take one or two sessions with an option to stretch things out further, while The Emptiness Within is a longer affair, which follows on from the previous scenario. Indeed, the intro even notes “Players may make use of the same pre-generated investigators provided [in the sourcebook appendix] – as long as they survived, either physically or mentally.”

    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    Many of the key artworks in Regency Cthulhu, such as this image of a lady’s boudoir, appear at first glance to show a conventional Regency-era scene. If you look again, however, you’ll see there’s something more sinister going on…

    I really liked the subtle touches in a number of the key artworks in the book – they did a great job of portraying what seemed like a “normal” Regency setting (women in a reading room, a ball in progress, people in a library) until you looked again and saw horrifying details that were there – which is very much a recurring theme in Call of Cthulhu generally.

    One thing to keep in mind, for Keepers of Arcane Lore looking to create their own adventures in the time period, is the era is nearly 200 years ago from our perspective, so it’s an ideal time to set a “foundation” campaign. Readers of the Cthulhu Mythos will be well aware a lot of it centres around legends from the 1600s-early 1800s, with protagonists in the 1920s onwards discovering those events and the horrors they entail.

    Indeed, Regency Cthulhu explicitly acknowledges this with information to develop a “Part II” of the main events, set a century later (1913), exploring the repercussions of the events from the included campaign and also providing a very useful generic 1920s Small British Town setting for other Call of Cthulhu adventures in the process.

    Regency Cthulhu: Pride and Prejudice and Eldritch Horrors
    A fancy ball is the centrepiece and setting for the first of the adventures in Regency Cthulhu.

    From my perspective, the social reputation etc elements of Regency Cthulhu aren’t a huge appeal for the sort of scenarios I’m interested in – but they are a worthwhile addition to Call of Cthulhu  generally and given the creativity of the community (including the Miskatonic Repository creators),  I have no doubt they’ll prove very useful indeed. They certainly open up a lot of role-playing opportunities for players and Keepers who want to take advantage of them, and I know there’s already player-made adventures for Regency Cthulhu being published on Miskatonic Repository too.

    How worthwhile Regency Cthulhu will be for your table will depend on your interest in roleplaying the era – if you’d prefer to keep your adventures set after the invention of steamships and electricity, then you don’t need to rush out to add this to the RPG shelf.

    On the other hand, if you want your cosmic horror with more fancy balls, tea parties, and people in crinolines and cravats, then being able to create your own “Pride And Prejudice And Eldritch Horrors” experience is going to be a very appealing and proper proposition – in which case you and your table are going to have a great time with Regency Cthulhu.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Previous ArticleNuts & Bolts Ep 68: I Can’t Help But LoL
    Next Article World Of Tanks ANZPL Season 5 Grand Final: All Hail The Kings!

    Related Posts

    Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review
    GAMING REVIEWS February 4, 2023

    Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review

    HAVING a decent gaming headset is all well and good, but it helps to have somewhere to store it when…

    Auro Of Worlds Key Art
    ACTION-ADVENTURE February 4, 2023

    Aura Of Worlds Review: Change My Mind About Rogue-Lites

    I don’t like rogue-lite games. It’s a weird way to start a review of rogue-lite game Aura Of Worlds, but I need to give some perspective.

    Subscribe

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    Ads

    Categories
    • ACTION
    • ACTION-ADVENTURE
    • APPLE
    • BATTLE ROYALE
    • CLOUD GAMING
    • CONVENTIONS
    • ESPORTS
    • Events
    • FEATURE
    • FIGHTING
    • FPS
    • FUNNY
    • GAMING HARDWARE
    • GAMING NEWS
    • GAMING REVIEWS
    • GIFT GUIDE
    • GOA
    • GOA PODCAST
    • HORROR GAMES
    • INDIE GAMING
    • Industry
    • MMORPG
    • MOBA
    • MOBILE
    • NINTENDO
    • Open-World
    • OPINION
    • PC
    • PLATFORMER
    • PLAYSTATION
    • Press Release
    • PREVIEW
    • RACING
    • RETRO
    • RPG
    • SIMULATION
    • SPORTS
    • STRATEGY
    • STREAMING
    • SUBSCRIPTION GAMES SERVICE UPDATES
    • SURVIVAL
    • TABLETOP GAMING
    • TECH
    • VIDEO
    • VR
    • XBOX
    Related Article
    Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review
    GAMING REVIEWS

    Satechi 2-in-1 Headphone Stand with Wireless Charger review

    February 4, 2023Royce WilsonBy Royce Wilson

    HAVING a decent gaming headset is all well and good, but it helps to have somewhere to store it when you’re not wearing it.…

    Nuts & Bolts Hero Card Ep 72
    GOA PODCAST

    Nuts & Bolts Ep 72: Jim Has A Spreadsheet

    February 4, 2023Darren 'Str8JaktJim' MacneallBy Darren 'Str8JaktJim' Macneall

    In this episode of Nuts & Bolts Jim and Natty talk about a threat to the DOTA Lima Major in Peru, NZ Esports’s funding…

    Auro Of Worlds Key Art
    ACTION-ADVENTURE

    Aura Of Worlds Review: Change My Mind About Rogue-Lites

    February 4, 2023Darren 'Str8JaktJim' MacneallBy Darren 'Str8JaktJim' Macneall

    I don’t like rogue-lite games. It’s a weird way to start a review of rogue-lite game Aura Of Worlds, but I need to give some perspective.

    Game on Australia Logo

    Game On Aus is an Australian games publication working across written, video and podcast, and supported by an ever-growing community of content creators and fans!

    Copyright GameOnAus 2023. Privacy Policy. Website by Digital Hitmen

    CONTENT
    • News
    • Gaming Reviews
    • Podcast
    • Tech
    • Indie
    ABOUT GOA
    • About Us
    • Contact

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.