(Spoiler-free) Review of "The Order of the Stone"
A review of Chaosium's druidic-themed "Call of Cthulhu" Scenario
When I saw the cover of Chaosium’s latest scenario, my eyes immediately went to the triskelion pictured on the tentacled plinth looming over the possibly ill-fated investigators on the cover photo. Upon reading the caption for the Facebook post where I saw this announcement, I knew I had to write a review on it. Although it only released in on the 25th of September this year, and I currently have no group to play it with, I decided to take the chance of reviewing it (spoiler-free) to give my thoughts on this scenario.
With that in mind, this will be more of a “first impressions” sort of post with very light analysis from the Celticist side of things, once I actually get around to playing this with a full group, I’ll be able to talk about this to my heart’s content.
First Impressions
Coming in at 154 pages (this including the handouts, maps, and pre-generated characters), The Order of the Stone is a rather lean scenario for its length in that most of its events can be easily self-contained, but has enough liberty to be worked into a pre-existing campaign. The Order of the Stone is a “Classic Era” scenario, meaning it can be set at any point in the 1920s and '30s. The text handily provides some historical tidbits for Keeper consideration on what sorts of technology was available at the time. Most scenarios in Call of Cthulhu are set in this era so The Order of the Stone does not stand out too much in terms of time period, and while its comments on the technology are helpful, there isn’t much other historical grounding to help supplement the adventure.
The scenario is broken up into three chapters, with each one having some possibility of being played as stand-alone events should the player characters not survive any of them. The first one is especially well-done as a stand-alone scenario that would be best described as “Alien at sea.” The events take place in Massachusetts in the “Miskatonic Valley” region, which is the name given to the area around Lovecraft’s Arkham, MA. While being a completely serviceable setting for Call of Cthulhu, I was hoping they might have just gone and set (at least part of) the scenario in Ireland or somewhere in North America with stronger Irish connections—or I at least figured the writers would have tapped into the supposedly strong Irish American roots of Massachusetts. I get more in-depth on this in the section below, but this aspect of the scenario and quite a few other points just felt like a standard retread of most Call of Cthulhu scenario beats without much innovation. The location (combined with the 1920s setting) especially is very much a dime-a-dozen when it comes to this game and it all feels very standard like the Keeper and players are just expected to go along with what’s happening and where without much question or receiving satisfying answers.
In terms of modern tabletop companies, Chaosium has never failed to knock it out of the park with layout and generally providing stand-out resources for Keepers. Throughout, I noticed what must be a somewhat newer addition to mark the difficulty of finding leads and clues in the game; possible leads or areas where player characters can find clues are marked as either “obvious” or “obscured.” I think this would be great for helping more uncertain Keepers in deciding whether they need to call for skill rolls to find clues.
In terms of other miscellaneous details throughout the scenario book itself, I noticed several pictures that just seemed a bit “off.” I’ve mostly known Chaosium as going above and beyond with their artwork, and The Order of the Stone mostly continues that trend, but some pieces in the book had this awkward, blocky design and brighter coloring that killed any mood for horror I built up as I read through the scenario.
The “Celtic” Elements
Being a student of Celticism, I have developed a sort of reflex whenever I notice something even resembling my field of study pop up in regular discourse or popular culture. When I happened to see Chaosium’s announcement of The Order of the Stone, I was absolutely intrigued to see what they would do with any Celtic elements for this scenario. As far as I’m aware, Chaosium themselves have not done much with Celtic myth and folklore in their Call of Cthulhu scenarios. Off the top of my head, the only scenario by them remotely featuring any such references was the Scotland chapter of their sixth edition campaign “The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.” Outside of Chaosium, third-party creators of Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks and scenarios have done a little more with the myths and folktales—mostly from Ireland—such as Stygian Fox’s “The Wild Hunt”1 (which I picked up a copy of at NecronomiCon this year and plan to do a review of as well). Truth be told, it is somewhat difficult to work what little we know about Celtic myth and folklore into the Cthulhu Mythos while remaining “authentic”; liberties almost always need to be taken, but that can apply for most other real-world mythologies. The only remotely “Celtic-themed” stories Lovecraft wrote were “The Moon-Bog” and (to a lesser extent) “The Rats in the Walls”, and even those examples aren’t explicitly Mythos-related unless readers interpret them as such. Lovecraft himself was not at all a Celticist and in the aforementioned stories tended to rely more on Classical explanations behind the weirdness going on. He also did incorporate the Brythonic god Nodens into his stories concerning his Dreamlands setting, which also might have been an interesting angle to include for The Order of the Stone (since Nodens is supposedly a parallel to the Irish god Nuada). I have only ever actually seen Nodens referenced and utilized (even peripherally) once in Chaosium’s modules.
It is unfortunate that I must say the Irish and druidic references in the scenario are, for the most part, set dressing. Within the scarce few examples of backstory and lore relating to the Irish themes of this scenario, there is a lot of potential that has not been realized. There are a number of Non-player Characters with Irish Gaelic as a language skill, but not once is there a skill roll or challenge that actually uses it. There were also a few moments when Gaelic folk belief could have been referenced or used to explain certain concepts in the scenario, but those also were not capitalized on. (What’s also quite baffling is that the scenario doesn’t even use Samhain as a climax!). I cannot say much more without going into spoiler territory, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little disappointed.
There could be a number of reasons why the authors chose not to lean harder into the Celtic connections of this scenario, one being, as I stated above, the difficulty of working in Mythos references with the little we know of Celtic mythology. There might also have been the desire not to overwhelm the Keeper and players with background information. Overall, I think the writers might have simply used the Irish/druidic details as a pulp-horror backdrop but did not think to go into greater detail on its implications or injecting more elements of folk horror into the scenario.
What I Would Change for My Table
With prospective players who might be reading this and the desire to avoid spoilers in mind, I will try my best to be as vague with my planned alterations. Should I ever make a more detailed review or “campaign diary,” I would happily go into greater depth.
As readers might have picked up on with my previous comments, I’m not entirely satisfied with the details (or lack-thereof) given in the scenario—it overall feels rather “thin.” For one, I would lean very heavily into whatever Celtic elements I can scour from this scenario and throw in whatever can fit. There is already a lot of potential here hiding in the shadows but the writers just couldn’t quite tease it out or decided not to for whatever reason.
One of the bigger changes I would plan to do is shift the scenario from the Miskatonic Valley all the way up to Newfoundland—or somewhere in Canada’s Maritime provinces. Although modern Newfoundland’s Irish Gaelic heritage is not incredibly strong, the location is both novel enough for a Mythos horror setting and still within the theme of the campaign’s general features (seacoast and backwoods areas).
Despite my criticisms, I still am very interested in running The Order of Stone, but would most likely be using it as a toolkit from which I’d build a more fleshed-out Celtic folk horror scenario rather than run it as it currently is.
If my review caught your attention and you want to check out The Order of the Stone for yourself, you can pick it up from Chaosium or DrivethruRPG for yourself!
Thanks for reading this week’s post! If you’ve read The Order of the Stone, leave your own thoughts on it below (be mindful of spoilers, however)!
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“The Wild Hunt” also utilizes its Classic era time period well by actually incorporating the social climate Irish people and Irish Americans were dealing with at the time, elements which The Order of the Stone doesn’t really acknowledge.
That's disappointing that they didn't go harder on the theming. At least with TTRPGs it's easy to make your own modifications for actually playing it.