Cthulhu by Gaslight

Cthulhu by Gaslight 3rd edition cover

This last week I got in a copy of Cthulhu by Gaslight from Chaosium. This is the third printing of the Victorian era supplement, but the first update or reprint in over 20 years.

The book has an awesome new cover by mythos artist Paul Carrick, and new maps by Steff Worthington. David Englehardt made the new character sheet and the new scenario handouts. A nice acknowledgement is also goes to The HP Lovecraft Historical Society for use of their excellent period fonts in the scenario handouts.

The book itself is about 50% bigger than previous editions with new material reaching the earlier edition's page count. They did remove the majority of the Sherlock Holmes related material from this edition in favor of expanding the Victorian setting more thoroughly.

There is one major revamping of the basic BRP styled character generation system, traits. These are advantages and disadvantages that are randomly rolled after skill point allocation. There are 120 possible traits which run from Aged to Youngster and damn near anything in between. This chart is not Victorian era specific at all, which leads me to believe that this is the next major add-on that we will see in CoC 7th edition.

Income levels in Gaslight are not determined by occupation, as most will be familiar with, but instead by the character's Social Standing. This was done to more properly reflect the huge gap between the wealthy upper and middle classes and the poor. As such, the Credit Rating skill has been given a lot of significance and is directly tied to your character's social standing. The base chance for CR is now 5% for every £100 of annual income. Upper Class characters however start with a fixed base of 65%.

The real meat of this book is in the setting, as it should be. There is an excellent, and brief, history of the British Empire and it's colonies in the last half of the 19th century. There are also wonderful breakdowns of the British Army at home and abroad, and the rather lackluster British Navy of the time. The Vicotrian Timeline from 1880-1901 is William Barton's original from the first edition, and is still a wonderful piece. Glynn White wrote the excellent new British Exploration and Fortean Timelines in this edition. There is also a short list of sample Victorian stores and shops that is included as more of a series of examples more than anything else.

There is loads of new material covering the occult world in the 1890's, with articles on the Theosophical Society, Freemasonry, The Golden Dawn, Spiritualism in general, and the Society for Psychical Research. A new Gazeteer of Selected Strange Sites in Britain lists out numerous occult locations throughout Great Britain and Ireland, but focusing primarily on London. In fact if there is one problem with this edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, it is the obvious focus on London and not other Victorian locations that would be just as interesting. Oxford and Cambridge both have long storied histories and, especially Oxford, the architecture to provide a really amazing backdrop. Maybe we'll see an add on for additional Victorian cities throughout England and the Continent in the future.

There is, of course, the list of Fictional Victorian Characters which has been updated with even more new possible NPCs, including Allan Quartermain, Buffalo Bill, Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, and many others. There is of course a nice list of NPCs based on occupation included.

The Night of the Jackal and The Burnt Man are the included scenarios with this edition and both are excellently done, with top-notch handouts. There is also a new section from Kevin Ross detailing some more scenario and campaign setting ideas that Keepers can use.

A number of excellent short biographies on a number of influential Victorian personalities that would be nice to put into play. I would love to see Sherlock Holmes, with set stats in the Victorian Fictional Characters section, and Oscar Wilde or Yeats from the Victorian Biographies section. That combo would be just amazing for me personally.

So all in all, this is probably the best CoC rulebook that has been produced in years. My Cthulhu Fez goes off to the editor Kevin Ross, and the original author William A. Barton. There are some scope issues that I mentioned earlier with the London focus, but that is really a preference issue, and they give ample information and imagination to create whatever else might be needed. This is a wonderful release and the guys at Chaosium should be proud to have released such a high quality product.