Daniel (@dungeondive) returns to Cthulhu: Death May Die — still in his top 50, and possibly climbing — ahead of an upcoming Kickstarter for a new standalone-slash-expansion box. Today’s setup is Monsters in Sin City (Season 2, Episode 5), solo with Adila and Ariel against Hastur inside a casino, hunting six Lucky Lady tokens to disrupt the ritual.
Five points, three positive, two critical.
Positives: (1) once the scenario is set up, you never re-open the box — unprecedented uninterrupted play in a game of this size. (2) Tension hits from turn one; unlike the Arkham games’ slow burn, this drops you into direct conflict immediately, a structural echo of dudes-on-a-map games like Kemet or Cyclades without the competitive layer. (3) The three stats — sanity, stress, wounds — function as interlocking currencies. Sanity doubles as a push-your-luck resource: roll more dice and risk more sanity, but hitting thresholds levels your skills. Stress buys rerolls and pays for loot-card pickups. Health absorbs overflow from stress.
Criticisms: (1) the game is chronically under-served on lore and flavour text. Hastur is a lump of plastic with no context for a player who doesn’t know the King in Yellow or the Yellow Sign — and most of that lore is public domain. (2) The final boss fight is too long; Elder Sign’s Epic Final Battle injected more dynamism into its equivalent moment.
Could Death May Die’s lack of flavour text be fixed with five hundred words of public-domain Mythos, or is the action-first identity the point?