The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.61: Grimrock Isle

Grimrock Isle was publshed by Triad Entertainments in 1992, and to my knowledge is the largest solitaire adventure for the Call of Cthulhu rpg, consisting of five adventure booklets which together form something of a mini-campaign; it also seems to be one of the most highly regarded solo scenarios produced for the game - despite the fact that it draws the player in using one of the more cliched tropes typically found in early CoC scenarios (the ‘you are hired to investigate a strange old house in an isolated community’ opening gambit).

Also included is the ‘Big Book of Forbidden Knowledge’which reveals the secrets of Grimrock Isle, allowing the GM to run the scenario in standard rpg mode for a group of players.

In any case, as per yesterday’s post, Grimrock Isle is the current focus of my regular solitaire gaming night. During last night’s session, I also discovered some used character sheets shuffled in with the handouts which come with the scenario. These proved to be the PCs used by members of my family during the one and only time they felt a need to play a game of Call of Cthulhu - late one Christmas afternoon about 15 years ago. I still cannot account for how this came about, and must assume that a) copious amounts of alcohol had been consumed and b) my family decided to humour me in my strange gaming ways. Needless to say, this session has now become somewhat legendary in the annals of the family history. To this day, my father insists that he ‘won’ the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game (in fairness it looks like he came out of the session with most of his sanity intact and 5 hit points remaining - which I suppose is a kind of winning as far as the Call of Cthulhu rpg is concerned). Good times.

Unfortunately if you want to play Grimrock Isle, you can’t - it is now long out of print. And you can keep your grubby paws off my copy.