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The World of Georic 1989-Present

Thursday, June 9, 2011

(Review) Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition Keeper's Screen


I did receive my 6th Edition Keeper's Screen in the mail yesterday. Again, a shout out to www.rpgshop.com for getting it to my door in three business days.

First off, the description for Chaosium's site:
A 3-Panel Keeper's Screen mounted on thick hardcover stock that folds out to 33 inches wide. One side, intended to face the players, portrays an investigative scene. The other side collects and summarizes important rules and statistics, to help ease the Keerper's task. The package includes a 22"x34" Mythos Vade Mecum poster by the mad french artists Christian Grussi and El Théo, postulating relationships between the deities and minions of the Cthulhu Mythos.

When they say it's mounted on thick hardcover stock, they're not kidding! My rough measurement makes each panel 1/5 to 1/4" thick, which is guaranteed to stop any projectile dice. The front of the screen is a beautiful, yet fairly generic scene:
The Center Panel of three



The Keeper side of the screen contains basic combat/injury info, a recap of insanity, and, of course, the resistance table. With CoC there isn't much that one needs to reference. On my own generic Gamma World 2nd Edition screen that I picked up for fifty cents, I have clipped on copies of all those items, save the size adjustments for ranged weapons. Still, the screen is solid, sturdy, and just useful enough for purchase. It is about two-thirds as high as a traditional screen, so that may limit my use of full page notes behind it, and a need to pack some post-its with me.

The Mythos Vade Mecum poster is nice, but I'm not going to hang it on any wall. I can picture throwing darts at it to figure out which big baddie is responsible for this week's session.

I was disappointed that there was no throwaway scenarion included inside. Even The Terrible Trouble at Tragidore, from the AD&D 2nd Edition screen was mined for useful items. Then again, the 2nd Edition AD&D screen was useful for the first month and disintegrated afters a few months of lugging it around to gaming sessions. This new CoC screen might actually survive being drug from session to session... dragging behind the car on a gravel road.

1 comment:

  1. Eric: I was disappointed that there was no throwaway scenarion included inside. Even The Terrible Trouble at Tragidore, from the AD&D 2nd Edition screen was mined for useful items.

    Heh. Even the Street Fighter screen came with an adventure.

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