Cthulhu by Gaslight: Keeper’s Guide

by Mike Mason (Editor)

264 pages, Hardcover

Published April 28, 2025

About the author

Mike Mason is the best-selling, award-winning author of The Blue Umbrella, The Mystery of Marriage, The Gospel According to Job, Champagne for the Soul, Twenty-One Candles, and many others. He has an M.A. in English and has studied theology at Regent College. He lives in Langley, BC, Canada, with his wife.

Reviews

[Storm Bookwyrm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The choice to divide "Cthulhu by Gaslight" into two volumes - an investigator and keeper book each - is no doubt a financial move, rather than altruistically conceived to genuinely aid the players. Pages could have been saved, I think, and the price brought down, by doing away with the idea of "Gaslight" as an alternative 'jumping in point', filling them with abridged versions of the basic rules. I do realize of course that rpg companies are forever floundering, and attempts to make them friendlier to get into are necessary, but I simply don't see anyone unfamiliar with CoC being recommended, or finding this on their own, as the place to begin, when far simpler is the advice I'd give of "Buy the core rules".

All that being said however, I do like this book. It's inspirational, and does what I actually really want from these CoC supplements, which is give me researched information on the era/place that will provide the answers to the questions my players will have for me, like "Can we join the golden dawn?" and "I want to jump in another cab and chase that one that's getting away! What do I roll?"

There's also some npc and enemy stat blocks that are intriguing; there's the ever useful 'basic npc' blocks, which I love, then there's some far more unique write-ups, for persons real and fictional, human and monstrous. Heck, there's stats for DRACULA in here, as well as war of the world martians! That's quite fun.

Another interesting chapter is devoted to the concept of astral projection, and what happens and what you do when you achieve this. It's the sort of intriguing notion in game that I want to come up with a scenario involving it now.

So, padded out though this and the player guide may be, I'm still pleased to have them on my shelves. I may start dropping hints to my players soon that being consulting detectives or Victorian occults sure sounds like fun. Knowing them though, I'll want to partner this with the cowboy supplement too...

[Arthur B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent expansion on the original, including welcome input from one of the co-authors of Pagan Publishing's Golden Dawn supplement to fill out that part of the background. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...