Call of Cthulhu

...and other Starter Sets
One of the fun things I did at this year's Gencon was to run a session of Call of Cthulhu for my friends using materials from the recently released starter set. The hard box starter set seems to be making a comeback in the past year or so as several new ones have appeared and the quality seems to be quite nice among most of them. Paizo, who does some of the best starter boxes, has one out for their Starfinder science fiction game. Cubicle 7 released a starter box for their Warhammer Fantasy Role Play around Origins time. WizBros has released a couple new 5e starter boxes in the past 12 months, the first a tribute to D&D in Stranger Things and the most recent, currently only available through Target combines nicely with their original starter set from a few years back by adding content for the campaign setting from the first box. Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu Starter Set is my favorite of them all.
The Call of Cthulhu Starter Set contents includes three paper cover booklets titled Alone Against The Flames, Introductory Rules and Paper Chase and other adventures. Also included in the sturdy, well illustrated box are a set of dice and a selection of pregen characters. The contents also include some handouts (to be expected in CoC) additional blank character sheets and a couple of info sheets. All the contents are nicely executed and demonstrate the superior quality that Chaosium Inc. is currently providing in all of their products.
As previously mentioned I ran a CoC game for my friends at Gencon. I started with the adventure, Paper Chase, from the starter set. Taking inspiration from the published adventure, but having some ideas of my own I changed the location to Istanbul circa 1922 which allowed me to make the adventure more exotic. This places the scenario events near the end of the Turkish Civil War, the Greek War for Independence, and the forced relocation of ethnic Greeks and Turks accrding to the realignment of national boundaries. I rewrote the starter pregens to fit my altered setting and recast the main NPCs to fit the Turkish location, the missing professor becoming a minor Russian noble longing to return to his native land now occupied by communist revolutionaries. That is the extent of the spoilers I will give as my intent here is to merely demonstrate how I frequently modify details of a printed adventure to suit my personal interests and sensibilities. By investing some of my own creativity into the module I am both more conversant with the material and more excited about what I am running. Enthusiasm is infectious a usually transfers to my players.