One Shot TPKs: Alone Against the Frost

One Shot TPKs is a new review category looking at solo and one keeper/one player scenarios in Call of Cthulhu. I just got done with a few runs of Chaosium’s latest solo scenario “Alone Against the Frost,” and wanted to put out some thoughts about it.

“Alone Against the Frost” is revamp of the long sold-out Alone Against the Wendigo solo scenario that came out in 1985. You play the part of a Miskatonic U Anthropology professor on an expedition to an unexplored portion of the Canadian Northwest Territories. There you run into degenerate ancient wizards, Wendigo, native cultists, and I don’t know what the hell that rolling thing was that killed me on the third run-through.

I’ve had this scenario since it dropped and, being a holiday weekend, finally had some time to take a crack at it. In one hour I died seven times seven incredibly different ways, and one time just suffered having my reputation destroyed in the academic community. Even that time was interesting.

The main thing about Alone Against the Frost is the pressure. Just a little ways into the scenario and the badness just hits you hard early on and gives little in the way of letting up. There is a natural tension that builds up and stays with you throughout the scenario when you realize that nothing you do is an intrinsically good idea. What’s going to happen when you take a particular course of action? You have no idea! It’s a crap shoot! This held my attention and created an actual atmosphere that I was pleasantly surprised to find in a solo scenario.

Another interesting factor that creates some interesting choices in the scenario is that you have a team of NPCs that come with you. They are basically redshirts. Don’t get attached to them. If you make it through with all of them alive and accounted for, it works out really well for you but don’t get married to the idea that it happens a lot. The first time I played the scenario I was alone with only a knife within 10 minutes.

While having the expedition team is good in some situations, group skill checks are an absolute bear. There are times when all of you have to succeed and an individual roll, such as Stealth, for a relatively positive outcome to occur. If one of those rolls fails, bad things can happen. In one of my run-throughs, all four of us passed Stealth checks when our skill scores were not particularly desirable. That was gloriously stressful to go through, and added a lot to the game.

If you think that its all masochistic meat-grinding in the scenario, I should mention how in my last run I came out with 18% Cthulhu Mythos, and pretty much headed back to civilization at that point because I wanted to use this investigator again. Getting out of the forest was a brutal chore unto itself and two of my expedition got offed along the way, but at least I have an investigator with a  better chance of knowing what the hell that thing is coming at the group in future games. 

Alone Against the Frost is currently available in PDF format directly from Chaosium with a hardcopy version coming out at a later date. If you have a free night to yourself and want to fill it with interesting horror and trauma, this will make the night worthwhile.