Critical Role: Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace [one-shot]
October 24, 2019 5:36 PM - Season 2 (Specials) - Subscribe

Set in 1890 in London's Crystal Palace, the Cat Club is hosting its annual cat show. Several nights before the show, a meeting for the owners is held. Six of them have actually entered their cats with the ulterior motive of gaining late night access to the Crystal Palace. They have been hired by Rupert Merriweather, a young American man with an interest in the occult, to sneak into the Palace's closed exhibits and retrieve an ancient casket for him.
posted by booksherpa (7 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Note for CR discussion regulars: this is an experiment with adding Critical Role adjacent content that isn't its own show on the channel - stuff like the Undeadwood miniseries and one-shots, both the in-canon ones and ones that live completely on their own like this.
posted by booksherpa at 5:43 PM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm overdue a re-listen/watch of this. I enjoyed it the first time around but struggled to fully understand the underlying system (I've since gotten more familiar with Call of Cthulhu which should help).

I also had some issues with the overall narrative thrust and players knowing what to do in certain rooms/scenarios. It's an issue I've had in my own games and is compounded by the one-shot format but it felt a bit awkward at the start and just as people were getting into a flow it all came to an (appropriate) end.

Some personal highlights:
- The description of the creepy, well, everything (especially the backwards people) by Taliesin was so strong and perfect for Call of Cthulhu
- The phobias/neurosis he assigned to people on the fly were expertly imagined and assigned
- This spoilery Scooby Doo-style fan art
- Liam's accent(s)
- Also, this spoiler-free fan art
- No plot armour for anyone
- Actually all the fan art

Really wish they do come back to this especially with higher production values like they brought out for Undeadwood.

Thanks for posting this; I know no critters in real life and I'm still catching up to the main campaign before I can participate in those conversations... Definitely up for the same treatment for Undeadwood, if there's an interest from folks.
posted by slimepuppy at 7:23 AM on October 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Was this a recent one-shot? I think they did a CoC some time at least months ago. (I ended up not seeing all of it - my wife was watching it while I ended up going to sleep)
posted by rmd1023 at 11:21 AM on October 25, 2019


Came out end of July so yeah I think this is the same one you're thinking of.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:29 AM on October 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Is that the same Rupert Merriweather who dies at the start of the classic CoC adventure "The Edge of Darkness"?
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:40 PM on October 26, 2019


Yes! According to a fan page about the one-shot, "This episode functions as a tie-in prequel to the published Call of Cthulhu adventure 'Edge of Darkness', from the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Starter Set. In both adventures, Rupert Merriweather gathers the PCs together and initiates the plot, although he appears to be in the prime of life in 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace', but is elderly and dying by the start of 'Edge of Darkness'. As Taliesin explains at the beginning, Chaosium (the publishers of Call of Cthulhu) originally suggested they use one of the published adventures in the Starter Set. To avoid spoiling a published adventure for listeners, Taliesin instead wrote 'Shadow of the Crystal Palace' as an original story that could act as a tie-in."
posted by booksherpa at 2:03 PM on October 26, 2019


Slimepuppy, I loved all the stuff you mentioned, plus the amazing props! Taliesin is probably my favorite of the CR players, so I loved getting to see him GM something so firmly in his wheelhouse. Having Erika Ishii as one of the guests was also a delight; I've loved her in everything I've seen her in.

rmd1023, this did air at the end of July, but the ability to add specials like this, that live outside the standard season/episode system, is relatively new. It was possible to add one per season, but not multiples, so it required a bit of back and forth with the mods and frimble's help, all of which was quite recent. I wanted to test it with a couple of different specials, and this and UnDeadwood were the first ones I posted.
posted by booksherpa at 8:13 PM on October 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


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