Whispers in the Dark: A D&D 5e Ruleset

[davewire]

Any D&D 5e players, have you checked out Whispers in the Dark by Saturday Morning Scenarios? I came across this the other day in an email. The black and red cover with its fairly creepy cover image and a title invoking one of Lovecraft’s tales intrigued me. The short booklet is a minor overhaul of the 5e rules to allow players to play as investigators in a world like our own but fraught with eldritch horrors. It was written by M.T. Black, a frequent DMsGuild contributor and a co-writer for Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, and Matt Corley, who has worked on projects for Sandy Petersen, including co-writing his Ghoul Island 5e adventure series.

The rules do away with the fantasy class system for Investigator backgrounds which clearly takes inspiration from CoC. The only playable race is humans, but their are options for Deep-One and Lengian ancestries. The booklet also has a comprehensive set of rules for sanity and madness that appear to be inspired by those in the CoC Keeper Rulebook set to a d20 system.

All in all, this looked pretty interesting to me. If you have any friends who are big D&D players who you’ve wanted to introduce to CoC, this might be the bridge. Coupled with Sandy’s 5e Cthulhu Mythos, you’d have a whole bestiary of mythos threats. Although this is only a brief QuickStart, Matt Corley has said he has plans to begin work on a complete core rulebook later this year with rules for mythos magic, more backgrounds, ancestries, etc. Currently, Saturday Morning Scenarios has released a few adventure modules and an Investigator’s Companion (with new backgrounds, feats, and rules for magic). A sourcebook for Chicago was successfully crowdfunded last month for release later this year. If you’re interested, the books are fairly cheap on DriveThruRPG with most being under $5.

If anyone has already played Whispers in the Dark, I’d appreciate any reviews or thoughts you had on the game.

Edited May 30, 2020 by davewire