Berlin: The Wicked City: Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar… (2025)

One can argue about its relevance to today (and maybe the analogy has been worn out), but the interwar years in Germany (saddled with the "Weimar" metonym, even though that's only where the constitution was drafted) continue to remain fascinating to people from all walks of life. The efflorescence of Jugendstil/Art Noveau, along with an incredible theater scene and expressionistic films and experimental painting mean that artists of every stripe remain drawn to the Berlin of the 20s. The circulating theories of the time, some of a spiritual and supernatural nature (clairvoyance, telepathy), others so advanced scientifically that they might as well have been magic (relativity), mean that the tension between science and mysticism was never so fraught or so fruitful.

There's a lot to love and learn from this time, and a lot to fear and to not repeat (unless you're keen to see a continent bled white again). And yet, despite the goldmine that this time and place has presented to so many people of so many backgrounds, it's never really been mined (to my knowledge) by those involved in making role-playing games.

"Berlin: The Wicked City" makes a valiant effort to mesh H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos with more Teutonic and Semetic strands of magic that were kicking around in German theosophic and Gnostic circles around this time, and it is partially successful.

It gets a lot of the broad strokes right, showing a city in flux and a culture unsure of itself in the aftermath of a humiliating defeat in war and onerous reparations payments that went from being an economic albatross around the necks of the Volk to becoming an existential neurosis that would lead to some of the largest acts of mass murder in history. But the RPG seems to rely a bit too heavily on mixing the salacious with the sinister in a way that doesn't so much recall Christopher Isherwood's Berlin or Bob Fosse's "Cabaret" but hews closer to the works put out by Feral House written by Mel Gordon. And some of these seem to celebrate, of all things, child abuse and pederasty, and regard history solely as an entry point for titillation of a dubious variety. If the campaigns in the game were just dedicated to breaking up such human trafficking rings, that would be unsavory (and a bit too dark for even Lovecraftian gaming), but still somehow forgivable. But the text wallows in the ugliness in a way that's just unseemly, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

As to the campaigns themselves on display here, they're of varying quality. The first deals with the ghost of Karl Großman (a Lustmorder and alleged cannibal who was a sort of poor man's Jack the Ripper), and it is solid if not entirely original in execution. The next offering, about a sort of Godzilla-sized Goddess-cum-Golem stomping the red sands of Berlin to fine powder below her high-heeled domina boot was the weakest link. The last campaign, a curious paean to celluloid generally and Berlin's Babelsberg film colony specifically was my favorite, and could in the simplest terms be summarized as "Last Action Hero" as conceived by Fritz Lang.

Some of the artwork, ephemera, and maps are handsome, and the book's a bit of an objet d'art in its own right. But there's still something unsavory about it all when considered in toto. Judge for yourself, though.

Cosmic horror in a city foreshadowing an even darker evil ahead…

Berlin: The Wicked City: Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin by David Larkins and Mike Mason is an intriguing setting book set during a time of upheaval in Germany…

Berlin: the wicked city is a quandary. As a call of Cthulhu setting, it’s set in a city (specifically a non English speaking one) and it’s set between two world wars (as most Cthulhu games set during war time are under other other game lines…giving players the chance to pay witness to the rise of the German state and the axis powers.

Any game would be directly tied to the aftermath of the Great War, with a number of investigator opportunities to explain why they get involved with the occult (my favorite being a 1920s German film company that are early ghost hunters).

As with most of the setting books, they also provide historical information on the being (including key social, political, and military figures that will prove important prior or later…depending on what direction the game goes). Suggested names, occupations, and backgrounds (primarily linked to what they did during the war) are also provided.

Naturally there’s a wealth of plot books and other paraphernalia both a mix of German specific or variants on existing MYTHOS lore.

There’s not a ton of European based call of Cthulhu material especially not early 20th century (as I said most of that can be found in other lines by other companies).

Worth checking out even if it’s only a chance to have some investigators “visit” Berlin as part of an ongoing campaign…or just read it for fun…

Chaosium has been impressing me with a lot of their material in recent years; I found the new "Arkham" book to be one of the single greatest pieces of rpg supplements I've ever read, providing a wealth of background information that has supplied a campaign that is, presently, on-going. After picking up "The Wicked City", I began desperately thinking of ways I could plausibly send my players to Berlin.

Like a lot of chaosium's books, I'm impressed with the bits if history it teaches me; not just the textbook bullet-point of significant events, but the little details, answering questions players would actually have ("How much is a cab? Where do people live? How long would it take to get across the city?"). The vision painted by this book of Berlin is a fascinating one. It's seedy, it's perverted, it's nuanced, revolutionary, progressive, oppressive, and a center for culture to rival New York!

Unlike "Arkham", there isn't a vast list of npc's and locations, the book instead supplying a list of neighborhoods, with their themes and highlights. Also included are three scenarios, which I have not played, but read enough to see that they could be played standalone, or as a campaign.

This is a fascinating supplement, but not one for less than mature players! While CoC players are used to horror, this book intrinsically involves sexual themes, and should be used in groups that are ready for that sort of thing!

Podría haber sido un gran módulo, el equivalente a nuestra La piel de toro 1920, lleno de información sobre el Berlín de hace un siglo, sus personajes, sus cuestiones sociopolíticas, sus oscuridades... Tiene todo esto, junto con el elevado precio habitual por los buenísimos materiales usados y la descuidadísima edición con la que se adornan estos manuales en los últimos tiempos. Sobran palabras. Faltan palabras. Sobran caracteres. Faltan caracteres. Se intercambian palabras y caracteres por encima de las posibilidades de mi cerebro.

No me hagan caso, tengo un mal día y probablemente sea el módulo más chulo que se publica desde hace muchísimo tiempo. Pero un poco más de cuidado no estaría de más.

Pretty decent alternative setting for Call of Cthulhu, although not the slam dunk that Harlem Unbound is. If you're not su fait with the place and period, be prepared to do fair whack of homework. Will be running it.

I am not a gamer, but love anything about Berlin and so picked up this volume. Well worth the money. Love the historical accuracy and the maps. Weimar Berlin was stranger than I thought. Love it!

I've been enjoying Lovecraftiana a bit now -- maybe as a way to enjoy the imagination of disaster beyond our present moment of fear and loathing. So why not flip through this 2020 Ennie Awards Gold Winner for Best Setting that just happens to be available at my library?

And -- it's fine. It's the roaring '20s, but in Weimar Germany, which is roaring in all the usual ways (drugs, prostitution, corruption and crime, film and art, including cabarets and nightclubs), plus a few that are unique to Weimar, in particular: the rise of Nazism.

Which, again, brings this horror pretty close to home in our current moment.

Probably about half of this book is three long adventures, which raises questions for me about what counts as a setting for the Ennies, or what they're exactly judging on. And the adventures are... well, I can't really say without playing them, but they seem fine too: a murderous spirit on the loose; a mad god pulls Berlin into a nightmare; horror film threatens Berlin.

It's all fine, but I almost wonder how important it is that these adventures take place in Weimar.

Horror & Hedonism—A review of Berlin: The Wicked City – Unveiling the Mythos in Weimar Berlin by David Larkins, a city supplement for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition published by Chaosium, Inc.

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