Call of Cthulhu’s A Time to Harvest, written by Brian M. Sammons, Glynn Owen Barrass, with Mike Mason and Lynne Hardy, has its investigators primarily be students of Miskatonic University.
Miskatonic University, as well as its hometown of Arkhman, Massachusetts, is the main site of many of HP Lovecraft’s stories. It’s only right that the fictitious town be fleshed out for play in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Whole books have been written on the subject, detailing all the thoroughfares throughout the town and populating Miskatonic University’s faculty with a wide variety of characters that can be used as NPCs in a game.
Since A Time to Harvest features Miskatonic University as a major locale in the campaign, many pages are dedicated to help the Keeper understand the town and university. Even in this abridged look at the university, it’s incredible the detail that’s gone into bringing this place to life.
On the banks of the Miskatonic River, Arkham was first populated in the seventieth century. It’s about 25 miles northeast of Boston. With a population of 22,500 people it maintains a small town feel while being big enough where everyone literally doesn’t know everyone else.
Municipal buildings shut down for lunch. Restaurants don’t open on Sunday. Sunday is time for the family to gather together at home for the meals.
The police are aware this is a college town. They’re lenient about student pranks and antics… as long as it doesn’t affect the good people of Arkham.
Firing a gun in Arkham is illegal, as is carrying around explosives. Carrying concealed weapons is legal.
The campaign takes place during Prohibition. The Arkham police are lenient with violations of this law. Even the Chief of Police enjoys a glass of Scotch after work. However, those who make a nuisance of themselves while hammered will get arrested and tried before Judge Keezar Randall. He gives stiff sentences for such offences.
As for Miskatonic University, the rules demand students who are not living at home must live in the dormitories. There’s the freshman dorm, which houses sophomores unfortunate enough to not get into a better dorm, called Hell East. Dorothy Upman gave an endowment to Miskatonic University on the grounds that women should have equal access to all classes on campus. The Board agreed and used part of Upman’s donation to create the Dorothy Upman Hall, a dormitory exclusively for women. The hall monitors are very stiff. Men are only allowed in the lobby, and not after hours.
A bit of the action in A Time to Harvest, and probably many other campaigns based near Arkham, will involve the Orne Library. There is a Restricted Collection that contains a hefty amount of Mythos tomes, including Cultes des Goules, De Vermis Mysteriis, Nameless Cults, The Necronomicon, and The Pankotic Manuscripts. Keepers are encouraged to populate the Restricted Collection with whatever tome is deemed necessary for the current plot.
Orne Library looks like a cathedral, with raised ceilings and stained-glass windows. Many students refer to it as St. Henry’s, in reference to the Head Librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage.
The lobby contains busts of many of the best of literature: Thoreau, Irving, Emerson, Longfellow and Shakespeare.
It is such an important location for Call of Cthulhu adventures that the developers went to great lengths to map the library. The map that comes in A Time to Harvest shows which shelves contain Civics books and which shelves contain Economics books.
Along with the creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, Lovecraft’s great accomplishments include the creation of Arkham and its Miskatonic University. The developers over the years have been amazingly influenced by Lovecraft’s creation, fleshing out the setting in incredible detail. Now, with A Time to Harvest, Keepers are provided with more information about the setting than they know what to do with, and that’s with the abridged version that comes in the campaign book.
