The Claudia Contingency is an extremely beefy, feature length mini-campaign for FIST that dives into the neat subgenre of Peter Pan horror. It is *not* a lighthearted module, and it gets very intense at points, but it is very well-written and designed.

The PDF is 23 pages, with a clean but dense layout and a lot of helpful diagrams and maps.

Contents-wise, Claudia Contingency has a great structure and sense of pacing. It has a clear, urgent hook. Multiple avenues for investigation. And a growing sense of certainty and dread that culminates in a hellscape.

There are a few subsystems for this campaign, including a CYCLOPS tension tracker that results in hostile interference if the players act too overtly. There's also a somewhat odd 'spirit animal' system for NPCs, where they succeed or fail checks based on whether that makes sense for the animal---I'm not 100% this system is more efficient that just mentioning an NPC's profession, or that it wouldn't benefit from a different name, but it is an interesting experiment.

The campaign's framework is well-organized and ultimately reacts to the actions of the players. They might go to one location, kill the big bad, and wrap up in a one session speedrun. Or they might chase down dozens of leads and then set off a nuke in a hostile dreamrealm. There's a wide range of possibilities that the module accomodates.

The writing throughout is direct, informational, and technical. It's easy to read, and does an excellent job of conveying exactly what the GM needs to know.

The threats and challenges facing the PCs are complex, with lots of ways to solve them. The foes in Claudia Contingency also have a lot of variation to them. It's not d6 zombies in a hallway. Everything feels like a unique tactical encounter.

Overall, this is a solid, atmospheric, and at times quite eerie mini campaign. It fits FIST's style very nicely, but could also be adapted for a high lethality Delta Green, Call Of Cthulhu, or NWoD mortals game.

That said, I would *not* read this if exhaustive clinical descriptions of routine abuse might in any way bother you. I said it at the start, but I'll say it again. This gets very, incisively, dark. If you've got the tolerance level for Delta Green scenarios or you normally play that type of material, you will likely be fine.

Minor Issues:

-The CW maybe undersells how intense this supplement gets with intimate partner violence, medical horror, gender horror, and state-sanctioned abuse. I'm pretty deadened to descriptions of human cruelty, but the writing here is quite strong and it got all the way under my skin.

-Ketamine was first synthesized in 1962. I'm not 100% sure that syncs up with the time period during which the NATIONAL SUBMARINE DEFENSE TASK FORCE was operational.

-Page 14, "at dusk cricket overlap" crickets

-There's a few discordant elements in the scenario and places where the tone changes a little jarringly. "Woo woo knowledge", the PSI crystals, the crocodile, the goats. The goats are neat, and feel strange and menacing, and the writing on the crocodile is really strong. The Netherland being the way it is could be accounted for by Heaton having read Peter Pan to NICO, but some Netherland elements (the PSI crystals, the lobster) really feel like they're a different genre from the stuff the submarine base set up for. If the crystals were some other sort of object, something more intrinsically connected with who NICO is and how NICO sees the world, I don't think there'd be this dissonance.

I'm curious about something and would like feedback if anyone has a strong opinion : as is, the writeup is single column. I think it's fine, but did anyone have a hard time with that format or think it'd be easier to parse or reference if it was two columns (or more)?

The Claudia Contingency is clever re-imagining of a classic tale with a heavy dash of horror. (Bust out those Safety Tools, folks!)

The mini-campaign was clearly designed with ease of use in mind. You have a one-page scenario background, a mission structure flowchart, and a “research phase” which reminds me of Sly Flourish’s Secrets & Clues – the information isn’t tied to a particular location or NPC, it’s just there for the GM to weave into the game as they see fit. There are 2d6 Reaction style tables for, “What are these NPCs up to?”, and a list of Quick NPCs in the back, for when you accidentally make a background character a bit too intriguing and need a name and personality now.

Of course no matter how much you do, there’s always some jerk asking for more. And I’m that jerk. I do think it’d be helpful to have a final page with all the major NPCs in one place. There’s an Inhabitants of the Island page, which covers factions, but a single page to reference the named NPCs would be helpful.

I’m being purposely vague about the plot and focusing mostly on the design, but this adventure looks like a lot of fun to run. I definitely recommend checking it out and can’t wait to run it myself.

A VERY well written adventure. Don't let the synopsis fool you, this scenario is more than you might imagine.

For starters, it's well executed. It starts out with a well organized investigative scenario which anticipates the many ways players can go, and doesn't railroad them. It's possible for the PCs to wrap things up quickly, efficiently and completely ignorant of the true horror that's ongoing.

And it is absolutely a horror scenario. Children have been abducted from their homes, never to be seen again. The secret notes describing how things were set in motion are chilling in their cruelty, and should the players actually find out what happened to the missing children? That's a whole deranged playground filled with terrifying encounters.

But, it's also an adventure, and that means the PCs have a chance to triumph. Not just to beat the bad guy or live to fight another day, but get the serious, big damn hero ending with a happily ever after for dozens of tortured souls.

Probably not, but the pathway is there and I admire the author for giving us that light despite all the darkness in this scenario. Also any GM who can't have a blast with Mrs. Hearting just isn't trying.

One quibble. I wasn't clear on how the so-called zombies wound up in their present state. Perhaps I missed it, but while I could fill in the gaps I wasn't sure how they wound up where they were or what caused their condition. Otherwise a fantastic adventure. I'd also advise including the red herring in the briefing documents, just to watch the players faces when they realize what story they are really in.