Trail of Cthulhu, reviewed by C. W. Richeson

There’s a new review of Trail of Cthulhu up on rpg.net by CW Richeson.

Trail of Cthulhu takes a fresh look at Lovecraft’s Mythos with a strong focus on investigation, excellent writing, and plenty of play support.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

He says:

In play I was concerned that my traditional style of low prep freeform gaming would have trouble with the GUMSHOE clue system included here, as making certain there are clues for different characters at first seemed challenging. I quickly discovered that this was not an obstacle at all, and so long as I had a good idea of how the incident being investigated went down it was very easy to constantly push new clues through different Investigative Abilities. In fact, I found that the game worked spectacularly well with this style as the nature of these Abilities encouraged me to constantly engage each of the players thereby resulting in a mystery that was continuously moving forward to its PC driven conclusion. My play experiences have been far more satisfying than I would have expected, though my group has largely avoided physical conflict whenever possible.