Dreamhounds of Paris brings sandbox play to Trail of Cthulhu, as the surrealists of the 20s and 30s discover their ability to consciously reshape the realm beyond waking.
I play with a group that works best either in the completely dramatic realm of Hillfolk and DramaSystem, or in a procedural game with a strongly laid-out goal, like GUMSHOE in its default format. Their struggles with Dreamhounds proved instructive and helped me to improve the book’s GM section.
That’s not to say that they didn’t have any fun, or that nothing happened in their series. Its most memorable events include:
- A murder in Man Ray’s apartment building, with him the apparent target.
- Chasing the pulp anti-hero Fantômas through the marbled halls of Thran, while being accused of complicity in his murders and thefts.
- Dalí raising dreamscaping havoc in a Serranian tavern, striking terror into the hearts of its reticent citizens.
- The blossoming of a Dreamlands cult propitiating the dread god Buñuel.
- Giorgio de Chirico confronting his guilt for starting all of this in the first place.
- Going to the top of mount Hatheg-Kla to find the ancient gods of man, having hatched a plan with the poet Louis Aragon to extirpate them.
- Journeying to the shores of Lake Hali to open the coffin of the King in Yellow, only to find Magritte inside.
- Meeting Picasso in a Dreamlands grove, musky with corrupt fecundity. They found him and a minotaur engaged in leisurely congress with voluptuous plant women. The player characters declined Picasso’s offer to join in.
- A picnic with Nyarlathotep, who gave René Magritte a beautiful silver gun.
- A waking world raid on the chateau of a sinister Parisian occultist. There Nyarlathotep’s aforementioned beautiful silver gun took on a will of its own, massacring the servants in a spectacular fountain of gore.
- Salvador Dalí’s fateful meeting with Gala, wife of fellow surrealist Paul Éluard, at his family home in Cadaqués, Spain. His love for her cures him of his laughing fits.
- Shortly thereafter, Buñuel strangling Gala, the other pulling him off her before he kills her.
Items 11 and 12 are well-documented in the historical record. The others can be proven only by visiting the shores of dream, which still bear the scars of what the surrealists did to it ninety years ago.
Dreamhounds of Paris and its companion The Book of Ants are now available for preorder. Print copies will debut at Dragonmeet in London, on December 6th.