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The Book of the Smoke: The Investigator’s Guide to Occult London

20
Apr

This work is a primer for players of Lovecraftian roleplaying games set in the dismal streets of 1930s London.

 

The Guide is replete with contacts, rumours and clues which will guide you on your quest for forbidden knowledge. Written as the companion volume to Bookhounds of London for Trail of Cthulhu, it can be used as a Keeper’s resource as well as an in-game artefact for players in any Mythos game.

In 1933 a mysterious secret society commissioned Augustus Darcy to compile a guide to occult London. By the end of that year, Darcy was dead. Within these tales of The Smoke’s legendary past are scattered clues to its future. Was a magical war brewing? Were forces from other dimensions breaking through into our own? Who were the mysterious Brotherhood? Who killed Augustus Darcy and why? After eighty years Darcy’s book is here for you to make up your own mind. Use it as a guide as you venture into Darcy’s world and may your gods be with you in the days ahead.

It is a work of fiction, an autobiography, an occult miscellany and a murder mystery, a book which should not be read, and yet cannot be cast aside. It is all these things and more, but most of all it is a guide for your own journey through the streets of the Big Smoke.

People who bought this also bought Bookhounds of London, The Book of Ants and The Book of the New Jerusalem.

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Dreamhounds of Paris bundle

12
Oct

From the 1920s to the coming of the Occupation, a new breed of artist prowled the fabled streets of Paris. Combative, disrespectful, irresponsible, the surrealists broke aesthetic conventions, moral boundaries—and sometimes, arms. But until now, no one has revealed what they were really up to. In this comprehensive campaign guide for Trail of Cthulhu, you recreate their mundane and mystical adventures as you stumble onto the Dreamlands, a fantastical realm found far beyond the wall of sleep. At first by happenstance and later by implacable design, you remake it in the fiery image of your own art. Will you save the world, or destroy it?

This bundle contains everything you need to run your own Dreamhounds of Paris campaign:

  • Dreamhounds of Paris – In this comprehensive campaign guide for Trail of Cthulhu, you recreate their mundane and mystical adventures as you stumble onto the Dreamlands, a fantastical realm found far beyond the wall of sleep. At first by happenstance and later by implacable design, you remake it in the fiery image of your own art. Will you save the world, or destroy it?
  • The Book of Ants – Evocative, enigmatic, and haunted by airborne polyps, The Book of Ants, a.k.a Le Livre des Fourmis, gives Trail of Cthulhu Keepers and players an essential window into Paris of the 20s and 30s, and into the Dreamlands beyond.
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Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos

20
Apr

Lovecraft created his various “shadowy congeners” because the stories of vampires, werewolves, and even ghosts had become too familiar and too formulaic to evoke true horror. Almost a century after he wrote, his own monstrous races have likewise begun to seem like comfortable story furniture rather than unnerving signals that the world is horrible and wrong.

In Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos, we present a comprehensive look at Lovecraft’s hideous creatures, from as many angles as we can. Our goal is contradiction, surprise, and most especially the uncanny: the recognition of something familiar as something weird. As in the “Gods and Titans” section of the Trail of Cthulhu core book, this book deliberately contradicts itself, blurring boundaries and erasing certainties in the name of the uncanny. In your campaign, these variant truths might be misunderstandings, legends, heresies, or deliberate lies spread by the creatures to lull their foes into a false sense of familiarity.

Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos is the Trail of Cthulhu bestiary written by Mythos giant Kenneth Hite and fellow experts Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Becky Annison, Helen Gould and Ruth Tillman, in the tradition of the award-winning Book of Unremitting Horror and the 13th Age Bestiary. Creatures are not just antagonists to fight or flee from; they are entire adventures by themselves, leaving physical traces, occult clues and madness in their eldritch wake.

Hideous Creatures: A Bestiary of the Cthulhu Mythos features seven all-new creatures:

Bholes * Colour Out of Space * Elder Things

Flying Polyps * Moon Beasts * Night-gaunts * Spawn of Yog-Sothoth

Plus full write-ups of nine Foul Congeries, opening the books on Lovecraftian monsters that have never taken stat-block form before in any game!

Bat-Things * Black Winged Ones * Gaseous Wraiths

Medusas * Raktajihva * Ultraviolet Devourer

Vampirish Vapour * Worm-Cultist * Y’m-bhi

And new art and in-world documents for each of the fifteen original Hideous Creatures:

Byakhee * Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath * Deep Ones

Ghouls * Great Race of Yith * Hounds of Tindalos

Hunting Horrors * Lloigor * Mi-Go

Rat-Things * Serpent Folk * Shoggoths

Star Vampires * Tcho-Tchos * Wendigo

People who bought this also bought Rough Magicks, The Book of Ants and Dreamhounds of Paris.

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Swords of the Serpentine

20
Apr

A GUMSHOE roleplaying game of swords & sorcery!

by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner

When it’s summer, you smell her before you see her. As you come around the curve of the Serpentine river the scent of the open sea is replaced by the stench of low tide, of boat tar, of rare spices spilled from a smuggler’s ship; of cooking smoke and human waste. Bells ring out across the water and echo like the song of ghosts, loud enough to almost drown out the chanted prayers of your ship’s rowers.

You round the bend past the lower fort and there she is: the great city of Eversink, sprawled out on scores of islands across the sheltered water. Her jeweled and crystal turrets are reflected in a shimmering bay full of hundreds of brightly colored boats. Architecture from a dozen eras towers above a tangle of grand plazas and narrow canals. Temples to her goddess rise above the mansions and tenements, calling her people to prayer. She may be ancient and corrupt, slowly and inexorably swallowed by an endless bog; but she’s alive in a way most cities aren’t. She’s a melding of faith and stone and wood and water – and mud – that’s unique in all the world. 

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve come to kill a rival, earn a fortune, learn a secret, or hire an army. You’re home now, and the Sinking City will embrace you. All you need to do is survive.

Swords of the Serpentine is a sword & sorcery game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city rife with skullduggery and death. The rules adapt the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system to create a fantasy RPG with a focus on high-action roleplaying and investigation inspired by the stories of Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, and others.

Your characters will discover leads that, if followed, propel them headlong into danger and forbidden knowledge. A lead might point the way to sunken treasure, jungle ruins, the missing key to a sorcerous trap, or the true identity of a notorious murderer. The GUMSHOE game mechanics ensure that you’ll always notice leads if you look for them. It’s up to you to choose which one you’ll follow into whatever perils lie ahead, in hopes of fortune, glory, justice, or just staying alive another day.

If you want to track down foul sorcerers in a corrupt and decadent city, clamber through underground ruins to sneak into an enemy’s home and rob them, or wage a secret war against a rival political faction, you’re in the right place.

Swords of the Serpentine offers:

  • A fantasy city of mystery and magic inspired by Lankhmar and Ankh-Morpork
  • Tools for fast and effective character creation
  • A customized combat system that opens the door for cinematic, heroic battles
  • Social combat that targets your enemy’s morale, letting you defeat some foes through wit, guile, and threats
  • Sorcery that allows you to rip apart a tower with the flick of a hand—but are you willing to pay the price in corruption to body and soul?
  • Powerful allegiances that give you influence in one or more factions across the city, but which can earn you equally powerful enemies…
  • Streamlined abilities that power four distinct types of heroes, and which you can mix-and-match across professions to customize your character further
  • Gameplay and rules mechanics that encourage players to help build the world they’re adventuring in
  • Rules for death curses, true names, alchemy, sorcerous items, ghostly possession, political manipulation, and more!

  • Swords of the Serpentine Hero Generator – Matthew Breen’s online tool allows you to build a character from scratch, or randomly generate a starting template for inspiration. Export a finished sheet as a PDF, or create a short-form stat block.
  • Four Heroes: Your Swords of the Serpentine source for pre-made heroes – Kevin Kulp’s short series featuring sample Heroes for each profession.
    • Four Heroes 1 – Sentinel, Sorcerer, Thief and Warrior pre-generated characters.
    • Four Heroes 2 – More Sentinel, Sorcerer, Thief and Warrior pre-generated characters.
    • Four Heroes 3 – Six pre-gens, as used for The Dripping Throne adventure, featuring Sentinel, Sorcerer, Thief, Warrior, pre-gens along with two mixed profession preg-gens, Sorcerer / Thief, and Sentinel /  Sorcerer / Thief.

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