A Poison Tree is a campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, a generational saga that spans the globe and 350 years of history. The players take on different roles across five chapters and three interludes, beginning in rural Wales in the seventeenth century, passing through settings as diverse as revolutionary-era Massachusetts, South Africa in the 1890s, […]
Category Archives: Trail of Cthulhu
The scene: your Trail of Cthulhu game. The speaker: A player. “All right, I’m sick of being fed bafflegab by these mystic jerks, and I don’t want to read any more books that will keep me up for a calendar month with waking nightmares. We take the train to Providence, Rhode Island, go to” [quick […]
Ruth, over on the Illuminerdy, reviewed the Doomsday Edition of Cthulhu Apocalypse. Thanks Ruth! You can find the entire review on the Illuminerdy. Ruth says, “I found the Apocalypse Machine engaging in its versatility. It allows for an immense variety of apocalypses with even more resulting situations. A lot of post-apocalyptic writing, even in gaming, locks […]
See Page XX A Column about Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When we of the Pelgrane-Industrial Complex write and test GUMSHOE scenarios, we take care to avoid short circuits—moments that, early in play, could conceivably allow the investigators to abruptly move to the end of the story. The dissatisfactions of short-circuiting are various. The players […]
Pharmacist A Trail of Cthulhu GMC in Armitage Files format Name: Frank Warren Physical Description: late 50s, papery complexion, thinning hair Sinister: Frank Warren became a pharmacist to make use of the alchemical secrets his father taught him from the family collection of moldering Renaissance manuscripts. He chose to operate in this desperate urban neighborhood […]
If you’ve ever tried to research a painter on the net, you might have noticed a paradox: many sites dedicated to historical visual artists are ugly, outdated, and haphazard. A site called Artsy addresses this gap by presenting itself as a clearinghouse of articles and images for the visual arts. Dreamhounds of Paris Keepers might […]
A while back we had a creepy rhapsody over archived crime scene photos from the NYPD, as useful handouts in Trail of Cthulhu games. On a like note, let’s applaud the team who took historical photos of New York as digitized by the New York Public Library and keyed them to a map of the […]
Pookie reviewed Dulce et Decorum Est on Reviews from R’lyeh. You can check out the full review here. Thanks Pookie! “Dulce et Decorum Est gives the tools for the Keeper to run scenarios set during the war, plus numerous good ideas…Physically, Dulce et Decorum Est is solidly presented. The art is excellent” On the Vaterland […]
By Tony Williams This exercise was far more difficult than previous character sheet designs I’ve done. My first problem was getting past the intimidating presence of the great art in itself and then the second was doing something I felt lived up to the design work put into the book. I was flummoxed trying to […]
Here is an example of Trail of Cthulhu combat, in which three plucky adventures confront a crypt-dwelling corpse-eater. Dramatis Personae The consumptive Professor Oberon Lankwiller Player: Larry Health 5, [no rating in Firearms], Scuffling 4 Weapon: Webley revolver +0 Hit Threshold: 3 The brash Tag Hunter Player: Tina Health 13, Firearms 10, Weapons 8, Scuffling […]