In the shadowy world of The Fall of Delta Green, you never know who’s got clearance, not to mention who’s got your back … and who’s got your back in his sights. The Company man – the man from the CIA – might fit any of those descriptions, or any other. That’s kind of the point, […]
Category Archives: Trail of Cthulhu
I ran two Trail of Cthulhu sessions over the weekend (a stealth proof-of-concept of a possible upcoming setting). At a three or four hour convention game, the pressure of time means every scene has to count. There’s little time for backtracking or encounters that don’t go anywhere, and that pressure’s compounded if you’ve got a […]
“Knowledge was knowledge a hundred thousand years ago, when our especial forbears were shambling about Asia as speechless semi-apes!” — H.P. Lovecraft, “The Last Test” It’s a new year, and time for the “Call of Chicago” column to seamlessly shift from endless iterations of Stuff We Left Out of The Dracula Dossier to endless iterations […]
As extensively, nay giddily, described in a recent episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, the two of us received a sneak peek at the books on display in the Royal College of Physicians’ current John Dee exhibition. Among the treasures we examined was Dee’s copy of Trithemius’ Polygraphie. Its pages include several volvelles, […]
Ken’s upcoming Fall of Delta Green will get Trail of Cthulhu as far into the modern era as it’s likely to go for a while. In the meantime, here’s a quick and dirty ability list with which GUMSHOE investigators can learn too much about the Mythos in 2015 and beyond. With its forensic procedural […]
The Secret War is coming to England. Will you be ready? It is 1927. As Britain continues her slow recovery, August Darcy, a young journalist, is seized with a strange obsession. He must recover the very essence of England – her traditions, customs, and legends – and he must do that even at the cost […]
In Raymond Chandler’s short story “Nevada Gas,” Johnny De Ruse, one of his proto-Marlowe protagonists, pays a hotel detective for answers to questions. In GUMSHOE terms, he’s clearly using the Bargaining ability. Before De Ruse gives him the dough, he extracts a promise not to tip off the man he’s investigating. A few beats later, […]
The Eternal Lies Limited Edition Eternal Lies is our tribute to the great epic Call of Cthulhu adventures such as Masks of Nyarlathotep and Beyond the Mountains of Madness. Eternal Lies was released at GenCon 2013, won two ENnie awards and has its own fan community and now has an alternative ending. We printed 125 […]
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, […]
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 […]