Bookhounds of London

An Ennie- and Golden Geek-award-winning supplement for Trail of Cthulhu.

These cycles of experience, of course, all stem from that worm-riddled book. I remember when I found it – in a dimly lighted place near the black, oily river where the mists always swirl.
– The Book

Forbidden Tomes

Bookhounds of London is a brand new campaign setting for Trail of Cthulhu, packed with period detail, where the Investigators seek out books about horror and strangeness and become, seemingly inevitably, drawn into the horror themselves. It provides in-depth material on London in the 1930s, carefully slanted towards Mythos investigators.

An Ancient City

Bookhounds’ London is a city of cinemas, electric lights, global power and the height of fashion. It’s about the horrors – the cancers – that lurk in the capital, in the very beating heart of human civilization. A Templar altar might well crouch, mostly forgotten, in the dreary Hackney Marshes, but altars to false gods tower over the metaphorical swamps of Fleet Street and Whitehall. And as for lost, prehuman ruins … who’s to say what lies under London, if you dig deep enough?

Terrible Choices

The PCs aren’t stalwart G-men or tweedy scholars exploring forbidden frontiers. Instead, they acquire maps (and maybe guidebooks) to those forbidden frontiers from fusty libraries and prestigious auction houses. They are Book-Hounds, looking for profit in mouldy vellum and leather bindings, balancing their own books by finding first editions for Satanists and would-be sorcerers. They may not quite know what they traffic in, or they may know rather better than their clientele, but needs must when the bills come in. This volume includes:

• 32 authentic full-colour maps with unique new street index of London in the 1930s, and plans of major buildings.
• A Mythos take on London in the 1930s, packed with contacts, locations and rumours.
• New abilities such as Document Analysis, Auction and Forgery, as well as new occupations and Drives.
• Full statistics for a host of new and horrible Mythos creatures to pit against the Bookhounds.
• Whitechapel Black-Letter, a brand new adventure which takes Bookhounds through the bleak East End of London on the trail of a powerful 15th century grimoire.

With Bookhounds, Kenneth Hite creates a rich sandbox full of dusty tomes, crooked dealers and dark alleys, a perfect setting for any Mythos investigation.

A Detailed Guide to London in the 1930s

Bookhounds of London also features a complete, indexed street map of London, recreated and adapted from original sources, packed with over 200 locations essential to Investigators. Whatever system you play, this is an essential resource for Mythos roleplayers. The PDF version is fully cross-referenced. The cartography in Bookhounds won a silver ENnie award.

See the complete reviews to date here

Not only does Bookhounds make me want to run a game, it makes me feel confident that I could run that game well. Many supplements place the burden of extracting a game from their contents on the Keeper; this book does not. As an unconfident and less experienced Keeper, this is excellent. If you only get one supplement for Trail of Cthulhu, this should be it.

Whomever, decides to buy it will certainly get their money’s worth and more. This is a beautifully and hauntingly illustrated book, in which the graphics are not horrific but do instill a certain sense of dread. I would commend Pelgrane Press once again for creating yet another beautiful product that is both attractive, functional and serves a multitude of purposes.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a gamebook which so carefully integrated the character of the city with the character of the play. It is an imaginary London, but one vivid and playable … Bookhounds could obviously be easily used by a traditional Call of Cthulhu GM and I’d recommend they pick it up. Anyone with an interested in London or England in the first half of the 20th Century should consider it as well.

To the usual Trail mix of Pulp vanilla and Purist chocolate, we now get rainbow sherbert Arabesque, rocky road sordid, and disgustingly neon Technicolor. We can only hope that Pelgrane provides more support for this line so as to give us more of what is otherwise an impressive and inspirational book.

People who bought this also bought Cthulhu Apocalypse, The Book of the Smoke and Out of Space.