The following memo was found in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It sheds light on the complicated relationship between the surrealist Dreamhounds of Paris and both the French Communist Party (PCF) and the intelligence arm of its Soviet masters. July 6, 1932 To: Trofim Lysenko, Russian Academy of Sciences From: Konstantin Strezhakov, […]
Tag Archives: Trail of Cthulhu
a column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Looking for a new way to spark ideas for your next player character? Consider stealing a dramatic pole from classic literature. As Hillfolk players know, a dramatic pole is the essential opposition that defines a character tuned for, you guessed it, dramatic storytelling. It allows the character […]
While running Trail of Cthulhu for the first time might be intimidating, never fear – there are a wealth of resources to guide you through your first games: New Trail of Cthulhu Keeper questions and advice on Yog-Sothoth.com GUMSHOE 101, Kevin Kulp’s helpful overview of GUMSHOE The Enchiridion of Elucidation, a guidebook for both players […]
Dreamhounds of Paris already stretches Trail of Cthulhu’s default time frame by covering events of the surrealist movement from the 1920s. While researching the book I found some details ripe for Lovecraftian parallel that fell on the other side of the time divide. Although the surrealist movement never recovers from the Occupation and the flight […]
by Scott Dorward A Poison Tree, which was announced late last year, is an epic campaign for Trail of Cthulhu. This takes the form of a generational saga that spans the globe and 350 years of history. Matthew Sanderson, Paul Fricker and I have been developing it for the last 18 months, and we are […]
See P. XX A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The surrealist films your player characters help to create as the Dreamhounds of Paris one day wind up on YouTube. The ones fit for human observation, at any rate. In 1928, expat American photographer and painter Man Ray and French poet Robert Desnos […]
One figure I’d hoped to feature as a possible player character in Dreamhounds of Paris is the painter Yves Tanguy. His imaginary biomorphic landscapes seem as dreamlandish as better-documented movement cohorts Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, or André Masson. Their undulating forms evoke a primordial soup on the verge of spawning life. His careful delineations of […]
A Dreamlands Location When traveling through the Dreamlands, especially when accompanied by Luis Buñuel or Salvador Dalí, one may come upon La Abadía de los Putrefactos, an imposing structure of suffocating order. It appears as a counterforce after you move the Dreamlands too quickly toward chaos and freedom. Should you attempt to move away from […]
Dreamhounds of Paris’ sandbox structure requires players to know what they want to do as their surrealists explore and alter the Dreamlands. Knowing what you want from a sandbox roleplaying environment can be harder than it sounds. Luckily, the unconscious automatism so beloved by the historical surrealists can come to your rescue. Just scour the […]
A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When we think of doing a haunted house horror scenario, we tend to look to The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise) and its cousin The Legend of Hell House (1973, John Hough.) This plot template pits a seasoned group of paranormal investigators against a home infested by […]