Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates, Video Games | Tagged: Bundle of Holding, entertainment, gaming, H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Hite, Robin Laws, rpg, The Trail of Cthulhu

Investigate The Horrors With The Trail of Cthulhu Bundling of Holding

By Christopher Helton

One of those givens is that tabletop gamers have an interest in the creations of H.P. Lovecraft. Previously in the Bundle of Holding you found Lovecraftian horrors in the modern world, and now you can investigate The Trail of Cthulhu with the Gumshoe system from Pelgrane Press. Customized to facilitate investigations in your role-playing games, the Gumshoe system was designed by game designer and novelist Robin Laws (and used in games such as Essoterrorists, Mutant City Blues and Ashen Stars) and then reinvisioned for the Cthulhu mythos by designer Kenneth Hite. For a couple more days you can pick up this game in DRM-free PDF form from the Bundle of Holding.

As always a portion of the money raised by the Bundle of Holding goes to a charity of the designers' choice, this time 10% of the money will go to Cancer Research UK and The Heart Research Institute.

For only $8.95 you receive the core collection of The Trail of Cthulhu, the Keeper's Resource Book & Screen and Stunning Eldritch Tales.

Trail of Cthulhu is a complete game of investigative horror set in the 1930s based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft. The game uses an adapted and enlarged version of Gumshoe, a rules system that offers a laser-like focus on investigation, and encourages characters driven to explore and investigate, even at the expense of their own health and sanity. While licensing the background and creatures seen in Chaosium Games Call of Cthulhu games, Trail of Cthulhu builds on this foundation and give Keepers and players new mysteries to solve and new Lovecraftian horrors to face. Even if you use another game for your Cthuhlu fix, you will find a number of things in Trail of Cthulhu to enrich your games. Designer Ken Hite is probably one of the best horror designers in tabletop RPGs, and certainly one of the best versed in Lovecraft and his writings.

One interesting approach for Trail of Cthulhu is how it makes the character's drive to investigate the weird and terrifying world an important part of the game. For me, this was always a draw of the original stories, watching the characters of Lovecraft's fiction get drawn into their stories and how it would feed them into wanting to know more and more. With Trail of Cthulhu you get game mechanics to back this, coupled with a character's Sanity and Stability, to map the erosion of their minds as they further descend into the darkness.

In Stunning Eldritch Tales you get four adventures to help you map out your ongoing Trail of Cthulhu games. Presented like a 1903s pulp adventure magazine, this book gives you hooks and stores upon which to start the characters adventures in a world of Lovecraftian horror.

The Trail of Cthulhu Keeper's Screen gives you the most important tables, rules, and references for Gumshoe. Combat, contests, tests, and the mind-shattering Stability tables are there at your fingertips, letting you spend more time GMing and less fumbling through rulebooks. And, on the players' side, Jérôme Huguenin's breathtaking artwork will add to your game's eldritch atmosphere.

Included with the screen is the Keeper's Resource Book, not the last scribbled words of a madman, but a carefully researched collection of clues, special benefits, game-relevant historical data, NPCs and occupational information for use in play. Each ability includes1930s equipment and practices, focused on their use in adventures to bring your game to life. Sprinkle the sample clues we provide, and offer the listed special benefits to your players.

These DRM-free PDFs alone retail for $38 and they can be yours for $8.95. Then, if you pay over the Bundle of Holding's threshold amount (roughly $21 at the time of this writing), you also receive a number of additional PDFs (and music!) to enrich and expand your Trail of Cthulhu games.

Arkham Detective Tales by Gareth Hanrahan gives you a wealth of information about the New York City of the 1930s, and the terrible horrors that plague it within the game's world. A series of extended adventures featuring the investigations of the detectives of NYC's finest fill out this book. If you aren't playing a campaign based around New York police, it should be easy enough to adapt this material to your games as well. Despite the difference in time periods, this supplement made me think of the BBC America series Copper. Taking the themes of that series, refitting them to the 30s time period and adding the arcane horrors of Trail of Cthulhu would come up with a great campaign.

Hite's Bookhounds of London expands upon one of the campaign frames from the core Trail of Cthulhu book. Instead of detectives, police officers or G-Men, you play a group of collectors and sellers of rare and unusual books…often dealing with the dark arts or blasphemous ideas. As a bookhound you may not believe in what the books you sell are talking about, at least not at first, but as the strange occurrences start to pile up it will be harder and harder to ignore the truths within the books you sell. The supplement also gives an expanded look at London of the 1930s, with maps and building plans, as well as NPCs and potential contacts for players who are part of the occult world of London of the era. The book also introduces new mechanics, new drives for characters who are in the bibliophile lifestyle.

Rough Magicks, also by Hite, adds a more Robert E. Howard element to your Trail of Cthulhu games by bringing the worlds of magic into your campaigns. Magic itself was not as important of an element to Lovecraft, but many of the later Cthulhu Mythos writers, especially the Mythos works of Howard, brought a great deal of magic to the stories. With this supplement you can add these elements to your campaigns as well.

In The Armitage Files Laws introduces new improvisational methods of game mastering for the Keeper, driven by the choices made by players when their characters are presented with various documents in the game. The clues that the players decide to follow shape the adventure and guide the direction in which the campaign moves. For game masters who have never used a "sandbox" style of play in their campaigns, this can be an eye-opening experience, and Laws guides Trail of Cthulhu Keepers through the hows and whys of this style of play in this supplement.

The Book of the Smoke is an interesting supplement because it is also an in-game artifact as well. Intended for the Bloodhounds of London campaign frame, this book was an exploration of London's occult world written (in-game) by Augustus Darcy. Out of game this supplement was written and designed by Paula Dempsey. The Book of the Smoke goes into greater detail about the people and places of 1930s occult London, giving rumors and stories about the setting that can be used to flesh out a campaign set there (whether it uses Trail of Cthulhu or not).

Finally, Four Shadows isn't a book or a game supplement. It is four pieces of music by musician James Semple to help Keepers set the tone and feeling of a Trail of Cthulhu game. These four DRM-free MP3s are able to be used by Keepers in the media player of their choice. These evocative instrumental pieces wouldn't be out of place if they were included in the soundtrack to your favorite horror movie.

The Trail of Cthulhu Bundle of Holding closes at 11am EST on Thursday, May 15^th so get this deal while you still can.

Christopher Helton is a blogger, podcaster and tabletop RPG publisher who talks about games and other forms of geekery at the long-running Dorkland! blog. He is also the co-publisher at the ENnie Award winning Battlefield Press, Inc.  You can find him on Twitter at @dorkland and on G+ at https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherHelton/ where he will talk your ear off about gaming and comics.

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