Trail of Cthulhu RPG

Trail of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game from Pelgrane Press released in the spring of 2008. Trail of Cthulhu uses the Gumshoe game resolution system for this investigative RPG. ToC includes both a "purist" and "pulp" rules variations so the storyteller can tailor their game to their own tastes and their gaming group's style of play. While most Call of the Cthulhu RPG adventures are set in the Roaring Twenties, Trail of Cthulhu is set in the 1930s.

The Gumshoe System and Robin D. Laws

The Gumshoe System was designed by Robin D. Laws and is used in several Pelgrane Press games. The first game to use the Gumshoe mechanic was The Esoterrorists. Fear Itself was the second game using Mr. Laws's rpg game resolution system. Mutant City Blues, a modern game blending mutant powers and investigation, also uses the Gumshoe System. The Book of Unremitting Horror and Ashen Stars also use the system.

Trail of Cthulhu: The Purist Version

Trail of Cthulhu - Pelgrane PressThe Trail of Cthulhu purist rules are for those investigators who want to play Lovecraftian horror the way it was "meant" to be played. This means a high mortality rate and a high incidence of insanity. In the purist version of Trail of Cthulhu, your investigators are faced with the creeping suspicion that the world is doomed and there's really nothing they can do to stop the inevitable. The most they can do is delay the return of the Old Ones, to give Earth another day of life. If you and your group play Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder most of the time, you'll need to explain this concept to your players before starting a purist campaign of Trail of Cthulhu.

Trail of Cthulhu: The Pulp Version

The Trail of Cthulhu pulp rules give the investigators a better chance to survive and succeed. The interwar years were the golden age for pulp novels and short stories. In these tales, two-fisted adventurers tended to travel to the still-undiscovered, mysterious corners of the world to fight mad scientists, eastern mystics, and Nazis. In a pulp tale, a larger than life hero tends to brave danger and live to tale the tell. For those gamers who prefer their Depression-era protagonists to live, the Gumshoe pulp variety rules give players a better chance to succeed. That isn't to say danger isn't present.

Gumshoe System Elements

In either version, your characters will have a special ability based on your occupation. Certain skills are cheaper for different professions. Each character is given a Drive, which is a motivation for braving the horrors they see. Sanity and Cthulhu Mythos are stats like in the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but a system exists for mitigating the effects of these. For every 3 points in sanity, a player must include a Pillar of Sanity, which is a human concern that bolsters their ties to the world beyond the horrors they see. In a pulp game, the players receives "build points" to improve a character between sessions. Magic is available in both spell and ritual form, though ones stability rating is drained quickly when using magic of any kind.

Ancient Old Ones in Trail of Cthulhu

One interesting aspect of Trail of Cthulhu is the writeup section for the various outer gods and ancient old ones. Each god-monster include 5-10 different ideas or interpretations of the character. A gamemaster can use one of these character seeds to present the monstrous god in exactly the light they prefer. I've found that, when highlighting a second cult of this same god, it also adds depth to the horror to find the monster being worshipped in an entirely different way. This might sound arcane, so let me give you an example.

In the Chaugnar Faugn writeup for Trail of Cthulhu, you are told that the truth about Chaugnar Faugn might be one or more of the following ideas:

Besides being nice little tidbits and factoids to throw at the investigators, each represents a logical extrapolation from Chaugnar Faugn's depictions in books and short stories. Once you start to mix and match aspects of each possible interpretation, the investigators begin to see a picture of a monster so cosmic and so alien that it does become horrible to envision. Chaugnar Faugh isn't the embodiment of time, but "time as a force"--I guess you could say entropy. Imagine a thing which only touches our universe every so often, but leaves behind a corruption of our plane when it does: ready-made icons for mortals to worship. Then imagine the freaks who would worship such a thing.

Anyway, that's just one tiny aspect of this 250-page rulebook by Kenneth Hite. But even if you don't intend on playing Trail of Cthulhu, buying the core book is worth it to any Cthulhu gamemaster just to have the various descriptions and interpretations of Cthulhu mythos god-beings. Picking and choosing from these aspects should add depth and horror to the depictions of your Cthulhu Mythos monsters.

Pelgrane Press Ltd

Pelgrane Press Limited is a London-based British RPG publishing company that was founded in 1999. The owners of Pelgrane Press are Simon J. Rogers and Sasha Bilton. In its early days, Pelgrane Press's most famous contribution to the role-playing world was the Dying Earth Roleplaying Game. Pelgrane Press also produced Skulduggery.

The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game is basd on the Hugo award-winning novels by Jack Vance. The Dying Earth RPG was written by Robin D. Laws, Peter Freeman, and John Snead.

Ashen Stars RPG

Ashen Stars is described as a "gritty space opera game" and is the latest product by Pelgrane Press to use the Gumshoe System. Ashen Stars contains 7 playable species, including the tragic vas mal, the tavak warrior-race, the serial immortals known as the kch-thk, the nature-loving balla, phase-masters known as durugh, and the cybes, who are cybernetically-altered humans. The seventh and final race you can play are humans, of course.