Trail of Cthulhu is an award-winning Gumshoe-powered Lovecraftian mystery RPG. Publisher Pelgrane Press has a crowdfunding campaign, now several times over its funding goal, running for the next week on BackerKit.
The second edition of Trail of Cthulhu significantly expands the game and has two new adventures. You can join the dangerous darkness over on BackerKit.
You can sample the game now and for free with the quickstart available now.
Designed by Robin D. Laws, the Gumshoe system streamlines investigative gameplay by ensuring players always have the clues to progress the story.
Gamemasters are provided with resources to design horror mystery adventures, including guidelines for creating Cthulhuoid creatures, cults, and narrative frameworks for long-running campaigns. Players have a variety of abilities and options for character customization, including motivations for investigating the Cthulhu Mythos.
The game offers different play styles with specific rules and advice. The Purist style emphasizes philosophical horror and cosmic dread, while the Pulp style provides a more action-oriented experience.
You can listen to an actual play with A Ravenous Hunger.
Acclaimed game designer and Lovecraft scholar Kenneth Hite remixes the Cthulhu Mythos, providing players with eldritch tomes to sift for blasphemous lore and spells, and with a horde of unnatural monstrosities to battle with such knowledge. Award-winning RPG adventure creator and best-selling fantasy novelist Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan adds a wealth of advice and tools for building your own mysteries and for exciting improvised play.
Fans can support the project with just £1, giving them access to the pledge manager.
At £25, backers get the PDF of Trail of Cthulhu 2e when it’s ready.
Those who can step to £40 get the PDF of the core rules, Boundary of the Darkness, and digital stretch goals.
£60 backers, aka Deep Ones, get the full-colour hardback of Trail of Cthulhu plus the PDFs of the rules, Boundary of the Darkness and The Kingsbury Horror.
The three-panel GM screen, The Kingsbury Horror print version, and the Syrinscape audioscape for the game are added to the previous loot for backers at £125.
The last normal tier is £150, which adds the print of Boundary of the Darkness, the GM subscription for The Black Book, game dice in a bag and a set of maps.
After this, we have limited tiers: £250, £500, £750 and £1,000, which include faux-leatherbound editions, custom art, access to developers and writers through Zoom and a custom one-shot created for you.
The campaign ends soon, on the 8th of November.
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