Review: Eternal Lies from Pelgrane Press

I love campaigns for Call of Cthulhu.  Since the early 1980's, one of Chaosium's advantages was putting together those campaign-length, multi-stage horror investigations like Shadows of Yog Sothoth, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Brotherhood of the Beast, and many more.  The upcoming publication of Eternal Lies, from Pelgrane Press, is a clear statement that Trail of Cthulhu is not only going to deliver the same kind of epic experiences, but they're going to continue to refine the form and push adventure writing into new places.

After spending the past few weeks reading this 400 page monster, Pelgrane has far exceeded my expectations.

Let me start by saying that Eternal Lies is the latest work I've seen that takes a self-referential approach to the "Cthulhu investigation genre".  A group of investigators, much like your typical 1920's Call of Cthulhu characters, failed spectacularly at disrupting a cult summoning in the year 1924.  (I believe the cover image up there shows the 1920's guys about to get handed their rear-ends).  Shattered and disbanded, the few survivors have malingered in the asylum or home care, unable to come to terms with the horrors they experienced all those years ago.  (I've known some PC's that ended up like that, too).

Now it's more than 10 years later.  A wealthy patron hires a diverse set of characters to investigate the affairs of her late-father, who was never the same man after a mysterious event in 1924 (the botched Cthulhu investigation referenced above).  Starting with a pair of simple interviews at an asylum in the deep South, the campaign quickly thrusts the player characters into planning a series of world-spanning explorations that take them from a South East Asian pit fighting arena (ala Blood Sport), to the deserts of the Great Rift Valley, the jungles of the Yucatan, even to the peaks of Tibet.

Masks of Nyarlathotep is arguably the greatest Cthulhu campaign (it certainly headlines most of the discussions), and this campaign is a descendant and successor in a few of key ways.  It involves a world-spanning cult with unique, local iterations and challenges, much the way the cults in Masks are facets of a whole.  More importantly, the early locales give the players enough pointers to the global destinations that the players can prosecute their investigation of the cult in any order.  That right there is the classic Masks structure.

The overarching theme of Eternal Lies is corruption, and the adventure does a fantastic job of grinding stability and sanity from the investigators and threatening them with effects that corrupt their character's thoughts, souls, and ultimately, their physical bodies.  It wouldn't be surprising if one investigator ended up in the asylum, only capable of babbling incoherently in "the Tongue of Lies"; a second is forced to assume the ascetic life of a monk; while the third spends their remaining days covered up in heavy clothing, unwilling to show the mouth-like growths that grew on their forearms and must remain forever gagged lest they spout gibberish from beneath the sleeves.  Of course, that character could choose... amputation.  Gruesome stuff.  I'd anticipate a high body count and a fair amount of investigator "turnover" over the course of this particular campaign.

I'm not going to spoil the identity of the godlike horror behind the cult, nor discuss much about the end of Eternal Lies.  The identity of "the Liar from Beyond", the object of the cult's veneration, is one of the central mysteries of the campaign.  The ending holds plenty of surprises and twists that should be saved for play.  I'm satisfied with how it concludes.  Longtime fans of the genre will guess the identity of the "the Liar" long before the ending.  They'll still be unsettled by the twists before the final credits roll.

The rules set is Trail of Cthulhu.  Trail uses a resource management approach such that players are constantly making choices to deplete their resources (and have an easier time in the early going) but risk needing those resources later and having a tougher time.  Depending on your point of view, the resource system is either designed to give players equal spotlight time, or challenge group planning and strategy with resource management - game-style.  The authors do a good job of addressing both philosophies, with frequent "antagonist reactions" that maintain pressure on resources.  As the first Trail of Cthulhu published setting, the campaign includes advice on managing character Drives, Pillars of Sanity, resource pool refreshes, pacing, along with the aforementioned antagonist reactions.  The presence of Drives and Pillars of Sanity are important factors that tether the characters to their regular, day-to-day lives back home.  They're one of the important differentiators in Trail of Cthulhu, so it's nice to see them featured prominently in the campaign.

Eternal Lies is 400 pages, divided into 9 separate adventures.  Playing once a week, I'm thinking it'd be a 6-8 month endeavor to run this end-to-end.  Or longer.  Since I preordered, I've been reading the black & white PDF, with layout and art; the hardcover should be available later this summer.  You may still be able to preorder here:  Eternal Lies.

I'm on my second read-through.  This is an excellent campaign, highly recommended, which confronts the players with a diverse series of locales and investigation types, while showing off the strengths of the Trail of Cthulhu rules set (ie, Gumshoe).  I imagine a fan-conversion to Call of Cthulhu will be along shortly after publication.  Eternal Lies is right at the top of my queue for next games to run, and I plan to kick it off as a regular game as soon as we wrap up our current thing (probably early August).  Unfortunately, this one is on the mature side; the cults the players investigate involve plenty of drugs, sex, violence, drugs, violence, sex, and more drugs.  And big freaky mouths that try to eat you.  We won't be letting our younger players in on this particular campaign.

I may not be able to hold out for the hardcover edition, and could need to start running it off the pre-order PDF.  Now, if I were really lucky, some kind-hearted Pelgrane chap would pop in over here and let us know it would be ready for Gencon and that I can pick up a copy right there at the Pelgrane Booth, like Night's Black Agents last year.  Sometimes the stars are right.

Happy Father's Day and Free RPG News

Free RPG Day was partially successful.  None of the "game stores" in the area participated, so I had to drive out to the King of Prussia area in PA to find the nearest place.  Despite calling ahead the day before, it was still a mess when I got there.  The guy I spoke to on Friday told me to swing by when they opened at 10am, the clerk at 10am Saturday said they weren't giving away the free RPG stuff until noon, and it would be through random drawings, and I needed to hang out all day to have a chance at getting something.  (I'm not kidding - that's how they were managing it).  After a quick call to the manager, the clerk came to see things my way, and I was able to grab the primary book I was after (the LOTFP "Better Than Any Man").  There were some other things to get at the shop, and I went home mostly happy.  I'm used to stores in year's past letting you pick more than one title, so I missed out on the S&W and DCC items this year.

"Better Than Any Man" looks fantastic - it's 96 pages, well produced, and covers a ton of adventuring locales and plot hooks.  I've only had the chance to leaf through it, but if appears to treat game balance and your campaign setting with the same callous disregard we've come to expect and love from the LOTFP line.  I'll get a review up this week.

MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP COMPANION !!
Out of the blue, Yog-Sothoth.com has put up their massive reference book for Masks of Nyarlathotep.  Happy Father's Day indeed!  This thing has been worked on as a community project for over 5 years, and for a long time, it looked like it was going to be commercial (like maybe a Chaosium "monograph").  One reason I've held off running Masks so long was the possibility of seeing this thing get finished.  It combines the efforts and experiences of many Mask's keepers on getting the most out of the campaign.  Now I'm glad my players recently chose to do a few Delta Green one shots, it means when we circle back and take on Masks at a later time, I'll have the companion to look at.

(I'm going to recommend anyone grabbing to drop some Innsmouth Gold in the Yog Sothoth tip jar - as a 550 page PDF monster, I'm sure downloads of the Companion are going to rock their bandwidth costs).

I'll just point out to the OSR folks - yes, it's true, sometimes these labors-of-love community projects make it through to the end.  Hang in there, Petty Gods.

ETERNAL LIES
Pelgrane Press recently had a pre-order for their massive Eternal Lies campaign for Trail of Cthulhu.  This one has been in playtest and writing for a few years, and the snippets you hear from the playtest reports are absolutely glowing.  It's pretty clear the writers set out to create a sweeping campaign that pays homage to MASKS while breaking new ground, and the overarching structure is reminiscent (in a good way).  So far, I've been reading the pre-release PDF on the tablet, and I'm super impressed with the campaign so far.  It releases later this summer  - maybe in time for Gencon, if I'm lucky.  I'll put together a better preview once I've gotten through the whole thing.

(Understandably, Eternal Lies one is not free, but I've been meaning to mention it on the blog).

Cthulhu Gaming Roundup: Pelgrane and Chaosium news

Here is some hearsay and news coming out of the Pelgrane and Chaosium booths at Gencon, as well as a reader request for more Pagan Publishing news.

Pelgrane Press
I spent some time at the Pelgrane booth, and Simon Rogers, the owner of the company, is always approachable.  Rumors on the message boards have been swirling of excellent play test reports about Pelgrane's epic sized Trail of Cthulhu campaign, Eternal Lies.  They've been suggesting a publishing date of November 2012.  The new piece I heard is that Pelgrane is considering a slip case with multiple books, since boxed sets would move it into a different tax classification.  Personally, I'd much prefer a slip case for multiple books than a boxed set, so that's all good.

Kenneth Hite was at the booth and was willing to discuss his upcoming projects.  Mythos Expeditions is a campaign frame where a university group, like Miskatonic University, sponsors archaeological expeditions to far off places.  I'm stunned it's taken 30+ years for someone to build out a published campaign around this theme of exploration, and I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to this one.  Many of Lovecraft's best stories invoke the theme; At the Mountains of Madness, The Nameless City, The Shadow Out of Time.  It should be full of ideas that are useable across game systems and genres.  Ken indicated he's wrapping up the rules, initial scenario, and scenario guidelines, and then the Pelgrane freelancers would fill out the remaining scenarios.

Being an OSR aficionado myself, I had to ask about the LOFTP adventure in Ken's queue.  (Mr Raggi roped in Ken to write an adventure as part of his hardcover LOTFP indiegogo campaign a few months back).  Ken described it as a mashup between Apocalypse Now, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; an adventure across a scarred battleground in a fantastic war between godly arcane wizards.   Sounds intriguing;  we don't have a lot of fantasy adventures with the horrors of war in the backdrop, and earth-blasting magic is a viable stand-in for the destructive power of 20th century technology.  Queue Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

A few other Pelgrane projects were discussed; Dreamhounds of Paris is underway, Robin Laws is writing that one.  Although I enjoyed Bookhounds, I find I'm much more interested in Pelgrane's adventures than settings, so I'm cautiously interested.  For Night's Black Agents, Ken is working on The Dracular Dossier, a book similar in theme and approach to The Armitage Files, but involving a hunt for Dracula in the modern world, using NBA's spy thriller rules set.  Gareth Hanrahan will take it forward.  My need to mash up Delta Green and Night's Black Agents is currently a faint siren song in a distant room; soon it will be an unavoidable symphony, driving me to madness.  I better start reading Night's Black Agents in earnest.

Chaosium News
The big news is that Chaosium has launched a Kickstarter.  A few days ago, they announced a push to get Horror on the Orient Express, a classic boxed set campaign that's been out of print for 20+ years, updated and back in circulation.  View it here:  Orient Express Kickstarter.  They've neared $40k in two days with a month and a half to go, doubling their $20k goal.  Good to see.

I never owned Orient Express myself, so it'll be excellent to get a shiny new copy of one of Chaosium's classic campaigns.  More importantly, it shows that Chaosium is paying attention to the game-o-sphere and willing to crowd fund some much-sought after reprints.  One can only hope an updated, deluxe version of Beyond the Mountains of Madness is next in the queue.  Alas, Orient Express is targeted to be ready for Gencon 2013, a year away.  Better funding won't necessarily improve their production times.

Pagan Publishing
The guys at the Pagan booth were chatty and willing to talk about various Delta Green campaigns and adventures, but very noncommittal about the timing of the reboot.  (On various podcasts and going back to Gencon 2011, Pagan has been discussing a new version of Delta Green that updates the setting for the post-911 world scene and the USA's 'War on Terror').  My appeal to readers is whether anyone made it to the Pagan Publishing seminar Saturday night and could post some news?  My group hit the road after dinner Saturday, and I had to miss it; there's still a chance it was recorded and will make it out on a podcast feed.

A Review of the Black Drop

Shortly after reading The Black Drop, I knew it was one of the first Trail of Cthulhu adventures we had to play.  It has the right blend of exotic locale, real world history, weird horror, and moral difficulty to generate a memorable horror game.  Plus - for the D&D and fantasy gamers out there - the ideas behind this one make for a great inspiration in your fantasy or weird horror game, if you don't mind filing off the serial numbers.

The adventure involves the Kerguelen islands, a small cluster of islands in the far south of the Indian Ocean just outside of the Antarctic circle.  A steamer (with the characters on board) is headed to the islands to retrieve a failing French colony of shepherds, while across the islands are littered encampments from the age of whaling.  Unbeknownst to the players at the start of the adventure, a sinister group of Nazi scientists are on their way to the islands as well.

The Kerguelens are the topmost remains of the sunken Kerguelen plateau, which was home to the ancient Lemurian empire; as the players explore the island, they even encounter Lemurian artifacts.  The adventure revolves around the stirring of an ancient god, a 30 year astronomical cycle, ambiguity whether the colonists or the scientists can be trusted, and some difficult moral choices that force horrible decisions on the players.

The scenario is fairly open ended, and the players have a lot of choice around where they want to go and how they want to explore the island.  Time is a factor, as there's an impending astronomical event that drives some of the action, and antagonist reactions also drive some events, but otherwise this is a freer structure than many investigations.  It also offers a lot of interesting role playing situations for the keeper.

Some groups don't like body horror, or psychological horror, or having to do bad things, and this adventure confronts the investigators with decisions concerning the latter, so there's some fair warning.  My own group is not comprised of horror enthusiasts, and they thoroughly enjoyed the scenario, although the body count was quite high.  I'd recommend using the pre-generated characters and running this one as a one-shot, rather than integrating it into a campaign.

I highly recommend the scenario, it's one of the strongest in the Trail of Cthulhu line, and the investigation ends up feeling quite epic and action oriented for such a short jaunt.  I've often called it the "lite" version of Beyond the Mountains of Madness.  It's written by Jason Morningstar, an RPG designer in his own right (Fiasco), and the PDF format makes it a great way to test drive Trail of Cthulhu - the adventure is 40 pages, with 6 pre-generated characters, maps and handouts, and should cover two nights of gaming (6-8 hours).

Cthulhu Gaming Patronage

Pagan Publishing had an amazing run of hit books starting in the late 1990's culminating with their Delta Green setting for  modern Call of Cthulhu.  I keep hearing on the message boards that an update to Delta Green is in the works, as well as a move towards publishing their books in PDF through One Book Shelf.  In the meantime, a few of the authors that contributed to Pagan's catalog have some related kickstarters to check out:

The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man
This is a Dreamlands campaign starting out in 1920's New York.  Pagan's previous forays into the Dreamlands are more on the nightmare side than Lord Dunsany, so there's no doubt this will be a darker interpretation of the Otherworld.  Dennis Detwiller is a creative double threat here, writing and drawing the campaign himself; he has a lot of cool stuff on his blog to check out:  Nothing Can Stop the Blog.

Bumps in the Night
John H. Crowe III wrote and contributed to a number of Pagan's early Cthulhu books, like Mortal Coils and Coming Full Circle, and is the author on this collection of 5 non-Mythos horror scenarios for COC, Bumps in the Night. Pagan still has a loyal following and this one blew through the goal in less than half a day (both of these kickstarters are going pretty strong).

Pelgrane Press:  Night's Black Agents
Not a Pagan update, but since I'm on the subject of promoting horror gaming:  the next Gumshoe book, Kenneth Hite's Night's Black Agents, is in pre-order and is targeted for this summer (I'm hoping by GenCon).  Players take on the role of spies and ex-military in a shadowy world of vampire conspiracies.  The spy thriller genre is a great fit for Gumshoe's resource management - it should handle secret identities, hidden weapon stashes, underworld contacts, all that spy thriller stuff, really well.  I can see myself using this to do a mash-up of Trail and Delta Green and Night's Black Agents - alien vampires guiding the world towards the nihilistic ascendance of Nyarlathotep.

On The Trail of Cthulhu - a Review

I'll just come out and say it; Trail of Cthulhu is controversial.  It's a new school game and uses mechanics that feel very different from the simulation approach of 1970's games.  It shares a common setting with Call of Cthulhu, and it's fairly easy to convert back and forth between the two systems.  Furthermore, Pelgrane Press is challenging the status quo with a lot of interesting supplements, many of which I'll review as the year goes on, so Trail of Cthulhu is worth a close look.

The physical book is amazing - much of the art is photo realistic, brooding, and ominous.  There are many full page prints of intrepid investigators or explorers dwarfed by alien ruins, strange monuments, or haunted locales, and it captures the spirit of the game perfectly.  It’s written by Kenneth Hite, and there's a ton of Mythos scholarship and useful ideas for Cthulhu games.

The book is published by Pelgrane Press and uses their Gumshoe system; Gumshoe shows up in most of their games: Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, Mutant City Blues, Ashen Stars, and the upcoming Night's Black Agents.  Before we get too far talking about all the things Trail of Cthulhu does right, let's take a side track and talk about how the Gumshoe system works.  (I'll refer to Trail of Cthulhu as TOC here on out).

Gumshoe Abilities
Gumshoe characters don't have Call of Cthulhu (COC) style attributes like strength, intelligence, size, education, etc., instead they have abilities like Athletics, or Forensics.  The player can surmise an athletic character is probably strong, and a guy with good technical skills is probably smart.

A character with skill in an ability (for instance, forensics) is an expert in that area.  TOC is an investigative game, and a guy with skill in forensics will automatically find the appropriate clues just by searching a scene and bringing forensics.  The other thing about having a rating in a skill is that it also gives you a pool of points you can spend during the investigation to excel.  Let's say you have skill with Latin; you could normally translate that loose page of De Vermis Mysteriis in a few hours back in your study.  But if you spend a point out of your pool, maybe you can read it directly, on the fly, or translate it in a fraction of the normal time - as long as the player can come up with a snappy reason for their moment of excellence.  The GM can also assign bonus clues for point spends, but I prefer treating point spends as rewards for quick thinking and player improvisation.

Besides the investigative abilities, all of the conflict skills are abilities, too - "general abilities". Conflict skills require dice rolls, and points can be spent to improve the chance of success.  A typical guy can be hit in combat on a 3 or higher on a d6, so even a single point spent on the d6 roll improves the odds dramatically.

What the two sets of pools means is that TOC puts a lot of emphasis on resource choices.  Players need to gauge how much they're going to need those points later and spend wisely.  Investigation skills only refresh in between completed adventures, whereas general ability pools refresh daily, or partially after periods of short rest.

It can be a little hard to visualize how this plays out differently from a Call of Cthulhu situation, so let's look at how a few situations might be handled in the two rules sets.  Building gun-oriented characters in a Cthulhu game isn't generally a good idea, but let's assume you're a Morose Veteran of the Great War with 80% in rifle (COC style).  Early in the game, late in the game, doesn't matter, whenever your guy drops prone with his rifle and takes a shot, he'll be shooting at 80%.  Whether he makes an awesome shot is out of the player's control; he needs to roll the dice and see what happens, explaining the results after seeing the roll.  You don't get to choose when you're awesome (but when you do roll that 16% and make a critical/impale, everyone cheers).

In the TOC system, the same character would have a lot of points in firearms (let's say he has Firearms 12).  Many monsters have higher hit thresholds (4 or 5 on a d6) so the player might need to spend 2-3 points per shot to ensure he's always hitting his target.  Unlike the COC player, the TOC player can choose to pump a lot of points and ensure he hits.  He may even get an extraordinary result with a good roll, exceeding the monster's hit threshold by enough to do extra damage.  But later in the session, when all of those firearms pool points are spent, he's down to straight rolls.  "I'm spent".

In TOC, you lose some of the suspense that comes when all of your success is contingent on a dice roll.  The tension is different; you're constantly wondering, will you need those points later, did you choose to spend wisely?  It has echoes of resource management from the survival horror genre, as points dwindle and choices get tough.  It's a different qualitative feeling than hoping for lucky rolls.

Another difference is that Trail of Cthulhu resolves narrative investigation differently than dramatic conflict.  Let's take the example of a locked door.  During an investigation, a character with the locksmith skill can automatically get through the door to the clue on the other side.  However, when the group is being chased by a hideous monster, and they need to open the same kind of lock to escape, a dice roll is required and the player would need to spend some points to ensure success.  The mechanics change depending on whether it's exploration or combat.

Before you cry foul, keep in mind that versions of D&D have had things like take 10 or take 20 on skill checks, implying that skills during exploration are different than execution under a pressure situation.  The ability to refresh pool points at arbitrary intervals is not much different than 4E's use of replenishing Encounter or Daily powers, or even spell memorization.

I tend to think older gamers, ingrained in 70's and 80's RPG styles, are more comfortable with success based on dice rather than the resource spends.

Gumshoe Clues
I've seen questions regarding the Gumshoe clue system; what fun is it if characters always find the right clues?  Here's the thing:  you built your guy to be a professor of dead languages; you find the cultist's journal, and it has notes in archaic Greek; since you can read ancient Greek, you can read the notes.  The fun isn't whether you make or fail a roll, it's what the group does puzzling over this new bit of information you've discovered, and how this changes their plans moving forward.

In games where skill rolls are required to get basic clues, you can end up doing a fair amount of "pixelbitching" once the main guy fails his check.  "Crap, I missed my Greek roll on the journal.  Now what do we do?"  Invariably, it involves using a fall back skill (like Luck or an Idea Roll) to see if a Deux Ex Machina is around to help with that translation; or worse, the barely trained other characters in the group make off-the-wall rolls hoping for a critical success.  "Yeah, I only have 5% in Ancient Greek, but I rolled a 04% - take that, Professor!  Looks like your 90% in Ancient Greek were points well spent, har har!"

It's no fun when groups miss necessary clues through bad rolls.  If they ask the right questions and have the right skills, they should get the clues.  Most Call of Cthulhu Keepers familiar with the problem either fudge dice or ignore the skill check rolls for necessary skills; TOC makes it an explicit design element.

New School Roleplaying
Another way that TOC is a modern design vs an old school design are the mechanics that shift narrative control to the players.  I already alluded to the investigative abilities, and how a player can choose to spend points, do a little improv, and generate their own spotlight moments.  For instance, having the right Flattery skill might get you into the hotel conference; spending some Flattery points and making up a little story for the hotel clerk might get the players a room on the same floor as their target, or a back stage pass.  Cha ching.

TOC characters have a new mechanic called a "Drive" - a drive is the personality quirk that makes them open to investigating eldritch horrors in the first place.  It could be something like Curiosity, a sense of Adventure, or boredom (Ennui).  When characters fulfill their drives, they replenish mental Stability points.  Drives can also be a stick that penalizes them when they're ignored.  Let's look at an example.

In COC, the group of characters follow the bloody footprints out of the front door to the street, where the man-hole cover lies ajar.  "Dude, I am not going into that dark sewer following a rotted corpse.  Let's go back to the mansion and come back in the morning.  With shotguns".  That's how gamers think - like gamers, not like the neurotic protagonists in a horror story.  TOC's Drives ensure the characters have a good reason to throw caution to the wind like their literary forebears in the horror genre.  In this situation, at least one of the players would want to slide the manhole cover aside and look down the hole, for the chance to score some quick Stability points by demonstrating their insatiable Curiosity, or sense of Adventure.

TOC kept the same kind of Sanity death spiral you see in COC, so there are plenty of options for investigator madness; keeping with its tone of encouraging more player control, many of the insanities involve the entire table "reinforcing" the insane investigator's new, warped world view.

Trail of Cthulhu's Improvements
The book has a lot of elements that are useful in regular Call of Cthulhu campaigns, even if you skip out on the Gumshoe system.  TOC introduced the idea of Pulp vs Purist styles of play - more gun-wielding, weird adventure versus the bleak nihilism of Lovecraft's grim stories (think of The Dunwich Horror as a pulp story, and The Colour Out of Space as a Purist story).  There is great practical advice on structuring investigations and building out mystery scenarios, and examples of "campaign frames" - narrative structures for investigation games.  The original COC rules don't provide any of that campaign support, and I look at the TOC ideas fairly often.  I owe the readership here an article on narrative structures for Cthulhu gaming, so I'll defer a discussion on campaign frames for now, and return to it real soon.

The Mythos monsters and entities are very well done, and each major entity is given numerous rationales or explanations that surrounds the beastie with a sense of mystery and horror.  The COC book, with it's dry statistics and monster-manual-style of presentation, has had the unfortunate effect of making those Mythos horrors a bit banal after 30+ years.

Finally, Pelgrane Press has created a praiseworthy body of work, stretching the limits of Cthulhu gaming with titles like Bookhounds of London, Shadows over Filmland, Cthulhu Apocalypse, and The Armitage Files.  I'll be reviewing many of the Pelgrane titles as the year goes on, as they hold interest for both TOC or COC Keepers.  Because both games are light on rules, I find it's really easy to convert back and forth, running TOC materials using the COC rules - after a while, you stop seeing green code fragments, just blonde, brunette, red head….

We've played a fair number of Trail of Cthulhu one-shots the past few years; the greater emphasis on pregenerated characters with back stories, Drives, improvisational role playing, and bleak, Purist destruction, makes it ideal for one-shots and change of pace games - everybody dies or goes bonkers.  I expect we'll be doing some classic Call of Cthulhu games this spring and summer, while importing some of the TOC enhancements to the art.  Although I like it quite a bit, we've never given Trail a run as a campaign game.  Hopefully I've given folks that aren't sure which style they'd prefer, Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu, some qualitative information to illuminate the differences and help any decisions on system.  I'm glad to discuss the two games more in the comments.