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[Review] Trail of Cthulhu
I've never quite been a fan of HP Lovecraft, but as a fan of science fiction and horror, I've always held a deep appreciation of his contributions to the genres. I didn't even begin to really grasp him or his work until about seven years after I first heard his name, and I didn't start trying to really read him until well after I turned 30.

Conversely, I always had some appreciation for the Call of Cthulhu RPG - which did help me with the appreciation of Lovecraft's work. My big issue there is that, in the long run, I'm not fond of Chaosium's percentile based mechanics. (I guess I prefer dice types that can produce a bell curve rather than those that produce a straight line of probability.) I don't dislike all percentile mechanics, btw - I'm quite fond of those in the Warhammer games and the approach taken by Unknown Armies. The former I dont know why I like, since it's not much different than Chaosium, and the latter I like because it gives you ways to modify the dice roll outcome if it's important to your character or concept. What I liked about CoC was the detail and beauty of their sample scenarios - they were written well enough and open-ended enough that I wound up using at least three of them as Mage scenarios with little difficulty.

So when I heard that Kenneth Hite was working on a Call of Cthulhu game using the GUMSHOE rules, I was intrigued, to say the least.

GUMSHOE, for those who don't know, is a game system that is designed for running investigative and research oriented role-playing scenarios. Characters are defined entirely through their skills, and there are two basic categories - Investigative and General. Investigative skills are farther divided into Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical. General covers everything else. It's a resource management game - while if you have the right skill, you find the clue, proper interpretation of the clue can come from two things - either good guesses on the player's part, or spending skill points to get direct interpretation from the GM.

Since the fiction Lovecraft wrote was more investigative and psychological than action-oriented and visceral, this struck me as a natural match.

So how did it turn out?

The first warning is the final cost - the previous two GUMSHOE games (The Esoterrorists and Fear Itself) are, combined, slightly less expensive than Trail of Cthulhu. However, Trail of Cthulhu has a higher page count than both the previous books combined, with a better quality of printing, and a hardcover instead of soft cover binding. The physical quality, the artwork, and similar things are all higher than those two previous works, as well. (Not that I'm saying those other two books are crap - far from it - but ToC is better than they are.) This helps justify the price tag.

Actual content is equal in quality.

Like the Esoterrorists, the system for character creation is dependent on the total number of players - the more players, the less points you have to spend on Investigative abilities. If used correctly, this gives each investigator a chance to shine - with limited skill points, it's better for each Investigator to specialize in an area for the good of the group. Everyone gets the same number of General skills (a larger pool), but you'll want these.

Trail of Cthulhu has three 'types' of play - Purist, Pulp, and a mix of the two. Purist games will be closer to Lovecraft's original works, with academic types realizing how close to the end of the everything they are. Pulp is more action oriented, and obviously the mix is between the two. (Purist is like the standard Call of Cthulhu game. Pulp would be more like Delta Green, which was my favorite mode for CoC in the modern era.)

The Bad
I didn't see much bad in my first run through. Some of the pulp abilities seem to cross into the realm where my suspension of disbelief begins to snap, but the easy solution is to skip those.

I'm still kind of hazy on the Stability vs. Sanity rules, but I think playing through it will make it more clear to me.

The Good
There is so much.

I think Trail of Cthulhu has better examples of spending pool points than the Esoterrorists had - after reading it, I can better understand how to use the GUMSHOE system overall. The skills are altered from the Esoterrorists, but they are more focused towards the CoC setting.

The default ToC is the 1930s, which at first didn't thrill me, but the more I read, the more into it I got.

One helpful section was one about how to help players feel that they aren't being railroaded - which is good, since even we GMs who actually improvise a lot and let player input affect the game world get accused of being railroading unless we stop, say "dur, I didn't expect that" and then make an obvious display of not being prepared for that - which I think is detrimental to a good session.

There's also a part describing how to translate characters and creatures from Call of Cthulhu into Trail of Cthulhu.

Overall
Reading through Trail of Cthulhu led to me digging up my 25 year old, falling apart copy of "The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth" and thinking to myself "I could run this, finally." I believe Trail of Cthulhu best captures the feel of Lovecraft's work, and the work of his peers and followers. It made me want to run it, as an ongoing game, which hasn't happened with me and Cthulhu for a long, long time.

I know my interest in horror has flared up in the past month or so, and this game didn't help. Which is good.

If you are intrigued with the genre, pick it up. If it doesn't give you new ideas and new enthusiasm, read it again.

It's the best money I've spent on an RPG so far this year.

Rich


My review list expanded again - I eliminated one game, and gained some more. So here's what's next - help me decide:
1. Sons of Liberty
2. Dictionary of Mu
3. Grimm
4. Hollow Earth Expeditions
5. Fear Itself
6. Dark Heresy
7. Deadlands: Reloaded

Go ahead and put them in the order you'd like to see.

Rich