The Invisible Path

The first Trail of Cthulhu adventure I ran for our group was last fall. It was "The Book" from Arkham Detectives Tales by Pelgrane Press. The group had never played a Cthulhuesque game before so I was eager to have this go well.

The adventure was good and spooky, with the players having lively discussions over their various theories of what was going on. It ended with the investigators becoming murderously paranoid in a cheap hotel room. Ultimately one investigator was killed (by the hand of another investigator no less), one was retired due to obvious mental instability, one ran off with a strange voice in her head promising secret and wondrous knowledge, and the last two decided to continue experimenting with a mysterious narcotic that appeared to transport the imbiber into the distant pre-human past. All in all an excellent first run. The best part of it is that I had very little to do with the end game - the players drove the whole thing.

Oh evil temptress with your flashy green cover

This was also the first time I'd run a Cthulhu game using the Trail rules. I quite literally grew up running Call of Cthulhu (purchasing the boxed second edition when I was 13) and it was my go-to game for years. Switching systems seemed like a bit of a betrayal, but I'd been drawn in by a number of elements of Trail; the spooky old photo visual style, the treatment of the mythos with alternate explanations for the major entities, the character drives, the approach to building mysteries and the simplicity of a single d6. Oddly enough, the whole "players automatically receive core clues" thing which is the main selling point (as well as point of contention for some) did little for me, as I'd already been doing that in practice with Call for years. I have to say that I wasn't disapointed - I quite enjoyed the rules in practice. However I think the main Rulebook could do with a bit of a re-org and layout exercise to make things clearer and easier to find.

I look forward to getting to know the system better over the summer. Next post I'll talk about the campaign we've started - the infamous Armitage Files (actually I don't think it's "infamous" but it just sounds cool when you say it like that...)