Pelgrane Press has announced that on October 15th it will launch the crowdfunding campaign for Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition, the Lovecraftian roleplaying game of horror and mystery by designers Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, with art by Jérôme Huguenin. Published in 2008, Trail of Cthulhu won the 2008 Silver ENnie Awards for Best Rules and Best Writing, and won Best Roleplaying Game and Best of Show at the Lucca Games Festival in 2010.

Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition will be greatly expanded, incorporating the last two decades of play and design experience for its GUMSHOE system. It includes 20 Investigator occupations, multiple perspectives on the gods and titans of the Cthulhu Mythos, details of the world of the 1930s, and full support for improvised play. It will feature two new introductory adventures and a brand-new cover, illustrated by Jérôme Huguenin.

Pelgrane will launch the campaign on the crowdfunding and fulfillment site Backerkit. Backers will receive a quickstart rules set, and a complete draft document of the game.

About Trail of Cthulhu

Tabletop roleplaying games foster imagination and immersion like nothing else, and Trail of Cthulhu provides opportunities for both. The revolutionary GUMSHOE rules system, by award-winning designer Robin D. Laws, has changed the face of investigative games. It speeds and streamlines play by ensuring that the characters always get the clues they need to move deeper into the story.

Gamemasters get full support for designing horror mystery adventures, including advice on designing new Cthulhuoid creatures, sinister cults, and narrative frames to knit their adventures together into long-running campaigns. Players get a wide variety of abilities and options to customize their own characters, including their motivation to risk their lives and sanity investigating the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. The game can be played in a choice of styles, each supported by specific rules and tailored advice. The Purist style drives games toward stories of philosophical horror and cosmic dread in Lovecraft’s starkest style, while the Pulp style offers the lurid, desperate action feel of Robert E. Howard and Indiana Jones.

“Trail of Cthulhu has set the standard for Lovecraftian horror gaming, and has produced some of the best campaigns and supplements for any horror roleplaying game,” says Pelgrane Press co-owner and Managing Director Cat Tobin. “It combines bulletproof mystery-game design with evocative horror mechanics and elements for a thrilling investigative horror experience.”

What to Expect from Trail of Cthulhu 2E

“The world of tabletop roleplaying gaming has expanded and changed a lot since 2008,” says Trail of Cthulhu creator Kenneth Hite. “Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition will be a game not just for longtime fans of Cthulhu horror gaming but for gamers looking for a change from standard F20 fantasy. We want to welcome new players, and make established players’ experience smoother and better supported.”

Easier character creation: The occupations now use simple templates, like other GUMSHOE games such as Night’s Black Agents. Each occupation has a special ability, allowing the player to have their moment in the spotlight.

More contest options: Continuing challenges, quick challenges, and blind contests have been added based on later GUMSHOE system designs. From spends to toxins, everywhere in the rules the best of breed systems from later GUMSHOE games have been adapted to support Trail of Cthulhu play.

Better treatment of insanity: Stability breakdowns can now come from violence, terror, or the supernatural. The antagonistic meta-system for madness has been replaced by the Terrible Revelations of the Mythos. Using the Cthulhu Mythos ability now opens you up to the Outside before it destroys you utterly.

Streamlined magic: The magic system from the 1^st Edition supplement Rough Magicks has been incorporated into the main rules. Characters gain magical ability after seeking out or awakening their potential, deepening roleplaying opportunities. The casting system has been clarified and simplified, with rituals now moving faster unless the group decides to focus the scenario on them. Spells have been re-organized by type. Communing with gods now offers potential rewards to the Magic or Cthulhu Mythos abilities—as well as horrific dangers to your mind and selfhood.

More gods and monsters: Bast, Hypnos, Nug and Yeb, and Nyogtha, among other gods, now appear in the corebook, presented with the acclaimed multiple-perspective approach we retain (and expand, in some cases) for the other gods and titans. Guidelines for combat spends, plus unified rules for monstrous grappling and psychic attacks, make monsters easier to run. Avatars, revenants, and the spawn and hybrid offspring of the gods have been added to the Mythos bestiary, along with new monsters such as Lovecraft’s black-winged ones and Machen’s tylwyth corachaidd. Expanded guidelines for monster creation help the GM delve even deeper.

More GM guidelines and advice: This game now incorporates and sets out best practices, helpful notes, and guidelines for GUMSHOE gamemasters and players taken from the last two decades of GUMSHOE system releases and actual play experience. To our traditional sample story spine, we add a vast collection of modular story elements—reliable building blocks from which you can create endless Mythos tales and scenarios.

New campaign frames: Two new campaign frames offer narrative structures to support fresh campaigns. In the Purist-flavored Under Unknown Skies, you play small-town folk from Bishop, Oklahoma, exposed to the Outside by the strange technologies of the new Crawford Electrical Company experimental station in the hills. In the Pulpier Shadows Under Chicago, you can play gangsters or G-men facing an Al Capone grown even more dangerous after his initiation into the cult of Yog-Sothoth!

New introductory adventures: Each play style has an associated starter adventure now. Stop the Nazis from reaching a primordial artifact in the Pulp-style adventure “The Hammer of the Gods,” and sift through the ashes of a suspicious séance in the Purist scenario “Afterlight.”

Backward compatibility: The wealth of award-winning scenarios and supplements for Trail of Cthulhu 1^st Edition, like The Armitage Files, Bookhounds of London, Eternal Lies, and Dreamhounds of Paris, remain perfectly playable with 2E. The Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition change list provides a complete checklist of the differences, but the majority of changes either happen during character creation, enrich play within the old mechanics, or add robust options for the GM.

Backerkit Campaign Dates and Notifications

Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition is planned to launch on October 15th and last through November 7th. You can find the campaign on Backerkit by following this link: https://bit.ly/3BHqmSY

About Pelgrane Press

Pelgrane Press is a UK-based tabletop roleplaying game company, publishing character-focused, story-driven RPGs for more than twenty years.