EVERYTHING YOU NEED to start your own roleplaying campaign of Lovecraftian occult investigations using the GUMSHOE system
The complete TRAIL OF CTHULHU rulebook plus scenarios and resources, all as complete, DRM-free, non-watermarked .PDF ebooks
TRAIL OF CTHULHU was designed by superstar Kenneth Hite based on the GUMSHOE rules by Robin D. Laws
Investigator! This Trail of Cthulhu Starter Pack features Trail of Cthulhu, star designer Kenneth Hite's horror tabletop roleplaying game of Cthulhu Mythos investigations using the GUMSHOE system from Pelgrane Press. This Starter Pack provides the core Trail rulebook and everything you need to start uncovering dark Lovecraftian plots by demented cultists in your own 1930s campaign.
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Trail of Cthulhu
Designer(s): Kenneth Hite, Robin D. Laws
Pelgrane Press, 248 pages
Retail price US$21
You uncover mysteries in dusty libraries and bloody crime scenes. You walk the mean streets of Chicago or hack through the jungles of the South Pacific. You battle vile cults, or recoil in terror at the alien enormities they worship. You follow the clues wherever they lead, whatever the cost in life or sanity. But do you dare to follow – the Trail of Cthulhu?
Trail of Cthulhu is a complete game of investigative horror set in the 1930s based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft. The game uses an adapted and enlarged version of GUMSHOE, a rules system that offers a laser-like focus on investigation, and encourages characters driven to explore and investigate, even at the expense of their own health and sanity.
Sanity measures your blissful ignorance of the true nature of reality, and Stability defines your mental health.
Investigative abilities such as Cop Talk, Interrogation, and Occult help you find the awful crypt and maybe even tell you what you might find there; Drives such as In the Blood and Arrogance compel your character into that crypt at night; and General abilities such as Sense Trouble, Filch, and Scuffling get you out again.
Tune the rules for Purist cosmic despair or lurid two-gun Pulp.
This core rulebook includes three exciting campaign frames (tweedy academics, jut-jawed G-Men, and grimy traffickers in the eldritch) plus "The Kingsbury Horror," a complete introductory adventure.
(Note: In October 2024 Pelgrane Press crowdfunded Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition, which rises inexorably in 2026. All First Edition supplements and scenarios are wholly compatible with the 2E rulebook. The new edition adds character creation templates, new ability spends, new campaign frames and introductory adventures, and an expanded guide to the Mythos. As a convenience to customers, we include the free Second Edition Quickstart.)
Arkham Detective Tales
Designer(s): Gareth Hanrahan
Pelgrane Press, 110 pages
Retail price US$10
Cyclopean skyscrapers, bizarre cults, strange foreigners, and eerie alleyways – the cities of New York and Arkham stand on the threshold between the modern age and the Mythos. No one in the NYPD speaks of it, but everyone knows certain neighborhoods are to be left alone, and there are worse things than criminals in the shadows. Only the foolhardy or the desperate follow the trail down these haunted streets:
"The Kidnapping": An infant has been snatched from the cradle. Can the Investigators track down the kidnappers before the parents are forced to pay the ransom?
"The Book": Two men die under similar circumstances within a day of each other, victims of a serial killer that stalks New York. As the Investigators delve into the mystery, they discover the perils of learning too much.
"The Wreck": The tramp steamer Star of Mauritius is discovered drifting in the harbor. Her crew are all dead or missing. What secrets lie within her rusting hull?
"Return to Red Hook": Thomas Malone led the police into the slums of Red Hook ten years ago, and dozens of officers died there. Now the horror at Red Hook has returned, and once again New York's finest must risk their lives amid the crumbling bricks tenements.
"The King's Men": Detective Thomas Talby commits suicide under suspicious circumstances. Papers found among his belongings put the investigators on a trail that leads to historic Arkham and the dangerous Miskatonic Island cult.
The Investigators are law enforcement agents and their civilian consultants, answerable for their actions. But will the full force of the law be enough to stem the tide of the Mythos?
Designer(s): Adam Gauntlett, Robin D. Laws, Jason Morningstar
Pelgrane Press, 184 pages
Retail price US$17
Out of Space presents five Trail of Cthulhu adventures that take Investigators from the mountains of northern Mexico to the skies above Germany, from the smog and disease of gaslight London to the raging Atlantic Ocean. It will even take them to a world that only exists in their worst nightmares.
The Repairer of Reputations: This scenario explores the warped publication history of The King in Yellow. A seemingly utopian future takes on a distinctly nightmarish quality, for the alien beings described in the play are as real as the antagonists believe them to be.
Flying Coffins: Winter, 1918. You are members of the Royal Flying Corps stationed near the Front. The new Hun Circus is racking up kill after kill – but is it the enemy or something else that's to blame?
Many Fires: In the mountains of northern Mexico, something ancient and obscene lies smoldering among ruins older than the Aztecs. But here the problems are more modern – and they wear gun-belts. Does an unlikely band of Investigators have the courage to tackle Pancho Villa's bandit army?
Hell Fire: In the smog and grime of 18th-Century London a great evil stirs. In the seedy underclass of the city, a plague is taking hold. Its victims are under the sway of an entity of disgusting power bent on engulfing the world in disease and death.
The Millionaire's Special: First class on a luxury steamship is exciting in itself, but when you're invited to a private viewing of one of the world's great curiosities, a cursed Egyptian mummy, things take a turn for the worse. Strange rituals, a device to contact spirits, and the awakening of something ancient and evil mean icebergs are not the only danger for RMS Titanic.
Rough Magicks
Designer(s): Kenneth Hite
Pelgrane Press, 40 pages
Retail price US$6
Trail of Cthulhu designer Kenneth Hite's Rough Magicks examines Mythos magic, presenting everything from a theoretical summa of Lovecraftian lore to horrifying new spells and handy lists of magical names to drop. Rough Magicks also presents an optional new ability – the Magic ability – for those Keepers who (perhaps reasonably) wish to further differentiate Stability from magical puissance. Perhaps most significantly, Rough Magicks introduces explicit magic use for the aliens and creatures of the Mythos. This element is nigh omnipresent in the later Mythos and in the works of Robert E. Howard and his epigones, if mostly implied rather than stated outright in Lovecraft's tales.
Tune your Trail of Cthulhu game as you see fit. Learn the sorcerous practices of the unthinkably alien and ancient beings of the Cthulhu Mythos, and view the dizzying heights to which even human wizards may ascend.
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