New Arrival

Bookhounds of London, a Trail of Cthulhu campaign book from Pelgrane Press.

Hardback, with the same production values that have made Trail of Cthulhu the most popular alternative to Call of Cthulhu for the world's Mythos Fix.

Priced at the extreme range of what I'll pay for a setting book these days, $35.

The idea in this one is right out of The Ninth Gate, with the players taking the part of less-than-squeaky-clean types who hunt up Mythos Tomes - to sell them for profit to the bad guys (and occasionally stop them using them)!

This is a nice idea from where I sit. Players often like to explore the ambiguity of their Call of Cthulhu characters, but the truth is that in all the published materials the players are essentially the Boy Scout types, the cavalry that will ride in and save the day if it is at all possible, with the shady characters firmly on the GM's side of the screen.

Not only that, players usually never get to play the really dirty swine on account of they are typically mad, dead or mad and then dead before their morals are truly irrevocably compromised.

I did manage to get some players to sacrifice to a Dark Young a few months ago, but they did it for the good of the community and the players were appalled when I casually pointed out that they were now, in point of fact, Cultists. Cultists were to be fought, killed, stamped out because they are the bad guys!

Bookhounds of London doesn't so much turn this idea around as discard it as irrelevant. There are no bad guys, just customers. Okay, some of the customers need to be dealt with but mostly because they represent a significant threat to the bottom line.

I'm trivializing the great idea at the core of this wonderful campaign, and I urge everyone to buy it, read it and judge for themselves.

There is much in the Trail of Cthulhu line for the trad Call of Cthulhu GM (with a little work) too, though I'd personally urge Call of Cthulhu GMs to look at the Trail of Cthulhu rules with their knee-jerk circuits offline. There was a time - a long time - when I would have sniffed at going "off the reservation", but I know better now.