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Trail of Cthulhu $24.99
Publisher: Pelgrane Press
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by Jeffrey V. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/11/2010 18:23:20

Megan Robertson did a pretty in-depth job of addressing the nuts-and-bolts of the game, so consider what she said to be a baseline, and I'll just add my $.02 worth.

First, I still don't think that an entirely new game system needed to be created to deal with this one glaring problem. In fact, I had already dealt with it in a somewhat similar fashion in my own games -- simply ensuring that the necessary clues WERE found by the players (along with enough distractors to keep it from being obvious). However, having said that, if you DO have to design a new version of CoC, then this is a pretty good one.

It's worth noting that the folks who created ToC did so in a very thorough manner. They have excellent detail, provide great insight into the period of the 1930's, provide a ton of information in a very short amount of space (the sidebars could very well set the standard for everyone else to try and follow) and tie their system together very well. The sample adventure is excellent and could easily be adapted back into the original CoC with minimal difficulty. The addition of the "Special Advantage" concept allows players to "suddenly remember/discover" something germane to the investigation and speeds the investigative section of play very nicely, without being permitted to overwhelm normal play. This is another concept that could easily be added to the original CoC without significantly changing the game.

The addition of the "pulp" rules also makes for a more fast-paced, "Indiana Jones" style of game, which most players enjoy very much. The biggest problem here is that the rules want to force the Keeper to be consistent by either playing a Pulp style game or more of a "purist" type game more in keeping with HPL's original concept. Why the Keeper can't fluctuate between the two occasionally, I don't know, but it does seem to be somewhat discouraged. Personally, I always found it nice to vary things up a bit by giving the players something more "pulpish" to do occasionally instead of just sitting around the library tables watching each other for signs of incipient madness.... However, by the same token, the pursuit of "things man was not meant to know" OUGHT to be a serious business, and despite the occasional interlude of gun-slinging, the players need to be working to save the world from the outre menace.

As usual, DriveThru did a wonderful job on the scan, and the material in the rule book is legible and easily readable. The only weird thing is that when I purchased this, I actually got two versions -- the original, and one with bookmarks. The Bookmarks are excellent and should really be the only one offered in my opinion. Still, I suppose there are some folks who would object to that...somewhere in the world. At any rate, despite my personal ambivalence over the need for a completely new rules set, I give this one a solid "4" for attention to detail, excellent writing, and the excellence of DriveThru's reproduction.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks very much for this review. My only comment is that the Pulp and Purist options are specifically presented as options you can choose between; they are not interdependent. So, you can use the Pulp option for cars exploding when they get a bullet in the tank, and the Purist option of not being able to regain lost Sanity. We didn't mean to give the impression they weren't interchangeable.
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Trail of Cthulhu
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