Here is some detailed Esoterrorists actual play, demonstrating the strengths of the clue-giving system (and, to be fair, of this particular GM).
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A day of tons of new releases. On the Pelgrane Press store or IPR.
For GUMSHOE:
- We've released Stunning Eldritch Tales, a collection adventures by Robin D Laws for Trail of Cthulhu. Gosh, they are good, and well playtested. The street date is 13th May.
- The Trail of Cthulhu PDF. As it says. People who preordered have been emailed a voucher for a free copy. People who have ordered to date have been sent a voucher for a reduced price copy. If you haven't heard, email me.
- Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide The ToC Player's Guide is a subset of the ToC (99 pages) and includes all non-GM material, but (and I whisper this) you can run GUMSHOE games using this alone.
- Trail of Cthulhu Game Group PDF Bundle (1 x ToC and 3 x ToC Player's Guide). The bundle is an interesting experiment in the spectrum of honesty of PDF users. If I sell lots of these, I'll be pleased but slightly surprised. The idea is, the GM gets the Trail of Cthulhu PDF, the players get three copies of the Player's Guide between them.
For the Dying Earth RPG: - We've released after a slight hiatus Tooth, Talon and Pinion :The Excellent Prismatic Spray 7/8 Double Issue. It's full of creatures which you might eat, might eat you, or there might be some negotiation involved to determine who is eaten. There are also adventures and a walking tour by the famed Grashpotel.
I've emailed all of our subscribers for updated addresses. If you are a subscriber and you haven't heard, please contact me.
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All the Trails of Cthulhu destined for the distribution are now sold. ACD swooped in nabbed the last hundred or so from Aldo while I was away. If stocks dwindle, I'll keep an eye on channels on line and highlight those retailers who still have stock. For example, Leisure Games in London and End Game in California. If you are retailer stocking Trail, you might consider posting here.
IPR and Pelgrane have 71 left between them for direct sale in the US. I've got about 50 in the UK. Chaosium have none (and I shipped them 100), which is pretty spectacular.
So, basically, woot! 2000 copies sold, pretty much.
Because the Trail printer found it difficult to deal with a foreign company (they insisted initially on invoicing me for tax and I wouldn't pay until they corrected it), the reprint won't be for a few weeks.
I've got to choose between another 1000, or else 1500 for the next print run. Tough decision. It's just south of $2 difference per copy.
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Please listen to this Trail of Cthulhu music and let me know what you think (good or bad).
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Look what I've got! Four adventures to support Trail of Cthulhu.
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We'll be releasing the Trail of Cthulhu PDF a little earlier than I had originally anticipated - early may. As promised, those who pre-ordered will get a free copy. Other Pelgrane and IPR customers will be able to get a PDF at a substantially reduced price - we'll email you.
One other thing we'll be releasing is the Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide PDF. This is all the player's stuff from Trail of Cthulhu, including the complete Trail GUMSHOE system, character creation, equipment lists, tips and forms. It weighs in at 100 pages, compared with the potent 248 Ken Hite-ened pages of the full Trail.
The Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide: half the calories, none of the madness.
Edit: I said Ken-Hite-ened. That is funny, isn't it? Sometimes I worry about my copy.
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Here's a comprehensive review of Trail of Cthulhu, and some interesting comments on the GUMSHOE system.
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The excellent Edge Entertainment are developing a Spanish language version of the full GUMSHOE range, starting with Trail of Cthulhu. They've published Spanish language versions of Heroquest, Conan, Feng Shui, and the former Hogsheads New Style games, so they have an excellent pedigree.
Edit:
Here is the announcement. They are releasing Los Esoterroristas, too.
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Graham Walmsley (writer of Play Unsafe) is creating an online GUMSHOE character generator which works with all of our GUMSHOE games. It will be a commercial product, although we haven't decided how to release it. It will generate PDF character sheets, and you'll be able to optionally share your characters with other GMs. It may also do other GUMSHOE GM aid-related things.It works decently well already.
What features would you like to see?
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| 2008-04-08 16:35 |
| GUMSHOE and the meaning of Health |
| Public |
| gumshoe, pelgrane |
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In GUMSHOE and a number of other games, characters have a Health pool. In GUMSHOE, if someone shoots at you, and they spend enough points, they will successfully "hit" the first time and every time until they run out of points. But, you are not actually significantly hurt by any kind of weapon until your Health goes below 0. Now if somebody is shooting at you and actually hitting you, this doesn't seem right. And that is because Health down to 0, at least has an abstract function, just like other pools.
The best handle I can give on this is that pools police narrative plausibility. In narratives and in rpgs if a character is in gunfight after gunfight and is never hit, it becomes less and less satisfying. Fine tuning the maximum Health for example can be used to make the difference between a Purist and Pulp game in the case of Cthulhu; in a Pulp game, your hero avoids injury when bullets fly, in a Purist game not so much.
For NPCs, the Health rating can be a measure of their combat ability, an extraordinary constitution, or their narrative importance. An unimportant NPC who happens to be a combat monkey can still start out with a Health of 0, and be killed by the first bullet which files in their direction. This method can be used for mooks, or in a horror game to kill the reassuring authority figure unexpectedly and horribly.
One final example. A weedy PC is sitting in a bar. A sniper fires at the PC. It's not going through their head in any RPG, is it? A combat veteran NPC in the same bar? Straight through the head - brains on the table.
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Adamant Entertainment will be creating PDF adventures for Trail of Cthulhu under their imprint. They do good quality stuff, they've worked with other licensors and it will extend the range of ToC material for Keepers. A more detailed press release will follow next week.
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Here is Jerome's cover for the forthcoming GM's Resource Book and Screen. Simon Carryer, who wrote three excellent articles for See Page XX has produced the first draft of the resource book. For abilities and occupations it includes historical information, practices, equipment, clues and special benefits for point spends, as well as a collection of useful NPCs .
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I've just received my copies of Profane Miracles, an Esoterrorists adventure by Spirit of the Century co-author Leonard Balsera. It's our first saddle-stitched book. It's available from the Pelgrane Press Store and Indie Press Revolution, and in your FLGS in the next couple of days.
I'm happy with the print quality and it's pretty sturdy.
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Here is a review for Trail of Cthulhu.
"If you are intrigued with the genre, pick it up. If it doesn't give you new ideas and new enthusiasm, read it again." And another here for Esoterrorists. I'm sure Robin must be blushing at the quote. "The best Mystery/Investigative RPG ever" Also, The Game's the Thing podcast covers Esterrorists in their latest issue. It can be found here. The Eso bit starts at about 26.50, and describes actual play. "They hit it.""It felt very natural"
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| 2008-03-12 11:52 |
| Trail of Cthulhu Launch Party |
| Public |
| pelgrane |
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All regular readers and/or Lovecraft fans cordially invited to the launch of The Trail of Cthulhu, and the newly formed Axe Initiative Games Ltd. 17th March 7.30 pm at
Black Gardenia,
93 Dean Street,
Soho,
London,
W1D 3SZ
http://www.myspace.com/blackgardenia93 The dress is 1930s, horror or fantasy, or at least a nod in that direction. RSVP
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From Jerome, and for the GM's Resource book to be included with GM's Screen:
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The Trail of Cthulhu website is now up, complete with English-language trailer. The pre-order books are starting to arrive now in Europe and as far as Australia. Our distributor wasn't able to send the books out last week because of lack of other products to ship, but should be in stores early next week.
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Jerome has been working on artwork for Mutant City Blues, our forthcoming GUMSHOE release. Here are a couple of images.
I'd really like to go to town on MCB the way I have for Trail; but I simply don't know if I can sell enough copies to justify an offset print run. At the moment I'm planning a large monochrome paperback, but I'd prefer a blue/black duotone smythe-sewn hardback. Unless I can think of some super-clever plan worthy of Prof X, it will be the triumph of experience over hope.
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