I’m playing in a Trail of Cthulhu game that started last Halloween and is wrapping up in the next few weeks. It is the published campaign Eternal Lies, with some expansions from people online, and some from my GM.

The backstory is that in 1924 a group of investigators (a standard Call of Cthulhu party essentially) tried to stop a cult summoning, but were all killed or driven insane. Now it’s 10 years later, and people connected to the original party members are brought together to find out what happened to them and stop the cult.

There’s some great stuff in the story. It’s very globe-trotting, like the classic CoC campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep, but things get much more extreme and disturbing than Masks, at least as my GM has run it. There’s also a lot about the political situations of the time, for example the invasion of Ethiopia by fascist Italy.

System-wise, I think I like Gumshoe in Trail more than the original Call skill system. The “Investigative” abilities being either auto-success because you have the skill, or you just need to spend a pool point is great. I’ve run CoC games where characters who are experts in a skill missed vital clues because of unlucky rolls, and the clues then had to be given out in awkward ways that didn’t feel good. But there’s still “General” abilities for things that aren’t getting clues to have risky rolls and player friction.

I also like the way Trail does sanity compared to Call. It has two stats, Stability and Sanity. Low Stability is more outwardly recognizable, like acting erratically in a stereotypically “crazy” way. Low sanity is more about believing that certain things matter, and having empathy for people. If you know serial killers, my GM described low Stability as Ed Gein, and low Sanity as Ted Bundy. Stability is more easily recovered, but if enough is lost the character is driven insane as in CoC. Sanity is much harder to recover, and when all lost the character becomes an NPC who stays outwardly normal to society, but has no empathy or morals. My first character this campaign lost all his sanity, joined the cult, and has become a major antagonist to the party. It is awesome.

I guess that’s more than “a little summary,” sorry!