# Trail of Cthulhu tags: #game/rpg/trail-of-cthulhu ![[Trail of Cthulhu (cover).jpg|600]] **Trail of Cthulhu** is the **[[Gumshoe|GUMSHOE]]** engine's Lovecraftian flagship, designed by Kenneth Hite and published by Pelgrane in 2008 "by arrangement with Chaosium." Where **[[Call of Cthulhu]]** rolls to find clues and loses them to bad dice, Trail flips the script: you *always* find the core clue, and the horror lives in what you do with it and what it does to you. It's a harsher, grainier take on the 1930s Mythos — the game that famously declares that investigative scenarios aren't about finding clues but about interpreting the ones you do find, and it backs that up with one of the genre's most thoughtful sanity systems. *Only the Players Guide is in the library*, but it's still the best introduction to the line's Purist-vs-Pulp heart. ## Setting Trail of Cthulhu puts investigators in the 1930s, up against the whole Cthulhu Mythos — cults worshipping the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, horrors in forgotten places, and the very real price ordinary people pay for looking too hard. Its signature trick is the dual tone dial. **Purist** mode sets fragile ordinary people against forces vastly greater than themselves; **Pulp** mode lets characters be heroes in the *Indiana Jones* mold for whom nothing is impossible. The two are fully interchangeable, letting a Keeper tone the campaign from creeping dread to two-fisted action on a whim. It also carries guidelines for adapting Chaosium's vast *Call of Cthulhu* adventure catalog to the engine. ## Mechanics Trail of Cthulhu runs the **GUMSHOE** core: **investigative abilities** find clues with no roll (spends buy bonus clues), while **general abilities** resolve combat and other uncertain action with 1d6 against a difficulty. Its genre-specific genius is the **sanity triad**: **Drive** (the motivation that keeps an investigator going — act against it and lose Stability, follow it and recover); **Stability** (short-term shock, refreshed or lost in play); and **Sanity** (long-term mental health, propped up by **Pillars of Sanity** — the things you trust and believe in). In Purist play, lost Sanity is never healed; Pulp mode is more forgiving. The game also introduced a **magic** system to GUMSHOE, and using it drains your Stability away in a hurry. ## Editions - **2008** — the original *Trail of Cthulhu* core rulebook, by Kenneth Hite (with Robin D. Laws and Simon J. Rogers), a handsome hardcover over twice the length of earlier GUMSHOE games. - **Players Guide** — a pared-down player-facing edition of the core rules. *In the library (529).* The full core rulebook is not currently in the library. - **2023+** — a **second edition** announced in September 2023, a collaboration between Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan. ## References - [Trail of Cthulhu — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Cthulhu_(role-playing_game)) - [Trail of Cthulhu — Pelgrane Press](https://pelgranepress.com/product-category/gumshoe/trail-of-cthulhu/) - [GUMSHOE System — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumshoe_System)