When I want to run an adventure about unknowable horrors, 1930s investigators in over their heads, ancient books that send readers insane, and all that squirming Lovecraftian goodness, there’s one TTRPG I reach for every time: Trail of Cthulhu.
Its clever system puts the emphasis on solving mysteries, giving players all sorts of tools to discover clues and learn more about what they’re up against before confronting whatever horrors await. The feel of it is perfect for the genre—dread mounting as the players uncover more and more disturbing evidence, but at the same time always being tempted forward into yet more forbidden knowledge.
The real secret sauce, however, is in how cleverly it finds different angles on what a Lovecraftian campaign can look like, offering all sorts of creative adventures and set-ups that don’t simply make do with all the old tropes.
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All of which is to say… when it’s available in a remarkably cheap digital bundle, it’s well worth taking a look.
Bundle of Holding’s Trail of Cthulhu Mega bundle offers the core game with a big range of supplements, totalling 14 books. As with Humble Bundle, it’s pay-what-you-want with two tiers. $17.95 or more gets you the “Starter Collection” of eight books, though it’s a bit of a misnomer—given it includes the core book, the bestiary, a guide to Lovecraftian magic, 26 adventures, and a GM resource book, it’s really everything you need to play a full campaign rather than just to get you started.
To get the higher tier, you need to beat the “threshold price”—the average of what others have already paid. At time of writing that’s $36.85, which is still a steal for $269.50 worth of books, but be aware that it may continue to tick up a little between now and the bundle’s end on April 6.
This tier throws in six of Trail of Cthulhu’s most interesting books, offering very different premises for your campaigns, including post-apocalyptic survival in the ruins of a world destroyed by the Mythos and surreal investigations in a city ruled by cults where Lovecraft’s creations have become commonplace (very reminiscent of videogame The Sinking City).
I am a little surprised to see it doesn’t include Bookhounds of London—a surprisingly brilliant campaign that casts players as bookshop owners hunting down forbidden grimoires. There are a few other key omissions too, including Dreamhounds of Paris, the pulpy Stunning Eldritch Tales, and the Armitage Files sandbox campaign. It’s a shame to leave out some of the range’s best books, and it does mean this isn’t a complete collection in one.
Also worth noting is that there is a 2nd edition for Trail of Cthulhu on the way, currently due in July this year. That will mean that this won’t stay the most up to date version of the core rules for long, but otherwise everything else in this bundle will remain compatible with the new stuff, so you don’t have to worry about it all becoming irrelevant in a few months time.
All the books are delivered as PDF downloads, and you can redownload them any time from your library on the site. You may not have heard of Bundle of Holding before, but rest assured it’s reputable—I’ve bought many bundles from the site before with no problems at all.
If you do find yourself drawn to investigate further, just make sure you grab these unsettling tomes before April 6—after that, the bundle will no longer be available.