Hi … I thought it apt to begin introducing the various composers who are working on the Eternal Lies suite.

Here is Marie-Anne Fischer in her own words…

I fell in love with composing music when in South Africa, after moving from my native Belgium.  Rhythms, beats and sounds of Africa stylised my music, some of which was used for television, wildlife documentaries, sport and corporate video.  Further colour was added during time spent in the USA.  I moved to the UK where I focused on composing music for media after completing a diploma course in the same. My main instruments are piano and violin.
I look forward to co-writing music for “Eternal Lies” and have already been exploring the range of possible emotions and ambient sounds that might accompany live role play. Composing can be solitary, so I welcome working alongside such talented friends and taking the opportunity to broaden my musical spectrum.

I’ll be introducing Mike and Yaiza in the coming weeks and hopefully I can bring a few of these musical types along to Dragonmeet in November.

I believe next week we will post up the first preview of the music!

cheers

James

Here’s a quick update on the state of the Eternal Lies suite.

This has been a truly phenomenal week with a chance for composers and authors to finally bounce ideas of one another. I’ve been absolutely amazed by the exceptional ideas coming from Will and Jeff and I’m so pleased about their enthusiasm for having their adventure scored. This week we began looking at the various chapters and how they will be scored.

Without giving away too much here, we have come up with around five distinct musical themes each representing concepts within the campaign. Therefore, chapters will reference themes based on the relevance of the concepts at the time. We’ll also be using this idea for the various stings that are to be used for specific circumstances. For instance, this week I created the sting for when a character is … well let’s politely say ‘retired’ from the game for whatever reason. This sting is a piano version of a theme which in one sense represents failure but is really part of a bigger concept. Perhaps I’ve said too much already…

We also agreed to include a new piece specifically to be played when the group are sitting back and reviewing the information they’ve amassed. We felt this would be a useful piece of music for keepers. In fact we’ve really spent a lot of time looking at the utility of this music for a group playing a game. That whole aspect has been very important for keeping us focused. The music must serve the game.

I hope that I’ll get a chance to include samples of the music during these articles to whet appetites!

Next week I’m going to start introducing the wonderful composers working alongside me to create this enormous suite of music.

James

An illustration by Jérome for the forthcoming Castle Bravo.

A new GUMSHOE Game from Kenneth Hite, author of Trail of Cthulhu.

The Cold War is over. Bush’s War is winding down.

You were a shadowy soldier in those fights, trained to move through the secret world: deniable and deadly.

Then you got out, or you got shut out, or you got burned out. You didn’t come in from the cold. Instead, you found your own entrances into Europe’s clandestine networks of power and crime. You did a few ops, and you asked even fewer questions. Who gave you that job in Prague? Who paid for your silence in that Swiss account? You told yourself it didn’t matter.

It turned out to matter a lot. Because it turned out you were working for vampires.

Vampires exist. What can they do? Who do they own? Where is safe? You don’t know those answers yet. So you’d better start asking questions. You have to trace the bloodsuckers’ operations, penetrate their networks, follow their trail, and target their weak points. Because if you don’t hunt them, they will hunt you. And they will kill you.

Or worse.

Night’s Black Agents brings the GUMSHOE engine to the spy thriller genre, combining the propulsive paranoia of movies like Ronin and The Bourne Identity with supernatural horror straight out of Bram Stoker. Investigation is crucial, but it never slows down the action, which explodes with expanded options for bone-crunching combat, high-tech tradecraft, and adrenaline-fueled chases.

Updating classic Gothic terrors for the postmodern age, Night’s Black Agents presents thoroughly modular monstrosity: GMs can build their own vampires, mashup their own minions, kitbash their own conspiracies to suit their personal sense of style and story. Rules options let you set the level of betrayal, grit, and action in your game. Riff from the worked examples or mix and match vampiric abilities, agendas, and assets for a completely custom sanguinary spy saga.

The included hook adventure gets the campaign going; the included city setting shows you what might be clotting in Marseilles’ veins even now. Rack silver bullets in your Glock, twist a UV bulb into your Maglite, and keep watching the mirrors … and pray you’ve got your vampire stories straight.

Designer’s blog entries.

An interview with the publisher.

Eternal Lies, the forthcoming mammoth campaign for Trail of Cthulhu will have a sound track album designed for use in actual play, created by James Semple and a team of other musicians.

James Semple, has produced music for GUMSHOE including four tracks for Esoterrorists (Dissonance) and four track for Trail of Cthulhu (Four Shadows )

James told me “I plan to produce an orchestral suite of music to truly capture the atmosphere of this huge globe-spanning adventure. The music will include themes, action pieces and ambient tracks to set the atmosphere throughout the game. The music will be written in the style of early Hollywood epics such as King Kong however it will also include a world music feel incorporating instruments and sounds of the various regions explored. In total there will be 60 minutes of high-quality music and to help me on this epic undertaking I will be utilising the exceptional talents of composers Marie-Anne Fischer, Mike Torr and Yaiza Varona.”

He’ll be blogging on this site as work progresses.

A decade ago, a band of occult investigators battled against the summoning of an ancient and monstrous evil.

They failed.

Now, you must piece together what went wrong. Investigate ancient crypts, abandoned estates, and festering slums. Explore choked jungles and the crushed psyches of your predecessors. Follow in their footprints and make new ones of your own. This time, there won’t be another chance.

The world is yours to save… or lose

A massive new campaign for Trail of Cthulhu by Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball

Status: Planning

Based on the award-winning Dying Earth RPG, Skulduggery is a roleplaying game for 2-6 players and a GM.

Skulduggery plunges the player characters into situations where they must prevail by guile and persuasion. The game is generic, meaning that its rules can be applied to various settings. It specializes in stories where negotiation and verbal gamesmanship take precedence over fighting and adventure. Left to its own devices, the tone of a Skulduggery session drifts toward the humorous or satirical. With some effort, it might also be put to grimly serious ends.  Four settings are provided, but we offer rules to create your own, and will release many more.

In Skulduggery, you play:

• a cabinet official attempting to please the President by shepherding an unpopular nomination
• a pirate crewman scheming for the captaincy of his scurvy vessel
• high schoolers vying for the limelight as they stage a musical
• skeevy space traders trying to corner the market on Silurian jump wine

Status: Illustration

Bookhounds of London is a campaign frame, by Kenneth Hite, for Trail of Cthulhu.

Your characters aren’t stalwart G-men or tweedy scholars this time around, serving their country or sealing off forbidden frontiers. They’re working the main chance, and selling maps (and maybe guidebooks) to those forbidden frontiers. They are book-hounds, looking for profit in mouldy vellum and leather bindings, balancing their own books by finding first editions for Satanists and would-be sorcerers. They may not quite know what they traffic in, or they may know rather better than their clientele. Peddlers of blasphemy and madness aren’t nice people, and the only consolation is that their customers are worse yet.

In a Book-Hounds of London campaign, the Investigators do not investigate horror and strangeness professionally. Rather, they investigate books about horror and strangeness and become, seemingly inevitably, drawn into the horror themselves. If they could just sell a pristine copy of the 1845 Bridewell edition of Nameless Cults, pocket their 40% (or 400%) and move on, they would. But it’s never that simple. Not for them. Not for book-hounds. Not in London. Not now.

Featuring new drives, hints for running your games as a “sandbox” and a sample adventure, Whitechapel Blackletter.

Status: Second draft

Jason Morningstar, best known as creator of of the Shab-Al-Hiri Roach, has written a Trail of Cthulhu adventure called The Black Drop.

Something slowly gathers strength beneath the frozen basalt of the remote Kerguelen archipelago – a monstrous thing once worshipped and then betrayed, a terrible god from the antediluvian past.  It’s time has come again, and mysterious forces gather.

Will they usher in its rebirth – or put an end to it forever?

Status: Released

This provisionally-titled game, by Robin Laws, takes GUMSHOE to the stars. Crews work at a distance fulfilling contracts for a central combined

In the distant reaches of its furthest frontier, the belt of stars known as the Edge, it maintains its authority only at a remove. Lacking the ships and manpower to protect its nominal citizens, it deputizes small teams of independent contractors to perform missions on its behalf.

When a settlement in the Edge has a problem, it sends for the Combine. The Combine then draws up a contract, offering it on the open market to the contractor community. They bid on missions including peacemaking, surveying, fugitive apprehension, crime investigation, disaster prevention, and evacuation management. Any mission interesting enough for PCs to take on requires them to investigate and solve a mystery of some kind. The faster and more efficiently the team wraps up the mission objectives listed in the contract, the more profit it makes, compared to its operating expenses.

Players strive to balance financial considerations against the heroic requirements of their missions. Do the embody the ethos of the Old Combine at its idealistic best, or adopt their own version of the hard-edged realpolitick that characterizes it today? Do they keep their eyes on the mission, or pursue money-making opportunities on the side?

Status: First draft