The more you discover, the more the Mythos infects your mind. Your friends cannot be trusted, your knowledge means nothing, and everything you hold dear turns to dust.

The Final Revelation collects for the first time the four sanity-destroying Purist adventures for Trail of Cthulhu written by award winning RPG writer Graham Walmsley. With a framing scenario by Scott Dorward, The Final Revelation gives your Investigators the opportunity to play through a Purist campaign set in the United Kingdom of the 1930s where there is no escape, no comfort and no salvation when faced with the Mythos. Your Investigators are powerless and insignificant; your only choices death, insanity or a quiet life with a shattered mind.

The Final Revelation features the following scenarios:

• The Final Revelation: A group of Investigators called The Friday Group tries to piece together the details of what they believe to be a threat to humanity. As they uncover the facts behind each scenario, they are faced with a final, inescapable truth none of them could have guessed.

• The Dying of St Margarets: On the remote Scottish island of St Margaret’s, Investigators take jobs at a private school, each searching for an acquaintance who has disappeared. What they discover drives them to the edge of insanity to a place where guns will not help them, reason will not protect them and even faith will not give them comfort.

• The Watchers in the Sky: The Watchers introduces a new and unknowable Mythos entity. Blending Lovecraft with Hitchcock, a madman feeds the birds, paranoid they are watching him. Later, the same strange birds stare from the rooftops, warping the laws of physics and chemistry. And, when the Investigators dissect one of the creatures, they find something monstrous inside.

• The Dance in the Blood: In a forgotten corner of Northern England nestles a village plagued by terrible secrets and subterranean horrors. Every hundred and nineteen years it is torn apart, its inhabitants massacred. It happened in 1697 and 1816. Now it’s 1935 and beneath the village are loathsome creatures, waiting to reclaim their land and kill anyone who stands in their way.

• The Rending Box: In an antiques shop in North London, there is a box. Inside is an ancient creature, seeping through into the world. It will show the Investigators everything as it really is: the patterns behind the universe, the monsters older than time, the secrets that break your mind. And all they need to do is open a box.

With little else to do but go mad or die trying, how will your Investigators react when faced with the final revelation?

Preorder

by Will Hindmarch

Eternal Lies took a while to devise and design and write. It took a long time to assemble and layout and that’s not even done yet. It turned into something. Working on a book this big can be scary.

We went through a number of ideas, experimenting with structure and motif and villains, before we refined a couple of the big ideas into what became this campaign. We built on the sterling adventure-design ideas pioneered by Robin D. Laws and Kenneth Hite. We developed plot and story ideas shared with us by Simon Rogers. With one hand on the railing behind us, we leaned out and reached into the dark in search of something frightening.

Trail of Cthulhu is a big damn game full of big ideas and we wanted to dramatize some of those ideas and we wanted to strike out into new turf in a few places. We wanted to pay homage both by meeting the demands of the game’s fans and by surprising them in a few ways. Trail’s players and keepers are why this thing exists.

We set out to build Eternal Lies because we wanted the game to have the kind of epic campaign that big damn games call for. We also wanted something that Trail players and Keepers could get excited about and dig deep inside for months and months of play. I, myself, wanted something that could be at once grand and personal, ugly in its terror and human in its stakes — some of its stakes. It’s big and it’s small. You’ll see.

What could have been the hardest part of assembling a big book like this, though, was the testing. When we supplied the text to playtesters, I was terrified.
For no reason. The playtesters on this book were remarkable. It was a wonderful experience. With great players gathered and facilitated by Beth Lewis, the playtest process honed and improved the text immeasurably. Sharp-eyed proofing and copyediting by Christopher Smith Adair further refined and cultivated the text.

It took a lot of hands and eyes and minds to bring this book together. It is a privilege to have my name on the front of it, alongside such colossal talents as Jeff Tidball and Jeremy Keller, when so many worked to make it real.

And parts of it still scare me.

Calling all agents: This burst transmission contains the classified outline for Double Tap: The Night’s Black Agents Expansion Book. Use this intel at your discretion.

Which is to say, read it, share it with your Night’s Black Agents game group — or the people who would be your Night’s Black Agents game group if they just had this one thing cleared up … You see, if we get some really good ideas here in the comments, there’s a bit more room in the book for them. Not a whole lot, mind you: it’s already fully loaded. But, if I may mangle the metaphor a bit, it’s not fully locked.

And if you have specific ideas for stuff to go into the sections that are already in the outline, well, feel free to add those in comments too. Where we may or may not STEAL THEM AND GIVE YOU ONLY A MEAGER “BLACK LEVEL AGENT” CREDIT FOR YOUR TROUBLE. That’s just how we roll, here at P.E.L.G.R.A.N.E. For example, I’ve only got two vampiric monster ideas (the Assyrian/Babylonian ekimmu and our old pals the zalozhniy) for that “More Monsters” section, so if you’ve got a favorite bloodsucker you’re hankering to see, sing out.

Seriously, we’d especially like to hear from people with Night’s Black Agents campaigns: what do you want to see more of? What works? What might work? Tell us. We’ll get the intel to those who need it most.

DOUBLE TAP

THE NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS EXPANSION BOOK

Outline by Kenneth Hite

Introduction

(500 words; Hite)

What this book is and how to use it.

Agents’ Companion

Abilities

(25,000 words; Wieland)

This section mirrors the similar section in the Trail of Cthulhu Keeper’s Resource Book (pp. 4-37 in that book), providing expanded information and examples for the various abilities.

Investigative Abilities

For each Investigative ability, this section provides:

• Specific ability uses and techniques, thriller-color infodumps, and “ability focus” material, in whatever ratio seems right for that ability: e.g., grifts for Reassurance (or Bullshit Detector!), how a séance works for Occult Studies.
• At least three example benefits from spends (NBA, p. 46).
• At least one example TFFB (NBA, p. 108-109).
• At least three vampiric traces and clues that the ability can pick up (similar to the “Investigation” sub-section in each monster writeup in Trail of Cthulhu, and the “Sample Clues” sub-section for each Ability in the Keeper’s Resource Book). If applicable, use the vampire type glyphs here to identify each clue by the type of vampire (Supernatural, Damned, Alien, Mutant) most likely to leave such a clue.

General Abilities

For each General ability, this section provides:

• Specific ability uses and techniques, thriller-color infodumps, and “ability focus” material, in whatever ratio seems right for that ability: e.g., pickpocket techniques for Filch, ways to defeat security systems for Infiltration, scrounging and improvisational use of scenery with Preparedness, the “Mozambique Drill” Shooting technique.
• If the ability can be used investigatively, some of the other material for Investigative abilities above (benefits, vampiric clues, etc.)
• At least one new cherry for each ability except Shooting. If you’re on a roll, add more than one. Multiple cherry rules, as follows: When a General ability reaches 8 rating points, pick the cherry you want to use. It does not change. You can add a second cherry (if available) when you have 14 rating points in that ability, a third at 20 rating points, etc.

Achievements

(2,000 words; Plant and Hite)

Adapts Will Plant’s See Page XX article.

Hite to provide specific rules for the Achievement system plus mechanical guidelines and benchmarks where needed.

Adaptive Tradecraft

(2,000 words; Wieland)

Incorporates and expands Rob Wieland’s See Page XX article.

Firearms

(3,000 words; Kulp and/or Hite)

In playtest, the most common request was for a big list of guns, even though the requester (usually) knew that it had no real reason to be there. In this section, we provide a big list of guns, both those seen in thriller movies and in actual use by clandestine and covert operators.

The compiler of this list should ensure that every firearm from the Bourne movies and Ronin, at the very least, is included, as is every firearm normally issued to the Spetsnaz, GSG 9, SEAL Team Six, and other major special operations forces. Doubtless, other absolutely iconic weapons will occur to the compiler. The Internet Movie Firearms Database will be your savior.

The model for this list of guns is the firearms table in Trail of Cthulhu (p. 186).

The Notes column is for any other rules effects; other interesting, inspirational factoids about the weapon; and a place to list the weapon’s associated gun cherry, if any.

The reason that there was no big list of guns in the corebook is that, damage modifiers and type of weapon (pistol, rifle, shotgun, SMG, assault rifle) aside there is no rules-mechanical difference between guns. This section also adds some difference back in in the form of gun cherries.

A gun cherry is a special feature of the weapon, drawn either from its real-life performance characteristics or its military legend, that provides a bonus of some kind when the user rolls an unmodified 6 and succeeds. (This also addresses another common playtest concern: players who rolled a 6 after spending a lot of points felt their good roll was “wasted.”) More than one weapon can have the same gun cherry; no weapon should have more than one.

Each gun cherry has a trigger event (usually the roll of an unmodified 6, usually on Shooting) and an effect, e.g.:

Stopping Power

Trigger: Roll an unmodified 6 on a Shooting test that hits a foe.

Effect: The foe’s action moves to the end of the ranking order in combat.

Note to the author of this section: try very hard to avoid extra damage as a gun cherry modifier. Extra damage, even on a 6, is an expensive bonus in the NBA game economy: see, for instance, the Critical Hits option on p. 73. That said, a gun cherry for an exceptionally accurate weapon could easily drop the cost of a Called Shot by 1 (on a 6, immediately refresh 1 spent Firearms point), giving a damage bonus on the back end, as it were.

More Gear

(2,500 words; Adamus and Lindke)

Follows the basic pattern of the Spytech section of the NBA corebook (pp. 96-100). Provides brief descriptions and salient rules effects of both actually existing equipment, including:

• 3D printer/fabricator (useful for Forgery, too!)
• countersound generator
• harpoon (and rules for running its cable around a Jeep winch as in Vampires: Los Muertos)
• more drugs or toxins (use format from p. 81 for these)
• parasail
• scrambler, etc.

and cinematic gadgetry, including:

• Mission: Impossible style face mask
• burning/cutting hand laser
• jet pack (with rules/stats compatible with the NBA Vehicles section on p. 101)
• digital stealth (e.g., the “ugly shirt” from Zero History)

In cases where there is a cinematic version of an existing gadget (a parasail worn under your coat, for example), provide both, as with the Climbing Hoist on NBA p. 98. Signpost cinematic spytech in the description.

Either in this section or the Guns section above, a list of possible anti-vampire ammunition loadouts for conventional firearms and tranquilizer guns, by type of vampire. Also, provide a basic notion of the point spends (Vampirology, Chemistry, Shooting, etc.) and time needed to create such a loadout.

If you want to take a swing at a rule for Q-style gadgets and “joke shop” spies, go for it. Otherwise, Hite will do it. Most likely in the form: Describe, ideally in the form of a flashback, the implausible gadget you claim to have been issued. Spend 12 total points from Preparedness and whatever ability the concealed gadget uses (e.g., a bomb in a pen would cost 12 points from Preparedness and Explosive Devices). You now have, on your person, a gadget meeting your specs. For wilder games, lower the cost to have a gadget: Daniel Craig has a laser-watch for 12 points (Preparedness and Shooting); Sean Connery has a laser-watch for 9 points; Roger Moore has a laser-watch for 6 points.

New Thriller Maneuvers

(2,000 words; Lindke)

Provide 10-12 new thriller maneuvers, both combat and otherwise:

Verbal Trauma Unit

Prereq: Medic 8+

Once per session, a player with a Medic rating of 8 or more can gain a 3-point refresh in that ability by uttering a brief narrative description of his or her actions surgically sliced from medical drama:

• “He’s tach-ing! Very thready pulse, shocky, eyes dilated … flesh cold and moist … Damn it to hell, I won’t lose another one. Not today!”
• “I pop the top from the syrette and smoothly insert it into her armpit, right where the axillary vein goes over the trapezius.”
• “My hands greasy with blood, I tear the duct tape with my teeth and then whip it around Jensen’s thigh. My eyes are far away, however, seeing only the basement in Sarajevo where I first felt life slip through my fingers.”

At the Director’s discretion, descriptions so bloodily graphic or antiseptically detached as to amount to vampiric porn may earn a 4-point refresh.

These utterances needn’t be improvised; players can crib from Gray’s Anatomy (book or show) in advance, then adapt their medical doubletalk to the injury.

Other Thriller Contests

(8,000 words; Hindmarch)

This section adapts the Thriller Chase Rules in the NBA corebook (pp. 53-60) to other abilities besides Athletics, Driving, or Piloting, and to tension-building sequences other than pure chase scenes. For the first three types of sequences below, follow the pre-existing Thriller Chase dynamics and rules as closely as you can, while adapting them to the specific challenges of the specific contest. You don’t have to rewrite the rules; reference to the Thriller Chase Rules is not just allowed but preferred.

Also, each type of sequence should:

• Provide examples of Raises and Sudden Escapes in the contest, and versions of Ramming and Swerve.
• Provide specific example uses of Investigative abilities (p. 57), especially by other players besides the main runner/hacker/infiltrator/watcher.
• Provide at least one (and ideally more, depending on local color) thrilling element list (p. 54).
• Feel free to introduce Thriller Maneuvers (like Parkour and Gear Devil in the corebook) specific to this type of contest

Digital Intrusion

Models the contest between the hacker and the system’s defenses/security professionals.

Infiltration

Models stealth-mode computer games as well as heist movies: infiltrator vs. security.

Surveillance

Models the contest between watched and watchers: Bourne in Waterloo Station.

Manhunts

Hunting for your target in a large area; the example here is Harker’s posse tracking Dracula down in London, or the CIA tracking Bourne from a single sighting in Moscow. This system is intended to model the players as the team of hunters vs. a single vampire or Renfield or terrorist. This probably works better not as a straight port of the Thriller Chase but as a player-facing mod of the Extended Chase (p. 90-91), to be played out as a micro-game before a session that opens or closes the target’s Hot Lead.

Standard Operating Procedures

(2,000 words; Kulp)

These are specific player tips for what to do when you:

• don’t know what to do next
• feel like there’s nowhere to turn
• hit a new location
• uncover a profusion of new chaff and detail
• uncover a strong single new lead
• deduce or sense vampiric activity but have no confirming data
• encounter resistance getting information out of someone
• are hunkered down and are afraid to unhunker
• etc.

In other words, logjam-breakers and practical advice for stumped or demoralized players to help them proactively dig themselves out of trouble and get the story moving again. Cast them as specifics, special cases, and expansions on the Bucharest Rules (pp. 116-117).

Director’s Companion

Cameos

(3,500 words; Adamus)

Twenty-five instant NPCs suited to the spy thriller genre. Each writeup should include: important abilities, a physical description, a story hint in the text, and the preferred Interpersonal method to win their cooperation. Then three things they can provide as an asset (for the vampires or for the agents), three clues they possess, and three handles for roleplaying them.

Longshoreman

Athletics 9, Conceal 5, Hand-to-Hand 6, Mechanics 2

Tanned by the weather, grizzled Erik wears a slick vinyl parka over dull clothes. He holds himself ready, a bit hunched over. His eyes size you up behind his cigarette smoke; he’s done enough off-the-books deals and seen enough strange cargo come in to know you’re not here by coincidence. He’s had to cover for too many weaklings to have patience with them at his age; only if you seem tough will he pay attention, but not if you try to bully him (Athletics or Hand-to-Hand used as an Interpersonal ability).

As Asset: Access to cargo before inspection; access to ships; use of heavy cranes

As Clue: Saw a coffin unloaded; knows who the mafiya stooge in the union is; knows which warehouse the Chechens use

In Play: Squint against the sunlight off the water; hunch your shoulders like you’re about to pick up a heavy object; steal a quick look over the player’s shoulder to see who’s backing him up.

Establishing Shots

(3,500 words; Kulp)

Twenty-five instant locations common to urban settings or spy thrillers (the Remote Farmhouse could work, too). They can be campuses (Touristy Graveyard), buildings (Glass Skyscraper), events (Political Rally), single rooms (Drug Lab), or streets (Red Light Street).

Each writeup should include a quick “Stock Footage” description, followed by the Cameos you might run into there (if you’re not writing the Cameos section above, put in who you think might fit; I’ll edit to make it work), three clues, and any sensible rules effects (e.g., Red Light Street provides 2 free pool points for setting up a safe house). Then three elements of the location to use in a fight, and three elements of the location to use in a chase. (Type of Thriller Chase in parentheses: Open, Normal, Cramped)

Nightclub

After you get through the metal detector, your eyes adjust. Multiple levels break up the enormous warehouse-like space. Sound is deafening, lights dazzling or dim. Two brilliantly lit big bars dominate the ends of the room, the middle is a dance floor broken geometrically by tables occupied by lounging douchebags and their parasitic girlfriends. VIP spaces up on the balcony and in a raised dais on one end provide architectural reinforcement of social status. The bathrooms are down the hallway; no, farther down than that.

Cameos: Dealer, Party Kid, Thug

Clues: Traffickers talk while high or boasting; cold spots or missing mirror images; infrasound creates mesmeric trance in susceptible patrons

Rules Effects: People are here to be seduced; if you have Flirting, get 1 free pool point to spend here. Noise, motion, and darkness add 1 to visual and auditory Difficulties.

In a Fight: Bouncers and thugs have guns; bottles in the bar; cute hostages

In a Chase: Slide down the bar; foam drops down obstructing vision; jump off VIP area balcony onto dance floor (Cramped)

More Monsters

(2,000 words; Hite)

Adds four more monsters from the world’s store of vampiric and quasi-vampiric terrors.

Nosferatu

(2,000 words; Hite)

Another fully statted sample vampire type, with servitors and forensic spoor.

Pulling Them Apart

(2,000 words; Palmer)

Incorporates James Palmer’s See Page XX article on how conspiracies turn on themselves.

Adds graphic for the Vampyremid

Solitary Heroes

(1,000 words; Wieland)

Notes and advice on running an NBA game with only one player character.

Variant Eras

(2,500 words; Hite)

Character generation modifications and rules specifics for running NBA in other eras besides the modern day.

• Victorian (1880s-1890s)
• World War II (1930s-1940s)
• Cold War (1960s-1970s)

Addenda

Complete Cherry List

Names and summaries of all General ability cherries, in this book and corebook

Mental Illness Flow Chart

Graphic representation of the Mental Illness rules on pp. 82-84 of NBA corebook

Mode Index

Index for both books of all the rules and game-play changed by the various modes

New Thriller Options

Thriller options (and gun cherries) added in this book, in the same format as pp. 218-219 of NBA corebook

Complete Vampiric Abilities List

Names and summaries of all vampiric abilities

Vampyremid

The escalating conflict Vampyremid from “Pulling Them Apart”

Dreamhounds of Paris is the Dreamlands book for people who hate the Dreamlands.  The players are prominent surrealists, their rivals, and occult adversaries, fighting to control the Dreamlands and thus alter human consciousness.  The fractious, iconoclastic surrealists were the premiere troublemakers of the intellectual scene of 1930s Paris. Andre Breton, their ideological enforcer, considered the movement not an art or avant garde pursuit, but an exercise in literally changing the human spirit.  The exploration of dreams was but one part of this quasi-mystical pursuit.  In Dreamhounds of Paris, top surrealists–but never the hyper-rational Breton himself–not only discover a way of breaking through to the Dreamlands by randomly walking the streets of the city.  They discover that their powerful imaginations allow them to reshape its oneric geography. Soon the Dreamlands look more like something envisioned by Lautreamont than Dunsany–then they’re overrun by melting watches, ants streaming from giant hands, and bowler-hatted men whose faces can never be seen.

Status: In development

The Gaean Reach is a brand new game written by Robin D Laws with Jim Webster and Peter Freeman based on the science-fiction works of Dying Earth author Jack Vance. It will use a new GUMSHOE-meets-Skulduggery system.

The Gaean Reach is a fictional setting developed across a series of loosely connected novels. It exists in the far future and can be defined as those parts of our galaxy in which human colonies have become established. The scope of the Gaean Reach varies between novels, growing large over a timeline of several millennia at least.

The richness of the settings, the vast array of cultures and races, each with their own bewildering customs and traditions ensure that this is a setting unlike any other. This is not a background where NPCs exist purely to provide clues for the next stage of the adventure, instead, the NPCs are complex individuals, with their own aims and objectives, with whom you have to interact and that interaction may send the game off in surprising directions.

Status: In development

The Dracula Dossier is a sandbox style campaign frame for Night’s Black Agents in a similar vein to The Armitage Files for Trail of Cthulhu. It will include pages from Jonathan Harker’s diary and possibly a fully annotated copy of Bram Stokers Dracula for use as an in-game artefact.

Status: In development.

Hillfolk is the first game using the DramaSystem roleplaying rules engine designed by Robin D Laws. In a game of Hillfolk, players take the roles of iron age raiders struggling to protect and enrich their clan at a time of clashing empires. In a DramaSystem game, players, aided by a GM, collectively create a compelling, serial story of emotional need and conflict within a tightly-knit group of people.

In addition to the primary goal of allowing players to create and enjoy a primarily dramatic narrative, DramaSystem possesses the following features:

Long term story play. DramaSystem arises from the story games school of roleplaying game design, which privileges the exploration of narrative over other design goals, such as strategic decision-making, tactical butt-kicking, or the simulation of imaginary environments. Story games typically focus on delivering a fun and challenging one-time story that wraps up in a single sitting. DramaSystem shines in long-term play, in which a group unfolds an improvised narrative over an extended period, during which they come to relate to the characters as they would to the protagonists of their favorite ongoing television drama.

Easier to GM: Unlike some justly acclaimed story games, DramaSystem retains the role of Game Moderator, a participant apart from the rest who guides action and pacing and provides necessary rules interpretations. In this it is more like a mainstream or traditional roleplaying game. However, its events are entirely created in the moment, sparing the GM the usual lengthy prep work required by those games.

Harder to GM: Where GMs in traditional games have nearly unlimited power to shape the narrative by determining the obstacles PCs face, DramaSystem doles out their interventions in measured quantities. That makes the effort of pushing the story in the direction you want more of a challenge, with game-like tactical elements. Working within the limitations becomes part of the fun. You can never predict the outcome of any episode, giving you a sense of surprise and suspense you don’t get in games granting you near omnipotence.

Status: In layout

The Mythos Expeditions are a collection of adventures designed to be run as a stand alone with new rules tailored for expeditions or as part of the Armitage Files campaign setting in the core rules. Take your Investigators on an expedition into the dense jungles of central Africa, trek through the arid wastes of the Gobi desert, and clamber through the lost cities of South America. Your travels will you take you through the skies and across the oceans, into the lava caves of New Zealand and the frozen peaks of Patagonia.

Written by Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws, with contributions from an eclectic mix of mythos experts.

Status: In development

The Esoterror threat is growing. The membrane is thinning. Eradicating the threat did not work. Surpressing the threat is failing. The next step is Containment. We will have to create quarantine zones of areas of high supernatural presence and designate safe zones for habitation. Using force against the Esoterrorists has not worked. We must understand them and their methods in order to defeat them. We must know what they know. Then we can defeat them.

This document is the first step toward that. It discusses the wall between our reality and the Outer Dark, how it is measured, how it can be injured and repaired, and speculates about its nature and purpose. The summoning techniques the Esoterrorists use and how we, the Ordo Veritatis, can counter these actions. There is also a section on how to deal with Outer Dark Entities after they have manifested. Direct contact with ODE’s is not recommended if any other options exist.

The Esoterror Summoning Guide by Gareth Hanrahan is a supplement for The Esoterrorists. It also includes a short adventure based upon the material presented.

Status: In playtest

Owl Hoot Trail is a Wild West fantasy game where you can play an upright lawman bringing justice, a dastardly scoundrel robbing a bank, a feral scout on the trail of an owlbear, a mysterious mentalist looking into the darkness of an alien mind, or a gunslinger ready to take on any threat, be it man, beast, or undead. It’s set in a mythic version of the Wild West, and can as easily be seen as the future of a classic fantasy setting or the fantastic version of the historical American West.

The rules are simple and familiar if you’ve played classic fantasy RPGs, but they’ve got cowboy grit. Bullets can kill as easily as a dragon’s claws, and traveling unprepared in the desert is as dangerous as any dungeon.

Status: In playtest