I like investigative RPGs. A detective story just feels such a natural fit for the format, you know? I’ve written at length about this topic recently, having published a 7-part series on the matter. Here’s a link to the first entry in the series:
If you’d like to dive into this sort of game, then Humble Bundle absolutely has your back. They are currently running a Trail of Cthulhu-themed bundle. This game is built for investigative play. It’s based on the Gumshoe system, which is all about ensuring that characters can move from clue to clue in the course of their investigation. It’s also set within the Cthulhu Mythos, adding a supernatural/cosmic horror element to proceedings.
In looking to the bundle, I need to start with a negative. The otherwise good folks at Humble Bundle are purposefully terrible at building RPG bundles. By this point, it’s clearly a business decision to present a three-tiered bundle that isn’t actually usable unless and until you spring for the highest, most expensive tier. By this, I mean that they place the core rules of the game in that highest tier. Earlier tiers usually contain supplements that cannot actually be used without the core book. It’s cynical. It’s bad. It’s frustrating; especially when they’re able to get this right for their video game bundles.
Now, given that nothing is usable until the highest tier, I’m not going to bother reviewing the lower, unusable tiers and will instead just look at the bundle as a whole.
Okay. negativity over. Let’s get into the bundle.
I’m pleasantly surprised by how much content is actually in here. I genuinely didn’t realise how much had actually been produced for the game. Priced at £14.29, here’s the full contents of the 23-item, bundle:
The core book is obviously the most important item here. As I previously mentioned, I have this book. The Gumshoe system does a really good job with investigative play, and that’s great, but there’s one glaring issue in that it only really does one thing really well. The system of seeding clues works well in ensuring that players are ultimately able to access what they need to piece together the mystery, but I don’t like the point-based skill system. I think that’s my natural hoarding instinct at play as I just don’t want to use the points. I’m also not convinced it’s the best system for fostering improv in play.
It does help you structure investigations, though. It does help to avoid the players getting completely stuck by making one bad choice or roll. Let’s keep these positives in mind.
Beyond that all-important core books are a ton of cool supplements. I’ve picked up physical copies of both Cthulhu City and Bookhounds of London.
Cthulhu City is a fantastic book. It’s a self-contained setting with a bunch of locations (in masked and unmasked flavours) and loads of ideas, plot hooks, clues, and the like. There’s a wee adventure in here, but that takes up fewer than 20 pages of the 200+ page hardback; it’s really about the setting.
Bookhounds of London is, like Cthulhu City, a campaign guide, locale sourcebook, and an adventure. There’s loads here, and I love the premise of the party being a group of bookhounds tasked with hunting down rare books for wealthy collectors before getting embroiled in all the cosmic horror of the mythos.
These are both solid books with a ton of content. Frankly, with these two books and the core rules, you’re more than getting your money’s worth for the price of admission. Of the remaining book in the deal, I like the look of Dulce et Decorum Est, The Armitage Files, and Eternal Lies.
Ultimately, the bundle is a decent deal for both players and GMs. The problem is that you can’t buy in at a lower level as a player and leave the GM to get the higher tiers with the more GM-centric supplements. Putting the core rules in the top tier means that everyone really needs to buy in at the highest level. Again, they don’t do this with their video game bundles, so I’m not sure why it’s okay to do it here.
Still, good deal!
You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Humble Bundle.
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