Gareth & Ken have finished the writing, and I've finished my edits, of the Trail of Cthulhu 2e core book, which included incorporating feedback from some above-and-beyond-going backers (you know who you are! 😅)
Now that we've revised the core book adventures - the Purist Afterlight and Pulp Hammer of the Gods - we're looking for playtesters for them. If you're interested, email us at the usual address ([email protected]) and we'll send you through the details.
We're still waiting for some of our HUNTING HORROR backers to get back to us with details of the NPCs they want included. If you backed at that level, consider this a gentle reminder to check your inboxes for an email from Gareth, and send us the details of your custom NPC. We want to move on with getting the book into layout, so if we haven't had a response from you by the end of July, we'll include your NPC in a future supplement.
We've decided to revise the Pulp and Purist icons, so our resident Foundry VTT expert Neil has designed these beauties, which we feel better represent the two modes:
Cartography for the four main corebook maps - Bishop, Chicago, The Armitage Inquiry and Lovecraft Country - is ongoing, as are the adventure maps for Afterlight and The Hammer of the Gods.
New interior art for the corebook is also ongoing. Here's a WIP sketch of Whitney Maers from Afterlight, by artist M. Wayne Miller:
While I'm working on the corebook, Robin's steaming ahead with Boundary of the Darkness. The adventures have just finished a round of external playtesting, and Robin will be making the final text adjustments once he gets back from his holiday. IIRC, about half of the art for BotD is finished; here are some sneak peeks of completed art, also from M. Wayne Miller:
I'm reviewing the existing Kingsbury Horror at the moment, to see how we can expand it to make it a printable book - it's only 14 pages at the moment, which is too short. I'll be bringing it more in line with what we've done in 2e, as well as adding a scene flow diagram and scene lead-ins and lead-outs, but expect some new interior content, too.
And finally, Ken's finished writing the Outside Entities stretch goal. The issue is, it refers to the 2e book which isn't yet laid out, and so there are loads of "see page XX" references throughout. So a question for you all: would you like it now, without these being linked, or would you prefer to wait until we can include the 2e page references? (We will be updating it once we have the final page numbers, of course). LMK in this poll!
The GM screen is finished, and Alessandro's final is so moody and atmospheric! I can imagine a whole campaign taking place in these remote desert ruins. Here's a crop of the middle section:
The dice are being manufactured as I type, by a great USA-based company (we're taking no chances!)
We've commissioned our good friends at All Rolled Up to make the dice bags, which can either feature the 1e Pulp and Purist logos, or the new 2e logos - I've done another poll.
Steven Hammond has finished the Black Book update for 2e. We've had some back and forth about when to kick off the one-year subscriptions; my feeling is that it's best to wait until we've sent you at least the final text, if not the final PDF. If you're already playing with the Alpha draft and would like your Black Book sub to start now, email us at the usual address ([email protected]).
A different Steve has finished the Syrinscape soundscape for Stranger Shores, the quickstart adventure, and is about to add James Semples' evocative Trail of Cthulhu soundtrack to it. I had a play around with it recently, and was impressed by what they did for the "research" part of the adventure 😁 Here's a screenshot of the dashboard:
Rudy at Metamorphic, who's working on the Roll20 Trail of Cthulhu character sheet, recently sent me through a draft to play around with. It's not how I pictured it, but it looks good and the functionality is really cool. If you'd like to test it out and give feedback on it, get in touch and we'll give you access to the test PC.
Okay, I think that about covers it for now - until next time!
I’ve been holding off on this update in the hope that we’d reach more certainty on tariffs, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. Here’s where things stand as at today for this project.
Since 2022, we’ve been printing our hardback books in Lithuania with the fantastic Standart Impressa, and splitting our perfect bound book print runs between a number of companies in the USA and UK.
As a result, Pelgrane Press shipments will not be affected by tariffs on Chinese imports into the USA, although - if books are not exempted, which a number of authorities believe they will be - Pelgrane shipments will be impacted by tariffs placed on EU goods coming into the USA (currently at 20%, but with a 90-day pause).
One thing I know we will be impacted by is the effect of those tariffs on the cost of raw materials, such as ink, paper, packaging, and fuel. It’s too soon to predict the full extent of that impact - the tariff war is ongoing and evolving as I type - but I’m guessing our production costs will have increased at least 10% by the end of the year.
We will be monitoring the situation closely, talking with our suppliers, and working through what changes we can make to mitigate these rising costs - such as holding back on new products, moving older products to print on demand only, and offsetting the shortfall with more crowdfunding campaigns - but I suspect these increases will be more than we, as a small company, can afford to absorb, and the worst-case scenario is that we will need to pass these price hikes on to consumers.
My intention is to honour the pledge levels and add-ons you have been quoted, and absorb any cost increases we incur during the printing of these books. The cool stuff you picked up during this campaign will not change in price during this campaign, but will almost certainly increase in price before it is available to non-backers.
Due to vast fluctuations in shipping costs since 2020, we’ve made it a policy to delay quoting and charging for shipping until we are ready to start fulfilment. I hope to be able to honour the shipping estimates we quoted during the campaign, but if there are unprecedented rises in shipping costs due to the ongoing trade war, we might have to increase those costs.
We haven’t yet committed to a printer for Trail of Cthulhu Second Edition, Boundary of the Darkness, and the GM screen. I’m currently sourcing US-based printer recommendations from tabletop industry colleagues, and my current plan is to compare the increased cost of splitting the print run (that is, printing the US & Canadian books in the USA, and all the other books in the UK, where they’ll be distributed from) with the cost of printing everything with our trusted print partner in Lithuania and shipping from the EU into the USA.
Apologies for the delay with this update - I'll make sure we're posting these monthly going forward.
The radio silence has masked work progress on all fronts. I'm particularly excited by how the GM screen is looking. We've recruited Alessandro Alaia - whose work you may have seen in our Cthulhu Apocalypse book covers and interiors - to do it. The project has evolved through sketches of jungles, the Antarctic, ships, featureless plateaus and New England houses, and we've finally landed on an ancient desert city, which I think is going to look great! Here are Alessandro's initial sketches:
Also in progress are backer surveys, which have just been sent out. You should be able to make any changes or additions you want in that - please do let Becky know at [email protected] if you have any issues with it. If you've backed at the Retailer level, you'll need to confirm your retail store details before getting access to the wholesale items.
I'm having a meeting later on today with Steven Hammond of The Black Book fame, so expect more details on the Trail 2e character generator in our next update.
Robin D. Laws has taken over the development of Boundary of the Darkness. He's working with Sarah on pre-gens for her Bluestockings adventure, as well as art and layout.
Ken's taken the Trail of Cthulhu manuscript, and is adding his magic touch - what we call his "fairy dust" - to it, which is the last stage of development. His changes will likely be more editorial than mechanical, but I do know he's improved the Fleeing rules, and added a list of the rules specific to Pulp and Purist modes, along with necessary appendices. Once he's finished with it, it can go into layout.
And speaking of, Aileen Miles is working on new layout templates, to an admittedly fuzzy brief from me. On the one hand, I want to have a different look the interior; but on the other hand, I really like the look of Jérôme Huguenin's original design. Here are some of Aileen's drafts:
Hope you had a great holiday season, and best wishes for an amazing New Year in 2025!
We're motoring along with Trail 2e on a number of fronts.
Helen Gould has turned in a thoughtful and incisive sensitivity edit of the current manuscript, and the project team will be getting together shortly to review her feedback. After that, Ken will be going through the manuscript with his usual care and attention, and then it's ready for layout.
We've set up a couple of polls to solicit your opinion on the dice bags and custom d6s. Let us know what colour combination and dice design you preference by voting in our polls:
Unfortunately, our GM screen artist has had to pull out, so we're researching appropriate replacements while we commission the new interior art pieces, which is an ongoing process.
To those of you who've asked if you can still add things and make changes to your pledges, the answer is yes - we've set up the pledge manager now, and expect it to be approved by Backerkit this coming week. Once it's approved, we'll be sending out the backer surveys, and you can update your shipping address and add any additional items then.
