View from the Pelgrane’s Nest

News from Pelgrane Press

Trail of Cthulhu made 2008 Pelgrane’s most succesful year to date. Even without Trail and other Trail releases,it was our second most succesful since the launch of the Dying Earth. We do hope to continue with this success this year.

Mutant City Blues is printed and shipping, and is now available for pre-order and a supplement Hard Helix is well underway.

For Trail of Cthulhu, we have a limited edition prelease of Shadows Over Fimland from the webstore, and in the pipeline Arkham Detective Tales, Bookhounds of London, and The Armitage Files. This month’s Page XX also sees the first in our cartoon series Trial of Cthulhu. For Esoterrorists we have the longed-for background supplement, The Esoterror Fact Book laid out and ready to print. Finally, we now have a complete GUMSHOE bundle available in PDF and print form available a complete GUMSHOE bundle available in PDF and print from the webstore.

Mutant City Blues

Our new stand-alone Mutant City Blues is on its way to distributors, and is available as a pre-order Mutant City Blues is available for pre-order from the Pelgrane Press store, and Indie Press Revolution, with the PDF free. Mutant City Blues is like The Wire meets Heroes, or CSI meets Powers.

Win Loads of Stuff In Our Mutant City Blues Competition

To celebrate, we are announcing a competition to use your powers of investigation to solve a mutant-related murder and win a $150 Pelgrane Press voucher plus a Trail of Cthulhu signed leather bound and every PDF we’ve released, or one of three $30 prize vouchers. You can get started here, but clues are stashed all over the Pelgrane Press website and other related internet sites.

Hard Helix

The first Mutant City Blues supplement is Hard Helix, written by Robin D Laws – a set of four adventures giving heightened officers a chance to take on mutant terrorists, the Mafia, white collar criminals and drug dealers. It’s now being illustrated by the inimitable Jerome, but also Pascal Quidault . You can see a rough of one of Pascal’s pieces here.

Mutant City Blues Reviews

Here is an rpg.net review of the Mutant City Blues PDF.

For the first time in months I’m excited about running a new game. I can’t wait for the new season at my local games club so I can get stuck in. And I think this is because Mutant City Blues is one of the more original settings I’ve seen in a while. It adds a decidedly grown up spin to the superhero genre.

Over on the Superhero Summit , there’s an actual play review, as a podcast. It goes into to depth about the powers, the Quade Diagram and the investigative system.

The Esoterrorists

Out shortly will be The Esoterror Fact Book – it’s awaiting printing. The Esoterrorists was designed to be slim line easy-to-learn game. I think it achieved that goal, but some players wanted more background material, and this is the book which offers them that. It includes Ordo Veritatis operating procedures, the nature of esoterror, the membrane, and you can play Special Supression Forces with all-new crunchy combat options.

There is a review of an early draft here. To the extent that the review is negative, it appears that he thinks the material should have been included in the core book (in other words, he thinks it’s essential) and that there is too much material. I can live with both these criticisms!

Trail of Cthulhu

Gareth Hanrahan has finished the final two adventures for Arkham Detective Tales, and playtest reports are coming in. Graham Walmsley’s Purist adventure The Dying of St Margaret’s is tested, and ready for illustration and layout.

Shadows Over Filmland

We have a few softcover advanced copies of this forthcoming Trail of Cthulhu supplement from webstore. The final version will be out in early June.

A World-Spanning Adventure Competition

Following this post on my livejournal, I’ve made a shortlist of writers for a mammoth Trail campaign, and I’ll be commissioning them to do blurbs and outlines for the adventures. When I’ve chosen the top three, I’ll put it to the public vote, so you can chose the campaign you’d most like to run or play.