This is a book that has long needed in the world of Cthulhu gaming and I am so pleased that Pelgrane Press has managed to produce it. They have created a beautiful dynamic mechanic for world spanning expeditions whilst things very local. And, because it is GUMSHOE, the emphasis is upon play not points loss or gain. It is designed to accelerate play. Can it be converted to BRP? Of course, it can. That is the beautiful thing that is emerging the Trail of Cthulhu line – there is a slight convergence between BRP and GUMSHOE – as I get the feeling that 7e writers have been inspired by GUMSHOE, as well innovations brought on by Runequest or 101Games.

So, what is this book – it is a big book of adventures using the new showcased mechanic which I must commend Pelgrane Press for doing. Often sourcebooks are dry and uninteresting affairs but the addition of adventures gives it the feel and vibe of a splatbook without sacrificing the need to introduce new rules, adventures give them rocket juice of applied examples with an entertaining narrative.

As per my usual practice, I will not introduce spoilers but I was deeply impressed by the handling of the adventures that could be a balance of purist and pulp depending upon the Keeper’s personal preference. Furthermore, Pelgrane Press has done excellent job of revising their style of adventure writing and I think that they have managed to find the success. It gives enough details for us who want to be able to run an adventure right out of the box (as a One Shot or series of One Shots) but is sandbox enough that it does not get bogged down in stereoscopic maps that one cannot fathom up or down. Instead, it has beautifully rendered maps that harken back to the Indiana Jones movies of having to cross different locales – by planes, trains, automobiles (or camels, boats, or whatever) – exquisitely done to give a real sense of motion to the storyline. Here is hoping that this will soon become a GUMSHOE and RPG norm. So once again Pelgrane Press is on the forefront of gaming design.

The book is nicely bound and the illustrations are fantastic – character portraits are finally included and do add much colour to the adventures. Each illustration is carefully paired with text that it can be used as a gaming prop or just break the monotony of the text. And the quality of the art is of the usual high standard that Pelgrane Press sets stunningly combining horror, fantastic, and realism into a single image. The writing despite having many authors hence many different styles is well edited and clear with precision – with lots of opportunity for purple prose, in either the form of sample dialogue or unpretentious guidelines how to play the NPC. Making each encounter memorable without getting bogged down in statistics. Once again, GUMSHOE shows an inspiring way of paring down the game system without dumbing it down. While some may object to the point and spend system – even the random systems of things like BRP do it, when in the hands of an experienced Keeper. And, that is what the adventures show – even if the clue is not immediately obvious – there is another way of finding it within the same scene. GUMSHOE is rapidly becoming for me – the main way of conducting investigative horror for me with some slight tweaks.

The following section contains a short synopsis of expeditions:

The Dwellers in the Dunes - Steven S. Long Famed explorer Roy Chapman Andrews leads one final expedition into the harsh Gobi Desert of Mongolia in search of fossils. His true hope is to find evidence that humanity evolved in Central Asia as his academic mentor predicted years ago. When his latest expedition uncovers some hominid fossils, he and his colleagues are ecstatic — until members of the expedition start dying horribly. Can the Investigators figure out what’s going on and destroy or escape a menace out of time before they and the rest of the expedition become yet another collection of bones scattered across the desert?

The Mother of Malaria – Robin D. Laws Professor H. C. Kelston of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine both loves and hates anopheles mosquitoes. Every day he wakes up thinking about the damnable creatures, so perfectly designed by evolution for fecundity. Kelston seeks a better way to end the disease’s reign of terror—by learning to control, and eventually exterminate, the mosquito itself. After expeditions to Egypt, Panama, and Greece, Kelston now trains his angry scientific eye on the British colony of North Rhodesia, in whose Busanga Swamp is said to fester the Mother of Mosquitoes. The investigators prepare to join him on that quest.

Lost on a Sea of Dreams – Adam Gauntlett The group, en route to Bermuda with a bathysphere to assist naturalist and oceanographer William Beebe, is blown off course. The captain is injured in the storm, and few others aboard know much about navigation. Moreover what little they do know seems contradicted by the stars; none of the constellations are in the right place. How will the expedition get back on course?

An Incident at the Border – Kenneth Hite On August 13 of 193-, during the Perseid meteor shower, something struck the Earth somewhere in the remote reaches of the Gran Chaco, a disputed and inhospitable borderland between Bolivia and Paraguay. Now, it’s late September, and the University has asked the Investigators to assist with a scratch expedition to find the impact site, make a full report of the incident, and recover any extraterrestrial material there, if any.

The Jaguars of El-Thar – Tristan J. Tarwater Professor Henry Rutherford Stapleton of the Miskatonic Department of Anthropology is just west of Chichen Itza, working with local Maya people and a few university students at what he calls the Cenote of El-Thar. He is loath to leave his work behind as he has fostered a relationship with the locals and reports he is on the verge of making a very important discovery. To the northwest, ethno linguist Galina Avenirovna Prokhorov is studying glyphs found in the Temple of the Jaguar King, suggesting it has some connection with the cenote Stapleton is studying. Hurricane season is drawing to a close and Stapleton has requested several more students to aid him in investigating and dredging the cenotes, ruins, and vibrant villages on the Yucatan peninsula.

Tongued With Fire – Bill White The investigators are members of a Miskatonic University expedition whose purpose is to travel to a Christian settlement in India which some evidence suggests dates as far back as the 1st century AD. Their destination is the village of Usmavasati, which lies in the Siwali Hills on the edge of the Punjab region of northwestern India. Their aim is to advance historical knowledge of early Christianity, as well as possibly locate the source of a Prester John legend.

Served Cold – Jeff Tidball Langdon Gibson, a marksman and ornithologist, died six days ago on his acreage in the Catskills. It was an attack of some kind, quite bloody. Another man, Frederick Cook, also died gruesomely, in Danbury, Connecticut some months ago. Gibson and Cook had a common link, in that both been involved in the Arctic expeditions of the famous explorer Robert Peary, who mounted a number of expeditions to explore Greenland and the North Pole. Is this a coincidence, or did something unspeakable happen in the polar ice?

Whistle and I’ll Come – Emma Marlow Dr. Tyler Freeborn at Miskatonic University has acquired a strangely carved whistle taken from Stone Age tribes in the New Guinea jungle. He has persuaded Dr. Armitage and the Derby Foundation to fund a small expedition to find the source of the whistle. They will journey to New Britain, Papua New Guinea, provision and hire guides, then venture into the unmapped rainforest to find the tribe who carved the whistle.

A Load of Blarney – Lauren Roy On December 11, 1937, the steamship Annagher sank off the coast of Ballymacormick, Ireland. The Court investigation attributed the sinking to “a movement which was rendered inevitable by the peculiar quality of the cargo and its distribution.” The wreck report also expressed puzzlement that, although the time between intial list and capsizing was quick, the crew should have had ample time to make use of the Annagher’s lifeboats, lifejackets, and lifebuoys, and yet did not. Nine of the ten-member crew died in the wreck. In the early spring of 1938, a lump of iron recovered from the hold is sent to Miskatonic University for examination. Where the salvage crew saw nothing but scrap iron, steel, and lead, a scholar at Dublin’s Trinity College thinks she might have stumbled onto something unusual. She has sent it to Dr. Armitage for study, and has invited a team to cross the Atlantic and accompany her as she ventures into the graves of the kings and queens of Erin.

Cerulean Halo - Matthew Sanderson Tuesday July 17th 1934. Present Franklin D. Roosevelt, on a 12,000 mile voyage from the Caribbean to Portland, Oregon, arrives at Clipperton Island. Four years later, in the summer of 1938, the President is organizing a return to the island as part of a 6,000-mile cruise examining various islands known for their curious wildlife, including the Galapagos. As the short-list of candidates is prepared, the Miskatonic decides to organize an expedition of its own to Clipperton Island. With the journey taking a week from the southern tip of Baja California, they will have a week on the island before they have to head back to civilization before they make their report. Upon an island with a dark past, of which humanity knows so very little, a week can seem a very long time indeed…

These adventures use a number of modes of transportation and could be strung together in a single campaign or played individually. Hopefully, this the beginning of a long run of Mythos Exploration books. And, if it can be a criticism of Pelgrane Press is that brilliantly introduce us to concepts such as Book Hounds or Cthulhu Detective Stories but then stop there. True, some can be stopped without spoiling further the Cthulhu Mythos – yes, I am looking at you – Shadows over Filmland (although, Blood Brothers fans would surely get a kick out of it). What Pelgrane Press has successfully done is balance cosmic horror and individual heroics – all too often Cthulhu adventures conclude as TPK – as players are confronted with the GOO or BOSS at the end of the adventure. While that is a satisfying component of many Cthulhu adventures – it need not be. Characters do, often forfeit their lives and sanity for the greater good but should not be played like bullets. There is perhaps a British sensibility that I find missing in most Chaosium products – in which people matter in a universe that fundamentally does not care. Hence, there is the possibility of a dark and entertaining tale akin to a ghost story – where the participants come out psychically scarred but alive – because their foe is non-corporeal and belongs to the realm of the supernatural.

I had been looking forward to this product for some time, I am very pleased that Pelgrane Press did not disappoint. A Keeper who is looking a bunch of crackerjack adventures should immediately tramp over his FGLS and pick up this volume. Those looking for visceral and gory horror story might find this lacking – but – just they would find Cthulhu gaming lacking. So my search goes on to find the happy medium between the two – thus far, I have merged Fear Itself (another great Pelgrane Press Product) with Blood! with moderately good results. And, I do like how The Esoterrorists 2.0 handles it, sans the overpowering organization of Ordo Veritatis, which for me is too much like Night’s Black Agents. However, I have met Delta Green players who used thermonuclear devices like dynamite. So, it falls to the Keeper to restrain and retrain players into a certain mode of play.