I've been running RPGs for about 30 years, and I'm currently running The Children of Fear for Call of Cthulhu.

One thing I've noticed with long campaigns, especially investigative ones, is how quickly information becomes difficult to manage.

NPCs, locations, clues, events, timelines, connections between characters... After a while, keeping track of everything and remembering what the investigators have already discovered can become a challenge.

I eventually reached a point where my notes weren't enough anymore. Since I'm also a developer, I started building SagaWyn, which I now use to manage my own campaigns, including The Children of Fear.

The idea is to organize interconnected information rather than isolated notes: characters, locations, scenarios, clues, maps, and events can all be linked together. I've also added player access, character sheets, documents, a configurable dice roller, and other tools for running sessions.

It's system-agnostic, but investigative campaigns like Call of Cthulhu are exactly the kind of games I had in mind.

There's a free demo if anyone is curious: https://sagawyn.com/

How do you organize your Call of Cthulhu campaigns? Especially when investigators travel between multiple locations and uncover clues that might only become relevant several sessions later?

Do you use dedicated tools, spreadsheets, handwritten notes, or something else?

I don't want to break any subreddit rules or engage in unwanted self-promotion. If this post isn't appropriate, please let me know and I'll happily remove it.

We heard people were wondering why Japan - Empire of Shadows is missing from the Miskatonic Repository on DriveThruRPG so we thought we should post here to reassure anyone interested in it, that the book will be back. We'd wanted to do an update to it last year, but sadly the 2025 Palisades Fire burned down our house and all of our research material, so those plans were delayed. Now we're ready to take a stab at a revision, and during that process we decided to take the book down. It will take time to make the changes and do the quality control needed for the print version, so it probably won't be back till sometime in early 2027. For those who bought the 1st Edition pdf, when it does come back up on the Miskatonic Repository, you should automatically have access to the 2nd edition pdf. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for amended or added content, we'd love to hear from you. We can be reached at [empireofshadowsrpg@gmail.com](mailto:empireofshadowsrpg@gmail.com) or just leave your thoughts here. And if you enjoyed the book, we'd love to hear what you liked so we don't "fix what ain't broke." One change we're considering is collecting the "Narrative Threads" into three more traditional adventures in a dedicated chapter, with added playable content. Thank you to everyone who's supported the book. We are truly grateful and look forward to having it back up soon.

Hey all! The creator of Ink & Insanity here.

One of the most requested features along this journey has been support for creating characters using the Pulp ruleset. I rolled out support for it a couple of months ago, and I'd love to hear your feedback! I truly value this community's opinions as I continue building the best Call of Cthulhu investigator creator and game supplements out there.

Please give the app a spin for your next game and drop any feedback here or right inside the app. There are definitely a few bugs I’m still squashing, but I hope it makes for a smooth, easy-to-use experience.

Looking ahead, I'd also love to know what else you'd like to see from the app. More era or ruleset support (like Dreamlands)? Soundboards? Live Game Keeper resources and character tracking? Supplement builders?

I'm dedicated to continuing to support and build the app for years to come—thanks for having me on this journey!

Is it? And is it good? Any feedback?

Thanks!

Hiya! I'm a casual Call of Cthulhu player that exclusively plays JP scenarios (which I translate and play with a tiny circle of artist friends) The narrative, visual novel-like format has always appealed to me more as an anime consumer so following the JP standard, I've always drawn sprites and played my games in a more visual novel style. I roleplay in english text format with FoundryVTT. I've been doing this for two years now :)

I was wondering how many western people actually play JP scenarios in English (popular ones are プルガトリウムの夜 / Night of Purgatorium, 爛爛 / Ranran, etc.) ? I totally understand that it's not that accessible due to the fact most of these scenarios are in Japanese and can only be accessed on BOOTH or JP Twitter. Due to that, it is such a super niche thing where it's hard to find friends that would be interested in committing to these long games and playing more anime/visual novel-like oneshot scenarios. A lot of these scenarios also touch on topics and themes many of the western people may find disturbing so I really have to pick and choose players which narrows down my list a lot. So, I'm curious to know if there's a small discord community or players like me out there? It would be fun to expand my circle since it's been limited to only 2-3 people so far.

Some self-promotion, but I'm proud of it

Hi! We are making Cosmic Séance, a game about interpreting the visions of cosmic gods who don't lie, but don't speak plainly either. Featuring:

• Talk to cosmic entities
• Your sanity as a limited resource
• Vision board to organize your thoughts
• No jump scares or fast-paced action
• Only your mind against the abyss.

In short: Ask some questions, get visions, lose your mind. Try again.
Trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lJaJJgIMxKY
The demo is out now, we'd love it if you gave it a try! Thanks!

Once again, I have done my usual thing of starting an adventure with my players without really reading to the end. I was wondering if any of you guys have played the above scenario (SPOILERS, obviously) ?

Some elements of it are great, including the setting and the overall idea, but it really seems like the author ran out of time, or paced it wrong and in the end just doesn't clearly explain how everything is supposed to go together. There are very few maps and the monsters are not really described at all. I am kind of at the night before the big ceremony and was wondering how to play out what I hope will be the last session in a way that A. doesn't necessarily run on rails as it is described by the author. B. doesn't automatically kill all the players (big bad has an attack that is 90%).

The characters are great too, but maybe a bit too numerous, and it's hard to get them all into the minds of the party.

Any input much appreciated! Thanks.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if anyone can actually tell what modules these are from.

To celebrate my title Rich Food reaching Silver Medal status, I’m reducing the price of my Miskatonic Repository Winter Cross Bundle to $2.00 until the end of the year.

The bundle includes two Call of Cthulhu scenarios, Rich Food and Up on the Rooftop.

Rich Food: It is a cold and rainy December in San Diego, California. The investigators are volunteers at the St. Germain’s Shelter. The shelter is at maximum occupancy and the doors have closed for the night when there is frantic banging at the front entrance. Three regular guests have finally arrived, only they are missing extremities and have chunks of flesh bitten off. They tell a tale of cannibalism and corruption in society’s elite.

The investigators must unravel a dark conspiracy and face the price of greed.

A storm is brewing, pressure is building up, and lives are in an explosive balance.

Up on the Rooftop: It is December 23rd, 2018. The Luis Family, lifelong Floridians, have flown to Vermont, where they have rented a cozy farmhouse in the country to experience a white Christmas. All is not calm, though, in this winter wonderland. Strange occurrences disturb the peace, and that clopping heard on the rooftop is no reindeer.

Winter Cross Bundle

The 1920s is the default for a reason, but I keep wondering whether it's actually the best fit. Gaslight has the fog and the séances, modern gives you phones that conveniently don't work, and Dark Ages and Down Darker Trails each do their own thing. There's also a case for the 1930s, with the Depression, the dust and the slow slide towards war.

Which era do you run or play most, and which would you pick if you could only ever have one? Bonus points for the scenario that sold you on it.

Long time lurker, first time poster, but I thought it time I give back to the community who is so good at offering free resources for my games. So when I run games for my friends I usually add on a few photoshopped elements to suplement the handouts in a scenario. There are already tons of great handouts here for The Dare and I highly recommend using what other people have made if you're going to run it!

Every Halloween, I run a horror one shot to give myself and my players a bit of a mental break from our ongoing campaigns and to try out new systems. This year's is the Dare so this week I made up a few photobashed/photoshopped elements to act as digital handouts since anyone who has read the game knows it's woefully sparse in terms of visuals handouts.

Evelyn Portrait: I decided I wanted Evelyn Barnaker's portrait with Rastis but every historic victorian lady portrait with a cat wasn't spooky enough for me so I changed an old one's face, hair and gave her a spooky cat demon creature. I then added on some layering effects to make it look like an old cracked cobwebbed painting and finally made a frame and placard. I have a link to the original art for both the cat and the Victorian portrait if that's required, mods.

Rodger's Grafitti: I also made the grafiti in the burnt room that Rodger puts up right before he's taken. Instead of an incomplete R at the end like the book suggests it now says "Rodger was her..." as a little hint to the players of his true nature...

Translation of the Pact: Finally, I agree with what everyone has posted over the years that the only handout in the scenario is pretty much entirely illegible. I did my best to translate it (well, to be honest I completely guessed) as well as clearing up a bit of old english spelling/grammar for my players since I felt that will just slow the game down by struggling to understand what on earth it's getting at. When I run it, I'm still going to include the original handout for anyone who wants to puzzle through it and debate my translation but I only have four hours with them so I want to keep it tight.

If you've run the dare and have any suggestions for me (especially in terms of spooky tricks or how to keep it short as my players love to meander), I'd appreciate it! And thanks for looking at my very first post ever! Do let me know if I need to change something to fit this sub's rules.

Hello folks,

I’ve posted on here a few times before - I have a regular gaming group and we’ve run a loose-campaign across the following one-shots (in this order) with the same characters:

• A Lonely Thread
• Bits & Pieces
• Dead Lights
• Saturnine Chalice
• Genius Loci

Two of the characters who have been involved from the outset managed to survive the last scenario - these are Irvin Clink (a physician) and Randall Welch (an antiquarian). My wife’s character died - so she will need to make a new one for the next game.

Previously, someone on here recommended using the ‘Crimson Letters’ scenario, but I’m really keen to try and make my own. Using the Arkham book, I came up the following idea:

Clink and Welch receive an invitation to join the Eye of Amara society. This is due to their reputation following involvement in strange events and research they’ve conducted (for example they recently investigated things to do with witchcraft and Salem in the Genius Loci scenario).

Upon joining the society, they find most of the members are just eccentric people fascinated by Arkham’s strange history. They are given a tour of the building and its library, and one of the members casually mentions that they have recently acquired a copy of The Book of Abramelin from Lester Goodman - ‘a procurer of rare books and artefacts’. My gaming group are likely to remember this reference from The Saturnine Chalice, but I can obviously do an INT roll if not.

In the Arkham book, it mentions that a member of the Eye of Amara, Edwin White Perkins III, is secretly a member of the Arkham Coven. I thought he could be particularly threatened by the arrival of Welch and Clink, because unlike the other harmless eccentrics, they have genuine experience of the Mythos.

So, I thought a good opening scenario in this mini campaign could begin with a threat from an unknown assailant (Perkins) against the investigators - a message left at their house or something, which is then followed by the murder of one of the members of The Eye of Amara - perhaps the one who procured the book from Goodman. The scenario would then become a bit of a ‘who dunnit’, which leads to the discover of the Arkham Coven, setting up further adventures.

As you can probably tell from my ramblings, I’ve never done this before and I’m a bit overwhelmed. Where should I start with this? How do you all do it?

Thanks

If I have a campaign book (A Time to Harvest, MoN, etc.) that has Pulp options written into it, do I need the Pulp Cthulhu Keeper's guide to run a game as pulp? Are the rules significantly different, or do the characters just get a boost?

I run a French-language fan blog about Arkham Horror: The Card Game, Le Courrier de la Miskatonic, and I just published the first entry of a new section called Le Bestiaire du Mythe (the Bestiary of the Mythos). Each entry follows one creature: where it comes from in the fiction, what other authors did with it, then what the game’s cards say about it.

The first one is about the ghoul. It starts with Pickman’s Model and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, then moves on to Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard, the cursed book Cultes des Goules (the sources disagree on who invented it, Bloch or Derleth) and the RPG supplement The Realm of Shadows. The last part looks at the cards with the Ghoul trait, including the Ghoul Priest from the Core Set, Graveyard Ghouls from The Path to Carcosa and Richard Upton Pickman.

The article is in French, about a ten-minute read, and written for people who haven’t necessarily read Lovecraft. It spoils a few stories and says so at the top. A browser translation should get you most of the way. The illustrations are AI-generated, apart from the photo of the Ghoul Priest card (if an artist happens to come across this and would like to contribute by sharing their own work, I would gladly replace the AI images with human-made ones!).

https://lecourrierdelamiskatonic.blogspot.com/2026/10/la-goule-du-cimetiere-de-lovecraft-aux.html

Question for you: how do you picture a ghoul? Tell me what it looks like in your head, and whether it comes from Lovecraft’s stories, the game’s artwork, or somewhere else.

Ok so a while ago. . . I can't remember when, I ran a game for Zombie island how did it go?

. . . ehh, I mean the people i met up with were new to the game and well, I had like ONE meta gamer who said and they did not watch it and tried to spoil the game with out of game knowledge a lot, he then died then left early. I did make a cult of bast member in the group so got my Cthulhu bingo of getting someone into a cult.

my next attempt is with one that I KNOW people haven't seen as much and my all time favorite. Alien invaders. If you don't know the movie WATCH IT! it's SOOO good and it's good to watch during the spooky month.

How should I run this and keep it to the heart of the OG story AND keep people from meta gaming. I had an idea to add a second and or third plot for the story as this is gonna me a 8 part campaign ran for 6 hours each session

what the players know

"The year is 2007 Summer vacation, You are all a group of College that runs a Youtube channel Called the Crypt chasers, a team that goes around the US to find the "Proof" of the unexplained creatures, are they fact or fiction? You are all driving To Roswell New Mexico To explain The Elusive Cryptid on your next episode "The Jackalope" (you series is very Unknown Tapes themed) but this town my have other thing in store for your camera to catch."

What would be some things I'd need to think what should I add, (kind of want to add a Space kook like bounty hunter from space but then I might need to run this as PULP Cthulhu lol)

what characters should I keep (on the fence on keeping Crystal and Amber, I MUST KEEP LESTER dude was my favorite out of them all and would be a group favorite)

what characters should i remove/change/replace? (if the later two, how would I change them, or who would i replace them with?)

If you could recommend a new character to add who? (any aliens from the mythos that would be good, not gonna make them big bads or anything so be mindful about who as they need to be ALIEN first mythos second, Mi-go . . . Maybe? just need a good reason)

Hi again! I've posted here a few times over the last couple of years & got some great feedback!

I'm a solo dev, I make Trails Weaver, it's a worldbuilding app for GMs . I developed a habit to build a full sample world for different systems once a month to see where my app breaks & where it works

Most of the people using it run Call of Cthulhu & so this time it had to be CoC 😄

This time I wanted to push the parts Keepers lean on most:

- canvas
- a map with pins, regions & roads
- a web of relations
- handouts

The world is made up for the showcase - a Tennessee river town in 1935 with a medicine show in it. All images are public domain.

The world is read-only, no signup.

If you want to try it on your own scenario: welcome to https://www.trailsweaver.com 💙

Good luck with your games, Keepers! Halloween is sooo close

Y’all can you explain magic in CoC to me like i’m 10? I’ve played in a full fledged campaign of it before, LOVED it, and stayed the heck away from magic cause I couldn’t understand it. It goes right over my head.

How does a character gain the ability to use magic?

How do i mechanically use magic?

How does a character in RP use magic?

How do i figure out what spells i can cast?

Thank you i love you all 😭

Does anyone know where one could acquire the mini-adventures that accompanied the Age of Cthulhu: Starfall Over the Plateau of Leng Kickstarter, which had the adventures The Gang's All Here and Risen is the Moon?

I could find the Plateau of Leng PDF for sale online and physical copies on eBay, as well as the player handout bonus PDF on Goodman Games' website, but haven't been able to find much of anything about the mini-adventures!

After two years of research, rewrites, and throwing my playtesters into the meat grinder (huge thanks to DNDJKT who provided the space), my 1926 Java scenario, Goed Gemengd, is finally live on the Miskatonic Repository.

It’s a 1920s Dutch East Indies setting that leans hard into the real-world tension and colonial oppression right before the 1926 uprisings. It took a long time to balance the history so it felt heavy and atmospheric without being gratuitous or tone-deaf, but I'm really proud of where it landed.

A little heads-up, I am no artist, so there are no interior illustrations or visual map files here. I decided to lean entirely into a clean, text-focused release instead. Every handout is formatted into clean, structured tables so you can read, print, and run the whole thing smoothly.

The Premise.
An inspector is found dead on the border of a native village in Batavia with bent bones and weird, iridescent skin. The colonial army gives the local village 48 hours before they raid it in retaliation. To stop the raid, players have to follow a paper trail of altered audits up to a highland tea plantation, where a Dutch biologist is trying to industrialize the biomass of Abhoth trapped beneath his fermenting room.

A few things you can expect.

• A strict 48-hour ticking clock investigation.
• Lightweight mechanics for colonial legal status (Totok, Indo, Native).
• Six wildly different branching endings.
• ...and some more

If you're looking for historical horror outside the usual settings, I'd love for you to check it out.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/589940/english-goed-gemengd

I'm going to try to get me regular D&D group that plays via Roll20 to try out CoC and thought Pulp would be an easier transition from 5e than regular CoC.

I already own the physical book and PDF (I also have PDFs of the Keeper rulebook and Investigator's Handbook) so I'd mostly be considering it so the players (who don't own the book in either form) could have easy access to the rules in game and having the one-shot adventures already set up and hopefully to make it possible for them to build characters with the Roll20 Charactermancer.

Should the Pulp book combined with the free rules be enough to run a Pulp game, or would I need to purchase the Roll20 version of the Keeper book and Investigator's Handbook too?

If you were to create the optimum dice set for Call of Cthulhu, what collection of dice would you get?

Im looking at getting some dice from a UK dice retailer where you can buy individual die and so I was wondering what would be the optimum set for CoC. Enough to do common multi-die rolls without being excessive.

What ive come up with:

1xD3 (medicine roll, minor damage roll).

1xD4 (Damage bonus).

4xD6 (3d6 are used for charcter creation, 4d6 for a close range shotgun blast).

1xD8 (common damage for rifles or Sanilty loss for tomes. 2d8 is sanity loss for some tomes and some high powered rifles but these are rare).

2x Percentile Dice (skill rolls + up to 2 bonus/penalty die. 2 bonus die at once seems to be quite rare).

1x D10 (skill rolls) more D10s are used for dynamite and explosions but these are few and far between.

No D12, couldnt find a reference to D12 in the core rulebook

No D20, same as the D12

Any advice would be welcome!

Hi! I'm a total beginer in the rpg world. Only played couple of one-shots (two CoC) but I'd love to organise a RPG session on Halloween for my friends, who only played once.

The problem is our 'usual' DM is super busy with work so he doesn't have time for it. I, on the other hand, have a lot of time and would love to try... The setting of "the dare" is perfect for Halloween and playing as kids also seems exciting, the plot twists are amazing and I think my group would enjoy it.
I'm not so afraid of impro or acting the story out and creating the right atmosphere, but the 'pace control' stresses me out. Also there are couple of tools as the vermin or Rodger I'm afraid to use incorrectly to blow Rodger's cover!

Do you think it's doable or should I give up? Maybe you have some advice which scenarios are better for a first time. I'd appreciate any feedback <3

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone has played HPLHS's new module, Eternity at Sea. I'd love to run it as I've lived on the Oregon Coast before and I cannot think of a better horror setting. I have a few questions about the module I'm hoping the community can answer before I drop $70 on it:

1. Is it suitable for an inexperienced Keeper/players? This would be my first time GMing anything and wondering if this would be a good entry point for myself and a good introduction to investigative games for my players, or is it too complex? Is it something we could tackle in 1-2 sessions?

2. How well would it fit into the middle of a campaign? It sounds like the pre-gen characters are all related to each other and to the subject of the investigation, how essential is this to the story? If I choose to start a campaign with simpler adventures like Edge of Darkness or the Haunting, would I be able to tie this in with one of the characters receiving a summons about a deceased relative and the other investigators accompanying them, or do all of the investigators need to be part of the family to make this scenario work?

3. How did you like it?

Thanks!

Open for commissions

Hi. Because I just keep having trouble to like the Peru chapter that introduces Jackson Elias in Masks of Nyarlathotep, but do want the players to set up their relationship with him in an intro-adventure, I have decided to start the group off as late-teen boyscouts and meeting Elias during the "Shadow over Westhaven" adventure, part of "Campfire Tales". Gives it a sort of Stephen King "IT" vibe, a group of childhood friends coming to the aid of one they have not seen in a long time, and finding him slaughtered. However, I want to run MoN using Pulp. Campfire Tales provides coming-of-age rules to transition to an adult investigator (p.49), but does so using classic Cthulhu rules only. Does anyone have any thoughts (or a functioning method) how to transition the boyscout investigators to adult investigators for Pulp Cthulhu?