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Trail of Cthulhu RPG
Shadows Over Filmland
The Silver Screen Drips Blood and Madness! Trail Of Cthulhu creators Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws team up, marshalling their deep mastery of cinematic and Lovecraftian lore to bring you a landmark collection of Cthulhoid scenarios and source material.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2010
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About the author
Kenneth Hite
128 books115 followersKenneth Hite (born September 15, 1965) is a writer and role-playing game designer. Author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, Hite has been announced as the lead designer of the upcoming 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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May 17, 2021Another Bundle of Holding, the Cthulhu-oriented Bundle of Tentacles, all the way from 2013(!). And also: It is becoming clear that I am using these skim reviews just to mark things off my to-do list that aren’t writing....
That said, this bundle includes
* Cthulhu 101, by Ken Hite -- A perfectly cromulent and snarky intro
* Cthulhu Britannica: Folklore and Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland
* "Shadows over Scotland" is a lot of adventures, the guide to 1920s Scotland is good, detailing both reality and the hidden horrors, both Cthulhu core (deep ones, ghouls, etc.) and particular to Scotland (what’s in what loch, what truth is there behind Macbeth, etc.)
* "Folklore" covers the concept of folklore, folk magic, folk monsters, with some options for its relation to the mythos (e.g., here’s a black dog folktale, is it a hound of tindalos or not?)
* Dark Streets, Hellfire, and Renaissance Deluxe -- A game system based on early modern London, along with a Cthulhu game, and an adventure, with no appeal for me
* Dubious Shards -- A grab bag of Ken Hite Cthuliana: a bit of the tarot (also included in another form), some essays, including a review of Michel Houllebecq and an attempt to critically examine an RPG (Call of Cthulhu as Western, where the gun is the tome, and it sets you as forever outside of the world you’re protecting) -- interesting, but I get a lot of Ken Hite material through his podcast
* Eldritch Skies -- a cinematic sf Cthulhu future, i.e., humanity is among the stars now and has to deal with that stuff, but heroically it has a chance. There's an argument that Lovecraft himself didn't write pure downer stuff, that he wrote stories where humanity has a chance; and there's also a tradition of SF/horror with Cthulhu, some of which I even like. But at some point, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this mix is?
* The Unspeakable Oath issues #18, 19, and 20 -- a classic magazine, full of adventures, npcs, cursed tomes (what if a basement was a tome?), cults, reviews of Cthuliana — a real solid zine that might interest me more if I were actually running a game.
* Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide and Shadows Over Filmland
* The "Player's Guide" is just the player rules from the core book
* "Shadows Over Filmland" is marketed as adventures, but it's really almost an entire campaign frame, what they call The Silver Nitrate Gothic, which is: "what if we mix classic 1930s horror movie tropes with Cthulhiana and set it in a recognizably filmic setting, the Backlot Gothic (with Dread Albion, backlot Haiti, the castle, etc.). Some fun stuff here, though it feels like it might teeter on the edge of camp.
That said, this bundle includes
* Cthulhu 101, by Ken Hite -- A perfectly cromulent and snarky intro
* Cthulhu Britannica: Folklore and Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland
* "Shadows over Scotland" is a lot of adventures, the guide to 1920s Scotland is good, detailing both reality and the hidden horrors, both Cthulhu core (deep ones, ghouls, etc.) and particular to Scotland (what’s in what loch, what truth is there behind Macbeth, etc.)
* "Folklore" covers the concept of folklore, folk magic, folk monsters, with some options for its relation to the mythos (e.g., here’s a black dog folktale, is it a hound of tindalos or not?)
* Dark Streets, Hellfire, and Renaissance Deluxe -- A game system based on early modern London, along with a Cthulhu game, and an adventure, with no appeal for me
* Dubious Shards -- A grab bag of Ken Hite Cthuliana: a bit of the tarot (also included in another form), some essays, including a review of Michel Houllebecq and an attempt to critically examine an RPG (Call of Cthulhu as Western, where the gun is the tome, and it sets you as forever outside of the world you’re protecting) -- interesting, but I get a lot of Ken Hite material through his podcast
* Eldritch Skies -- a cinematic sf Cthulhu future, i.e., humanity is among the stars now and has to deal with that stuff, but heroically it has a chance. There's an argument that Lovecraft himself didn't write pure downer stuff, that he wrote stories where humanity has a chance; and there's also a tradition of SF/horror with Cthulhu, some of which I even like. But at some point, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this mix is?
* The Unspeakable Oath issues #18, 19, and 20 -- a classic magazine, full of adventures, npcs, cursed tomes (what if a basement was a tome?), cults, reviews of Cthuliana — a real solid zine that might interest me more if I were actually running a game.
* Trail of Cthulhu Player's Guide and Shadows Over Filmland
* The "Player's Guide" is just the player rules from the core book
* "Shadows Over Filmland" is marketed as adventures, but it's really almost an entire campaign frame, what they call The Silver Nitrate Gothic, which is: "what if we mix classic 1930s horror movie tropes with Cthulhiana and set it in a recognizably filmic setting, the Backlot Gothic (with Dread Albion, backlot Haiti, the castle, etc.). Some fun stuff here, though it feels like it might teeter on the edge of camp.
January 18, 2024
Lovecraftian Investigation meets Hammer Horror, Universal Monsters, and Creature Features of the golden age of Hollywood.
Shadows over Filmland by Kenneth Hite and Robin Laws is a collection of 12 adventures for the Trail of Cthulhu role playing game, though they could also be adapted for any other game system or Cthulhu inspired rule set.
This anthology is meant to evoke classic black and white horror whether it’s supernatural, alien, monstrous, or all too human.
Each adetentions spiritually inspired by a classic horror film (though some likely less well known to modern audiences) and includes helpful historical context notes for the piece that inspired it. However, don’t expect this to be a crude adaptation of an existing work as these are fairly original and simply drawn from elements or themes of the related movie to tell its own story.
While classic monsters, the horror of human transformation, the undead, and even the cosmic horrors that typically exist in Lovecraftian games means there’s a nice variety to choose from…ina edition to the various settings be that a classic Hollywood backlog, grim Eastern Europe, or a distant tropical hideaway…
Shadows over Filmland by Kenneth Hite and Robin Laws is a collection of 12 adventures for the Trail of Cthulhu role playing game, though they could also be adapted for any other game system or Cthulhu inspired rule set.
This anthology is meant to evoke classic black and white horror whether it’s supernatural, alien, monstrous, or all too human.
Each adetentions spiritually inspired by a classic horror film (though some likely less well known to modern audiences) and includes helpful historical context notes for the piece that inspired it. However, don’t expect this to be a crude adaptation of an existing work as these are fairly original and simply drawn from elements or themes of the related movie to tell its own story.
While classic monsters, the horror of human transformation, the undead, and even the cosmic horrors that typically exist in Lovecraftian games means there’s a nice variety to choose from…ina edition to the various settings be that a classic Hollywood backlog, grim Eastern Europe, or a distant tropical hideaway…
January 3, 2019
The concept of mixing the Cthulhu mythos and horror films from the golden age of horror b-movies is intriguing, but the result is that most adventures in the book have a plot which is too silly for me. It's entertaining reading, but I don't think I will find use for the material here.
October 29, 2022
Una gozada de leer esta serie de módulos inspirados en el cine de terror clásico. Muy didáctico también el pequeño ensayo acerca de ese cine de terror y como generar ese ambiente de escenarios de cartón piedra en tus partidas.
January 7, 2016
A set of spectacular tributes to Depression era horror movies flavoured with Lovecraft.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews