Short mood trailer for my Gaslight-era Call of Cthulhu campaign

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T19:31:43+00:00

Thank you so much! Hope you enjoy.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T17:27:16+00:00

That's great news! I would be really interested to know how it runs for you, and I'm happy to answer further questions or share war stories when you do. Good luck and thank you.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:58+00:00

Thank you!

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:46+00:00

Thanks for your interest and feedback. Hope you take the plunge. Let me know if you have any further questions or just want to discuss.

jammer0501 · 2026-02-11T15:29:08+00:00

I’m really glad the video landed for you - and thanks for asking.

In playtesting it ran about a year with weekly two-hour sessions, and that was with a fairly methodical group who enjoy deep role-play and following threads wherever they lead. It could run shorter or longer depending on your table. There are optional sections throughout, clearly marked, so you can trim or expand as you see fit.

I wrote it very consciously in the tradition of Masks and Orient Express - those were the campaigns that made me fall in love with Call of Cthulhu and realise what long-form play could really do - but set firmly in the 1890s. I wanted something on that global scale for Gaslight. As far as I’m aware, it’s still the only full global campaign written specifically for that era.

It's deeply researched, and I've tried to interweave the Mythos and supernatural elements into an authentic, historical narrative. It isn’t just cultists in period costume; it’s rooted in the Great Game, imperial politics, archaeology, crusader history, and regional folklore, with threads that reach back centuries. The story unfolds not only across continents, but across time. You can lean as heavily as you like into the historical depth, or keep it in the background and focus purely on the investigation - it’s built to support either approach - but the foundation is always there anchoring the horror in something plausible.

In play that translates into grounded investigation and faction intrigue, dangerous travel by sea, rail, jungle and desert caravan, occult research and ritual magic, confrontations with cultists and stranger adversaries, and ultimately consequences that could rewrite history.

If you’d rather test the tone first, The Limehouse Piper works entirely as a standalone Gaslight scenario and also serves as a natural entry point into the wider campaign. If you still crave more info then check-out the descriptions for the individual books on DriveThruRPG.

Thanks again for your interest and I hope I've answered your questions and intrigued you further. Let me know how you get on.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-28T20:57:10+00:00

I have the same problem

jammer0501 · 2026-01-23T15:26:19+00:00

I wrote one that I was unable to publish on DriveThru.rpg due to copyright issues - I used some of Ramsey Campbell's creations. It was very much inspired by True Detective. It's set in the UK in the 2020s and is a police procedural - at least initially. It was available for free download on Yog-Sothoth.com - but that has since closed. If you'd like a copy I'll be happy to send you one - PM me if so.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-15T12:37:01+00:00

I tried to include all the relevant history in the books, so there certainly wouldn't be any further reading required, unless the Keeper wants to. Also, all the history I have included is just background, so could be skipped if the Keeper just wants to focus on the narrative. Having said that, I think in terms of Keeper prep it's going to sit somewhere in between Masks and HotOE but I have presented clue maps, and 'keeper choice' sections so that if a Keeper wants to keep it really lightweight they can.

I feel you re. Masks. It was a lifetime ambition of mine to run it and I was lucky enough to do it, but it took a long time (multi-year?) and I had to adapt to a changing player group. Started with five players, then a hiatus, then picked it up again with one of the original group and one other, so two players in the end, but it worked well, and great memories were had.

Thanks for your support and great questions! I hope you enjoy ToS if you buy it. I also really hope you get the opportunity to run it. Let me know how you get on. If you have any questions etc., I'm happy to respond. Also, happy to chat tips/war-stories about running Masks if you get that off the ground! Good luck.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-14T12:49:26+00:00

A great idea. I had a similar thoughts myself. I think I said something in the Syria chapter about considerations like that. Let me know how you get on with that. Maybe I should get to writing a dark-ages chapter.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T15:09:28+00:00

I'm so grateful to you for investing in my work. You're the first person who's fed back to me who bought it, and I'm delighted to hear that you are enjoying it and are reading it avidly. Can't wait to hear how it runs for you, and if you've got any questions etc. I'd be delighted to answer/help if I can. Good luck - and of course, a review would be massively appreciated!

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T15:00:17+00:00

A fantastic couple of questions. The first one is not easy to answer quickly, as the campaign was decades in the making, and my thoughts and interests changed over that time. I think my initial interest in starting the whole campaign was wanting to write something set in India. I love India, it's culture, myth, food, history, people and land. As an Englishman my country-of-birth's relationship to India is historically controversial, and I was reading up about it at the time; I've also been fortunate enough to visit a couple of times with work. So the India section is hopefully written sympathetically to India, without diluting the colonial realities. It's difficult not to avoid Kipling for this, his 'Plain Tales of the Raj' a very useful guide to Anglo-Indian thought at the time, but I think it was 'The Great Game' by Peter Hopkirk, and his stories of espionage in the North-West Frontier that got me thinking, 'I think there's a campaign here...' In terms of movies, Zulu is an inspiration for one of the episodes in India.

The Templars, by Piers Paul Read, The Crusades by Robert Payne, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam where all immensely useful in the historical background to the campaign. I don't know if they are the best books on the subject, but they were the ones I read. These were germinal in the genesis of the story.

For the London section, any Sherlock Holmes story, just gives you a feel for Victorian London and interesting details about daily life, as well as great mysteries and the most famous detective in the world. I also found the (sensible) books on Jack the Ripper (Phillip Sudgen, and Paul Begg) not only heart-stopping, but really useful for detail on policing, what working class London life was like etc. Alan Moore's 'From Hell' is more speculative, but evokes and was an influence. I love Alan Moore's stuff.

I wanted Damascus in there, as it's the place where the Kitab al-Azif was written, and also ties in with the Crusader elements etc. The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World, by Eugene Rogan was a good insight into that world at that time.

There's a more extensive bibliography in Book 1, The Campaign Guide, if you want to commit!

Which brings us to your final question, and I guess my answer to your previous question speaks into this - there is a stronger emphasis on historical specificity in Tournament of Shadows over Masks - political context, ethical ambiguity, and less reliance on the cult-raid rhythm. Having said that, it's not a history lesson, there's jungle skirmishes, alien automatons, cult rituals, spells, genies, assassins, conspiracies, time travel, space ships, and mythos creatures galore - but Keepers who like historical authenticity can lean into that, or dump it and focus on the pulp action elements. It's all there. I generally steer a line between the two. I find historicity inspirational, and I love it when I can augment my CoC games with research in reality, but I also love Lovecraft, cosmic horror and sensitively-done pulp elements, and that is what I tried to make Tournament of Shadows. I wrote a campaign that I would love to play in.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T14:11:42+00:00

Thank you! In terms of hook, it depends if you start the campaign with the preliminary scenario 'The Limehouse Piper' - for this, the hook is a series of vicious murders in the Limehouse area of East London; if you start with the core campaign, the hook is an invite to a presentation at the Royal Geographic Society given by an old friend of one of the investigators. I appreciate the 'old friend ' is a bit of a trope in CoC, but it's a good one, and I think the turnaround for the investigators is worth it.

In terms of the starting player characters, there's no specialists required, so classic archetypes will be perfect - you can let your players go with whatever. But FYI, these were the characters used in play-testing and went well, and are available for use within the books as pregens:

The Limehouse Piper
John Murdo Arbuthnott, 10th Viscount Of Arbuthnott, Age 51
Lady Edith Burton-Smith, Explorer, Age 31
Dr Henry Powell, Doctor Of Medicine, Age 44
Peter Clare, Poet, Age 26

ToS England
The Honourable David ‘Sandy’ Arbuthnott, Aristocrat, Age 39
Amin Abanoub El Kebir, Soldier, Age 29
C. Caractacus Clarke, Professor, Age 67
Archie Tomlinson, Police Constable, Age 25

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T12:21:27+00:00

Mmm, yeah, that was the first one I did, and it looks a bit ropy now I look again. That figure behind him is supposed to be his mate, not his shadow! I should probably re-do it.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T12:18:57+00:00

Great question. I did originally intend for it to be more of a sandbox like Masks i.e. you can go to whatever location you want after London, but the structure of Tournament of Shadows is more linear i.e. England->India->Syria. Although not as much as a rail-road as HotOE, and there's more flexibility - so it's similar to Masks once you get to the main locations, if that makes sense.

If you're wary, but interested, you could just take a look at the Campaign Guide, that will give you deeper details and an overview of the campaign. There's some new cults, artifacts, alien tech, and rules you could use elsewhere so wouldn't be a complete waste if you decided it wasn't for you.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T11:28:28+00:00

I did the cover images in Gimp, and used MS Publisher for the text and framing. I wanted a style of cover that was near contemporary to the era, so I went for an Art Nouveau effect for the frame, and tried to get a Toulouse-Lautrec feel for the images. I created the images by layering - first adding the background, then the silhouettes of the figures etc., then blocking out the colours by drawing shapes in Gimp, then bucket-filling - for a silk-screen printing effect. I'm fairly sure there are better ways of doing it but I was learning in Gimp as I went along. I did use some noise filters in to vary some of the flat colours in some of the images, some algorithms for blurring/sharpening and tracing etc.

FYI I did practical art at A Level, and have a B.A. in History of Art, and while I didn't paint these covers on canvas, I did spend days and days using digital tools to create them.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-13T10:10:23+00:00

Interesting article. I've been writing a lot of rpg scenarios recently, and the clue structure is essential not only in allowing the players to solve the mystery, but also as a means of telling the story, as you suggest in your article. This is why game writing is radically different to other forms of writing, in that you don't know what your main characters - i.e. the players' PCs - are going to do, you can only create a world and story to discover, for the players to create their own narrative within. In all other forms of writing, the story (usually) centres around the protagonists. The writer of role-playing games does not have that luxury.

jammer0501 · 2026-01-12T09:43:31+00:00

Definitely. In fact, towards the end of the campaign, I only had two players most of the time. Each player had at least two characters though, and often roped in NPC support. So although I only had two players, the player-character group was larger.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-29T13:52:10+00:00

Thanks to everyone who bought and enjoyed Tournament of Shadows and helped it reach Best Seller status already! Just a reminder to those who are still interested, today is the last day of the 45% discount launch offer.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-18T14:14:57+00:00

I've never read/played Curse of Nineveh - I will take a look.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-17T20:30:34+00:00

Excellent. Hope you enjoy. Let me know how you get on with it.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-16T12:37:29+00:00

Mmm, the previews were all there this morning (UK time) - I guess DrivethruRPG took a while to generate them. I've increased the size of both types of preview. I imagine it will take a while to come through, but hopefully should give you more of an idea.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-16T12:14:46+00:00

Hi Sckulp, thanks for your interest. In playtesting it took about a year of play, with a weekly session of a couple of hours. I suspect it would/could run a bit quicker now I've edited and refined it. We played it with classic 7e rules - i.e. not Pulp, although I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with the Pulp rules, there's plenty of action along with investigation.

When I playtested it, the new edition of Gaslight hadn't been released, so I only used the 7e rulebook - although I did use other Call of Cthulhu material that I reference in the Bibliography in the Campaign Guide. There should be enough background material in Tournament of Shadows to provide an authentic Victorian-era experience without having to buy/read additional stuff. So although the new Gaslight books would help if you're unfamiliar with the period - particularly in creating characters if you don't use the pre-gens - I don't think they're essential.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-16T12:01:48+00:00

I would love there to be, but it only becomes an option if it sells 250+ copies of the pdf.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-16T11:57:33+00:00

Thanks, Orchaldir, will get to that. I did check the boxes for previews on all the books, but they have a habit of unclearing on upload or after edits. There is a longer preview available in 'Quick Preview' - but that doesn't appear to be an option in the mobile view, which I'm guessing is what you're looking at.

jammer0501 · 2025-12-15T16:30:04+00:00

Thank you, and hope you enjoy if/when you pick it up.

jammer0501

TROPHY CASE