EldorfDragonsbane

Stretch Goal 1 ($250,00) looks to have been surpased, currently it is at over $280,000 raised with 3115 backers at the time I am typing this. Cant wait to see what other stretch goals are released as this continues to be funded. Also cant wait till I have it in my hands to play.

I would also like to add to the thank you's. Big Thank You to the following: The Late Great Greg Stafford, without him we wouldn't have Chaosium The Late Great Keith Herber, who gave us the fleshed out Miskatonic Valley and many many great scenarios both in th valley and elsewhere on the globe The Late Great Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his contemporaries, who's literary works inspired the game Sandy Peterson, the man who gave us the Call of Cthulhu RPG And of course everyone at Chaosium both past and present that have helped bring CoC to the masses culminating in great Live Play examples like the Bookshops of Arkham and Graveyards of Arkham. Also thank you to everyone who has ever played CoC and found it a fun game. Here's to the next awesome Chaosium Live Play, be it Call of Cthulhu or one of their other games.

One tip I love to remind both new players and new keepers is while the core game is set in the 1920's it isnt set in the 1920's you may have learned about in school. Think of it being set on an parallel earth where the Great Old Old Ones and Magic exist, for the most part it mirrors our world but at the same time it is different, certain events did happen, while others might not have. Who's to say that the Great Depression didnt start a year later or a year earlier, when you are running the game its your world to do what you want with, you can play it as accurate to history as you want, or you can have some divergence. The key thing to remember is to have fun both playing and running the game, who cares if certain things aren't realistic.

When I printed the tracker out on paper the 1/2 and 1/5 boxes were easily fill-able by me using a .5mm mechanical pencil, its just that the version i had printed n acrylic it is a bit harder as dry erase markers dont have that fine of a point as a mechanical pencil does, this isnt a fault of the tracker as it wasnt designed to be filled in with a fat tipped dry erase marker.

Thank you for this, I had the "Keeper's Revenge" version printed on Acrylic through the Frame Shop at the Michael's store where I work in 8x10 and then ordered one as an 11x14 as the 8x10 while nice it was harder to get the 1/2 and 1/5 scores in for Spot Hidden and Listen. On them I use either Wet Erase Markers or Dry Erase Markers (wet erase doesnt rub off as easily) so that I can reuse it again and again.

Yes I know a double post, but would like to draw attention to a very nice "easter egg" location in this edition. Outskits location 109- Herber's Hill, Named after Keith Herber a musician from the late 1800's. I can only assume this is an homage to the late great Keith Herber who gave us the original Arkham Unveiled.

I fully agree Judith does seem to be a better fit, as she seems to be closer to the age of most Investigator character, so I could see them being more invested in helping her if she comes back, or wanting to ind/rescue her then they might be for the older Shrewsbury (who I always imagined from the art work in Arkham Unveiled and HP Lovecrafts Arkham as being in is mid/late 70's to early 80's). One thing I like about this edition is as I believe I previously mentioned the expanded location information, where before some locations only had a brief, bare description paragraph, this edition they have expanded and given most locations additional info to use as possible seeds for scenarios. The full color overhead view of each neighborhood as I mentioned before is also nice, as if gives you an idea of how close a location is to a neighboring building, such as is it only a few yards or is it dozens of yards away from the closest building (great to know as both a keeper and a player in case an investigator decided they need to break a window or they do something that might make enough noise to attract the attention of a neighbor that lives close by). The art work is also a vast improvement, especially the NPC portraits, with them being color they give the NPCs more "character" then the old black and white line drawings or the very poor computer generated "3D" portraits that were from HP Lovecrafts Arkham (I seriously think in the mid 2000's some of the gaming companies thought the computer generated "3D" portraits were everyone seemed to have puffy faces was a good idea).

Thanks for the clarification MOB, as I posted a partnership/contract with Roll20 was just speculation on my part of a possible reason other VTTs haven't gotten official CoC releases/updates. Makes sense that if you guys are using Roll20 currently in house for productions such as Graveyards that you will be allocating more of the resources to putting material out for that platform then other platforms. Who knows what the future holds, the next Live play series could use a totally different VTT then either Foundry or Roll20, maybe even one that's both more user friendly and exclusively produced in house by Chaosium to support all their products (which I highly doubt, due to the additional costs and resources it would pull from other Chaosium projects, but one can always wish, lol).

It looks like the replacement for Shrewsbury is pretty much just that, the character looks to now be a female version of Shrewsbury just with a new surname. Glancing through my physical copy and comparing locations to a printed copy of the pdf copy of Lovecraft's Arkham from Drivethru RPG some location changes actually make sense, such as the Pump House and Water Tower, they were moved to a slightly closer location to the river. Some other changes are simple renumbering of the buildings such as 104 W Blank St becoming 105 W Blank St (NOTE used Blank St for illustrative purposes only for an example since I do'nt have my copy of Arkham or Lovecraft's Arkham in front of me at the moment to look up one of the actually examples), while other locations have totally moved from one street to a different one (though it looks like they have kept these within the same neighborhood so far and haven't moved the location from say the Northside to Rivertown). Once I am done comparing the locations between the different versions I will them bring out the Arkham Gazette #1 and start comparing/adding in locations. Over all I am actually liking the new Edition, with it better art work, expanded location entries, and the full color neighborhood maps. Eagerly awaiting the MU, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport updated books especially if they look as good as this one.

I dont work for Chaosium or Roll20, but I am guessing from both The Bookshops of Arkham and The Graveyards of Arkham utilizing/advertising Roll20 there is a partnership/contract in place that might be limiting Chaosium from porting there stuff over to Foundry. Again this is just speculation on my part.

You also need to remember this edition is set years earlier, Herr Wvinch might not have moved into 111 Terrace building until later, after Minerva Coleman had vacated the premises. Not sure why some of the locations were left out or moved (Arkham Sanitarium and Sefton Asylum being absent while the Unvisited Island was moved to a different spot in the river). As for scenarios utilizing some of the Arkham residents, I believe the book with Arkham Scenarios is due out with in the next month or so, though I could be wrong. Just got my Physical Copy today, and over all frrom what I have seen from a quick flip through and reading through the pdf version, I am liking it. I will be going though it along with the pdf of HP Lovecrafts Arkham that I got off of DrivethruRPG. I will be making a list of NPCs that were dropped that I want to use along with any dropped location that I might want to use, for those that were replaced with something/someone new I will probably just relocate them a house/building or two away on the same street.

Easyly explained, do you know all the history of your town, everyone in your town or where everything is located in your town? Probably not. Most likely you can locate the local High School, Post Office, City Hall, Police/Fire Station(s), etc... If I had to assign a History or Navigate score for my real life knowledge of my hometown that I have grown up and lived in all my like, I could say its as follows: History 25%, Navigate 40-50%. I have a basically familiarization of the Town History from elementary school, one of my teachers was a big history buff, while for navigating around the town I am familiar where most the restaurants are, along with the grocery stores, pharmacy's, all the elementary schools, middle school and high school are, along while the banks, churches, gas stations, care dealerships, hardware stores, etc... are, now as for the city residents I am only familiar with my neighbors, and I cant tell you every store in the town. Now the same can go for any lifelong resident of Arkham, they may know most the town "stories" but not the actual facts behind the stories, and they may know the area of town the live in, along with major landmarks/locations but ask them where the local quilting circle meets there's the possibility they don't even know about one existing let alone knowing where they meet.

This version is more of a Directory of the town then the previous editions, as it doesnt contain any scenarios, though it does contain some seeds to get one thinking about their own scenarios. There are some additional updates such as tables for local Arkham gossip, family names, weather, etc... This also contains a chapter dealing with Arkham Investigators, such as if they were born and have lived in Arkham all their life then they start of will start of with Navigate (Arkham) xx% and History (Arkham) xx%. Theres also an Arkham reputation table/mechanic, you do something good and are seen doing it roll luck to see if rep improves, do something bad (breakign and entering, killing someone, etc...) and seen roll luck to see if you are penalized or not. Obviously theres other stuff included but I think its worth it to get it, even if you have the older books, as for one you have the updated NPC stats for 7th ed and this edition is initially set in 1922 instead of 1928 giving you almost the entire decade to "build" Arkham up, and allows the Investigators to interact and possibly take part in some of Lovecrafts stories that happen in Arkham before the previous editions were set.

Once the rest of the source books in the Arkham Unveiled line (Dunwich, Kingsport, Innsmouth, Miskatonic U) all come out you would have basically all you needed for quite a while for your own home brewed scenarios taking place in Lovecraft Country. I can wait to get my hands on all of them.

Out now and I must say from what I have been reading in the PDF copy (while I wait for my Hard copy) it is a great sourcebook. Hopefully the Innsmouth, Dunwich and Kingsport books are getting close to release dates. The Arkham Advertiser also looks awesome, but then again its what had been come to be expected of the boys over at the HPLHS.