Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Mirroring my experience with airports when I originally ran Eternal Lies, those instances where a very specific hotel was established in both my imagination and the imaginations of my players resulted in much richer and more interesting play than when a generic hotel served as a generic homebase for their operations in an area.

In returning to the campaign, therefore, I decided to get much more deliberate in setting up these hotels. And, once again, this afforded me the opportunity to inject more historically-sourced material into the campaign. Although some of the hotels in this addendum are fictional, the significant majority of them are real hotels that you could have rented a room at in 1934-35.

Simply prepping a single hotel for each locale, however, was generally not sufficient. Deciding on where they wanted to stay (and how that would inform their strategy in approaching each locale) was actually quite important for my original group, and quickly proved the same for my second group.

As such, for most locales these addendum contains three different hotels, each representing a different class: High, Middle, and Low. (There are some locales where accommodations are scant and beggars can’t be choosers.)

• High class hotels require a 1 point Credit Rating spend.
• Middle class hotels have no mechanical effect, but they generally lack the security of higher class establishments (and the GM should take that into account when the bad guys become aware of them).
• Low class hotels also have no mechanical effect. They, too, lack security, but this can be made up for by the fact that PCs may find it easier to fly under the radar here. On the other hand, these facilities can often create complications in their own right. In addition to the mundane, they’re often an appropriate milieu for some of the grubbier floating scenes (as described on pg.125-144 in the campaign book).

The GM should also keep in mind that these hotels can be used in other ways than simply PC accommodations. For example, when the PCs concocted an unexpected strategy for pursuing the cultists in Savannah, they were able to track them back to their hotel. Since I had two other hotels on tap, it was easy to just pick one on-the-fly and decide that the bad guys had been staying there.

Make sure to also grab the Props Packet for this addendum, which contains photos and other props for many of the hotels. (This packet includes a video that can be played for your players.)

Note: There are no hotels given for New York (as it is not anticipated that the PCs will spend significant time there). No hotels are given for Thibet, as that’s a traveling scenario and the PCs are not anticipated to remain in one location for prolonged periods of time.

ETERNAL LIES ADDENDUM – HOTELS

(PDF)

PROP PACKET – HOTELS

(Zip File)

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

When I originally ran Eternal Lies, I semi-coincidentally included a couple of local airports. This was primarily because (a) I wanted to make the opening scene really specific and filled with lots of historical details in order to immediately begin immersing the players into the time period and (b) while searching for visual references of DC-3 planes for the Silver Sable I stumbled across this amazing photo:

In any case, roughly two-thirds of the way through running the campaign, I realized that getting very specific with each airport they arrived at was a very effective technique for this type of campaign. Compared to using a sort of “generic airport”:

• It made the arrival at each location memorable and distinct, creating a clear starting point for each regional scenario.
• It immediately established the transition in environment and culture.
• It transforms arrival and — perhaps even more importantly — departure into a scene which has been much more specifically framed. This seemed to encourage meaningful action (by both the PCs and the NPCs) to gravitate towards the airports, which had the satisfying consequence of frequently syncing character arcs and dramatic arcs with actual geography and travel itinerary.

In other words, it’s true what they say. First impressions are really important, and it turns out that in a globe-hopping campaign the airports are your first impressions.

Now that I’m running the campaign again, therefore, one of the things I prioritized was assembling similarly specific research on the other airports in the campaign. (As with other aspects of the campaign, I find that using historically accurate details seems to both heighten immersion and create a general sense of satisfaction both for myself and from my players.) As an addendum to the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies, I’m presenting these notes in the hopes that other GMs will find it useful.

One thing I realized in the process of assembling this material is that, even moreso than I had suspected, during the ‘30s air travel was this incredibly experimental, regionalized, and freeform ideal. Today we associate airports with these massive, institutional, homogenous experiences, but in the ‘30s every airport had its own unique flavor. This is something that I think a GM of Eternal Lies can really lean into, because it will emphasize just how much bigger the world was back then compared to day. How much more isolated; how much more strange; and how much more alienating.

Make sure to also grab the Props Packet for this addendum, which contains photos and other props for many of the airports.

Note: New York’s airport (Floyd Bennett Field) is fully detailed in 1.1 New York and is not detailed below.

ETERNAL LIES ADDENDUM – AIRPORTS

(PDF)

PROP PACKET – AIRPORTS

(Zip File)

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

This addendum to the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies adds historically-sourced local newspapers to all of the major locations of the campaign.

I have not researched papers for New York (the PCs spend so little time there; and, if in doubt, use the New York Times) or Thibet (the PCs are in such an isolated location that newspapers are unlikely to be available, except perhaps for an international edition of a paper like the Paris Herald Tribune, as described under Bangkok newspapers).

Hitting up the morgues of local papers for leads has become such a standard procedural element for Cthulhu-esque investigators that I probably don’t need to pontificate upon it at any great length here. It should be noted that the original campaign references a number of specific newspapers in which specific articles of note are published; those are generally not mentioned here (although obviously they also exist). The purpose of this resource is to provide a firm foundation for the GM to improvise from when the PCs go off the beaten path and begin performing unanticipated background research.

When I originally ran the campaign, I also found that it was not particularly uncommon for the globetrotting PCs to specifically request a local newspaper upon checking into a new hotel. Being able to reference specific papers (with a few personalizing factoids to distinguish one broadsheet from another) proved to be a remarkably effective and immersive technique that can contribute greatly to the meaningful sensation of the campaign moving through space and culture.

ETERNAL LIES ADDENDUM – NEWSPAPERS

(PDF)

Shut Up & Sit Down have published a review of Trail of Cthulhu based, in part, on the reviewer playing in my current Eternal Lies campaign.

MILD SPOILERS FOR ETERNAL LIES

Those of you who have been following the Alexandrian for awhile will remember that back in 2015 I prepped the Alexandrian Remix of the epic Eternal Lies campaign by Jeff Tidball, Will Hindmarch, and Jeremy Keller. I am now running the campaign for a second time for a new group, including a co-GM who played in the original run of the campaign.

This run of the campaign has seen several tweaks and improvements to the Remix, including (as highlighted in the SUSD review) a full-scale model of a graveyard built in my backyard:

It also contains highlights of several of the dioramas I prepped for the campaign, such as this one from Los Angeles:

It’s likely that I’ll be sharing my fully-tweaked version of the Remix at some point in the future, either here on the Alexandrian or over on Yog-Sothoth.com.

But, for now, check out the review.

Go to Eternal Lies: The Alexandrian Remix

Tim Höregott is providing a German translation of both the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies and the system cheat sheet I designed for Trail of Cthulhu. He will not be translating the handouts (he intends to use the originals), but will be translating all the various guides and cheat sheets. (If anyone else is interested in translating the handouts, please feel free to contact me.)

Tim is also the author of the Listen to the Gods blog (which is not in German), so make sure you check that out.

ETERNAL LIES REMIX (GERMAN)

1.0 Kampagnenübersicht
1.1 New York
1.2 Savannah
1.3 Los Angeles

TRAIL OF CTHULHU CHEAT SHEET (GERMAN)

(click here for PDF)