Cthulhu City- Prologue

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."- Thomas Jefferson

I'm running Cthulhu City. This is a sourcebook for Trail of Cthulhu that details the city of Great Arkham. It's an abomination of urban sprawl that's grown up in Lovecraft Country, where Dunwich is a little village being choked out by the expanding city and Innsmouth is just another neighborhood on the city waterfront, where travel is tightly controlled to prevent an epidemic that never quite seems to go away and great alien monoliths of antiquarian black stone rise into the clouds.

All of this is entirely normal. People live in the monoliths, converting some into skyscrapers, consider names like Marsh, Curwen, and Whateley to be respectable, and ignore the sounds that echo from the alleys or the shadows that appear over their homes in the night. The occult is a dirty word, and talking about the strange happenings in the city gets you shunned by your neighbors and not invited to parties.

As you might expect, people sometimes try to leave. Some can leave freely. None of these people are player characters. The transport police, originally formed to stop the aforementioned epidemic from leaving Great Arkham, frequently stop and detain travelers on their way out. Other times it's simple bad luck- car trouble, or something else innocuous. Whatever it is, the players aren't getting out.

Generally, I find the sourcebook to be pretty well organized, and it does a better job of fitting together a bunch of Mythos elements than most attempts I've seen of it. Trail of Cthulhu is a bit more of a mixed bag for me- I haven't worked with it extensively before and it's introduced a few snags I need to think about. Running this on an open table is likely going to present some as well, since that doesn't quite seem to be what Trail of Cthulhu's intended for.