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Make the consequences of failure different and interesting. There currently seems to be this problem where either failed sneak = combat, and you go from suspense to violent action (and then it's not easy to get suspense back). Even if you make the penalty almost being caught by a big scary thing, it frames the consequences of failure in statted, fightable ...

I'd like to see it work by creating some kind of link between the character who goes mad, and the one that follows. If you want a simple mechanical solution, get the player to select one mundane skill (i.e. not Mythos), preferably knowledge-based, from the first character's sheet. The next character then gets this skill at the old character's level for free. ...

First of all, start with a different game (system.) Using anything Lovecraftian (CoC, ToC) would be a dead giveaway. Pick a (very) easy, generic system, preferably something your players are not familiar with. You'll want to tell them you read an interesting review about it someplace and would want to give it a few shots, to freshen up your gaming. ...

Here's how I'd approach the concept of sneaking through a hostile city. Don't use single stealth rolls on their own. Instead, use series of rolls for each instance. Require two successes out of three checks to get across a section of the city, or perhaps use a system of rolling until three successes (good) or three failures (bad) are reached. This lets you ...

Call of Cthulhu is being given its first real overhaul in decades. The system is d100, and the emphasis is on immersion in the game world. The default setting is the 1920s, but there are expansion materials available for other eras. Chaosium has created an extensive body of well-regarded CoC adventures over many years. Here's co-creator Sandy Peterson ...

It almost seems too on-the-nose, but I'd say that you should keep it very simple and charge money when players want to make investigative spends. Since investigative spends are never (theoretically) required to advance a Gumshoe plot, you're not disadvantaging players who choose not to fork over cash. This idea has the additional advantage that "Spend for ...

My go-to solution for this is to dig up scans or reproductions of old catalogs. I like the Sears catalogs quite a bit, as you get a nice cross-section of what people would have been buying at the time. There's several sites online, but here's one with the 1937 Christmas catalog. It's toy-focused, but there's some early electronics and kitchen appliances and ...

The 1960s were a time of spiritual exploration and social awakening. In the world of the Cthulhu mythos, these things could represent the sort of knowledge that leads to understanding things that should never be learned. Inside every commune lurks a dangerous cult (artists and sensitives were particularly susceptible to Cthulhu's dreams); "free love" is a ...

Make the threat clear. Show the risk. Find other victims, ideally who died in inexplicable ways. A perfectly smooth hole through the chest. A perfectly smooth face devoid of eyes, nose, mouth, hair. Sliced into razor thin pieces. Minor failures. Make the checks hard with the expectation of failure, but have the immediate response be more threatening than ...

The 1930s section of the (rather old looking :)) The People History site (found via google) appears to have somewhat brief yet interesting, relevant info on the era. Note (and check) the links to the individual years in the middle of the right column too. There are quite a number of other (imo poorly designed, yet quite) informative-looking, minor sites ...

Offer difficult, maybe impossible choices. You can reach the hostage quickly, quietly, safely, or unshaken. Choose two. When found, the hostage is mobile, aware, sane or healthy. Choose two. The Mi-Go are observant, powerful, deadly or devious. Choose two. If being seen is tantamount to being ripped apart and spread all over the cyclopean street, ...

Start by changing the period and the location. Classic Cthulhu periods are the 1890s, 1920s and 1930s (for Trail), so avoid those. Try an Edwardian, Regency, Elizabethan or 1950s adventure, for example. And, as you suggest, keep out of New England. With Trail, you could easily keep Sanity and Cthulhu Mythos to yourself, until the Investigators see something ...

I ran a Serenity game with a Cthulhu basis, and I ran it like @OpaCitiZen said. The first four or five adventures had almost nothing to do with the Lovecraft mythos -- only one of them dealt with the Lovecraftian monsters, and only one character actually saw anything odd. Be patient, and have the first few adventures be traditional crime, ghost story, or ...

The first thing is: there isn't an obvious mechanic in Trail of Cthulhu that does this. That is, there isn't an "altered states of consciousness" mechanic. So you get to make up your own. Hooray! It's a sidebar in your adventure. There are different ways to handle it. Pick some or all of the following. When you narrate what's happening, you incorporate ...

I would handle this issue within the narrative of the game. First describe the alien construction aesthetics. Make the buildings based on a perfect solids other than cubes. I added an element of horror by saying that the buildings seem to be based on a combination of dodecahedrons (12 sided dice-like) and tetrahedrons (4 sided dice), but somehow 5 ...

This interview with Robin D. Laws might clarify some of the differences. Basically, your investigators won't be denied essential clues throughout the course of the game. GUMSHOE prevents the awkward "Oh, you really missed that investigation roll. Your seasoned detective manages to completely miss any clues in the well-stocked library with a post-it note on ...

The classic Call of Cthulhu campaign "Shadows of Yog-Sothoth" prominently features Cthulhu in the last scenario...R'Lyeh rises and the characters can actually face off against the Big C himself (and die horribly, of course). This was first released in the early 80s but has been reprinted since then. It's been a long time since I ran/read this campaign, but ...

Ah, the Cold War is in full swing: the communists are fighting revolutions kill thousands in South America, Africa and Asia while America gets dirty by helping dictators. Nuclear holocaust looms on the horizon in Cuba and Germany. Freedom is squashed in Eastern Europe by tanks while hippies trip on LSD. The space race leads to two men walking on the ...

There is a True20 treatment of the Mythos entitled Shadows of Cthulhu Dennis Detwiller adapted the One-Roll Engine to the Mythos in Nemesis Delta Green will have its own system at some point, as well.

How about one or two mystical tomes already extant in the PC's book collection? You can decide whether they've already been read or not. How about allowing the PC to start with some small amount of Cthulhu Mythos knowledge (with the associated affect on the PC's sanity levels applied, of course). These would seem to be in keeping with the kind of ...

I'm writing this from an American perspective, but I'm sure the experience of the 1960s varied wildly depending on where and how you lived. As my father used to say, "If you remember the 60s, you weren't there." His point was that there was so much going on, so much exploration, so much tumult, that even keeping track of it all was difficult as it was ...

In other games I've had players under the influence before. The approach depends on how much you can rely on them to keep player information separate and how much you need to compartmentalize the information for them. This is a good situation because the drug is also allowing them to perceive the "monsters," right, so if you tell them they see a monster, ...

Regarding Las Vegas, head over to the Wikipedia page for its history. I went there because I immediately recognized, based on reading your setting, that Vegas wouldn't be at that time what we think of now -- most of the big casino development happened after the Cuba embargo, as Havana had (at that time) been what we currently think of Vegas being today. ...

Since you're looking for an interesting dice roll mechanic, consider a push-your-luck approach. The player rolls as normal. If they fail, they can sacrifice a permanent point of Stability or Sanity to re-roll. In addition, they add +1 Stability loss (from their pool) to the final result. They can keep doing this as long as they have permanent points to ...

Depending on how complex you may want your system, my group has had lots of success with GURPS. There are built-in rules for Fright Checks and the consequences of failure, and the system is adaptable to any setting. Considering how generic it is, there won't be any indication of what is coming. As for the specific adventures themselves, they'll need to be ...

I remember White Dwarf did a Traveller scenario that... was really Cthulhu. Spacemen meet, erm, some nameless horror (it was a very long time ago). It should work really well if you consider Alien to be the same kind of thing you'd be up against, and the kind of atmospheric setting that you can so easily start off with without the players having any kind of ...