Secrets of San Francisco
Details
Publisher: Chaosium
Product Code: 23108
Publishing Year: 2006
Pages: 192
Cover Price: $24.95
Author(s): Cody Goodfellow, David Conyers, Brian M. Sammons, Elizabeth A. Wolcott, Hilary Ayer, Janice Sellers, Badger McInnes
Artist(s): Paul Carrick (cover & interior), Earl Geier, Badger McInnes, Tom Sullivan, David Conyers (maps), Janice Sellers (maps)
Setting(s): 1920s
Format(s): Softcover
ISBN: 1-56882-187-5 and 1-56882-136-0
Contents
This sourcebook provides information on using San Francisco as a setting for Call of Cthulhu adventures
The volume is divided into sections as follows:
- Introduction
- History of San Francisco
- The City
- Chinatown
- Earthquake & Fire
- Greater Bay Area
- Societies
- Legends and Celebrities
- Recreation
- Scenario: The Ferry Ride
- Scenario: The Westchester House
- Scenario: The Colour of His Eyes
- Scenario: Beyond the Edges
- Appendix: Maps & Handouts
- Bibliography
- Subject Index
Scenarios: The Ferry Ride, The Westchester House, The Colour of His Eyes, Beyond the Edges
Front Cover Text
1920s
A 1920s Sourcebook for the City by the Bay
Back Cover Text
Secrets of San Francisco
In all of North America there is no more perfect intersection of climate, culture, and colorful history than San Francisco — the culmination of Manifest Destiny, the Golden Gate to the Pacific Ocean, and the treasure house of the wealth of the great California Gold Rush. Purged of her wild, anarchic past by a devastating earthquake and fire at the beginning of the twentieth century, San Francisco has emerged as the most cosmopolitan city on the West Coast.
San Francisco is deceptively ancient; its history shrouded in a fog of false domesticity. The Bay Area has known many masters, each leaving a distinctive mark upon the land. As San Francisco blossoms it attracts fugitives and practitioners of unorthodox faiths from across the world. Tales of the region assume mythic proportions as it becomes the most ethnically diverse, and most lawless, place in America.
SECRETS OF SAN FRANCISCO provides excellent background for a Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the Bay Area of the 1920s. It includes urban geography, civic history, research venues, and mythos lore. Many period photographs are provided and dozens of historical figures are introduced, including several who collaborated and corresponded with Lovecraft. Here are provided descriptions of where San Franciscan’s are sent when they break the law, go insane, or pass-beyond. Here are the sights, sounds, and secrets of this place that makes it a unique city.
<also includes an advertisement for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying and fiction lines>
Comments / Trivia
Dedicated to Ambrose Bierce
This book was massively delayed, reportedly due to a hard-disk failure destroying the only copy of the almost- finished manuscript (which needed to be rewritten from scratch).
Strangely this book seems to have two ISBN numbers: the credits on the contents page list the book's ISBN incorrectly as 1-56882-136-0 while the back cover says its ISBN is 1-56882-187-5. An online search shows both numbers are commonly used to refer to the product.
Links
Spoilers - Keepers Eyes Only
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References to Mythos creatures, tomes, artifacts, and Lovecraftian locations that appear within this book's scenarios are described in the pages detailing these scenarios. There are, however, numerous such references made in the source sections (and thus not associated with a specific scenario). These references are detailed below.
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