Published in 2014 (I think), after a massively successful Kickstarter, this is the second, revised and expanded edition of Horror on the Orient Express. Yesterday, I mentioned that I had problems with jamming everything in the first edition’s box – this box is more than double the size of the original and nothing I can do can make it close properly.

That’s because this campaign is truly massive. Where the original ran about 200 pages, this one is over 800 and has nearly 200 pages of handouts and maps and 100 pages detailing NPCs, not to mention sexier versions of the original’s props. The design is even better than the original, featuring tons of period photographs, including some for use as NPCs – a nice touch.

Size aside, and despite not yet having run it, I am pretty confident that this is the best Call of Cthulhu campaign Chaosium has ever produced. That’s thanks to the way the additional material was created: in this version of Horror on the Orient Express, you travel through time as well as through space.

Because of the long history of the artifact you are searching for and the way Call of Cthulhu sourcebooks have steadily crept into other time periods, Horror on the Orient Express allows for digressions to ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Victorian era, the modern age and even the Dreamlands. All the but last two are flashbacks: players take the roles of pre-generated characters and essentially act out and experience the events that would have otherwise been revealed by static handouts. The result is…well, it’s just so fucking good, pardon my French. The thought and work that went into this turned a pretty good campaign into an epic one. I truly cannot think of anything that rivals it in scope.

Hopefully, when I get around to running it, it stands up to my expectations.