Chaosium’s Lovecraft Country has cast a long shadow. Many other companies have produced similar works under license for Call of Cthulhu. One of the best is the gorgeous London box set for Cthulhu Britannica by Cubicle 7.

I love the design work here. The covers are beautiful. The inclusion of reproduction historical maps is a lovely touch (reproduced here only partially, as shooting poster maps is a bit of a pain for my setup, but you get the vibe). Even the box has a heft. Very few RPG products carry much weight as physical objects, the way a fine book can – they’re necessarily utilitarian. London pleases me in this way – it feels good to hold and interact with, if that makes sense (the idea of the RPG book as an aesthetically pleasing object seems to me to be a fairly modern phenomenon that I will return to at a later date).

As for the substance of the set, it is equal parts history and adventure hooks. The history portion is well researched and presented with quite a bit more pep than Chaosium’s own London sourcebook. The adventure bits are equally well done, with quite a bit of a focus on Ramsey Campbell’s Cthulhu Mythos work (never too much Y’Golonac, TBH).

The whole Cthulhu Britannica line is noteworthy, and we’ll get deeper into it in time, but London stands as an interesting example of how different yet the same a sourcebook can be from its predecessors. It makes me happy that Keith Herber’s legacy is still alive and well.