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This is of course a manipulative marketing post, intended to persuade you to pick up the Cthulhu Awakens Bundle of Holding in its final four days—that’s four days! Hurry!—but as past developer and lead designer, I want to tell you why the game exists.
Now first of all, if it were something as simple as “Cthulhu sells” (and indeed, Cthulhu does sell) that wouldn’t be worth devoting a lot of thought, writing, and intense discussion, from me and the other writers on it. When we announced it was happening, press via Dicebreaker and elsewhere led to it being called “Woke Cthulhu,” which wasn’t the point, but I was flattered because, y’know, I like my projects being complimented, even by people who don’t know they’re complimenting me.
This was because we mentioned something very well known in Mythos fandom (HP Lovecraft was extremely racist) and that we were simply going to assume anything in the source material that was a product of discrimination or the general biases of the period in fiction, were inaccuracies. I don’t see this as especially activist because if we’re creating a three-dimensional world the Mythos exists in, it’s a world that treat racist garbage and other biases as inaccurate because that’s the simple truth. It’s handy that reality happens to be anti-racist.
(Aspects of this weren’t easy, and I’m grateful to the authors for working through this. I too was going to rename That Mythos God too, until counterarguments were raised by people with more standing—Shumath was proposed, and you can find examples in the core rulebook.)
But it wasn’t just about a social mission (because that was simply an aspect of setting depth). I also wanted a setting that covered a wide period of play with common elements. I didn’t want to emulate the fiction at the expense of play, and I wanted to conceive of the world of the Mythos—our Weird Century—as a game setting first, instead of a tribute to a literary body of work. That meant creating new cults and other organizations, as well as Mi-Go backed tech industry conventions, sinister physicists, warring armies of the undead, raygun-toting secret agents who might be aliens, and the rest of the latter-day Weird Century setting.
It also meant providing some customization tools for GMs based on how much they wanted to emphasize action. That’s why you can either use basic weapons or customize them if having a brand-name Tommy Gun or M4 is important. It’s also why we have a Fortune option (see The Expanse for that great game system), for people who prefer action-adventure play. Cthulhu Awakens is, after all, an Adventure Game Engine game, which means it’s highly customizable, but has signature game systems like Fortune, Bonds, and Stunts—and that’s why these are all integrated into systems ranging from psychic powers to how to lose your mind to terrible visions of horror.
But despite putting the design needs of a game setting before literary emulation, it’s pointless to use the setting in the first place without drawing inspiration from its sources above and beyond gods and shambling creatures. I’m quite happy with how eldritch workings came out. One of the traditional disconnects between RPGs and occult fiction is that in RPGs, magic use is generally a character ability, but in fiction, anybody can find a musty book and try to call up something they absolutely should not. On the other hand, dedicated, skilled sorcerers do exist in Mythos works. I think the rules did a decent job of allowing for both, while putting the flavor and process of eldritch workings first.
Last of all, Cthulhu Awakens let me tune up elements of the AGE System using lessons learned from the second edition of Fantasy AGE and supplements for Modern AGE. Defeat Conditions, challenge tests, streamlined stunts, and changes to game statistics are among a number of tune-ups.
All in all, I’m happy with it, and I’m proud to, well, tell you to go buy it. Try it out, enjoy yourself, and if you have more to say, tell us!
The post Gather Your Fears: Cthulhu Awakens at Bundle of Holding—and Thinking About the Game appeared first on Green Ronin Publishing.
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