This is a bit of a general news and catchup type posting, just to fill folks in on some of the things that have been bubbling along in the background at Cthulhu Reborn for a while, and are now threatening to reach their tentacles out to blight an unsuspecting world.
I guess that’s Lovecraft-speak for: here’s a quick news roundup
Miskatonic River Press Invictus Sheet
A while back, I was contacted by Oscar Rios of Miskatonic River Press who was keen to get a custom character sheet designed for the Cthulhu Invictus setting. At the time I figured that they were after something that could be a free download for their website (in support of their excellent Invictus campaign book The Legacy of Arrius Lurco). It sounded like a fun project though, so I spent a furious week or so researching Roman-looking artwork and fonts (not to mention spotting a few errors in Chaosium’s character sheet). The end result is something that I think pretty well captures the “vibe” of the Cthulhu Invictus setting.
More recently I discovered that MRP had slightly more ambitious plans, that my humble little character sheet had been swept into … namely plans to release the company’s first PDF-only book, an Invictus book that both extends Arrius Lurco, but also provides a selection of other useful stuff for running Cthulhu games in this intriguing era. The book is called Lux In Tenebras, and it will be hitting the streets any day now. I’ve reproduced a copy of the cover below, but if you’re even slightly interested, I’d suggest jumping across to the MRP website to find out more!
Atomic Era Sheet
In a similar vein … it would seem that another of my custom character sheets is destined to be included as part of an upcoming book, this time from Chaosium Inc.
Readers of Cthulhu Reborn will know that in a previous entry, I uploaded the result of some stray doodling I did while speculating what a character sheet for Chaosium’s upcoming 1950’s (Atomic Age) setting might look like. Lots of people seem to have enjoyed my take on a 1950s sheet … including some of the great guys who are producing the book, who asked whether they could include it in the final layout. Of course I was very proud to be asked to be involved (in any capacity) with this book: it looks like it will be great. So of course I said yes 🙂
Next Freebie: Mark Morrison’s Deadwave
A number of people have commented positively about the Penelope Love PDF Dreamlands scenario layout that I recently posted. Of course most of the credit really goes to Penny for writing such a brilliant adventure, but I’m happy to take compliments however I can get them 🙂
Those who have enjoyed this previous PDF might be interested to know that I am currently in the process of resurrecting another classic scenario from the mid-90s, this time by Mark Morrison (another member of the once-dominant Aussie Cthulhu author contingent, and famous for many many things, not least Orient Express, Mansions of Madness, and a long-running column in The Unspeakable Oath). My layout of his scenario probably won’t be ready for some weeks, but I have included as sneak-peak at the proposed front-cover below.
In case it helps in understanding the rather unusual cover design … it’s probably worth mentioning that one of the rather unique features of Mark’s scenario is that it has a remarkably flexible structure that is easily adapted to any of the game’s three major time-periods (1890s, 1920s, Modern). Different “layers” in my cover design try to capture each of those periods.
Fillable Art Deco Sheet
Finally, there has been some talk over on Yog-Sothoth.com about the Art Deco character sheet posted on Cthulhu Reborn (here). In particular, folks were interested in producing a fillable “form” version of this design … which seems like it would be be a pretty cool thing to have. I have also been interested for a while in revisiting this sheet to see whether I could make something that retains its full glory when displayed on an iPad: since then someone could technically use it as a full replacement for a paper sheet (if they were nerdy enough).
I spent a day or so recently seeing if I could achieve both of these goals by going back to the original layout files. I’m not completely done, but if you want to take a test-drive of a fillable version of the Art Deco sheet (front side only, for now), here are a couple of download links:
Fillable Art Deco sheet (4.4MB)- An example of the sheet in use: Harvey Walters, famous “example” character from several editions of the CoC rulebook (4.4MB)
Note that, at least in the current design, this sheet only includes a very basic level of automation (Idea, Luck and Know are calculated, as is 99-Cthulhu Mythos); most things are left manual, including the positioning of the little circular markers on the Sanity, Magic Point and Hit Point meters — just pick em up and move em.
Cthulhu Reborn 