There is no denying that the events of the past year have changed the way many people play roleplaying games, shifting many people’s gaming from face-to-face to online. This has definitely been true for APOCTHULHU games that we have run or participated in — those have 100% been “virtual”.
Lots of people seem to be gravitating towards different Virtual Table Top (VTT) platforms to add a little bit of extra collaboration to their voice-only games on Discord or Skype. We’ve done a bit of gaming on Roll20, and even developed an APOCTHULHU character sheet for that tabletop.
Recently, we’ve dipped our toe into the realm of Roll20 “modules” with the release of the R20 VTT version of “Amber Waves”, the introductory scenario that is in the back of the APOCTHULHU Quickstart (still a free download from DriveThruRPG).
The Roll20 Marketplace pretty much obliges us to charge a minimum price of US $4.99 for this module. BUT because we are so indebted to our loyal blog readers that we will happily send a free gift copy to anyone who contacts us via email to vtt [at] cthulhureborn.com … make sure to include your Roll20 ID (that is, the email address you use to log into Roll20).
Of course if you would PREFER to pay for the module, you can buy it direct from Roll20.
If you don’t know what goes into a Roll20 Module … they basically combine:
- the full text of the scenario (hyperlinked for convenient reference),
- the scenario handouts,
- scene graphics you can show to players are key moments,
- maps for all significant locations (we added some new ones for “Amber Waves”), and
- pre-filled character sheets for all pre-gens, NPCs, and critters.
So, they’re kind of like online game configs that are pretty much ready to run. You can just find some friends, fire up a new instance of the module, allocate each player a pre-generated character, and start to play. Since the character sheets automate some of the dice rolling conventions of APOCTHULHU (e.g., remembering that matching digits means crit or fumble), it can be a slightly easier way to learn a new game system.
We hope that the added convenience of having a pre-made Roll20 VTT version of “Amber Waves” encourages a few more folks to give the scenario a run … it’s a very fun little introduction to APOCTHULHU. I was lucky enough to play in an early Roll20 version of the scenario run by Chad Bowser (who wrote the scenario). It’s a perfect mix of creepy exploration, mystery solving, and pulse-pounding terror. With lots of green killer plants and creepy flying things 🙂
While we’re talking about online APOCTHULHU, it’s probably worth mentioning that we are always interested in hearing about any “actual play” recordings of our games that you decide to share online. In the past we’ve been thrilled to see these, and have sent some nice rewards (print books and merch from our Redbubble store) to the generous folks who have got in touch. If you’ve similarly shared the word about your APOCTHULHU games, we’d be happy to extend the same generosity to you! Get in touch via the same email mentioned above.
Cthulhu Reborn 