There’s been a lot of interesting debate in recent days on various online platforms about the role of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in tabletop RPGs. This has all been spurred by news that one of the traditionally largest publishers of Lovecraftian RPGs reportedly has ambitions to capitalize upon this technology to help fund their business model. If you haven’t seen the lively conversation — these Reddit threads give you a good sample: thread one, thread two, thread three, thread four.
Now, while we have our own very strongly-held views on NFTs (we would never touch them, not even with a large bhole), we figure that you folks don’t read this blog to hear about our position on finance technology and the social and environmental ills particular schemes generate. So, we won’t be using this forum to discuss or debate the topic.
However, as publishers of an RPG of Post-Apocalyptic Lovecraftian horror, a few of the comments dropped casually into the Reddit comments got us to thinking … is there a way to turn this whole topic into a creative resource? Is there SOME way in which NFTs, in some foul conjunction with one of the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos actually brings about a literal Apocalypse? I don’t know about you, but that feels like a cool (and topical) game that I’d love to play.
Rather than try to dream up one set of ideas (based on our own limited imaginations), we thought it might be a lot more fun to solicit ideas from all of you fine readers. And to incentivise folks to put some of their precious time to sharing their cool ideas, we’ve decided to offer a couple of hardcover print editions of our APOCTHULHU books as rewards for the best ideas.
Yes, that’s right … I think I am announcing a competition!
“Imagine there’s an NFT or Crypto Apocalypse” Contest
Here are the important details:
- What do you have to do? Just describe a Post-Apocalytic setting where some combination of NFTs/Cryptocurrency and the Cthulhu Mythos (not necessarily working in collaboration), brought the downfall of civilization. What terrifying forces now rule the planet? What groups of survivors eke out a tenuous living amid the rampaging horrors? Can they still access their Crypto wallets? There’s no need to include game stats, just your descriptive ideas.
- How many words? To keep it easy for us to read everyone’s cool ideas, we’ll cap the submissions at 300 words (which is the same we ask for authors pitching ideas for our publications).
- What are the prizes? For the idea that we think is the most evocative, creepy, and original we’ll happily reward the devious submitter two books: a hardback copy of the APOCTHULHU RPG (RRP US$41.95) and a hardback copy of Terrible New Worlds (RRP US$38.95). For the idea which is the most off-the-wall-crazy we’ll send the submitter one or the other of those books, whichever they prefer.
- How to submit? You can either use the form at the bottom of this page to send ideas, or email them to contest [at] cthulhureborn.com.
- How long do you have? We will keep submissions open until midnight UTC on Tuesday, March 15 (the Ides of March)
- What about ownership of ideas etc? You will retain ownership and copyright of all the content you submit to us, but by submitting it you’re also agreeing to us sharing some or all of your submission here on the blog. If we really like your idea, we reserve the right to work with you to develop it into a full-blown APOCTHULHU scenario for publication, but that would be via a separate paid arrangement that we’d sort out with you under our standard freelance contract.
- Other random Ts & Cs: Winners will be judged by a panel of Cthulhu Reborn core contributors; after their decision is made, no correspondence will be entered into. Books will be sent to all winners with all shipping and other fees paid by us.
Cthulhu Reborn 
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