Fantastic news! Our stunning colour book detailing all of Creatures, Gods, Cults, Rituals, Artifacts, Tomes and Weird Places invented by HPL is now available as a hardcover Print-On-Demand book. Available right now via DriveThruRPG.
The photos below show a selection of pages from the print book, just to give you a taste of what the physical book looks like. We are really pleased with how it turned out … and we can’t wait for it to get into the hands of our loyal supporters (many of whom requested this title as a print book, in a few cases repeatedly).
As a reminder to anyone who was an early purchaser of the PDF version of the Book of Yog-Sothothery, we are offering vouchers allowing you to buy a print copy at a reduced price. Check your DriveThru download for details.
Recently we released the second in our line of Australian Aeons scenarios — “Dead Flowers” by the amazing and prolific Stuart Boon. This adventure takes players to an unorthodox setting for Lovecraftian horror, namely a sunny seaside holiday town in the early 1980s. In this case, the place is Busselton, Western Australia, the time is New Year’s Eve 1982/3, and the horror … is just about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting community.
Part of the beauty of this new scenario is that it re-imagines the Lovecraftian mode of storytelling, transplanting it into an entirely original kind of setting while retaining all of the brooding, ominous tone that HPL is famous for. Plus, Stuart has lovingly woven in some other forms of Supernatural threat that are drawn not from Lovecraft but from the Songlines of Indigenous Australians from this part of the world. In fact, the events that are described in this scenario are a case study in the dangers of mixing old world (Western) beliefs in the Unnatural with the ancient spirits of the Aboriginal Dreaming. It’s a volatile mixture.
The 46-page PDF for Stuart’s excellent scenario is available right now on DriveThruRPG, lavishly illustrated as always and with some nifty handouts and well-rounded Pre-gen Protagonists. Perhaps it’s time to take that holiday to the beach . . . (or just indulge in some eighties New Wave music nostalgia)?
Bill & Dean from Cthulhu Reborn were invited to chat to the lovely folks at the Miskatonic University Podcast. You can listen to the long and detailed interview either on the MUP site, or wherever good podcasts can be streamed.
We talked a lot about Cthulhu Eternal — why we made it, what it can be used for, and how anyone can use it as the basis for their own game or Lovecraftian scenario. Chances are if you have a question about our stuff we have at least touched on it in this chat.
More Australian Aeons on the Way
Hot on the heels of Australia’s immensely disappointing Indigenous Voice referendum outcome, we have been working to rejig our release schedule to bump a few Aus Indigenous themed scenario releases to the the head of the queue. That’s great news if you’re keen to see more of our “Australian Aeons” PDF scenarios … a line we started last month with “Thou Didst Let Fall”.
Coming this month, we have “Dead Flowers” by Stuart Boon … and next month we will be releasing “Red in Tooth and Claw” by Chad Bowser. Both of them are amazing (and quite substantial) scenarios — we hope you check them out when they drop.
Australian readers will doubtless have already heard the news that the attempt to have Australian First Nations peoples recognized in the constitution has been defeated; for those outside Oz, we thought we’d share this sad news.
While this blog is in no way related to politics or the fraught process of reconciliation with indigenous peoples, we would be remiss if we didn’t at least say we are gutted by this outcome and our heart goes out to those whose recognition is still denied by the white colonial systems of Australian government.
At Cthulhu Reborn we will do the (little) we can to continue to raise awareness of Indigenous Australian issues, publishing content that promotes the unique culture of Aboriginal peoples. Beyond that, though … there is much work that needs to be done to fix the divide.
Non-Australian readers may have heard news about Australia’s upcoming referendum to establish an “Indigenous Voice to Parliament” … Ozzie readers will definitely know all about it (since they are obliged to vote this coming Saturday, to either cast a ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ to the proposition). Normally, I try to restrict these blog postings to being purely about the principal topic (Cthulhuoid Horror Stuff) … but in this case, I feel we need to post a brief statement about Cthulhu Reborn’s position on this issue (as we have a strong connection to Australia and have written a lot about its history and the relationship between Indigenous and white Australians). TLDR: CR are huge supporters of the ‘YES’ vote; we’re surprised that other Oz-affiliated game publishers haven’t written about their position on this important topic.
If you’re a Non-Aus reader and not interested in all this semi-political stuff, feel free to scroll down to the “Indigenous Horror & Noir” banner below, where we have included some actual on-topic Indigenous-related ideas for Halloween-season viewing.
So, for anyone who hasn’t seen a lot of information about Australia’s proposed “Indigenous Voice”, the basic idea can be summarized very easily: citizens are being asked whether to modify our Constitution to include a paragraph which establishes a permanent lobby group for Indigenous people, made up of delegates from various peoples and able to present ideas or proposals to our Parliament. It has no power beyond suggesting things (like every lobby group, such as the dozens that already exist for mining industry interests, gas industry interests, manufacturing industry interests, union interests etc). It is literally just a voice.
One might think that such a proposal is fairly innocuous … but that doesn’t take into account 21st century politics & tabloid media with its love for culture wars, clickbait, and manufactured outrage. All those forces have (sadly) built an entire hyper-politicized storm around this simple issue. This compounds the already-difficult road for Constitutional reform in Australia (where historically pretty much no referendum has ever passed without support from all sides of politics).
One of the main arguments that is fuelling the campaign for the ‘NO’ vote is an assertion that creation of a lobby group to promote Indigenous interests in a political setting will “divide the country on racial lines”. Once upon a time I might have been swayed by such rhetoric … but the process of conducting many hours of research when writing Chaosium’s “Terror Australis, 2nd Edition” and our own extensive “Convicts & Cthulhu” line (co-written with professional historian Geoff Gillan) have given me a far deeper idea of the impacts of colonialism on early Australia. It’s also brought into stark focus the ways in which the ideal of a “White Australia” has manifestly disadvantaged many generations of Indigenous Australians (reduced opportunities and life expectancy; google is your friend if you need stats to quantify this disadvantage).
In reality, Australia has always been a divided nation — since pretty much the time of settlement in 1788. Any new proposal isn’t going to create new divisions: they already exist. But it might — just might — be a step towards the journey beyond the colonial ways of thinking that have shaped the last two centuries. That’s why I am in favour.
If the opinion polls are to be believed (and that is a big if), the vote to establish the “Voice to Parliament” will struggle this weekend to get the support it needs. If that happens, I believe it will be a huge missed opportunity, but an even bigger indicator of the readiness of Australia as a nation to reckon with the spectres of its own past. It will be another generation before anyone dares to propose anything new to redress these inequalities. I sincerely hope things don’t go down that path, but I guess we’ll see.
OK, that’s enough serious stuff … now to bring this somewhat back to the principal topic of this blog, namely ideas for horror TTRPG scenarios. If you have a hankering to add some Indigenous Australian themed viewing to your Halloween month (since when did Halloween become a month?) viewing, here are five suggestions. Not all of them are purely horror — in fact, one of them is more a film noir — but they are things we’ve enjoyed watching.
#1: The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977)
While many people would be familiar with Peter Weir’s “Picnic At Hanging Rock” (itself a film with an Indigenous connection), far fewer people know about this subsequent entry into the Aus Horror genre.
A weird, moody, and carefully paced supernatural thriller in which a Sydney lawyer defends five Aborigine men in a case of ritualized murder. In doing so, the white outsider is drawn into a world of Aboriginal magic, myth, and a doomsday prophecy for the world. All the while the rains continue to fall. Dips deeply into the rich mythology of Indigenous Australians and this movie is a great introduction to it. It also has a handily “cosmic horror” vibe to it that makes it accessible for game adaptation.
#2: Limbo (Ivan Sen, 2023)
A self-described “Desert Noir” shot in B&W and filmed in the famous (albeit very remote) Opal Mining town of Coober Pedy in the north of SA [fictionalised as the town of “Limbo” in the film].
A less-than-innocent cop (played by a grizzled Simon Baker, who seems to be channeling a strong “Walter White” vibe) is in town investigating a cold case — the disappearance of an Aboriginal girl 20 years ago.
In true film noir style, for every morsel of truth he unearths he finds a myriad more questions and questionable motives. Some deal directly with the intricacies of loss and injustice faced by Indigenous Australians.
Moody and short on easy explanations, this movie really leans in hard to noir genre expectations, but does so in a beautifully fresh way.
#3: Cleverman (Streaming series, 2 seasons, 2016 and 2017)
In many Indigenous Australian cultures, there is the concept of a “clever man” who has secret knowledge and skills of the spirit world (kind of like an indigenous sorcerer). This series charts the growing powers of a young Aboriginal man who inherits such powers in a near-future dystopian sci-fi version of Sydney.
Heightened in style, this version of the Cleverman’s powers take on an almost superheroic nature, being able to heal, see visions from the future, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Featuring a great Indigenous cast plus some famous faces from more traditional old-school Aus TV as minor characters.
#4: The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, 2018)
Bleak, gritty, and utterly heartless this portrayal of grim life in the early convict colonies of Australia (Van Diemen’s Land in this case) is as spot-on-the-money as any film has ever captured it.
The film charts the harrowing journey of Claire Carroll — a female convict who is brutally treated by the same military guards who kill her husband and baby. She sets out on a mission of revenge, teaming up with an Indigenous tracker, and ultimately comes to see how the European colonization of Tasmania has destroyed their traditional way of life.
Billed as a “psychological horror”, this film has nothing supernatural but depicts extreme brutality (including rape), so is worth a trigger warning for that. Super bleak, but an amazing film.
#5: Firebite (Streaming series, 1 season, 2021)
Another production filmed in Coober Pedy, Firebite follows the story of two Indigenous Australian vampire hunters who protect their home (the fictionalized “Opal City”) from bloodsuckers, many of whom live in abandoned subterranean mineshafts under the town.
A little bit on the schlocky or Rock’n’roll side of things, this series is nevertheless a lot of fun … basically adding a new twist on the very familiar pattern of Vampire-hunting shows. The show’s basic mythology (which seems to suggest that a bunch of bloodsuckers arrived on First Fleet of colonists to Oz) probably has a lot of potential for expansion … so hopefully there will be a Season 2 at some point.
While not related to the overarching Indigenous theme of this post, I thought I would also mention one other recent Oz Horror film that you really should add to your Halloween watch list:
Bonus: Talk To Me (Danny & Michael Philippou, 2023)
This Oz Horror film has been garnering a lot of attention on the film festival circuit, and it is easy to see why. Basically, it is just an awesome ride (and also not caught up in the modern trend of CGI-heavy productions).
The Set-Up is fairly simple: a bunch of young adults have (somehow) got their hands on an actual magic relic — a ceramic hand that can reliably get you in touch with the spirit world, and if you say the right phrase it allows a spirit to possess your body. So, naturally they use it as a kind of party trick, daring each other to become the vehicle for a variety of spirits to take earthly form. And as anyone who’s ever seen a horror film knows … nothing bad can ever come from that. Right?
Just when you thought it was safe to venture back on DriveThruRPG … we are back with yet ANOTHER iteration of the Cthulhu Eternal ruleset. This time around, we are tackling the entire vast genre of futuristic space-faring settings infused with Lovecraftian horror. We call this the Cthulhu Eternal Future SRD … and it is available right now as a Pay-What-You-Want title on DTRPG.
The localization work — which in this case was quite a significant task — was performed by the incomparable Paul StJohn Mackintosh who has been a big supporter of our earlier Cthulhu Eternal rulesets. Paul is also an accomplished game publisher in his own right, most famous for his M.R. James RPG “Casting The Runes”.
This version of Cthulhu Eternal is specially designed to support Lovecraftian games set in star-faring future eras, anywhere in the known (or unknown) cosmos. It particularly aims to support gritty types of horror/sci-fi crossovers which hint at terrifying alien vistas, baffling mysteries of unexplained lost races, and dark and corrupt human motives to bend the universe to humanity’s profit. If you have ever had the urge to run a claustrophobic bug hunt on an infested deep space trawler — and give it the tagline “In Space, No One Can Hear You Say Iä!” — then this game is for you.
As with all our other SRDs, this ruleset spans to 110+ pages of rules text, all the nuts and bolts needed to run a Lovecraftian game session in a futuristic setting. All of it is open content, distributed under the WotC OGL license. The SRD also comes with a snazzy character sheet, provided in both a fillable version [works with desktop Adobe Reader] and a non-fillable version (for printing out). We also bundle information about our “(Re)-Animated By Cthulhu Eternal” license, which is a free license for using a version of the Cthulhu Eternal logo that signifies your work is compatible with our rules.
We really hope that some inventive folks out there can make good use of these rules, either as the basis for a truly creepy space-based adventure to terrify their usual crew … or to build something awesome to inflict upon the broader gaming world.
The Great Old Ones may always say they “come in peace” … but can you ever believe them? Download the CE Future SRD and start telling the story for yourself!
Cthulhu Reborn 