It’s “Shouldn’t-We-Change-The-Day?” Day, Again.

If you reading this from somewhere that isn’t Australia (probably most people), it probably seems ludicrous that there’s an annual argument about whether today, January 26, is a suitable day for Australia’s “national day”. It is, after all, nothing more than the anniversary of the day back in 1788 when the British flag was raised for the first time over the newly-founded penal settlement of New South Wales.

Not really a happy day for anyone. Not the convicts. Certainly not the Indigenous Australians who were displaced and ravaged by disease as a consequence. And not really for most of the military gaolers who mostly were sent to this backwater outpost because they’d been caught doing something untoward.

And while we don’t really support the glorification of the Colonial era, we figured that we might as well use this arbitrary date as an excuse to reveal one of the big titles we will be releasing later in 2024. It’s kind of fitting (and not at all glorifying). Yes, at last we will be revisiting Convicts & Cthulhu, rebooting our earlier Australian penal setting for Lovecraftian Roleplaying using the Cthulhu Eternal rules to make it a self-contained game in its own right.

Here’s what we think the cover will look like:

While we don’t yet have a final page count or release date, we can definitely confirm that it WILL be a print book as well as a PDF release, probably about 200-250 pages. Following the release of the core book we will be brushing off a lot of the previous “Ticket of Leave” supplements and making the best of that content available in print also. So many people have asked us for this over the years … so we’re very excited to be finally getting around to it.

Listen to Us on the Miskatonic Uni Podcast!

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.

Ticket of Leave #16: The Devil to Play, Released!

We have to admit that Convicts & Cthulhu Ticket of Leave #16 — our 20th supplement for the popular setting — has taken a while. Geoff Gillan first came up with the idea for this release, a PDF which explores the unlikely phenomenon of convict theatre in the early penal colonies of Australia, about a year ago. Since then a whole lot of RealLife[tm] stuff has affected both Geoff and me … and Cthulhu Reborn has become whisked into the hurricane of success that has come with our APOCTHULHU product line. But despite all that, we still really wanted to press ahead and bring out something new for Convicts & Cthulhu.

And today — finally — I can proudly announce the release of Ticket of Leave #16: The Devil to Play. It is available for download right now, for FREE, directly from the Cthulhu Reborn blog. The version linked here includes game stats for the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition RPG. If you prefer running other D100 games (or earlier editions of CoC), there’s also a version which refers back to the Open Cthulhu SRD, which might be closer to your game of choice.

The subject matter for this Ticket of Leave is theatrical performance in the early convict colonies. While the idea of theatre in the grim and isolated world of early Australia may seem a little peculiar, there is ample historical evidence to confirm that the performance of theatrical plays by convicts did indeed form a unique form of entertainment almost from the time of colonization.

While the existence of a convict theatre might have been tolerated, that’s not to say that it was exactly welcomed — indeed it seems that the earliest theatres were perpetually threatened with closure by the colonial government. Ironically this was not because of lewd or unbecoming behaviour caused by convicts gathering at the theatre (although doubtless that occurred), but rather because a few opportunistic thieves decided that performance nights were an unprecedented chance to burgle the houses of theatre-goers.

This supplement includes some background historical source material that would be useful to any GM interested in introducing theatrical performance to his or her Convicts & Cthulhu game. It also neatly summarizes everything that’s currently known about the preeminent theatre of the C&C era, the establishment run by Mr Robert Sidaway (himself an ex-convict). Historical details on this topic are, unfortunately, pretty sketchy — which is one of the reasons this supplement has taken so long to research and complete. However, there are a few handy books (and even a very helpful Ph.D. thesis) that Geoff was able to track down to ensure that this material is as accurate as humanly possible, given the records that still exist.

As well as this historical material, the PDF includes a lengthy and detailed scenario which revolves around brutal deaths on the streets of Sydney Town which are linked solely by the victims having attended Sidaway’s Theatre. Unlike many of the other scenarios we’ve created for C&C, this one is deliberately intended to be challenging, even for experienced Lovecraftian gamers — so is a handy adventure to throw at players who are finding traditional scenarios too easy.

Like most of our “Ticket of Leave” supplements, the scenario half of ToL#16 includes three different Mythos backdrops for the peculiar events the investigators will be examining. That allows the GM some latitude in picking a backstory that will best meet the gaming group’s preferences … or slot in to an ongoing campaign.

Ticket of Leave #16: The Devil to Play is available right now, via the link below. It’s also available (with genericized stats) as a DriveThruRPG Pay-What-You-Want title (just in case you’d prefer to generously send a small amount of money our way, to help pay for the creation of new Convicts & Cthulhu material).

Ticket of Leave #16: The Devil to Play (CoC7e STATTED version) [36 pages; 5.8MB]

As with the majority of things released via this blog, this file is released under a Creative Commons License, which means you’re free to whatever (non-commercial) things you’d like to do with it. If you end up running this scenario, or creating something cool using this material we would love it if you got in touch with us (use the “About” menu-item at the top of the blog). We are always interested in how our games get used, and if you’ve made something nifty we might be interested in sharing it for other gamers to enjoy!

Busy Last Days of the Year

There’s no doubt that 2020 has been a very productive year for us here at Cthulhu Reborn — we’ve brought the whole APOCTHULHU RPG into the world (for better or worse) and a couple of other publications as well.

But, we aren’t content to rest on our horrific laurels just because the demon-spawn-year (a.k.a. 2020) is almost at an end. In fact there are two nifty things that we are hoping to sneak out before the calendar clicks over. I thought I’d share a couple of details about what we have coming out soon …

With the massive amount of effort that has gone into our Post-Apocalyptic Lovecraft stuff, a couple of our other popular lines have received a lot less love. It’s a sad consequence of there being only so much time to go around … but we always wanted to go back and catch up on some new titles for ongoing lines.

Our first return to older fields will be Convicts & Cthulhu Ticket of Leave #16. This will be our 20th supplement for Convicts & Cthulhu, which is quite an achievement. Well I think so anyway. ToL#16 centres upon the theme of theatrical performance in the penal colonies … which is perhaps not something that immediately springs to mind as part of a prison settlement, and yet historically there were theatres almost from the very earliest days of Australian colonization.

Geoff has been working on the research for this supplement for a long time … and to be honest it might be backed up by the most thorough historical delving we’ve done so far. Because the historical records are pretty spotty, Geoff’s chased down quite a number of unusual avenues to get the sorts of details that we were after. Any time when you start celebrating because of a rare discovery buried away in someone’s 1975 Ph.D. thesis (recently shared online), you know you’re in the right place for some premium C&C writing. Geoff is so good at that kind of historical research that I am constantly in awe.

As well as all the evocative history stuff, this supplement will contain a challenging scenario that might just be our most baffling Lovecraftian mystery we’ve written yet. It’s also looking destined to be our longest scenario to date — I’m guessing it’ll be about 33 or 34 pages. And, as always, a Pay-What-You-Want release (here and on DTRPG)

If you have purchased the APOCTHULHU Core Rulebook and read the two epic scenarios that are at the back, you will have encountered Jeff Moeller’s intriguing Apocalypse-by-fire tale “Kick the Can”. Without giving out any spoilers for this gruesome adventure … one unusual thing about it is the way the plot revolves around curious radio transmissions.

The Survivors begin the scenario in a bunker, having lived through some pretty unpleasant times, and their only clue about the new state of the world comes in the form of a weird message received on their CB Radio. As things go on, there are other stranger things that similarly lurch forth from the electromagnetic aether.

Because there are so many nifty radio/telephony kinds of clues in this scenario, one thing I thought would be sort of cool was to create a kind of “audio handout” pack. Something with a bunch of MP3s that the GM could whip out and play when the players say “ok, so what do we hear when the strange signal comes on?”

And so … that is exactly what we have created. With the help of a lot of folks willing to give their vocal talents (including some very famous people from the gaming industry, who have graciously agreed to help out). To make things more interesting than just nifty voice signals, we’ve put quite a bit of effort into creating a multi-layered background of interference, half-heard snatches of old broadcasts, and the like. In doing this we have found that there is a mountain of free (mostly Creative Commons released) audio over on The Internet Archive (a.k.a. the best place on the entire Web). We often source media from here — and we always ALWAYS give them a hefty donation each year to help them keep it free to everyone.

The “audio handouts” pack for Kick The Can will probably be about 15 MP3s of various sorts. In total it will be about 16 minutes of audio weirdness that you can bring to your gaming table — real or virtual — to make Jeff’s scenario even creepier than it already is. And it’s already pretty creepy. We will be releasing the MP3 pack as a free download … hopefully just before NYE. It’ll definitely be downloadable from here, and maybe elsewhere too.

ConVocational Fun

Last weekend, Yog-Sothoth.com hosted an online convention called ConVocation (actually the virtual version of a games day they normally run face-to-face at this time of year in Yorkshire). We were happily able to make it to this event — since virtual plane flights are much cheaper than real-life ones 🙂

In all, there were four sessions at ConVocation that had some kind of Cthulhu Reborn affiliation.

On Friday night (actually Saturday morning for me here in Australia), I ran a 2-hour game of Convicts & Cthulhu, basically a slightly-abbreviated version of “Un-Fresh Off The Boat”. This is the introductory scenario that’s in the back of the core C&C book — which you can get from our downloads page or as a PWYW title (PDF or softcover) on DTRPG.

I have run this scenario numerous times at conventions around the world, but this online run of it was quite a lot more energetic than most. For starters, the party of six investigators (three convicts and three free settlers) decided to split into 3 groups almost immediately. This was to cover more ground in their search for a missing plague-carrying parson. This was all well and good but it made quite a task for me to switch between the three different groups and ensure everyone was still getting enough game time. I think it worked out ok, and the group did a very exhaustive job at finding clues — even heading off to investigate locations well beyond the written scenario. Eventually, though, they all came back together and made it to the site of the big and messy Mythos intrusion into the colony of New South Wales.

I won’t spoil the scenario for anyone who might still run it (or play in it) but there was a fairly explosive final scene … and for the first time all the investigators survived with their sanity intact. This was partially due to some incredibly bad rolling on my part (the dice were on the players’ side for sure) and also because the players burned a LOT of luck points. For some reason they were willing to sacrifice ANY amount of points to avoid finding out what effects some toxic slime might have on their investigators. Chickens.

The scenario run-through was also memorable because the group of six players (all Americans) had to content with my Australian accent. Generally it was fine, but there was one point when the group was entering a powder magazine when several of the players heard me describe the room as “filled with stacks of cannibals” (rather than “stacks of cannonballs”). Still, since it was a Lovecraftian game, I guess it easily *could* have been cannibals so I’m glad they asked for clarification.

There was a second Convicts & Cthulhu game run on Saturday Night by Matt Ruane. It was called “A Southern Seranade”. This was originally going to be our scenario for the (real face-to-face) GenCon 2020 following up on scenarios we’ve run there for the past couple of years. This year, things weren’t to be for GenCon, but ConVocation offered a great alternative venue to try out this new scenario in a 4-hour online slot.

Unfortunately I couldn’t play in this game, since the timezones were against me (I was sleep-deprived enough as it is). But by all reports it was a hugely-enjoyable session.

 

Also late on Saturday (it was a busy day) I ran a 4-hour session of Dateline: Lovecraft. This was a run-through of the entire “Smoke Green” scenario by Noah Lloyd we published as a tie-in/add-on a year or so back. Although the “Dateline: Lovecraft” core pack is a paid PDF product — or a deluxe physical prop+book if you want to order it direct from here on the blog — the scenario itself is free/PWYW. Check out this page for download links. If you like scenarios set in Jazz-Age Arkham, this scenario is a great adventure that could, with some substitutions, be played without the Dateline pack.

Prior to the game, I had sent copies of the massive Dateline: Lovecraft newspaper prop to each of the four players. I could almost hear their plaintive cries through the fibre-optic cables as they opened this dense wall of broadsheet newsprint with the knowledge that *somewhere* in its thousands of words sat a few articles or advertisements that would be relevant to the scenario we’d be playing. Of course I wasn’t so cruel as to make them read the whole thing — when the scenario began I pointed out three notable articles which related in some way or other to odd goings-on surrounding the Reinhart Tobacco Plant, a newly-built Arkham waterfront factory.

This game was extremely heavy on investigation, and the players once again were very thorough (and inventive) when it came to tracking down clues and exploiting their character backgrounds. Thankfully there were also some badly blown skill rolls along the way, which let me make some rather inconvenient trouble for a few of the characters … and I’m pretty sure that at the conclusion of the game, one of them probably would have had the Arkham P.D. on his trail. But despite all that, the four plucky investigators eventually tracked down some rather unexpected weirdness, freed an “innocent” victim of the cruel machinations, and wound up in a huge fight. With human antagonists, a non-human antagonist … and something that launched lightning-bolts. Needless to say the Reinhart Tobacco Plant won’t be opening its doors any time soon (and actually some of those doors might no longer be standing). Conveniently their earlier “good deed” paid off with an unlikely alien creature returning to assisting them when things got tough.

As anybody who’s read our Dateline: Lovecraft EXTRA scenarios would know, those adventures tend to be written so that there is a single set-up but three possible Mythos-related backstories/conclusions. So, even though I had already run “Smoke Green” once before, it was my first time running this particular variant option, so it was all a bit different to how I remembered it. Thankfully it still seemed to go pretty smoothly and things wrapped up after a satisfying big climactic episode. I was thankful to be able to pull it all together … even though it was getting REALLY late in my local timezone (the game wrapped up around 3AM my time).

@RogerBW, one of the players in the game was kind enough to make a recording of the 4.5 hour game, which you can download from here as a MP3.

 

The final Cthulhu Reborn session at ConVocation was a run of “Amber Waves” the scenario that is included in the Quickstart for APOCTHULHU. The Quickstart is available as a Pay-What-You-Want 73-page PDF title on DTRPG, and if you want to grab it for free just to see what APOCTHULHU is all about, we’d love you to do so. Of course if you choose to pay a small amount for it, we would be even more pleased :). If you’re keen enough to want the Quickstart as a softcover book, you can buy one via this DTRPG link.

The ConVocation session of “Amber Waves” was run by scenario author (and all-round ursine footwear lover) Chad Bowser. I was lucky enough to snag a spot as a player. Excitingly this was our official “online convention launch” for the APOCTHULHU game and also a beta test of the Roll20 character sheet that I have been tinkering with for APOCTHULHU.

The scenario went pretty well, by which I mean it was a hellish nightmare of Post-Apocalyptic proportions that shocked us all with the brutality of life in a world where Shub-Niggurath’s promise of global fecundity had left the human population in fear of being devoured by plant life. As survivors in this harsh alternate 1970s we had been given a simple task — to meet a scientist from another settlement who claimed to have made a discovery which could ease the terrifying stranglehold of the plants. Like every other “simple task” this one went south pretty much immediately, and placed us on a warpath with a rather nasty cult that not only venerated the animated vegetation but strung infected people up like scarecrows.

Ultimately with some diplomacy we were able to borrow some shotguns and undertake a bit of a stealthy commando mission to put paid to these horrible and insane individuals. While not everything went to plan, we eventually did manage to secure the object of our mission and escape in a stolen jeep … thanks largely to the bad guys fumbling a “throw grenade” roll and effectively blowing up themselves and most of their safehouse/compound in one fell swoop.

The good news is that the APOCTHULHU rules worked well for this kind of scenario, and except for a few minor gremlins the Roll20 sheet also behaved well, and actually made some of the dice rolling conventions of the game much easier to remember. The session also reinforced for me how deadly shotguns (and grenades) are in this system … so don’t dive into combat on a whim!

So that was our huge weekend of ConVocation — it was an absolute blast to play in so many diverse and interesting Lovecraftian-inspired roleplaying games. Huge thanks to the YSDC folks for organizing the event, but an even bigger thanks to the players who signed on to play in our games. Without exception, everyone who came to our sessions was an enthusiastic and accomplished roleplayer willing to dive into the story wholeheartedly. That makes all the difference when it comes to achieving a great game dynamic (which I hope we managed to do in our games) and a satisfying conclusion.

Strangely, in all three games that I was in zero investigator/survivor characters died and apart from some brief moments of temporary insanity everyone weathered the horrors fairly well. That’s pretty unusual for convention games — usually there’s at least a few casualties. Maybe the GM had decided to play nice for once … or maybe he was half asleep … 🙂

ConVocation This Weekend!

This weekend Cthulhu Reborn will (virtually) be elbows-deep in the eldritch horror of ConVocation, the online game convention associated with the awesome and legendary Yog-sothoth.com Lovecraftian gaming forum.

We love this event because it’s small and community-focussed, without any of the conspicuous commercialism that you see at most gaming conventions (I’m sure many of you know what I mean).

There are 4 games being run over the weekend of 25-27 Sep based on things Cthulhu Reborn has published — one APOCTHULHU game (run by Chad Bowser), one Dateline: Lovecraft game (run by me), and two Convicts & Cthulhu games (one by Matthew Ruane, one by me). Both of my games are currently showing as sold out, but there are still tickets for APOCTHULHU and the 4 hour Convicts game by Matt.

You’ll need to be quick, though … registrations for the online event (open to registered YSDC forum members only) close in about 24 hours. If you’re already a YSDC member and hankering for some APOCTHULHU or Convict fun, we would *love* to fill up to few remaining seats on those games …

We’re so looking forward to this weekend’s games, which will (hopefully) also be a beta test of our APOCTHULHU setup on Roll20, which is something numerous people have asked us about.

See you at the virtual gaming tables!

Want to Game With Cthulhu Reborn?

We will be attending the (virtual) convention being run next month by the good folks at Yog-Sothoth.com (YSDC). And we’re bringing some of our games to play — APOCTHULHU, Convicts & Cthulhu, and Dateline: Lovecraft will all be represented.

The event is called ConVocation, and will be held (online) over the weekend of 25th to 27th September.

Events are all free to play in … though you need to be a member of YSDC (though not necessarily a paid patron).

Here’s a summary of the four events Cthulhu Reborn is running over that weekend

Un-Fresh Off The Boat

[Run by the scenario author, yours truly]

RPG System: Call of Cthulhu, 7e (Convicts & Cthulhu)

Duration: 2 Hours

Date & Time: Saturday, 26th September 2:00 AM *in the morning* (BST, UK)  (East Coast US = Friday @ 9 pm, East Coast Australia = Saturday @ 11 am.)

Experience required: None; also no familiarity with historical origins of Australia are assumed — necessary background will be explained in the scenario.

Scenario Description: In 1800 it was hard to imagine a worse fate than being transported to the Australian penal colonies; this scenario begins with two ships arriving in Sydney Harbour — one carrying convicts, the other free settlers. A strange disease has broken out onboard causing the colonial authorities no small consternation.

A Southern Serenade

[Run by the scenario author, Matthew Ruane]

RPG System: Convicts & Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu)

Online System: Roll20 & Discord

Duration: 4 Hours

Date & Time: Saturday, 26th September 12:00 noon (EDT, USA)

Experience required: Some knowledge of CoC would be helpful.

Scenario Description: A small group of Australian convicts have been sent to investigate what happened to a missing work team assigned to work some newly discovered mines.

Smoke Green (Dateline: Lovecraft)

[Scenario by Noah Lloyd, run by yours truly]

RPG System: Call of Cthulhu, 7e

Duration: 4 Hours

Date & Time: Saturday, 26th September 1:00 pm (BST, UK)  (East Coast US = Saturday@8am, East Coast Australia = Saturday@10pm.)

Experience required: None.

Scenario Description: In 1928 Arkham has a new, popular brand of cigarettes … with a distinctive greenish smoke; when the owner of the company winds up dead, is it an accident, or somehow tied up with the company’s affiliations in the tense Mayoral race.

Amber Waves

[Run by the scenario author, Chad Bowser]

RPG System: APOCTHULHU / Delta Green

Duration: 4 Hours

Date & Time: Sunday, 27th September 8:00 am (EDT, USA)

Experience required: None.

Scenario Description: There’s a man with a cure for the plague that plunged the world into a verdant nightmare. He’s willing to meet the PCs half-way.

Have Another Tot of Rum (Convict’s Birthday)

Today (or technically yesterday) marks the four year anniversary of the release of the original Convicts & Cthulhu core book. So … happy birthday to C&C.

In past years we have tried to time our C&C releases so that we’re able to put out something new to celebrate the anniversary, but this year things have been so crazy that we haven’t been able to do that. Hopefully the brand new campaign PDF that we released back in April will satiate your need for new Convict content for a little longer.

We can offer three pieces of news about the future of Convicts & Cthulhu, though:

• We now have a draft manuscript ready for the next Ticket of Leave (#16) — it’s titled “The Devil to Play” and concerns itself with convict theatres in the colony;
• We believe that despite the many changes to GenCon, we will still have a Convicts & Cthulhu event at the con. More details to follow;
• In creating the APOCTHULHU RPG we have crafted a customised version of a d100 system that we will use as the engine for our (long-planned) standalone Convicts & Cthulhu game. The same engine might also be useful for other gaming projects that have been on our backburner … so watch this space.

In the meantime … we offer our heartfelt thanks to those of you who have downloaded and read our Convicts games. And for those who have been in touch with details about your game runs — thank you from the bottom of our hearts; it’s your enjoyment of this unique setting that keeps us creating.

So … another tot of rum to celebrate (then it’s back to the ankle line).

 

We Love “Actual Plays”

I mentioned a while back that ever since this whole crazy-time of global lockdowns began, we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of people downloading our free Call of Cthulhu scenarios. My guess is that people are playing online a lot more, and some free, high-quality scenarios service that need pretty well — especially for one-shot game sessions.

While seeing people downloading our games makes our tiny demon-hearts glow every time, there’s something that makes us even happier … and that’s when people go to the trouble of sharing their runs of our adventures, either as audio recordings or just as written scenario logs. Recently there have been quite a number of these, so I thought I’d give a shout out to point any curious readers to places to go to hear some Cthulhu Reborn scenario-play in action.

I should also say that we’re always interested in hearing about more recordings — so if you and your group make a great Convicts & Cthulhu recording, or a Dateline: Lovecraft recording, etc., let us know! If it’s something we can share here in on the blog we’ll definitely be up for sending you some kind of “thank you” reward for your efforts!

In A Different Light: As Played by “Collections of Madness”

“In A Different Light” is the very first scenario we ever released here on Cthulhu Reborn (back in 2011). We’ve heard back from quite a few different groups who have given it a run over the years. It’s still available as a 100% free download (albeit statted for Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition) — jump to the Downloads Page for Rescued Scenarios and you’ll find both the scenario and it’s bonus extra props.

Back around Christmas time we were contacted by a reader called Bill who was running the scenario for his group and typing up a detailed account of the group’s escapades on his own blog. That adventure summary makes for a great read, and definitely gives a good sense of what the scenario is like and how it might play out in the hands of a typically gung-ho group of Cthulhu investigators.

The four game sessions run by Bill can be read here:

• Session 1: https://rigglew4.blogspot.com/2019/12/part-1-in-different-light-by-dean.html
• Session 2: https://rigglew4.blogspot.com/2019/12/part-2-in-different-light-midnight.html
• Session 3: https://rigglew4.blogspot.com/2020/01/part-3-in-different-light.html
• Session 4: https://rigglew4.blogspot.com/2020/01/part-4-different-light-behind-screen.html

Geoff Gillan’s Machine King: As Played by Skype of Cthulhu

Of all the scenarios we’ve ever released, Geoff Gillan’s “Machine King” is the one which has received the most attention from folks who make actual play recordings of their game sessions. We’ve been made aware of at least 2 audio recordings and 1 video session recording made by groups running through this Gaslights-meets-Mechanical-Dreamlands scenario. The PDF itself is still available (with CoC 6e stats) for free over on the Downloads Page for Rescued Scenarios.

Recently we learned that the famous players over at Skype of Cthulhu had given this popular title a spin for themselves. You can hear their audio recording of the 5 sessions of play on their site (and probably also on a variety of podcasting channels and services that they publish to). Here’s some direct links:

• Session 1: http://www.cthulhu.me/2020/03/603-machine-king-1.html
• Session 2: http://www.cthulhu.me/2020/04/609-machine-king-2.html
• Session 3: http://www.cthulhu.me/2020/04/612-machine-king-3.html
• Session 4: http://www.cthulhu.me/2020/04/612b-machine-king-4.html
• Session 5: http://www.cthulhu.me/2020/04/612c-machine-king-5.html

Convicts & Cthulhu – Orphan School Horror: As Played by Innsmouth House

There haven’t been too many Convicts & Cthulhu recordings shared yet (at least as far as I know), but one very significant one is just about to come out … A week or so ago we learned that the Innsmouth House players, who have a remarkably long history of recording games and releasing them via Yog-Sothoth.com, recently tried a one-shot adaptation of one of the C&C “Ticket of Leave” publications. The ToL in question (#9) can be downloaded via this link.

This game was run under lockdown with their in-house system called “nameless” with the session being GM’ed by the capable Helen (with most players joining via Zoom calls to Innsmouth House Global HQ). To fit in with their recent Victorian adventures, this tale of ghostly hauntings at a girl’s school has been transported from its original convict-era Sydney setting to Victorian London. We always love seeing people taking our free content and finding new and different ways of using it, so we say ‘yay Helen’. The recording has been made by (at the time of writing) hasn’t yet been shared — it will probably only be available to Patrons of Yog-Sothoth.com. I will definitely be downloading it when it’s posted in the next few days and will happily share a quick precis of how the nameless session went! Exciting.

Coming Soon …

In addition to all those things that have either been released, or will shortly be released, we’re also aware of at least one other Cthulhu Reborn scenario that’s been recently played and recorded … but is still waiting in the queue for audio processing and release. That’s the Dateline: Lovecraft scenario “Bottoms Up!” which the Skype of Cthulhu players ran through around Christmas-time with GM duties being performed by scenario author Rachael B. Randolph. We are eagerly waiting for the day that recording gets released … in the meantime if you want to grab the scenario itself (for free!) here is the link.

 

A Convicts & Cthulhu Campaign

It’s been several months since we’ve released anything new for our (much-loved) Convicts & Cthulhu RPG. A few people have contacted me asking me if we’d somehow stopped supporting it … fear not, we would never do that. But, even before the current world events had come to disrupt everyone, real-life complications were (temporarily) biting deeply into the free-time of our normal C&C writers. This has slowed down the production of the next Ticket of Leave supplement *and* also preparations for our annual GenCon Convicts & Cthulhu game — the latter of which might depend a lot more on exactly what shape GenCon 2020 takes.

While talking with our small crew the other day, someone suggested that now that there are a LOT of Convicts & Cthulhu scenarios written — scattered through some 400 pages of free/PWYW content that is available to everyone — why don’t we stitch some together to form a campaign? Given the way that downloads of our free scenarios (and especially our free Convicts material) has skyrocketed in recent weeks, having a longer-form Convicts tale that people could just pick up and run seems like an idea whose time has come.

So — between Geoff and myself — we’ve created an eight-chapter “ready(-ish)-to-run” campaign which binds together a selection of scenarios and seeds from the core Convicts & Cthulhu book as well as scenarios from:

• Ticket of Leave #1: Night Terrors (2016)
• Ticket of Leave #3: Criminal Enterprise (2016)
• Ticket of Leave #6: Night of the Convict Dead (2016)
• Ticket of Leave #9: Orphan School Horror (2017)
• Ticket of Leave #11: The Dispensatory of Doctor Macdead (2018), and
• Ticket of Leave #15: The Death Knells (2019).

All up, the campaign has 8 chapters (six core “campaign arc” chapters and 2 optional chapters). We estimate it will take an Investigator group 10-15 sessions to play. It’s an open framework which would also allow a few extra optional chapters to be inserted if you wanted something longer.

You can download the 33-page PDF which contains the campaign outline as a free download from here on the Cthulhu Reborn blog. We will also put the same file up on DriveThruRPG as a Pay-What-You-Want title (in case you would like to chip a small donation our way to help us keep making new Convicts supplements).

We’ve called the campaign notes a “String-A-Line” supplement to distinguish it from our original Convicts & Cthulhu scenario/sourcebook releases (“Tickets of Leave”) and our NPC-specific supplements (“Musters”). The term “stringing a line” comes from the “Flash Talk” slang spoken by convicts in the colony — it refers to the practice of spinning a long and elaborate story to someone to keep them occupied and distracted while one’s accomplice(s) silently robs them of their goods. It seems like a good analogy for running an RPG campaign (except for the stealing bit, obviously :)).

The campaign we’ve created is called “New Dawn Fades (or The Testing of New South Wales)” and concerns itself with a string of peculiar events which begin at the time of the Investigators’ arrival in the colony in early 1803 and extend through the next 2 years. The odd occurrences are linked thanks to the involvement of a shadowy group who are subtly (and not-so-subtly) pulling strings in NSW to fit their own agenda.

What’s In The String-A-Line?

Given that each of the scenarios themselves exist already in published forms (in the C&C core and the different Ticket of Leave supplements, respectively), we haven’t reprinted them but have instead created some “glue” to stitch these individual tales into a larger narrative. The String-A-Line supplement is thus a kind of framework or playbook that allows you to take those pre-existing publications and mash their component parts together into a harmonious whole.Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve described in the String-A-Line:

• Description of the shadowy organization who is at the heart of this campaign
• An option to involve a well-known historical figure in the machinations
• A summary of several ongoing linking elements that bind the stories together. These include NPCs both friendly and adversarial, colonial organizations that recur through the campaign, and some running mysteries
• Six brand-new “campaign handouts” that can be given to players as Investigators begin to unravel pieces of the underlying backstory.
• Eight chapter descriptions (each describing changes/additions to the vanilla published scenarios, how the action ties into the ongoing campaign arc, and the outcomes and loose-ends from each scenario).
• Six ready-to-play Convicts & Cthulhu investigators

Spoilers Hereafter

If you think you might one day be a player in this campaign, perhaps stop reading here. For everyone else, here’s a quick summary of how the New Dawn Fades campaign unfolds through its eight chapters.

Chapter 1: Un-Fresh Off The Boat

The Investigators begin as passengers (and convicts) on a pair of ships which has just arrived in Sydney Harbour from England. A mysterious illness has broken out onboard meaning the ship is refused permission to dock until after it has served a period of quarantine. One person on board simply can’t wait and makes a break overboard, breaking quarantine. The Investigators – as the only uninfected people on board – are asked to give chase. When they track down the missing man, they find that disgusting Mythos creatures were being smuggled into the colony inside his body. But who could have wanted to bring such terrifying monstrosities to New South Wales?

Chapter 2: Night Terrors

As “reward” for their quick-thinking actions in Chapter 1, the Investigators are drafted into the Sydney Night Watch — the motley group who enforces the curfew and patrols the streets at night. This chapter introduces life after dark in Sydney. As the Investigators run their patrols they have a range of  colourful encounters. Many of these are mundane but help to paint a vivid picture of what life on the streets of Sydney is like. However, others relate to the trail of havoc created by an unbound Mythos Creature – following up on these will draw the Investigators towards eliminating the menace it poses to the colony.

Chapter 3: Shyneth as the Gold

As part of their Night Watch duties, the Investigators must pretend to be criminals to meet with an American ship off the NSW coast so they can take possession of smuggled distilling equipment as part of a ‘sting’ operation. A criminal gang was supposed to deliver these items to a remote location near Banks’ Town. In order to find out who receives the illegal items the Investigators must make the rendezvous. When they do, they find a weird group who are happily using distilled essences for some rather unorthodox purposes.

Chapter 4: Night of the Convict Dead

An unusual spate of deaths has been reported on the streets of Sydney Town. In each case a pair of corpses is located adjacent to one another – one looking fresh, the other oddly decayed. Investigating these strange discoveries puts the Investigators on the trail of a dark-hearted man with ambitions to become a necromancer. His designs for the dead in Sydney’s burial grounds needs to be stopped, lest he accidentally trigger a mass zombie resurrection that he has no chance of controlling.

Chapter 5: The Lights of Botany Bay

A strange man in Black Robes has appeared in Sydney calling himself “Solander”. He urgently wants to reach the unsettled shores of Botany Bay and apparently has (somehow) swayed Governor King to arrange a military expedition at short notice. King has ordered the Investigators to “volunteer” to help since they already have experience of the Botany Bay region from their earlier smuggling ‘sting.’

Chapter 6: The Dispensatory of Doctor Macdead

Strange tales have recently been reaching Sydney about bizarre medical conditions reported at the hospital at Parramatta. Looking into these reports of mutations and such, the Investigators quickly establish a common link – all the patients had been treated by a private (highly unqualified) doctor named Macdead. Finding the good doctor, however, proves more complicated than expected. In recent weeks he has been arrested (for passing a forged promissory note) and was sent as punishment to the remote secondary punishment settlement of Coal River. But even in his absence, someone (or something) seems to have ambitions to continue visiting horrible medical alterations upon innocent settlers and convicts of the Parramatta region.

Chapter 7: The Orphan School Horror

The Female Orphan School is one of the few charitable institutions to be created in the harsh colony. Girls at the school have begun to report mysterious and eerie phenomenon in the weeks leading up to Christmas, prompting some to think that the school is haunted.

Chapter 8: The Death Knells

Sydney Town awakes one morning to news of a terrible night of carnage that has left three members of the Night Watch dead and a curious axe left embedded in the Harbour Bell which is used to signal the arrival of new ships. The dead are people who the Investigators knew well from their own service in the Night Watch, so the foul murders strike home in a personal way. But who could have wanted to carry out such an apparently motiveless spree of killings right on the shores of Sydney Harbour?

Getting the Campaign

Convicts & Cthulhu String-A-Line #1: New Dawn Fades is available right now, as a free download using the link below.

33 pages; 8.3MB PDF

In order to run the campaign, you will also need the C&C Core book and the six Ticket of Leave supplements from which the scenarios are drawn. Links to the latter are included at the top of this post. You can get the C&C core either from DriveThru RPG (“Pay What You Want”) or from here on the blog (see the C&C Downloads page). The DTRPG page also offers softcover print copies.

Playing the Campaign

We hope that existing fans of the Convicts & Cthulhu setting will consider using (or adapting) this campaign framework to create hours of amazing entertainment for their gaming group. Equally we hope that some folks who haven’t yet dipped their toes into the gritty world of Convicts might find this lengthy campaign just the ticket to inspire them to transport a group of friends to the penal settlements of early Australia to do battle with shadowy adversaries and save the colonies from an even more brutal fate.

If you and your friends give this campaign a spin we’d love to hear how it went. And if you decide to record and share your online games as “Actual Play” recordings, we’d definitely like to let other C&C fans know so they can check it out!

May the New Dawn never fade on your version of New South Wales!