Cthulhu Eternal WWII SRD Released!

It’s hard to believe that it’s just over a year ago that we first unleashed Cthulhu Eternal, our free/open D100 system for Lovecraft-inspired Roleplaying, on the world. And here we are announcing the release of our SIXTH era-customized version of the rules, this one catering to games set in and around the time of World War II. The new material for this SRD was all written by Roger Bell_West who did a fantastic job of sketching out all the basics you would need to run a wartime game of Cthulhu Eternal.

The World War II SRD for Cthulhu is available right now on DTRPG, and like all our SRDs is 100% open content. If you want to use it for pretty much any purpose, you’re free to do so. If you want to sell your creation, fine, you don’t need to give us a cent. If you want to include a version of the Cthulhu Eternal logo on the cover — we have a free license for one of those also.

Obviously one of the questions to be asked when developing games set in wartime eras is … where does the game sit on the spectrum of “pulp” depiction of the realities of war. And also whether it assumes action in and around actual battles, or focuses on out-of-the-way shadowy corners not directly in the line of the military stuff. For the most part Roger’s SRD is agnostic with regards to these questions — if you want to use it to run a purely historical game (or one where the Mythos has only a peripheral influence on affairs), you certainly can. Alternatively, if you want to create a game with vast occult conspiracies battling it out in some parallel hidden supernatural conflict, the rules would support that equally well. The Cthulhu Eternal system is more deadly than many games, however, so truly over-the-top pulp (“I charge the Shoggoth army with just my bowie knife and a bad attitude”) would probably require some rules work-arounds.

When depicting real-world atrocities like those that happened in World War II, it is always important to be sensitive to the real human suffering which even today is harrowing. Roger strongly recommends (and I heartily agree) that the historical horrors should never have their origins in some force of the Mythos — human beings are capable of evil enough even before they get involved in the picture, and to attribute things to this-or-that Outer God somewhat trivializes that fact. Obviously, though, it’s your game.

Go forth, grab the Cthulhu Eternal World War II SRD today and start scheming about awesome wartime Lovecraftian scenarios, campaigns, and game settings that you can use it to power! The world is ablaze, and its fire can cast dark shadows across any corner of the globe you wish …

Wanna Be Re-Animated (By Cthulhu Eternal)?

Ever since we released the first Cthulhu Eternal SRDs, people have been asking us how they can publish their own CE-compatible stuff with the distinctive CE logo on the front. We definitely want to make it easy for anyone to release cool games/scenarios/whatever that proudly declare their relationship with our free/open ruleset, so we created a version of our logo called the “Re-Animated By Cthulhu Eternal” logo, which anyone can use for free, without asking for our permission. You can see it at the top of this post!

There is a page on the Cthulhu Eternal website that describes the licensing arrangements: https://cthulhueternal.com/re-animated-by-cthulhu-eternal-logo/

But in essence: anyone can use this logo on published works, for free, without any prior permission from us. The only proviso is that in the (extremely unlikely) event that a published work is actually illegal (e.g., fraudulent, a copyright violation, etc) we might ask that the logo be removed. We can’t imagine a situation arising where that would ever happen, though, but it’s the only condition in the license.

We are also excited to mention that the first product bearing this logo has already been released (and it is kind of awesome, a nifty modern-day scenario): Sasquatch by Pnakotus Press. It’s Pay-What-You-Want on DTRPG, but we definitely think it’s worth throwing a couple of bucks down to support a great scenario!

Cthulhu Eternal: This is how we Roll20

Lots of folks have been asking for ages that we make it easier for people to play Cthulhu Eternal using online Virtual Table Tops. Today, we have made virtual games of Cthulhu Eternal much easier … if you’re a user of the popular Roll20 environment.

When you create a new game on Roll20, you can now select “Cthulhu Eternal by Cthulhu Reborn Publishing” from the super-long list of character sheets available.

The same character sheet will let you play games using ANY of the five eras for which we have already released SRDs (Modern, Cold War, Jazz Age, Victorian, Age of Revolutions). All you need to do is select the era from the pulldown menu at the top right of the sheet. When you do, the sheet reconfigures to show a look & feel appropriate to the era as well as the correct skills list for protagonists in that era.

To future-proof things, we have also gone ahead and built sheets for a bunch of eras we haven’t yet released SRDs for … but would really like to one day.

So, the full list of Cthulhu Eternal games that you can run on R20 looks more like this:

Happy gaming online! And if you do anything cool with these character sheets — especially the eras we haven’t yet written — we would love to hear about it. Cthulhu Eternal is a 100% community effort, so if you have some amazing ideas we would definitely like to consider incorporating them in those things we hope one day to bring into the world!

An Update: Our Hater Stan

We posted a couple of days ago about the steady stream of negative DTRPG ratings we see attached to our products, all sourced from the same two accounts (clearly working in tandem, probably controlled by the same person).

Well … it seems like the individual in question has spotted our posting, if today’s review spree is anything to go by. A snapshot from my inbox:

Yes, that is a total of 24 not-so-great star rating reviews in the space of 2 minutes. From the same person. Absolutely, totally normal behaviour … well, maybe not so much NORMAL, but perfectly rational. Right?

A few folks left comments on the earlier blog posting suggesting that we commission a special product and dedicate it to our hater-stan … we love this idea. But what kind of spite-themed product would work best do you think? Best suggestion in comments we will find a way to make it happen 🙂

A New Era for Cthulhu Eternal: Age of Revolutions

Today we are proud to announce the release of another in our expanding range of customized versions of the Cthulhu Eternal ruleset. This one is firmly aimed at historical games set in any period between 1750 and 1850. We call this turbulent century the “Age of Revolutions” since it embodied massive political and social shifts as well as great advances in industry and learning.

The Cthulhu Eternal “Age of Revolutions” SRD is available right now as a Pay-What-You-Want download on DriveThruRPG. It is a fully-featured ruleset, spanning a little over 100 pages, and is ready to bring life any 18th Century Lovecraftian game setting you wish. Ever wonder what the Cthulhu Mythos was up to during the American Revolution? Or during the Reign of Terror following the French? How about the secret Otherworldly battles that somehow formed part of the vast Napoleonic Wars? And if settings of conflict and strife aren’t your thing, the “Age of Revolutions” is also the time when both the Industrial Revolution and the “Enlightenment” were hitting their peaks — who knows what terrors might have been stumbled upon by those re-writing the established order of industry, or the longstanding worldview?

This era is also the time of the creation of the Australian penal settlements, which is a setting very near and dear to our hearts thanks to our long-standing Convicts & Cthulhu setting. In the future, we plan to reboot that line using this SRD as a foundation stone.

But for now, we invite anyone who has an interest in historical gaming, and also a fascination for cosmic horror, to consider mixing the two to build … some kind of 18th Century Mythos Monstrosity … and bring it to your game table with our SRD ruleset!

As with all our previous Cthulhu Eternal SRDs (Modern, Cold War, Jazz Age, Victorian, APOCTHULHU), this new edition is a self-contained and full-featured bare-bones TTRPG. While it doesn’t have the flashy illustrations and worked examples you’ll find in your average published game, the text of the rules are extensive and cover everything you would need to run a Lovecraftian game set in the 18th Century — everything from character development, skills, combat, sanity rules, and guidelines for building magickal rituals, supernatural effects, and adapting pre-existing Mythos horrors. Also included are some nifty character sheets (fillable and printable versions). Best of all, though, is the price tag — you can get this 100+ page ruleset for free if you want, or a small donation if you’d like to help us make more editions (we have many more planned).

Age of Revolutions Protagonist Character Sheet

We hope the creation of this new roleplaying engine will encourage folks to go back and look at this evocative (if somewhat grubby) period of history and imagine what horrors might lurk in the unwatched places as the world underwent the tumultuous events that created the world that we recognize today. Because our rules are 100% free and open (under the Wizards OGL) anything you imagine and create is yours to release (commercially if you want) as long as you do so under the OGL … Download our SRD today and start scheming.

So, find your powder horn, polish up your brace of flintlocks, … it’s time to set out into to uncover the hidden threats that no earthly revolution can harm, but which you must suppress lest all humanity fall. Nobody said it was going to be an easy life! C’est la vie.

A Very Special Thank You to Our #1 Hater

If you occasionally drop by our product pages on DTRPG, you might sometimes find something a bit … peculiar. Almost all of the product we have listed consistently score excellent ratings with folks who have purchased them … 4/5 or 5/5 ratings almost exclusively.

But sometimes, you might stumble upon a product which only has a couple of really low ratings. “What’s up with that?”, you might think to yourself. The mystery might even be compounded if we let the cat out of the bag … pretty much 100% of those 1 and 2 star ratings were all left by ONE individual.

What’s that? Someone who has purchased dozens of copies of our PDFs … the same products multiple times over … apparently just for the opportunity to leave bad product ratings? Sounds insane, right. But that’s what our DTRPG sales reports definitively show. One person, using two different drivethru accounts (accounts 2XXXX8 and 17XXXX6 [redacted for privacy]), seems hell-bent on repeatedly leaving us bad feedback. Well, I guess that is their privilege … although we really don’t know why.

There’s a couple of ironies about this situation, though. The first is the fact that this person’s reviews don’t persist for long — they’re up for a short time, but then quickly removed as inauthentic. The second irony is that this one individual — whoever he, she, or they might be — has now provided Cthulhu Reborn enough DTRPG revenue that we will shortly be in a position to commission further Open Source Lovecraftian PDF scenarios get written.

So … from that perspective … can I just say that whoever our #1 hater might be, please PLEASE don’t stop! We can make great new things together; your money and our creativity can achieve wonderful things.

APOCTHULHU at NecronomiCon Providence

While I am (sadly) not in Providence this weekend, celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s life and monstrosities at NecronomiCon 2022 … some of our fine book did manage to make the trip.

If you are at the con and have always wanted to pick up hardcover or softcover editions of our APOCTHULHU books, track down the shared “small RPG publishers table”. There are even a few nifty T-Shirts available for sale.

Iä Iä …

In other news … we are hard at work on the next two PDF releases that should be crawling out from our crypt of gaming. One is a great “Miskatonic Mystery” playable with the Cthulhu Eternal Jazz Age SRD. The other is … a whole new edition of the CE system, optimized for a brand new historical era. Watch this space. Things should be stirring before the month is out.

Miskatonic Mysteries #4: Spoiled Milk — Released

The juggernaut of Cthulhu Eternal scenarios continues … with today’s release of “Spoiled Milk” by Jo Kreil. This is the fourth title in our Miskatonic Mysteries line and, like the others, can be played with the Jazz Age version of the Cthulhu Eternal SRD (which we’ve bundled in with the download on DTRPG).

The set up is simple: a sudden rise in the number of residents falling ill after consuming spoiled milk has put the town of Arkham on high alert. People are questioning the quality of the product coming from the three main dairies supplying locals with their daily deliveries. Some have even taken to blaming bleary-eyed milkmen for the spate of illness. Arkham seems on the brink of a milk-related uproar!

Of course things are not as simple as they would appear … and there are certain strange and unusual aspects to the milk-related illnesses and hospitalizations. Can the Protagonists discover the true cause of these weird happenings … and fix the situation?

This scenario is a short self-contained mystery that will take a group of plucky Protagonists from the hustle and bustle of downtown Arkham out into the rural districts which surround it. We’ve handily just drawn an all-new map of these environs, so you can take your investigations out into the peculiar countryside.

It’s worth noting that, like the previous Miskatonic Mysteries, the core of this adventure has been released previously as a supporting scenario to Dateline: Lovecraft. This version converts everything across to Cthulhu Eternal, puts it all into a fresh new layout, and compiles all the digital handouts into a VTT-friendly format.

We have chosen to release this PDF at a lower price-point than others in the Miskatonic Mysteries line, not because it’s shorter or less-polished (it’s neither of those) but because we thought it would be good to have a cheaper way for people to see the production values we put into these products.

So … pack your shotguns into the Packard. We’re going out to visit the dairy. What could go wrong?

A Milestone: 5,000 copies of Cthulhu Eternal

Five months ago (to the very day, in fact) we unleashed the first batch of our OGL System Reference Documents for the Cthulhu Eternal RPG. Little did we think that just a short time later we would be announcing that 5,000 copies of Cthulhu Eternal SRDs have been sold (counting those originals and the additional era that we released later).

We are incredibly thankful to everyone who has grabbed some or all of those PDFs … and even more grateful to people who have used them to power their own game sessions, or who are already hard at work strip-mining our rules to become part of new games of their own creation. We created Cthulhu Eternal from the outset to be a community resource … and the fact that it has spread far and wide, and so quickly, really does warm the cockles of our Eldritch hearts.

While DTRPG is set up in a way that means free and Pay-What-You-Want products seldom get “Best Seller” metal allocated to them … if we were able to earn such titles for our SRDs based on sales numbers, here’s how they’d look:

Thanks to everyone for your support … Go forth and create. You know it’s what Great Cthulhu wants!

The Yellow Sign Wants to be Free

Recently we saw an online post from an advertising manager at a well-known game publisher reminding people that any use of the well-known (Kevin Ross designed) depiction of the Robert Chambers “Yellow Sign” is subject to Intellectual Property constraints. They own the rights to said symbol.

We cannot argue that what those marketing people are saying is true … except that is only PART of the story. It neglects to mention that more recently, a far more benevolent publisher (the ever-amazing Pelgrane Press) commissioned a re-designed version of the Yellow Sign for their super-classy “Yellow King” TTRPG … and true to their community-minded nature, THEY decided to release their version of the foul sigil into the Public Domain.

So … yes … if you’re looking to publish something based on Robert Chamber’s vision you COULD pay a game company for the right to use a well-known version of The Yellow Sign … but honestly why would you when there is a perfectly good alternate version that you can get for free?

And the Yellow Sign WANTS to be free!