Just in Time for the End of the World

The release of the APOCTHULHU RPG is definitely our biggest achievement of the year — the culmination of a mammoth project that kicked off in December 2017. And while the core APOCTHULHU rulebook and the Pay-What-You-Want APOCTHULHU Quickstart have been out for a while (and are both selling better than we could have hoped), we’re definitely not done with APOCTHULHU.

Today we released three digital resource bundles that may help folks who are considering running one of the two big scenarios from the APOCTHULHU Core book — Jeff Moeller’s “Kick the Can” or Jo Kreil’s “A Yellow and Unpleasant Land.” If you’ve previously bought the core rules from DriveThruRPG you should receive a message to say three additional ZIP files have been added to your purchase: these are the newly-released bundles. But if you don’t receive such a message — or if you haven’t bought the book but are curious about its handouts — the links below will also get you to the new goodies.

Even while we were working on Jeff Moeller’s “Kick the Can”, we were kind of impressed by the inventive and weird way in which the scenario uses radio messages and voicemails. It’s hard to explain what’s so cool about it without spoiling the scenario, but if you’ve read it chances are you know what I mean. With all the odd audio snippets mentioned in the adventure it was only a matter of time before we got the urge to try to compose some recorded MP3 versions of the clips … to serve as kind of Audio Handouts. While we’ve done lots of Lovecraftian scenario handouts before, these are a first for us. But we are really excited about how well they turned out … and even more excited by the roster of gaming industry folks who lent their voices to recording these clips. I don’t want to be a shocking name-dropper, but if you grab the files below you’ll see some of those gaming luminaries in the PDF credits document.

All up, we recorded seventeen MP3s to go into the “Kick the Can” Audio Handout bundle. You can grab them ALL in one go by downloading the following ZIP file.

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout bundle — all 17 MP3s as a ZIP (16MB)

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to browse the 17 files individually (and also the PDF credits), the links below will let you do that.

  “Kick The Can” Audio Handout Credits (3 pages, 1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – CORE – Melqart’s Morse Summons (5MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – CORE – Jeanette [scenario handout #3] (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – FUTURE – All Hail Melqart (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – FUTURE – Radio Free Columbia (2MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – 911 Call (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – Creeper (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – Saoirse’s Call [Lita Version] (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – Saoirse’s Call [Seth Version] (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – Sports Talk Radio (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PAST – Telemarketer (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – PRESENT – Kimmy (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #1 (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #2 (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #3 (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #4 (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #5 (1MB)

“Kick The Can” Audio Handout – RANDOM SIGNALS – Background Wash #6 (1MB)

As well as now having a bunch of nifty MP3s, the “Kick the Can” scenario has a new bundle of images — JPG versions of the scenario’s handouts, map, and pre-generated Survivor characters. We had previously released all this material in a PDF, kind of like a booklet for GMs to pull apart and use. Various people have contacted us since we released the core rulebook to say that they’re playing our scenarios online using VTTs … and having all the handouts in a PDF makes prepping the online games harder than it should be. Given how many people are playing online at present, this seems like an important think for us to fix — hence the pack of JPGs we also released today for “Kick the Can”.

APOCTHULHU “Kick The Can” Isolated JPG Resources (15MB)

Naturally we never want to play favourites when it comes to our scenarios … so while we were at it, we also created a digital JPG pack (handouts/map/pre-gens) for Jo Kreil’s superb “A Yellow and Unpleasant Land”, also in the core rulebook.

APOCTHULHU “A Yellow and Unpleasant Land” Isolated JPG Resources (15MB)

We really do hope that the various new free add-ons that we’ve released today will be useful to everyone who’s been so kind as to purchase our book. This year has been a trial for everyone, but the number of folks who have come forward to grab a copy of our APOCTHULHU books (and also the game SRD) has really lifted the spirits of everyone on the creative team. Yeah, 2020 sucked, but you guys made it suck a lot less. You have our eternal gratitude!

Roll on 2021.

Tidying the Downloads Page

One of the most important pages here on the Cthulhu Reborn blog is our downloads page. This collects all the different PDF releases (and other stuff) we have put out since starting the blog back in 2011.

A few people recently commented that the list of links on the downloads page was kind of hard to navigate. I guess I can see their point; when we started collecting download links there were maybe a dozen things and it was fine to just list them all as text descriptions one after another. Now that we have closer to 70 things available, sorting through a flat list is kind of hard work.

To make things easier we’ve split out the major groupings of downloadable content by product-line and type, and put each on its own page with some thumbnails to make it easier to see what’s what. For the Convicts & Cthulhu product-line and the Dateline: Lovecraft product line we’ve also created ZIP bundles of all the items that have been released up til now.

Hopefully this will make life easier for both long-time readers of the blog and folks who are just discovering what we do.

The sub-pages we’ve created (with direct links to each) are:

• Convicts & Cthulhu Downloads
• Dateline: Lovecraft Downloads
• Downloads of Prop and Upgrade Packs
• Downloads of “Rescued” Scenarios
• Character Sheet Downloads

Propping Up the Convict

As mentioned here last week, today marks the third anniversary of the Convicts & Cthulhu setting being released. In those three years we have released 15 supplemental PDFs to flesh out the setting with campaign ideas, scenarios, NPCs, and curious nuggets of historical detail. It’s probably fair to say that, by now, there is enough Convicts & Cthulhu content out there that you could easily run a lengthy campaign set in and around the penal colony of New South Wales

If you don’t already have all 15 of the supplements, they are downloadable either from our Download page (free), or by searching “Convicts & Cthulhu” on DriveThruRPG (“Pay-What-You-Want”).

What makes especially happy about this flourishing product line is that we’ve been able to bring these several hundred pages of content to you *entirely* as Pay-What-You-Want. That means that if you’re not in a position to shell out the (sometimes significant) cover prices for other publisher’s Lovecraftian RPG books — there’s always C&C as a cheap alternative. Heck, if you want to grab it all for free, you can (although chipping a little money our way certainly helps a lot when it comes to keeping the product line going).

On this occasion of C&C’s third birthday we wanted to give all our loyal readers a bit of a birthday present. We also thought it might be a good occasion to try something different — hence was born the idea for the “Convict Document Pack” which we are proud to be releasing today!

So, what is the “Convict Document Pack,” anyway? Well … in simplest terms it is a resource that helps you in the creation of realistic prop documents representing some of the most important records kept about convicts in the colony. If your convict was fortunate enough to be granted a “Ticket of Leave,” he or she would be given a (probably grubby) piece of paper proclaiming this status. Same for the rare cases where penal sentences were pardoned because a convict had done something spectacularly wonderful (or been somehow proven innocent after all). And if your convict survived long enough to serve out his or her entire sentence (assuming it wasn’t imprisonment “for life”), they would receive a “Certificate of Freedom.”

All of these important convict documents are included in this pack, in both flat (print & fill) form and also as fillable PDF forms. For the print & fill blanks we’ve included actual signatures for the two most important colonial Governors of the C&C era.

So … never again shall your convict Investigator’s special status need be a minor detail on the back of his or her character sheet. Now they can proudly carry their documents … and present them to snarky NSW Corp Redcoats who challenge them in the street! Further more, these blank documents make great starting points for GM-inspired handouts and clues as part of scenarios. In a similar vein, we have also included in this pack a fillable blank PDF of the single-page broadsheet newspaper produced in the colony, the “Sydney Gazette.”

Downloading the Convict Document Pack

Depending on your preference, you can download these docs either as a single ZIP file (17MB), or via the individual PDF download links below:

Convict Document Pack Info + Print & Fill templates [6.5MB]

Fillable Convict Prop Documents (blank) [4.1MB]

Fillable Convict Prop Documents (sample text) [4.1MB]

Fillable Sydney Gazette (blank) [2.1MB]

Fillable Sydney Gazette (sample text) [2.1MB]

We hope that these prop document resources will give you a set of handy tools to enhance your games of Lovecraftian horror set in the penal colonies. And if you wind up using them in some especially nifty way … feel free to drop us a note telling us about your brilliant prop-fuelled goodness (emails to feedback <at> cthulhureborn.com).

[As always, these resources are released here under a Creative Commons license which means basically that you can use these prop document templates for whatever personal use you can dream up. If you want to use them for a profit-making endeavor — say, for some splashy new TV Series set in the penal colonies — you’d need to contact us about obtaining a separate license.]

 

Villa in France, One Peculiar Owner

Recently I was chatting with Chad Bowser — Call of Cthulhu writer extraordinare, inventor of Cthulhu Invictus, and sometimes collaborator on Cthulhu Reborn projects. Chad was bemoaning the fact that despite the fact that the recent Chaosium update of Horror on the Orient Express is an absolutely super-deluxe reimagining of the 90’s classic, most of the handouts didn’t get much revamping or update. Having recently (finally) found time to read through my own HotOE box, I’d have to say I agree.

One specific problem that Chad’s group had run into was the fact that while in the Paris chapter of the campaign (“Les Fleurs du Mal”) they had fixated slightly on the 17th Century Villa constructed by the Comte Fenalique. Investigators researching this can readily turn up the floorplans to this unusual building … but sadly it isn’t included as a handout. Chad asked me if I had any way of putting together a semi-realistic looking old document bearing the floorplan of a French Villa in Poissy. Here’s what I came up with:

(click here download a higher-res version)

After sketching it out I thought maybe it should be a bit more beaten and weathered-looking, so I roughened and aged it some more:

(click here download a higher-res version)

If you’d like to use this image as a handout to enhance your games of Horror on the Orient Express (1st or 2nd Edition) … feel free! Equally, if you want to remix it into some other prop of your own creation, that’s also cool with me. If you get a visit in the night from a shadowy  fiend, though, it’s not MY fault … 🙂

EDIT: For those who want the floorplan image minus background texture, here it is … (click for the full resolution version)

Free Addon for Mutable Deceptions 1

Readers of Cthulhu Reborn that are interested in creating 1920s era Newspaper-based props for their Lovecraftian games probably already know about Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1. For those that don’t it’s basically a PDF-based toolkit for making nifty authentic-looking 1920s newspaper articles, complete with surrounding articles/ads and a reverse side. It’s Cthulhu Reborn’s only commercial product to-date … and you can find out more about it over on RPG Now if you are so inclined.

One of the things that people ask me most about this package is … “how come there aren’t more ‘reverse side’ pages of ordinary news articles and ads? I’ve made lots of articles using the templates but they all have the same stuff on the back! My players are bored of reading the same fake articles.”

This is a fair comment — although the original PDF pack for Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1 does include 8 or so pages you can use to create reverse sides for your awesome home-made newspaper clues, there’s always room for more. And I do hate bored players.

So … in the spirit of giving out Freebies for loyal readers of this blog, I thought I would put together some additional PDF pages that can be used along with Mutable Deceptions if you want a bigger selection of material for the reverse side of your clippings.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop anybody from using these files on their own (without Mutable Deceptions) — if you can do that, more power to you. Celebrate the spirit of sharing free stuff on the Internet! Print ’em out and use them to wrap your fish and chips for that authentic old-school dinner (disclaimer: if you do this, I am not responsible for anything that happens – you’re on your own :)).

You can download a PDF with two full pages of new newspaper content (based on real American newspapers of the 1920s, but re-typeset to look more consistent with the fonts and typography used in Mutable Deceptions, V1). Each page is provided as a version with background texture and another without — for those who like printing their newspaper articles on exotic paper to give them even greater authenticity.

I hope folks find these helpful — I am likely to create a second batch of freebie newspaper add-ons sometime in the future.

•   Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1 – Free Add-on Pack #1: Generic Full-Page Reverse Sides

Christmas in Arkham

Happy holidays, dear reader of Cthulhu Reborn. It’s certainly been a great year for the blog, and one that has allowed us to release a bunch of free prop-goodness to (hopefully) enhance your Lovecraftian tabletop gaming experience.

As always, though, a significant proportion of the prop design work we have done this year has been for commercial publishers — and while some of that has made it into products, a lot of it is still waiting to see the light of day. One of the projects that falls into that category is an amazing and fun project involving the creation of dozens of high-detail Arkham-themed prop documents for a deluxe kit that a publisher has yet to announce. As always with these kinds of jobs there ends up being too many ideas and designs to put everything into the final product — leaving cool but extraneous bits of left-overs.

I figure it would be in the spirit of the holiday season to work one of these left-overs up into something that I could release here as a free Arkham prop document. A Cthulhu Reborn Christmas gift :).

The design I chose to finish is … a dance card that is both Arkham-themed and Christmas-themed. “What’s a dance card?” I hear you young whipper-snappers quipping to yourselves. Well, I’m sure everyone is familiar with phrases “having a full dance card” and the like, but few of us today really appreciate the very important social function that that this humble piece of cardboard once held for people. When dancing was one of the primary form of social interaction (which it certainly was in the 1920s … and several later decades too) people would dance with many different people on any given night. If one wanted to recall the name of the dishy Army officer one foxtrotted with last Saturday evening, chances are you’d pull out the dance card that you’d kept as a souvenir of the night. Similarly, when one was asked to dance later in the night it was important to be able to “book” people into a free slot — and the dance card was the way of doing that.

Dance Card (outside)

 

One can imagine that nine decades ago, in the fictitious town of Arkham, MA, the yuletide dance at the most prestigious hotel in town — the glittering Hotel Miskatonic — would have been the social occasion of the season. So, when one of the party-goers is found in a back alley, apparently assaulted on his or her walk home — by something with tentacles! — the bloodied dance card on their corpse could be a clue!

Dance Card (inside)

 

The freebie prop that I have created is a 2 page PDF that allows you to create a realistic-looking 1920s dance card. Print double sided, cut out, and fold in half. If you’re really keen you can even punch out the hole and attach a piece of string with a small pencil on the end. That’s how the dance cards of the 1920s were done … a bit like this:

 

Click the link below to grab the PDF … and send your Lovecraftian investigators off to solve the mystery that haunts the mayor’s big Yuletide party!

Freebe Prop – Arkham Christmas Dance Card (5MB, 2 pages).

As an aside, the photo of the Hotel Miskatonic on the front of the dance card is actually something that I created as a mashup of several different period photos of luxury hotels. That picture *does* make it into one of the props I delivered to the publisher … so you might see it again someday on a letterhead or something.

Hotel Miskatonic … as envisioned and Photoshopped by CR

 

In the meantime — back here in Christmas, 2014, far from the luxury of the roaring twenties — we here at Cthulhu Reborn would like to offer our best wishes for a fun, safe and enjoyable holiday season. And down wander into any alleys that smell … fishy 🙂

Prop Competition: Extended One Week

We’ve had some impressive prop photos submitted as part of our “Mutable Deception” competition. The pic below by Daniel Myers is a great example!

In order to give any last-minute prop-makers a little more time to put together their work and snap a few quick photos, I have agreed to extend the deadline for the competition by one week (until the end of November). Prizes will definitely be awarded on 1 December.

Book Giveaway: Show Us Your Props!

I guess everyone familiar with Cthulhu Reborn will know us best for all the free Lovecraftian stuff that we release via this site.

But … did you know that Cthulhu Reborn also publishes commercial gaming aids? Well … has published ONE commercial gaming aid. I am talking about “Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1” — a toolkit to allow devious gamemasters to create realistic 1920s newspaper props for their games.

“Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1” has been out for a while and has sold pretty well — you can still get it via RPGNow or DrivethruRPG.

One thing I realised the other day, though, is that I never quite got around to putting together a nifty gallery of “props of awesomeness” that can be created using this toolkit. That would be a nice thing to have, and would also be a cool way to promote what can be done with the tools provided in our humble PDF toolkit.

Rather than just go ahead and take a bunch of photos of my props to build up a gallery … I thought a much more interesting and fun thing to do would be to ask folks who have purchased the product to send me photos of THEIR awesome props. To sweeten the deal, I thought I would run a bit of a giveaway promotion here on the blog …

So here’s my proposal: send me some awesome photos of real physical props you have created using “Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1” (using the form below). Your photos can showcase other awesome props as well, as long as the Mutable Deception piece is prominent. Include fancy backdrops, lighting, whatever you want — heck, take a photo of your prop next to the original of the Magna Carta if you want. You know, if you just happen to have one lying around somewhere.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am only looking for photos of physical props that have been created using our product. If you’ve got a cool digital design that’s great … turn it into a physical prop (preferably on some suitably antique-looking paper) and snap some photos of it! Send us those.

At the end of 30 days, the contributors of the best prop photos will win their choice of the following (brand-new) Call of Cthulhu dead-tree game supplements — doubles from my own personal collection:

• Golden Goblin Press’ “Tales of the Crescent City”
• Golden Goblin Press’ “Island of Ignorance”
• Cthulhu Reborn’s test print of “The Past is Doomed” (last copy of a limited run of 24)

If there’s enough demand, I might extend this out to a second prize round.

Hooked? Want to start sending me your creative prop photos? Upload your wonderful images to a public photo sharing site somewhere and copy a URL of your uploaded photo into the form below. Alternatively if you would like to simply email your photo … just enter “I wanna email it” into the URL field of the form below and I will contact you via your nominated email.

Happy propping … get your photos to me no later than 23 November 2014.

Nifty Form

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I acknowledge that the photo that I'm submitting is my own intellectual property

I acknowledge that the prop depicted was created using a bought copy of Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1

I am ok with Cthulhu Reborn using my photo to promote Mutable Deceptions, Volume 1

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GEEDUNK Reborn

As someone who tries to create beautiful prop documents for Lovecraftian games, one thing I have developed a sharp eye for is attention to detail in historical accuracy. It really is the difference between a “quickly-thrown-together-handout-for-my-group’s-homebrew” and a high-quality art item you’d expect to see in a published book.

One thing for which I have also developed a keen sense of is the (small) community of people who aim to create props/handouts to the highest quality. The highest exemplar in this field is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, whose work has been featured in their own products but also in recent releases from Miskatonic River Press. A lesser-known, but similarly excellent, source of high-quality prop documents is the GEEDUNK Props sets produced in 2010 and 2011 by Michael Fanara of Little Ferret Films.

Michael designed a series of prop documents to supplement previously published scenarios, employing very similar templates and fonts as those used by the HPL Historical Society. And, even better, he released these props sets for free.

So why haven’t most people heard of the GEEDUNK Props? … Well, the biggest reason is that Michael’s website “went dark” a little over a year ago. This is a great shame, as the GEEDUNK Props represent an amazing resource to Call of Cthulhu Keepers who are looking for some ready-made high-quality props to spice up many of the most-popular scenarios and campaigns published for the game.

In the interests of keeping this excellent set of props “in print” and available under their original (Creative Commons) license, Cthulhu Reborn have decided to create a mirror site for the GEEDUNK Props. This isn’t intended as an attempt to claim these fantastic props as our own … but rather a means to keep them available to the community.

We hope that by making these resources available, Call of Cthulhu gamers will continue to enjoy the fruits of Michael’s considerable efforts … and maybe it might also inspire other prop-makers to aim for the same level of quality when designing their own props.

The GEEDUNK Props sets provide enhanced props for the following campaigns and scenarios:

• Edge of Darkness (from the CoC 5th and 6th Ed rules)
• Masks of Nyarlathotep
• Beyond the Mountains of Madness
• Fungi From Yuggoth
• Secrets of San Francisco
• Pagan Call (a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign published for free on the C:DA site)

Click here to go to the mirror and take a look.

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Manufacturing Aylesbury

One of the thing I like most about designing props for Lovecraftian games is that it gives me the intriguing opportunity to design the “look” of some small part of the Lovecraftian world — whether that be the way that a particular period newspaper will look when read by Investigators, or the way in which a low-quality smart-phone video of a Mythos manifestation might look. Sure they are only small bits of “invention” … but I like to think that by creating little aspects of the Lovecraftian universe in a form that is highly evocative of a historical or geographic reality, players of the games might get drawn into the game just that little bit more.

The most fun things to create visually are things that have some kind of “place” in the weird alternate New England that Lovecraft created as a setting for his stories — what is often called today “Lovecraft Country”. Fortunately there are a LOT of Lovecraftian game scenarios which use this setting in some way or other, so I get asked to make newspaper reports, weird hand-written witch diaries, and other assorted Lovecraft Country paraphernalia suprisingly often.

One of the most extensive pieces of creation I’ve done to date is a whole raft of material set in Kingsport, including an entire “look and feel” for the local newspaper, the Kingsport Chronicle. I’ve previously blogged about that monumental piece of (ongoing) work.

A more recent request for newspaper props — to help illustrate the scenarios in the upcoming Golden Goblin book “The Island of Ignorance” — took me to the more obscure town of Aylesbury. One of the scenarios in that book called for a newspaper prop to be created, an article from the local Aylesbury paper “The Aylesbury Transcript”. Being a (presumably) much smaller town than Arkham or Kingsport, I figured the style for this prop should evoke a “small rural local rag” … Surprisingly it’s pretty easy to find some good scanned examples onling of rustic newspapers from the 1920s — reading them really brings home the “small town” remoteness of these places in the era (the front page might include a column of dozens of single sentence news entries like “Joe Blogs is building new paving for his farmhouse” or “Miss Johnson is leaving on Tuesday to visit relatives in California”).

For the prop in question (pictured as part of the montage below), I ended up basing a design on “The Turners Falls Reporter” (a small-town Massachusetts paper). As I was creating it I realized this wasn’t the first time I’d visited Aylesbury for a prop … other work for a different Call of Cthulhu licensee book (still unreleased) had taken me there a year or so earlier, as shown below.

While the newspaper clipping created for the scenario really only shows a small part of a page of “The Aylesbury Transcript”, the process of creating it involved mocking up an entire masthead for the newspaper, as shown below. I figure that if anyone else ever wants to create a prop involving this newspaper, they should feel free to use this design free of cost (high-res version available here).

Other Projects

In other, non-Lovecraft-Country news, there have been several other really neat projects which I have been priveleged to support in recent months by way of pieces of design work. I was lucky enough to contribute a small selection of art pieces for the forthcoming “Horror on the Orient Express”, 2nd Edition. This has always been my favourite of Chaosium’s CoC campaigns, so having the chance to contribute to its relaunch (albeit in a minor way) was a hugely satisfying experience — thanks, in no small part to the professionalism of editor Mark Morrison (who is a real pro who’s contributions to the game’s long history are frequently undervalued IMHO).

But the other MAJOR thing that has been occupying my time is work for the  shiny new Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. I was asked to contribute character sheet designs for the new edition books … which really is an amazing honour. Originally I thought I might get to contribute a 1920s design … and if I were extremely lucky a modern day one as well. But, as followers of the Kickstarter will know, stretch goals unlocked along the campaign have added a booklet called “Cthulhu Through The Ages” which has notes on running 7th Edition games in numerous others settings — and guess what? All of those settings need new character sheets. So all up I think I many end up contributing something like 9 or 10 different designs. The montage below shows some of the elements that have already been sketched out for these sheets (although there are many things still to finalize).