In continued celebration of Lovecraft’s 129th birthday today, there’s 10% off all physical Cthulhu Hack books, slim box sets, and dice trays—both square and compact—on the All Rolled Up web store.
That’s all the core books, as well as investigations—including Mother’s Love and the award-winning Valkyrie Nine—and supplements. And to round off the tabletop—the way I like to at game sessions and convention one-shots—there’s a range of official Cthulhu Hack dice trays. You can bind the dice to your will, even if the Elder Gods keep struggling.
It’s that time of year when the shops and the Internet go wild and, largely without conscious involvement, everything gets cheaper for a week.
For the next week (until close of play this coming Monday), DriveThruRPG offer 33% off a whole load of role-playing games, including everything in the Just Crunch Games store.
Click the link and take the offer while it lasts. And, if you quite like the idea of reasonably priced game supplements, consider pledging $10 to The Cthulhu Hack on Patreon. As a Dweller in Darkness, you will receive a free complimentary copy of new releases as they come out, as well as early access to drafts, playtest notes and more. This week alone, that’s a playtest approach to simplifying Abilities and come the end of the week, another slice of new (illustrated) content.
Whether you pick stuff up in the sale or pledge on Patreon, I appreciate all the support. And, remember, I’ll be at Dragonmeet in under two weeks time with a booth chock with books, boxes, dice, character cards, counters and – fingers-crossed – a smattering of T-shirts.
As a Doctor Who fan and a freelance tabletop RPG writer, I always find my worlds colliding. Indeed, even as I watched the first episode of the new series, I was taking notes to add stats for the Stenza!
To start with, I’ve created a simple tabletop roleplaying game called Renegade, just a few hundred words for quick, on-the-fly adventures.
And to help spawn those adventures, try Brace for Impact PLUS From Unformed Realms — combine them for a Chibnall-esque time-travelling role-playing experience.
Consult Appendix Z: Brace for Impact provides 20-pages of random encounters and a time-travelling twist, with the core rules for Renegade tucked away at the end. If you have already picked up CAZ:BFI, you now have extra content – as I added the infinity table (for time-travel shenanigans) and the Renegade rules as an update.
From Unformed Realms adds an essential non-Euclidean touch to your monsters, some more unsettling than others; then again, based on the evidence of one episode that seems the Chibnall way (I remember Day One).
You can pick it all up as a sub-$5 bundle from DriveThruRPG:
In a thoroughly belated celebration of success, as Winner of the UK Games Expo Awards 2018 People’s Choice Award for Best Roleplay Game Adventure, you can find Three Faces of the Wendigo available for 20% off the normal PDF price at RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.
It was a pleasure to receive the support of gamers across the long weekend of the Expo and I appreciate every support offered – whether you’re picking up the latest supplement in PDF, grabbing a boxed set at an event, or running a game using The Cthulhu Hack at a convention.
If you have picked up a copy in PDF, I would appreciate reviews posted on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, so gamers interested in the product can hear a bit more about what you thought. I appreciate the chance to talk with gamers at events about their experiences and sharing ideas on the Google+ community. If you leave a review (click on the product link on the right of the page, log in at the site, and then leave your review on the page), I hope we can expand the reach of the game even further.
Right now, I’m marshalling the creative forces behind the next trilogy of investigations, their focus on the cult of Shub-Niggurath, as first hinted at within the pages of The Dark Brood. Three great writers, new to the pages of The Cthulhu Hack, presently slave over the drafts of three fine adventures – and I’m getting the cold shivers already. Fear not, the horrors of the Wendigo might well pale in the face of what is to come…
For just over a week, you can get the whole lot for around $25, offering you a total of six adventures, three adventure seeds, 20 Mythos entities (and a book of tables to obfuscate and customise them) – and the tools to use the game’s simple rules to run all the other Mythos adventures you have around with minimal effort.
As I found on my recent trip to the Tierra de Nadie game convention, in Spain, gamers use these simple rules for their kids – and I had some enthusiastic converts coming back day-after-day for a chance to play the game (which landed me with eight players for a session, which worked out in the end, despite the slightly uncomfortable temperature!).
Not only can you use The Cthulhu Hack to run Mythos adventures, it works well for straight horror and investigation games (drop the sanity wrecking to shock for an easier ride). And, being based on the core of The Black Hack, you have an easy road to yet more customisation by crossing the system or just mashing the system with any number of other Hacks.
And there will be more to come, not least of which will be another set of three adventures coming by the end of this year.
Take a dip – the Core Book will set you back less than a fancy coffee – and celebrate simple gaming in the midst of Lovecraft’s cosmic nightmare.
Perhaps the exciting of Christmas got the better of me – but today I realised that I hadn’t posted about Christmas in July over on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.
If you haven’t been already, this is your chance to stock up on Summer time game reads and fill that tablet/Kindle with all the PDFs the plastic shell will contain. I daresay it might be creaking a little already, but I’m certain you can eke out an extra dimension or two for more room, right?
Christmas in July features the whole range from Just Crunch Games, both The Cthulhu Hack and wider releases. Right now, getting 25% off everything makes it a deal better than the normal bundle offers – so, don’t delay. You have until the end of July to fill up your shopping cart with bargains.
I’m pleased to tell you that The Dark Brood has been expanded, upgraded and uploading – now 20-pages with a tweak to the cover image.
The Dark Brood offers a selection of content bringing the fecundity of Shub-Niggurath front and centre to your game and loosing her mindless progeny upon the world. The supplement has been expanded from the original release (and in preparation for printing, which will be available through the All Rolled Up web store) and includes:
An overview of the Black Goat of a Thousand Young and the manifestations of its presence
Six ready-to-play samples of the Dark Brood as examples of using From Unformed Realms to generate endless new monstrosities
Three investigation seeds with three suggestions each on hooking your group in and what they’ll uncover
Worship and worshippers of the All-Mother, outlining six different follower types, their appearance and abilities
Five new Mythos spells and rituals associated with practitioners close to Shub-Niggurath
Dozens of ideas on adding the influence of the Dark Brood and Shub-Niggurath into your investigations, which you can use as hooks, flavour, or creative sparks for your next investigation
Written for use with The Cthulhu Hack, the simplicity of the system and light mechanics mean that ideas and content can easily be adapted to other investigation horror systems – or even rolled back for use in The Black Hack and its multitude of progeny!
And right now, as part of the May D&D Sale, this OSR compatible supplement has a reduced price tag until the end of the month, along with most of the rest of The Cthulhu Hack line.
As it happens, the event scoops up a bunch of material regardless and applies a sale saving – and that meant that several individual products had a better price outside the Bundles than they had inside them. It made sense to nip in and make adjustments – then after the event ends, the Bundles will return to their original state (which will still provide a saving over buying the individual books).
And, if you already have some of the books, the DriveThru (and RPGNow) site will adjust for what you have and only charge for the rest.
Oddly enough, as a collector of games I’m relieved they put this functionality in place, as I have dim and distant memories of once buying a PDF in a bundle only to discover that I already had it. Annoying, but something I’m OK with – because if I wanted it in the first place I clearly valued the material enough to reward the creator/publisher for their efforts. Sometimes, it’s nice to leave something more than expected in the Tip Jar!
In the Bundle offers, The Cthulhu Hack includes:
The Core Bundle – the Core Rules, From Unformed Realms and The Haunter of the Dark – is now $12, saving $2.85 (off full price of individual PDFs).
The Unformed Bundle – From Unformed Realms and The Dark Brood – is now $6, saving $1.90 (off full price of individual PDFs).
The Investigation Bundle – The Haunter of the Dark, Save Innsmouth, Thro’ Centuries Fixed, and Three Faces of the Wendigo – is now $17, saving $4.52 (off full price of individual PDFs).
And, I’m maintaining the reduction off of The Cthulhu Hack Investigations bundle in the All Rolled Up web store, while stocks last. Once the original slim version of Save Innsmouth is gone, it’s gone. That’s about $17.60 plus postage, or £13 (saving £4 or – approximately – $5.45 off the full price of individual printed books).
The DriveThruRPG New Year, New Game sale runs for another 10 days (around noon on 22nd January 2018). The offer on The Cthulhu Hack Investigations at All Rolled UpJust Crunch web store will run for the same period.
You can save 31% on the PDFs of the whole Cthulhu Hack range in the RPGNow and DriveThruRPG Halloween event.
That means you get hold of the core rules, From Unformed Realms, The Haunter of the Dark, Thro’ Centuries Fixed, the Outpost Generator and Save Innsmouth considerably reduced – perhaps fill out your collection?
In the meantime, I continue to wrestle with the next release – three new adventures – as well as the proofing for POD books through OneBookShelf and a character card set through DriveThruCards. All far more traumatic than the average Halloween movie…
September is the time for changing up your game’s setting – and for The Cthulhu Hack that means picking up your copy of From Unformed Realms and doing something unexpected with it.
Alternatively, you can make a roll or two to spice up some of your existing adversaries and antagonists. As a review of From Unformed Realms on RPG Geek said – “it’s an evocative and easy to read source of inspiration for just about any otherworldly monster. I like how it cuts straight to the weirdness – horrific or simply dangerous – and lets you build the monster around those core abilities. I fully intend to use this in fantasy games – at least high-fantasy ones, where ‘realism’ isn’t a concern.”
From Unformed Realms is a system-free toolkit suited for many settings and genre as a way to create or transform the monsters and horrors your player characters face – and until 30th September it’s 33% off.
In celebration of the nomination of The Haunter of the Dark for Best Electronic Book by the Judges’ Panel for the ENnie Awards, you will find the PDF discounted by 25% on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.
The offer will run until OneBookShelf kicks off Christmas in July – one of their biggest sale events of the year – when the whole Cthulhu Hack range should be discounted for the duration of the event.
For the next couple of weeks – until June 11th – RPGNow and DriveThruRPG has an Old School gaming sale on, which means you get at least 15% off the core Cthulhu Hack PDFs.
Right now you can get The Cthulhu Hack, The Haunter of the Dark, Save Innsmouth and Thro’ Centuries Fixed for at least 15% off.
From tomorrow, you will also find From Unformed Realms — not strictly a OSR title, but seems fair enough to include it in the sale — on sale with the same 15% off the current price.
That’s the core – character generation and core mechanics, creating horrors, creating adventures and two investigations. And those wanting physical copies who plan to attend
DriveThruRPG and RPGNow have a New Year, New Game event running intended to draw new blood into games they might not have considered before.
They have 948 games on offer!
As an incentive, all of those games has 10% off their standard price and, importantly, they provide you with the essentials to start playing straight away.
The Cthulhu Hack figures amongst the masses – and if you pick up the Pay What You Want Quickstart Nocturnal Rites, you have a really quick adventure and game mechanic summary as well.
For reference, the Quickstart has gone to Pay What You Want. It means you can still pick it up for free, but if you want to show your appreciation you have that option. More than 500 people have also taken advantage of the PWYW offer on The Cthulhu Hack: Convicts & Cthulhu.
I was really happy when someone got a Deep One Max box set on the RPG Geek Secret Cthanta. I’ve been really happy with the interest and support for The Cthulhu Hack this year period.
RPGGeek Secret Cthanta
I will have a more detailed look in a few days time, but in general number terms almost 3,000 items have been downloaded in the last 7 months, two-fifths of those paid products, one-fifth Pay What You Want, and the remainder all free. That kind of support makes it much easier to return to the keyboard and the playtest table to produce more material. Thanks to everyone for that positive push in the right direction!
