Green Ronin Announces 'Cthulhu Awakens' RPG

Green Ronin has announced a new standalone Cthulhu mythos tabletop RPG. It will come to Kickstarter in February, and is described as an inclusive take on Lovecraftian canon, powered by by their in-house Adventure Game Engine. The game takes place at any time in the last century, which it describes as the 'Weird Century'.

Green Ronin Publishing is proud to announce that its latest AGE System roleplaying game, Cthulhu Awakens, will begin crowdfunding on Kickstarter on February 15, 2022. Cthulhu Awakens is a complete roleplaying game where a diverse set of protagonists confront the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. It will be a 270+ page full color hardback book, with additional material unlockable through Kickstarter stretch goals.

Cthulhu Awakens deviates from Lovecraftian “canon” in the interests of creating an inclusive setting fit for the roleplaying campaign medium. In the game the original Mythos stories hinted at the truth, but it was obscured by their authors’ biases and fallibilities. Cthulhu Awakens creates a distinct vision of the Mythos that provides a new springboard for Cosmic Horror roleplaying. It allows you to play at any point between the 1920s and the present day, through a period it calls “the Weird Century.”

Cthulhu Awakens is a stand-alone RPG powered by Green Ronin’s popular Adventure Game Engine (AGE), a dynamic and easy to learn system whose games include Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE, Blue Rose: The Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy, and the licensed RPGs Dragon Age and The Expanse. Cthulhu Awakens evolves the Modern AGE rules, customizing them for the Cosmic Horror genre, but the game is also substantially compatible with other AGE RPGs.

“The Cthulhu Mythos is one of the pillars of modern roleplaying,” said Green Ronin Publishing president Chris Pramas, “so with the success of Modern AGE it was only natural we explore it, but we wanted to make sure we had the right team and a distinct, inclusive direction for the game.” The writing and design team for Cthulhu Awakens includes Sharang Biswas, David Castro, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul, Hiromi Cota, H.D. Ingham, Khaldoun Khelil, Danielle Lauzon, Ian Lemke, Monte Lin, Jack Norris, and Malcolm Sheppard.

The February 15, 2022, Kickstarter will not only fund a physical release of the book estimated by the end of 2022, but it will also include stretch goals for things like adventures and VTT token packs, plus options to explore other AGE System games at a discount. The campaign also features a special offering for backers in its first 48 hours.

H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos (beginning with the short story The Call of Cthulhu in 1928) is well known for his racist views which are reflected in his works. Much of the Cthulhu Mythos itself, including Lovecraft's own work, has been in the public domain since the 1980s.

 

[Von Ether]

Castle Amber was inspired by his writings?

"CASiana Literary Enterprises, Inc., has graciously given its permission to base this section of the adventure upon the Clark Ashton Smith Averoigne stories ... ," -- Castle Amber, Pg 18, second column, Part 7 Avergoine, last paragraph.

 

[MGibster]

Yes, many authors carried the Lovecraft torch with their pastiches. Some of those authors you mentioned I vastly prefer stylistically to HPL.

I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be a fan of Lovecraft's ponderous, elephantine, and maladroit prose. On second thought, now that I've written that out, yeah, I can see why people aren't a fan. I find his style somewhat endearing but probably in a similar way that someone might like a stinky cheese. I'll note that even authors who were influenced by Lovecraft sure don't write like him. Stephen King's Revival is a pretty good Lovecraftian story but certainly isn't written in the same style.

 

[TerraDave]

So Lovecraft and the Mythos are probably as big as they have ever been. Which is why we are getting this game...

But we don't need it. CoC is in a really good place right now, as is Chaosium. CoC is not a hard to learn game, its probably relatively easy to find a (virtual) table for it--not as easy as 5e, but compared to just about everything else, and there are plenty of great adventures for it, which are problematic only to the extent that your investigator will probably get killed.

 

[Dire Bare]

Interested to see what kind of value the stretch goals add. Green Ronin's crowdfunding to date has been "pay us MSRP plus shipping and maybe get a free PDF that most other companies hand out for free with physical purchase already but we don't because we're Green Ronin. "

While I love a good discount, I don't mind paying MSRP+shipping for a quality hardbound book and PDF. I don't have everything Green Ronin has put out, but I absolutely love everything I've purchased from them. Blue Rose 5E, The Book of the Righteous 5E, and The Book of Fiends 5E stay on my bookshelf when other books make their way to the used bookseller. Lots of fond memories of their 3E content as well, from back in the day. One of my absolute favorite RPG publishers.

This campaign won't be for me, as I'm not looking for a new mythos game or gotten into the AGE system . . . . but I suspect it will be a quality release well worth the asking price.

 

[Blue Orange]

So Lovecraft and the Mythos are probably as big as they have ever been. Which is why we are getting this game...

But we don't need it. CoC is in a really good place right now, as is Chaosium. CoC is not a hard to learn game, its probably relatively easy to find a (virtual) table for it--not as easy as 5e, but compared to just about everything else, and there are plenty of great adventures for it, which are problematic only to the extent that your investigator will probably get killed.

I don't know if we need it. Let them give their spin--maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. If it does, we have a new game to play; if not, we have some fun reading in the remainder bins.

 

[Reynard]

My attitude on any Lovecraft game is this: does your game do something interesting with the material that makes it worth my time and energy when there is SO MUCH material already out there. i can't think of a "setting" (I know, but close enough) that has gotten nearly as many iterations and variations in tabletop RPGs except "traditional" medieval fantasy -- and it's probably still close if you consider how many "traditional medieval fantasy" games incorporate some element of the Mythos.

 

[Retreater]

I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be a fan of Lovecraft's ponderous, elephantine, and maladroit prose. On second thought, now that I've written that out, yeah, I can see why people aren't a fan. I find his style somewhat endearing but probably in a similar way that someone might like a stinky cheese. I'll note that even authors who were influenced by Lovecraft sure don't write like him. Stephen King's Revival is a pretty good Lovecraftian story but certainly isn't written in the same style.

Interestingly enough, when I seriously got into writing fiction, my first style was an HPL copycat (in style, not necessarily the problematic areas we've been discussing here). I wrote numerous short stories for horror anthologies, including Chaosium's fiction collections - which thankfully were not accepted for publication and are still unread.
What else happened around me ... some of my friends at the time were led to a very dark worldview that persists to this day, which I can't get into because of this site's real world avoiding discussions of politics/religion. Impressionable people in their late teens/early twenties being exposed to this stuff is dangerous. And trying to make it more palatable and accessible to modern audiences runs a risk of more of the same.
I'm not criticizing when POC put their talent into it. I am trusting that they do it with maturity and skill, knowing more than I do the dangers of HPL's philosophies.

 

[MGibster]

Impressionable people in their late teens/early twenties being exposed to this stuff is dangerous. And trying to make it more palatable and accessible to modern audiences runs a risk of more of the same.

You could say the same of A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, or Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's me, Margaret. No, I don't think exposure to Lovecraft is dangerous for anyone in their late teens or early twenties. Whatever was happening with your friends wasn't happening because they read Lovecraft.

 

[MGibster]

But I think @Retreater makes a great point going forward. It's 2022. Do we really need to keep digging up HPL and then tying ourselves in knots justifying it? Let's tell some new stories.

It's a saturated market to be sure. While I'm interested in seeing what they do with it, it's not a must buy for me. I've got Call of Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu, Delta Green, and a number of other games influenced by Lovecraft so this would have to give me something different. I'm with you, let's tell some new stories.

 

[Retreater]

You could say the same of A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell, or Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's me, Margaret. No, I don't think exposure to Lovecraft is dangerous for anyone in their late teens or early twenties. Whatever was happening with your friends wasn't happening because they read Lovecraft.

Are there children's animated movies based on Catcher in the Rye? Plushies? Games? I think there are things we shouldn't take lightly and out of context. Lovecraft has all these things.