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.

 

[darjr]

Player rolls and gets triple 6s
Player: my investigator will use 6 stunt points to push the shoggoth 20 feet back. Take-li-li that, sludge face!

Microscopic shogoth invaders enter your blood stream via the skin in the palm of your hands and begin to turn your meat into mor shoggoths until, a few weeks later, you melt into a pile of slimy shoggoths who begin a war to devour each other that eventually engulphs the fates of an entire midwestern city.

 

[Scarlet.Knight]

Microscopic shogoth invaders enter your blood stream via the skin in the palm of your hands and begin to turn your meat into mor shoggoths until, a few weeks later, you melt into a pile of slimy shoggoths who begin a war to devour each other that eventually engulphs the fates of an entire midwestern city.

But but but
It doesn't say that on the shoggoth stat block
pouts

 

[Retreater]

I was a big fan of Lovecraft when I first discovered him when I was a high schooler in the 1990s. Some of the fiction felt icky then, and certainly does now even more as times have changed and I've matured.
I do like Call of Cthulhu, but I think it's time to let Lovecraft go. I think it might be one thing if you have an RPG that has been around 40 years like Chaosium's, and you make efforts to update that (especially with titles like Harlem Unbound.) But to create a new RPG product line meant to capitalize on the public's knowledge of the writer and mythology, I think that's unnecessary in the bloated market and disingenuous in its intent.
And it's not like Lovecraft had a few problematic words here and there (like Mark Twain). Thematically, it was that he was xenophobic and racist. You can't remove that from his works. The core of his works and worldview is so problematic that I don't think it belongs in pop culture. The fiction can exist as an uncomfortable scholarly curiosity for students of literature, but to put it in games and plushies is like publishing an RPG based on "The Birth of a Nation (1915)."

 

[MGibster]

It's a story of a town that has a beneficial relationship with a bunch of Atlanteans off their coast that gets raided by the US government and its citizens put into internment camps. IIRC the Deep Ones don't really even have any evil plans - they just have a mutually beneficial relationship with their relatives in Innsmouth.

That mutually beneficial arrangement includes human sacrifices. When the town arrested Obed and his followers, the Deep Ones showed up and slaughtered half the town to rescue their pals. The remaining townsfolk didn’t go along with the breeding program by choice.

 

[Aldarc]

The AGE System is fun, a nice mix of ease to run, learn, and play. I find that it's an easier game than 5e D&D when it comes to introducing neophytes to TTRPGs. I also took part in the playtest of the upcoming new rules for the Core Rulebook, alongside several other familiar names in this thread.

Cthulhu Mythos isn't really my cup of tea, but I am tentatively interested in this product.

 

[darjr]

I don’t think we should abandon Lovecraft. He’s not making anything from this.

I do think we should keep our eyes open.

And sometimes I do see themes reinvested that I’d rather not. Not in this green ronin thing though.

 

[Professor Murder]

I have very mixed feelings about how this material is being pitched. I want all games materials to be created in a way that fosters inclusion. I do feel as if, based on wording, this product is claiming that other Cthulhu Mythos games by other publishers in some way reinforce the failings of the setting's origins. I feel that does not give companies like Chaosium enough credit.

 

[Retreater]

I don’t think we should abandon Lovecraft. He’s not making anything from this.

Just because you're not giving money to an artist doesn't mean that you aren't giving them headspace, the value of your thought. That negativity can be insidious in geek culture, especially in impressionable young people. And elevating HPL as a master of the genre and pop culture icon is unwelcoming to many people. Frankly, it makes us look bad.

I do think we should keep our eyes open.

I agree. And that's why it's important to discuss works from authors like HPL ... in the proper setting. I think that pop culture, games, Pop Vinyls, plushies, etc., is not the place for that.

Imagine if Ed Greenwood had published the stuff HPL did and had that baked into the Forgotten Realms. Would you still want to play in the Forgotten Realms? Would it be okay if someone else tried to smooth over the themes and re-publish it? Or would you prefer to draw from the wealth of other fiction and creative artists to make something new without being tied to the reprehensible origins?

 

[Aldarc]

I have very mixed feelings about how this material is being pitched. I want all games materials to be created in a way that fosters inclusion. I do feel as if, based on wording, this product is claiming that other Cthulhu Mythos games by other publishers in some way reinforce the failings of the setting's origins. I feel that does not give companies like Chaosium enough credit.

I'm not sure this is the thread to discuss why that may be the case or relatively recent behind the scenes controversies regarding some of the high profile people associated with these other companies.

 

[Professor Murder]

Just because you're not giving money to an artist doesn't mean that you aren't giving them headspace, the value of your thought. That negativity can be insidious in geek culture, especially in impressionable young people. And elevating HPL as a master of the genre and pop culture icon is unwelcoming to many people. Frankly, it makes us look bad.

I agree. And that's why it's important to discuss works from authors like HPL ... in the proper setting. I think that pop culture, games, Pop Vinyls, plushies, etc., is not the place for that.

Imagine if Ed Greenwood had published the stuff HPL did and had that baked into the Forgotten Realms. Would you still want to play in the Forgotten Realms? Would it be okay if someone else tried to smooth over the themes and re-publish it? Or would you prefer to draw from the wealth of other fiction and creative artists to make something new without being tied to the reprehensible origins?

I feel these are valid concerns. However, there are much larger targets of Geek properties that provide shelter to bad actors. Geekdom has a large problem of poor media literacy and satire. See WH40K. See Judge Dredd. See Starship Troopers. See the Empire in Star Wars.

As a mild derailment, part of the appeal of using HPL all over the place is that he is free and clear for everyone to use. When in doubt, release a Cthulhu version of your product. It costs nothing.