Tell Me More About Cthulhu Hack

Cthulhu Hack is a tabletop role-playing game of investigative cosmic horror set against the backdrop of the universe Howard Phillips Lovecraft (H. P. Lovecraft) created.

While the Cthulhu Mythos has expanded significantly in the century since his tales first went to print,  Cthulhu Hack draws on that source material, which you can freely download in all its public domain completeness in ePub and Mobi format (thanks for the format to @cthulhuchick at ArkhamArchivist.com under CC BY-NC 3.0 credit to Squid Studios).

Many other games have done similar, including the venerable Call of Cthulhu (from Chaosium) and Trail of Cthulhu (from Pelgrane Press) – but Cthulhu Hack keeps to just two game mechanics – Saves and Resources – representing how investigators deal with the cosmic horrors.

• You roll to Save yourself when something threatens to hamper or hurt your character.
• When you apply yourself to get a result, check your Resources to see if you’ve pushed too far.

Both involve throwing one of a standard set of polyhedral dice. And the players get pretty much all the dice-rolling fun.

For example, your character’s ability to find a clue depends on three Resources – Flashlights, Smokes, and Sanity.

Instead of a long list of skills, you have three dice to do everything. Spotting the hidden, researching in a library, bribing a guard, knocking back sociable pints in a local pub, handling the complexities of multi-dimensional physics, or stomaching the sight of indescribable horrors. It not only means a simple game to teach, but it also makes it easy to convert adventures from other systems on the fly.

No previous experience with the Cthulhu Mythos is required as the book includes a two-page Mythos 101 for those unfamiliar with the original tales (ref. pp 67 – 68). And, “Ordinary people dragged into strange and supernatural situations certain to test the mind, muscle and mettle,” covers the rest.

Check out an example of adventure conversion of The Haunting.

Available from DriveThruRPG and All Rolled Up.

Want to know more? Head to our Discord channel: Just Crunch Games