Cthulhutech-not quite a 40k RPG but close

[MJ12 Commando]

Anyone here heard of Cthulhutech? If not, you should take a gander at it. It's roleplaying in a mythtopian future... and it also has a giant robot tactical fighting game built in.

Basically, it's Cthulhu meets Robotech meets Guyver meets Evangelion. You've got a giant war against the Fun Guys from Yuggoth (sorry, Mi-Gou), and humanity's in the shit. They've got more ships, we've tried nuking them and it doesn't work terribly well,


It uses the Framewerk system, which is essentially a combination of Storyteller and poker with a pinch of d20. You have a skill, and your natural attribute. You roll a number of 10-sided dice equal to your skill, and then either take the highest result, the largest straight, or total up any result you get multiple times.

E.g. Joe Killmore has a Master (6) rating in his firearms skill. He rolls his 6 dice, getting a 10, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5. He could take, as the result, either a 10 (highest), 16 (8+8), or 26 (8+7+6+5). After this, we add his attribute to the roll.

In combat, the system leans towards the brutal although it doesn't cater terribly well to one-hit kills. Against unarmored targets, a skilled shooter with an assault rifle can kill someone with two or three shots, though, which is about enough realism for me. Mechs and vehicles use the Integrity scale, with one Integrity being 50 Vitality. The average Tenacity 5 guy has 50 Vitality total, so a bad shot from a vehicle grade autocannon tends to gib. On the converse side, Vitality-grade weapons are going to be hard pressed to scratch any armored vehicles, but should chew up cars reasonably quick. Cars can take a total of 10 Integrity before being destroyed, so they die pretty fast.

There's Hybrid damage too, to represent stuff like RPGs. It's a game mechanics conceit but I'll forgive it that.

As far as characters go, there are humans, which are basically... well, if you don't know what humans are, you're quite far gone, and the Nazzadi, who were genetically engineered from human DNA by the Mi-Gou to hide their participation. Of course, this backfired quite well and billions of Nazzadi defected to the human side.

There's the normal character templates, like engineers, hackers, arcanotechnicians (play with sanity-eating Mythos technology), soldiers, spies, sorcerers, and then the two special ones, Tagers and Engels.

Tagers are holy warriors made by a cult, their most mentally strong members bonded to extradimensional symbiotes which give them superhuman powers. Tagers gain attribute boosts when they're in human form, and recover from injury far better than normal people, but their true advantage is the ability to shift into a 7-9 foot tall eldritch killing machine. In that form they gain armor, natural weapons, claws, the ability to scare the shit out of anyone who sees them, and Limit Weapons, which are insanely powerful desperation attacks that can only be used once per day. They're also completely undetectable except by other shapeshifters, and gain telepathic mind-linking when transformed, making them guerillas or special forces from hell. They're the baddest mother****ers on the block on the Integrity scale, but go squish to power armor.

Engels are biomechanical mecha built from cloned mythos beasties IIRC hybridized with human DNA and some other stuff that shouldn't be stuck in mythos beasties. They're basically Evangelions, but less humanoid. As befitting the inspiration for them, the pilots tend to go insane and need full time psychologists to keep their grasp on reality.

Now, some of you might be turned off by this, but Cthulhutech has Mecha. Yes, 20-30 foot tall humanoid robots. They have an explanation (or sort of) for it, that the arcanotech engines used in all war machines and vehicles resonate with the user, and by building humanoid vehicles, you give them not only an intuitive understanding of piloting and combat, but also further increase the capabilities of the vehicle itself beyond what's normal. It's not terribly annoying, but some might be turned off.

The smallest "mecha" are 10 foot tall suits of powered combat armor. Space Marines, basically. :p

Engels are humanoid or semi-humanoid because you can't build them any other way. They're the Tager-equivalents on the vehicle scale-a Engel is superior to equivalent conventional units, regenerates, has some nasty melee capability, and is generally awesome.

Migou use mecha as well, but theirs are insectoid.

It's a bit derivative and grab-baggy, but the art is excellent, the system is smooth, the setting is nice, and did I mention the art is beautiful? If you doubt me, go to the official site, linked below.

Official Site

[MJ12 Commando]

Ghetto edit: By "Tagers are the baddest motherfuckers on the block on the Integrity scale" I mean Vitality scale, which is where most beasties and humans are on.

[Stark]

Oh jesus just fucking kill me now.

The emo-livejournal generation just got a hold of their dad's Lovecraft books and it's just all over.

[SylasGaunt]

Waiting for my copy of the rulebook to get here. It's kind of funny picking out the various anime tropes and references (Like the 'we're not the guyver honest!' Tagers).

It's a spiffy way to go about it though since only the lower level mythos type beasties tend to show up and everyone's crapping their pants at the thought someone might wake up cthulhu.

[Stark]

It sounds like you're suggesting there's stuff that ISN'T an anime reference. Barring the terrifying misuse of Lovecraft's work, can you name some?

Is this just an example of the current state of the RPG industry? I've noticed a lot of crazy 'concept' RPGs pop up, sell on the back of the 'lol awesome' factor for about two months, then vanish without a trace because 80% of everyone wants to play the mainstream engines. Gotta grab that two months of sales somehow, so let's make Guyver-Bubblegum-Mythos! Idiots will lap that shit up!

[SylasGaunt]

It sounds like you're suggesting there's stuff that ISN'T an anime reference. Barring the terrifying misuse of Lovecraft's work, can you name some?

There's plenty of non-anime referenced stuff available and it perfectly possible to run a campaign sans Engels, Tagers, and mecha (which comprise most of the anime elements). Campaigns revolving around the Earth Government's attempts to deal with internal cults (which there are plenty of) should be free of almost all the anime elements unless they involve the Chrysalis Corporation (which is basically the Chronos Corporation from the Guyver with a mythos flavor).

Looking at my er.. preview copy.. there's a number of options for a more Call of Cthulhu style game albeit in the future. It's entirely up to the group whether you want to do something small scale like dealing with followers of Hastur or discovering artifacts man was not meant to fuck around with.. or you can go tromping around a futuristic battlefield in a 60 foot mythosed Evangelion or shoot it out with Deep Ones wearing powered armor.

[MJ12 Commando]

It sounds like you're suggesting there's stuff that ISN'T an anime reference. Barring the terrifying misuse of Lovecraft's work, can you name some?

And by "misuse" you mean setting it in a setting besides the 1920s, or something else entirely? Because I wouldn't call Delta Green a misuse of Lovecraft, and it's, if anything, MORE depressing and futile than CoC. You could say that anime craziness is the order of the day, but more accurately the anime stuff is just icing on the cake. It's still bleak, it's still "humanity is probably doomed in the future", and it's still "be careful, dealing with eldritch powers has its consequences."

You do go incurably insane as a Tager, Engel, sorcerer, or arcanotechnician quite reliably, even with the help of drugs and counseling. And you do go insane quite quickly as a NEG agent if you do encounter extradimensional gribblies on a regular basis. Fear rolls exist, and they are made reasonably often.

And yes, there's plenty of stuff without much anime in it. The NEG, the whole investigator thing, and playing as a deep cover agent, for example. It's a bit more Delta Green than CoC, but it's still perfectly viable. The average NEG Intel Op will never see a Tager, mecha, or Engel except on TV and in the files. You could play civilians who learned, by accident, about the things that could not be, and have to deal with it.

I mean, even with all the anime stuff inside, it's pretty damn grim and hopeless, even if the common man doesn't know it (but that might be because of all the propaganda being pumped at them). It's not what I'd say completely in-genre, but given what they were doing, I think they were reasonably faithful. Although you might not agree, because I liked NGE, Guyver, AND I like Cthulhu, so this is a natural fit.

Is this just an example of the current state of the RPG industry? I've noticed a lot of crazy 'concept' RPGs pop up, sell on the back of the 'lol awesome' factor for about two months, then vanish without a trace because 80% of everyone wants to play the mainstream engines. Gotta grab that two months of sales somehow, so let's make Guyver-Bubblegum-Mythos! Idiots will lap that shit up!

I think it's more someone creates a game that THEY want to play, and then someone else goes "hey, this might sell". If the mechanics are good, the book is decently made, and the art and setting are nice, it sells. If not, it doesn't work.

Cthulhutech seems to be going quite well for a small book. The RPG market is pretty much 50% D&D, 30% White Wolf, and 20% everyone else, so it's fairly hard to make much of an impact in the market.

[Stark]

And by "misuse" you mean setting it in a setting besides the 1920s, or something else entirely? Because I wouldn't call Delta Green a misuse of Lovecraft, and it's, if anything, MORE depressing and futile than CoC. You could say that anime craziness is the order of the day, but more accurately the anime stuff is just icing on the cake. It's still bleak, it's still "humanity is probably doomed in the future", and it's still "be careful, dealing with eldritch powers has its consequences."

Don't pretend to know what I'm talking about. There isn't anything wrong with playing CoC outside of the 20s (indeed, the 20s setting is bland as shit). Describing something as 'Cthulhu with mechs' is not a good place to start. If you think 'bleak, humanity doomed' is what makes CoC, you're exactly the kind of emo moron I lampooned in my first post.

Remember in the CoC manual where they point out it doesn't matter if the players have laser satellites or Guyver suits or tanks or whatever? Yeah. I'm going to spend the next week asking people what they think when I say 'imagine a game combining NGE, Guyver and Cthulhu' and see how many slaps in the face I get.

You do go incurably insane as a Tager, Engel, sorcerer, or arcanotechnician quite reliably, even with the help of drugs and counseling. And you do go insane quite quickly as a NEG agent if you do encounter extradimensional gribblies on a regular basis. Fear rolls exist, and they are made reasonably often.

And yes, there's plenty of stuff without much anime in it. The NEG, the whole investigator thing, and playing as a deep cover agent, for example. It's a bit more Delta Green than CoC, but it's still perfectly viable. The average NEG Intel Op will never see a Tager, mecha, or Engel except on TV and in the files. You could play civilians who learned, by accident, about the things that could not be, and have to deal with it.

Listing a whole bunch of dumb shit doesn't make it less dumb. The only thing that interests me is your constant references to Delta Green (which I believed was a Chaosium thing). Is this somehow related to Delta Green? Amusingly, the game sounds like simply CoC with extra dumb shit in it, so I'm not sure what they're actually *selling*. Their ridiculous 'World of Darkness with Cthulhu' setting?

I mean, even with all the anime stuff inside, it's pretty damn grim and hopeless, even if the common man doesn't know it (but that might be because of all the propaganda being pumped at them). It's not what I'd say completely in-genre, but given what they were doing, I think they were reasonably faithful. Although you might not agree, because I liked NGE, Guyver, AND I like Cthulhu, so this is a natural fit.

Grim and hopeless isn't good. Remember World of Darkness destroying the RP industry with silly tryhard goth bullshit in the 90s? Cause I sure do. Trying to be edgy is not a great idea, and when pastiching the pasticher it's almost self-parody. A circle-jerk 'worldbuilding' exercise gone wrong?

I think it's more someone creates a game that THEY want to play, and then someone else goes "hey, this might sell". If the mechanics are good, the book is decently made, and the art and setting are nice, it sells. If not, it doesn't work.

Cthulhutech seems to be going quite well for a small book. The RPG market is pretty much 50% D&D, 30% White Wolf, and 20% everyone else, so it's fairly hard to make much of an impact in the market.

That's my point. If I (god forbid) wanted to play 'zomg Cthulhu with mechs', I'd do it myself. Marketing to tiny niches is not a viable way to survive in the industry, but it's what people are forced to do by the crushing dominance of the big guys.

That zombie game was an interesting book, for instance, but the actual engine used was a horrible piece of shit. Cool ideas, but terrible execution.

I'm curious enough to go look at the engine. If it's CoC with mech knobs on, that's going to be really, really lame.

[The Dark]

Cthulhutech seems to be going quite well for a small book. The RPG market is pretty much 50% D&D, 30% White Wolf, and 20% everyone else, so it's fairly hard to make much of an impact in the market.

53% Wizards of the Coast, 19% White Wolf, 4% FanPro, 4% Green Ronin, 3% Steve Jackson Games, 2% Palladium, everyone else makes up the last 15% (with Mongoose, Privateer, and Margaret Weis being the biggest three of the "everyone else"). White Wolf's been going down fast the last few years - their sales now are estimated to be about 60% lower than in 2004, so they need to revitalize or see their market share continue shrinking rapidly.

[Stark]

Dark, FanPro are the guys that did Shadowrun 4 right? Are they a serious publishing house? SR4 credits suggested it was basically written by four people!

[The Dark]

Dark, FanPro are the guys that did Shadowrun 4 right? Are they a serious publishing house? SR4 credits suggested it was basically written by four people!

I think FanPro had taken over FASA's main properties - they were also doing BattleTech (although not Crimson Skies, damn them). They dropped the property last year, and Catalyst Games picked up BT and Shadowrun. They're continuing with the development plan FanPro had, with BattleTech progressing ahead from 3067 through the Blake Jihad, and Shadowrun's Fourth Edition set after the Second Crash.

Oh, and I checked my copy of SR4. There are ten authors listed. Three editors.

[MJ12 Commando]

Don't pretend to know what I'm talking about. There isn't anything wrong with playing CoC outside of the 20s (indeed, the 20s setting is bland as shit). Describing something as 'Cthulhu with mechs' is not a good place to start. If you think 'bleak, humanity doomed' is what makes CoC, you're exactly the kind of emo moron I lampooned in my first post.

The point is the struggle against things man could not understand or know, and how much you're willing to do to make sure you and your family and your friends survive. Also, the everyman struggling against forces he doesn't have a hope in hell of doing anything against... and winning anyways, but the Cthulhu Mythos in the end isn't exactly the most hope-filled place, and Cthulhutech gets that bit right. It's not flowers and sunshine, humanity's pretty badly off, but it's still kicking and sometimes it kicks the Migou or Cthulhu or whoever else in the face while it's at it.

Remember in the CoC manual where they point out it doesn't matter if the players have laser satellites or Guyver suits or tanks or whatever? Yeah. I'm going to spend the next week asking people what they think when I say 'imagine a game combining NGE, Guyver and Cthulhu' and see how many slaps in the face I get.

That's an amusing way to spend your time. I actually never played plain CoC -just Delta Green. My views may or may not be skewed slightly by that, since DG is apparently a bit more horrific and hopeless and bleak than CoC according to some (which I'm honestly surprised at). Although that might just be because instead of Innsmouth and a cult you're fighting a governmental organization with top-of-the-line gear, ECHELON, spy satellites, and connections to a bunch of horribly dicktastic fungi insects.

Listing a whole bunch of dumb shit doesn't make it less dumb. The only thing that interests me is your constant references to Delta Green (which I believed was a Chaosium thing). Is this somehow related to Delta Green? Amusingly, the game sounds like simply CoC with extra dumb shit in it, so I'm not sure what they're actually *selling*. Their ridiculous 'World of Darkness with Cthulhu' setting?

There are some relationships, but they're not the same game. The Migou are the big bads in Delta Green as well as Cthulhutech, which makes the comparisons quite easy to come by. There's also a couple of things that feel very DG-ish, like how they used a genetically engineered proxy race for first contact (like they did with the greys in DG), and how a lot of the Migou invasion force consists of flash-grown human clones. MJ-12 used those in DG, too, which was a cute nod.

What they're selling is a pretty neat and smooth mechanics system, and, a setting that despite its obvious silliness manages to be a lot better than I expected, even if the anime influence is heavy and obvious-but the Cthulhu stuff isn't abused as much as I thought it'd be. You could adapt it to standard CoC or almost anything else pretty easily from what I'm seeing.

Grim and hopeless isn't good. Remember World of Darkness destroying the RP industry with silly tryhard goth bullshit in the 90s? Cause I sure do. Trying to be edgy is not a great idea, and when pastiching the pasticher it's almost self-parody. A circle-jerk 'worldbuilding' exercise gone wrong?

Well, I am of the opinion that the only good thing that came out of WoD was Mage because you could win (in theory), and even if you lost, you'd do it in STYLE.

It's not exactly impossible to do anything of note in Cthulhutech or prevent the world from ending tomorrow, but just like in CoC, you've got a better than even chance of going incurably insane at the end, even if you do stop them from summoning Cthulhu. Humanity might be in the shit, but it's not quite screwed yet.

So you're right in some senses. It is like CoC with giant robots. Although if you're playing mecha pilots it becomes more like any other game with giant robots and less Cthulhu.

The more close to the ground you go, the more reminiscent of Delta Green it is. I haven't played it yet, but I've seen a couple of one-shots, and they feel pretty similar to Delta Green from my experience with that.

That's my point. If I (god forbid) wanted to play 'zomg Cthulhu with mechs', I'd do it myself. Marketing to tiny niches is not a viable way to survive in the industry, but it's what people are forced to do by the crushing dominance of the big guys.

I'll drink to that.

[Stark]

What I know about it suggests DG is simply a more modern, shooty campaign for CoC. Instead of it being about drama and storytelling, it's more 'conventional' RP-wise, which is why I never played it.

Your suggestion that the mechanics are good definately increases my morbid curiousity. I've seem a few of what I call 'joke' RPGs in the last few years, and they're usually an interesting idea saddled with terrible, terrible mechanics (like that zombie one I mentioned). Is it original, or is it d20/whatver based?

[MJ12 Commando]

What I know about it suggests DG is simply a more modern, shooty campaign for CoC. Instead of it being about drama and storytelling, it's more 'conventional' RP-wise, which is why I never played it.

There's a bit more shooty from what I've heard, but I wouldn't say it's as conventional... I'd say more "CoC crossed with the X-Files".

Your suggestion that the mechanics are good definately increases my morbid curiousity. I've seem a few of what I call 'joke' RPGs in the last few years, and they're usually an interesting idea saddled with terrible, terrible mechanics (like that zombie one I mentioned). Is it original, or is it d20/whatver based?

It's an original system, which still manages to have pretty useful mechanics. From what I hear from people who actually played it, the mechanics are fast and don't get in the way at all.

[SylasGaunt]

The game is basically as shooty as you want give or take since the primary opponents on the large scale stuff (involving governments) are the more conventional Mythos creatures, the ones who don't shatter your sanity from taking a peak for instance.

On the war side of things it'd mostly be Mi-gou and their constructs or members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the deep ones. Cthulhu's not reared his ugly head aside from a few starspawn, but they're trying to find him and wake him up which everyone thinks means certain doom.

Hastur's behind two factions. The Order of the Rapine Storm which is a collection of nutcases and monsters rampaging around SE asia killing everything they come across, and the Disciples of Death's Shadow who are doing subversion, blackmail, and are generally trying to get us so preoccupied with our own pleasures we're easy pickings.

The Chrysalis Corp. is run by a Nyarlathotep cult and is basically looking for ways to bring back the Old Ones and are opposed by the Eldritch Society which is a splinter faction who thinks that maybe that's not such a great plan.

Earth's government isn't all hugs and kisses and can be downright brutal in some of the descriptions but at least they aren't killing you for the hell of it like the Rapine Storm or forcing women into breeding camps like the Esoteric Order.

Most of the other enemies in the books are a motely collection of mythos beasties like gaunts and the fightable sort. The unfightable, unbeatable stuff like Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth doesn't enter into it unless you do something like fuck up a spell in such a way to end up sharing dreams with the nuclear chaos.