Cthulhu Reborn

One final word: although all the SRDs mentioned in this thread (though not the scenarios) can be downloaded for free, the option is always there for you to chip in a small donation (via PWYW) which helps us pay creators to help growing the Cthulhu Eternal line. But free is fine with us too.

A montage of cover images from nine Cthulhu Eternal scenarios: Thou Didst Let Fall, Dead Flowers, Red in Tooth and Claw, Second Coming, The White War, Physiology of Acquired Taste, Known Unknowns, The Usurpers, Fathoms Below

Cthulhu Eternal is our gift to the old-school Lovecraftian gaming world. To publish the RPGs we want, we needed to build a system. But rather than keep it proprietary, we decided to open source it so everyone could do the same. If that’s your thing, we’d love to see what horrors you create with it!

California Dreaming: A Cthulhu Eternal Modern and Dreamlands mini-campaign - Quills Media | DriveThruRPG California Dreaming’s Protagonists have signed up with a San Francisco start-up as testers for a new immersive game… united by the desire for revenge, justice, a hot story, or just a quick buck. Two a...

The Cthulhu Eternal SRDs aren’t just free and open but also redistributable – if you want to publish a scenario that bundles the rules & character sheets, you can! Several adventure writers (including us) have made adventure products with free rulebook included.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Logo which third-party publishers can freely use to denote compatibility with Cthulhu Eternal

For all of such uses, there are zero licensing fees for using the Cthulhu Eternal system or rules text – if you publish something commercially, you keep everything you earn (after platform fees, of course). If you want to use the CE logo, you need to list us in the credits – but that’s it.

Adventure Suite: The Cthulhu Solo Adventure Generator - Twin Engine Publishing | Adventure Suite Cthulhu | DriveThruRPG The Cthulhu Solo Adventure Generator is a solo role-playing game. Its intuitive system allows for an almost infinite number of solo role-playing adventures. Relentless cosmic horror simmers just below...

What’s that look like? To date, a bunch of folks have: published original scenarios for Cthulhu Eternal, built original RPGs copy/pasting the CE rules, & run actual play game recordings of CE adventures that can be freely distributed without licensing headaches.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Because the full text of each SRD is open content, it’s available for remixing and riffing on to build brand new games, adventures, campaigns -- anything. As long as you follow the (very simple) labelling/text-inclusions to satisfy the OGL, the world is your Shining Trapezohedron.

So we’ve made all these various free/open source rulebooks for different styles of Lovecraftian D100 gaming … but what the heck does that mean, and what can YOU do with them? The answer is – pretty much anything you can imagine. Free gaming or commercial publishing.

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Future SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Post-Apocalypse (APOCTHULHU) SRD

For more space age or Sci-Fi genres we have a Future SRD and a Post-Apocalypse ruleset. We have plans for other supported eras as well.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Age of Revolutions (18th Century) SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Age of Sail SRD

For other historical settings, our Age of Revolutions (18th Century) or Age of Sail (Golden Age of Piracy) SRDs might float your boat.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal World War I SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal World War II SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Cold War SRD

For games set during times of conflict, we have SRDs tailored to World War I & World War II. There’s also a Cold War SRD to cover smoldering spy conflicts running from 1950s to 1980s.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Medieval SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Classical Era SRD

For more unusual time periods only occasionally visited in Lovecraftian games, you can use our Medieval SRD (Dark Ages) or Classical SRD (Ancient Greece and Rome).

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Jazz Age SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Modern Age SRD

Cover image for the Cthulhu Eternal Victorian Era SRD

For common eras of play we have a Jazz Age (1920s) SRD and a Modern Age SRD. There’s also a Victorian Age SRD to cover your Gaslight needs.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

To date we have released 12 versions of the Cthulhu Eternal covering various eras and genres of Lovecraftian game, some warmly familiar and others quite unusual.

But best of all is … it is available for free, to both Game Moderators and players. Anybody can grab a copy of the rulebooks and use them for any purposes. We also have existing support on the Roll20 and Foundry VTTs.

Mechanically, Cthulhu Eternal is a D100 game. Its rules are like the Delta Green RPG and editions of Call of Cthulhu. It’s streamlined & deadly capturing the flavor of Cosmic Horror investigation without baggage from excess dice rolls. Gamers who play D100 games find it easy to learn and intuitive.

The Open Cthulhu Mythos SRD - Cthulhu Reborn | DriveThruRPG “What primal, inconceivable source of age-old myth-cycles and haunting nightmares might I be on the brink of uncovering?”   IMPORTANT NOTE: This PDF contains the text of a full set of game statistics ...

If you need a bestiary of Cthulhu Eternal compatible nasties … or terrifying rituals ripped straight from the pages of Lovecraft’s fiction … or weird alien artifacts to baffle players … we have a separate Open Cthulhu Mythos SRD with a bunch of that stuff.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

A Table of Contents for a typical Cthulhu Eternal SRD.

Each Cthulhu Eternal SRD is a full-feature self-contained 50,000+ word rulebook (~100 pages) covering every aspect needed to run games in a particular historical era or literary genre. Rules for Characters, Skills, Combat, Sanity, Tomes & Magic. It’s all there.

A logo for the Cthulhu Eternal RPG, rendered as text with an appearance of roughly carved into a surface.

The Cthulhu Eternal SRDs represent our biggest family of free products. These free/open-source rulesets for Lovecraftian gaming are 100% reusable content under the OGL. They are a freely licensable platform specially designed for supporting old-school investigative gaming.

www.cthulhueternal.com

A monochrome image of tentacles emerging from a Non-Euclidean pit. Text reads "Because Cthulhu Wants To Be Free"

So, with that in mind -- we promise to do better. Especially when it comes to promoting the many free (or Pay-What-You-Want) things we've made. Important in this era when lots of gamers -- and publishers -- are financially feeling the pinch (even if just from the GenCon credit card bill coming due)

A grid of nine book covers, each of them a title published by Cthulhu Reborn in their "Cthulhu Eternal" line. The titles read: To Touch The Untouchable, Starlight on the Gutter, Help Wanted, Dark Visitations, Smoke Green, Spoiled Milk, Bottoms Up!, The Bitter Jungle, and The Lord of Nombrecht.

We've been accused of being the world's worst publisher when it comes to promoting our catalogue of Lovecraftian goodies online. It's a fair cop -- the world seems so full of hype that adding to the noisepile kind of makes my skin crawl. OTOH it's the best way of people finding out what we've made.

"In his house at Greensboro Science Center, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" ... I think that's how the translation goes anyway. 😱

I'm just excited to see that I'm not the last person on planet Earth to have a DVD movie collection. I was starting to wonder. #OldPersonIssues

Another approach might treat rulesets as stages of 'initiation' into the Mythos-haunted world
BASIC: Investigate odd cases but none of the weird stuff is real
EXPERT: Seen enough to know there's oddness in reality
COMPANION: We talk to other people who also believe this
MASTER: Doing Unknown Armies.

I see these two visions as somewhat overlapping :)

Can't argue with that.

Basic Cthulhu for investigators with SAN 51+, Expert Cthulhu for SAN 25-50, Cthulhu's Companion for SAN 10-24, Mastered by Cthulhu for SAN 1-9, and Cthulhu's Immortals for SAN 0 and below. Sign me up for all of them.

Cover for the Cthulhu Eternal Scenario "Thunder God's Curse" by William Adcock.

Cover for the Cthulhu Eternal Scenario "The Bitter Jungle" by William Adcock.

Cover for the Cthulhu Eternal Scenario "Physiology of Acquired Taste" by William Adcock.

Fantastic news ... but Bill is being far too modest. In the past few years he's written some amazing scenarios which are among the best received titles we've released for Cthulhu Eternal
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

YouTube video by Benjamin Pieper Adaptation Clip: A Flower's Journey

See also: youtu.be/YvHA6JgXt9k?...

Thunder God's Curse (Cthulhu Eternal Jazz Age) - Cthulhu Reborn | DriveThruRPG “we thought of such things as the grotesquely weathered stones ...  the faintly symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert” —♦— “Thunder God's Curse” is a gritty investigative scenario ...

The legend of the Lost Dutchman's Mine has drawn treasure hunters to Arizona for decades. In "Thunder God's Curse," it seems someone - or something - is prepared to kill to defend the mine's secrets: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

Physiology of Acquired Taste (Cthulhu Eternal Age of Revolutions) - Cthulhu Reborn | DriveThruRPG “It was the ultimate product of ... cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; theembodiment of all the snarling and chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life” —♦— “Physiology of Acquired Tast...

"Physiology of Acquired Taste," set in 1830s Reims, puts the players on the hunt for grave robbers on the verge of setting off a political powderkeg. And what's all this about a werewolf? www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...