Attention Roll20 Community!
Green Ronin’s Cthulhu Awakens Kickstarter has been funded, and includes a code for the Roll20 Edition of Cthulhu Awakens — a character sheet, game materials optimized for play on Roll20, a PDF of the materials, and all unlocked digital stretch goals. This means Roll20 players that support the Kickstarter will get an incredible discount before it hits the Marketplace.
Our successful Kickstarter has opened the door to bringing the cosmic horror of Cthulhu Awakens and the Cthulhu Mythos from the unimaginable past, up through the 1920s, and into the 21st Century as a complete roleplaying game powered by AGE: the Adventure Game Engine.
Last year, Green Ronin assembled a team to help bring The Expanse, Return to Freeport, and Mutants & Masterminds to the Roll20 platform, and we’ve gotten kinda good at it! Naturally, we had to offer a Roll20 tier to the Kickstarter backers. When you pledge $55 for the Roll20 Edition of the Cthulhu Awakens RPG, here’s what you get:
- Cthulhu Awakens RPG, Roll20 Edition:
- Character sheet
- Compendium
- Token Packs
- Digital Stretch Goals
- Cthulhu Awakens RPG, PDF Edition
Did we mention that we’re funded?
Over 700% funded! The enthusiasm for Cthulhu Awakens has unlocked 6 of our 9 stretch goals, which means that in addition to all the things we mention above, you will also get the digital versions from the table below:
That’s over $200 of VTT-ready Cthulhu Awakens content for just $55!
For a deeper dive into exactly what we mean when we capitalize “Weirdness Overflowing,” you’ll want to check out our Kickstarter updates and explainers on everything from how the Adventure Game Engine works, to how Entities like the grody Gregarian work! You can learn more about the project and pledge your support directly on Kickstarter.
Why Cthulhu Awakens?
The genesis of Cthulhu Awakens was Modern AGE, Green Ronin’s multi-genre modern era AGE system RPG. Modern AGE is a platform for multiple settings, and the Cthulhu Mythos, as a classic inspiration for roleplaying, seemed like an obvious choice. Once we dug in, it became clear that we wanted to do a deeper treatment of the Mythos as a modern game setting than the supplement format would support.
The final piece of the puzzle is the setting itself. The Weird Century assumes classic open source Mythos tales are from unreliable narrators — and they’re especially unreliable when it comes to the racism in those stories. The truth? It’s there for characters from anywhere, of any kind, to explore, and includes elements that bring Mythos influence across decades, into the present day.
What is AGE?
The AGE system is designed to be straightforward and easy to learn. You use normal, 6-sided dice, rolling three of them against a target number. If you score doubles on any two of the dice, you may activate stunt points, which you can use to add extraordinary effects to your actions.
AGE powers multiple roleplaying games, including the following:
- Dragon Age Roleplaying Game
- Fantasy AGE
- Modern AGE
- Blue Rose: The AGE Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy
- The Expanse Roleplaying Game
All of these games use a slight variation on the system, so it’s very easy to move back and forth between systems without missing a beat.
How is Cthulhu Awakens using AGE?
We wanted to deeply tailor AGE for Cthulhu Awakens. This has led to a number of innovations. These characteristics are notable.
- Levels, Not Classes: Cthulhu Awakens uses levels to manage character advancement, since these encourage balanced improvement, but doesn’t have character classes—your character’s areas of expertise are up to you.
- Gritty Elements, Cinematic Options: Levels don’t make you tougher—unless you want them to. While your Health doesn’t improve like that of a fantasy hero as you gain levels, you have the option of introducing cinematic resistance to injury and more heroic deeds via the included Fortune rules, first devised for The Expanse RPG.
- Expanded Specializations: To represent obsessive interests and traditional character niches, specializations in Cthulhu Awakens have five degrees of competence, allowing for dedicated occult scholars, seekers of the unknown, and, perhaps, sorcerers.
- Bonds: A Bond is a relationship, belief, or preoccupation that has a powerful influence on you, providing bonus stunt points when actions support the Bond. Evolved from the Relationships system in prior AGE games, Bonds expands this into other character elements, and introduces External Bonds, which represent involuntary or aversive influence.
- Alienation: In Cthulhu Awakens, exposure to the Mythos adapts minds to the myriad Unseen Dimensions. This Alienation provides Enlightenment, conferring strange insights, and Terror, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Eldritch Workings: “Magic” in Cthulhu Awakens comes from strange texts and cults and can be used by virtually anyone. Workings risk Alienation, but include potent, bizarre powers.
- More: Other refinements include how stunts are structured, new equipment rules, some revised actions, and a lot more. We didn’t just slap the Mythos on top of AGE but made top to bottom tweaks to improve the game. It’ll be fun — well, eldritch fun…
You may have questions- and we are most certainly going to have at least some of the answers - so you can hit us up on Twitter at @GreenRoninPub or you can back the Kickstarter and get regular progress updates and any breaking news. As a backer, you get to post directly to our updates with any questions you might have.
We’re very excited about what Cthulhu Awakens has to offer, both as the creative people working on it, and the people who are looking forward to playing it, and we hope you feel the same!