CthulhuTech
| CthulhuTech | ||
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| RPG published by Catalyst Game Labs |
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| Rule System | Framewerk | |
| Authors | Matthew Grau Fraser McKay Mike Vaillancourt |
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| First Publication | 2007 (Mongoose Edition) 2008 (Catalyst Edition) |
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CthulhuTech is a roleplaying game developed by WildFire LLC and published by Catalyst Game Labs (formerly published by Mongoose Publishing). It combines Lovecraftian eldritch horror with Anime mecha sensibilities set in the grimdark future of the late 21st Century.
Backstory
Early in the 21st century woman by the name of Teresa Ashcroft discovered arcanotechnology, the science behind magic. The discovery revolutionised the world and sent her mad. Her colleague Simon Yi continued her research, laying the groundwork for the Dimensional Engine, a clean and inexhaustible power source. He was also driven mad. The research was taken over by one Doctor Golvash Czeny, who assembled a team and let people work on minute parts of the D-Engine project. While the staff suffered psychotic attacks, nervous breakdowns, frequent nightmares and other such unpleasantries, they were not driven mad, which was a good thing for everyone involved. Eleven years after Teresa Ashcroft began her research, the first arcanotech-powered D-Engine went public. After three months of trying everything, the global scientific community was forced to admit that the things were legit. With the limitless power of the D-Engine, it became possible to build anti-gravity pod systems, or A-Pods, with which vehicles could fly. D-Engines could also power mecha, allow for better space travel and gave the power required to build underwater research and food-growing bases. It was a pretty swell time to be alive, as long as you didn't live in the Middle East who had their economies go to shit because nobody bought oil anymore and resented the growing power of the UN, so they decided to side with China (who had not joined the UN and its growing power) and another Cold War started. Things tensed up and a global Jihad was an ever-growing threat.
And then the Migou struck.
The Migou were alien race living on the outskirts of our solar system. Looking like a mix of flies, crustaceans and Illithid, they saw humanity as a threat to their colony on Pluto. They decided to wage war us, seeking to destroy the human race and acquire the secrets of arcanotech for themselves. To do this they engineered a race in our image called the Nazzadi, who unaware of their artificial nature and roots. Believing they were Earth exiles they fought humanity for 6 years, killing untold numbers of people until their leaders (who knew the truth of things from the beginning) called it quits and made their knowledge of the Migou and their status as cloned lifeforms known to both their soldiers and humanity. Three quarters of the Nazzadi turned on the remainder loyalists and drove the Migou-aligned forces out. They made peace, joined Earth as allies against Migou, were given Haiti and Cuba to form their own nation (and to make them easier to fight if they somehow turned on humanity again) and joined their forces, tactics and mecha with that of humanity.
After the defection of the Nazzadi, the Migou decided to wage their war themselves. Putting all of their race to a fuck huge ship, the size of the Moon, they landed on Earth en masse. And so the second Arcanotech War began. The Migou, seeing the threat of the cults, also worked against them.
Meanwhile a less obvious war had been going on. Cultists that had been in the shadows of humanity since the discovery of fire saw the advent of arcanotechnology as a sign that it was a time to revive their dead gods. The Chrysalis Corporation, innocent at first, corrupted afterwards by Nyarlahothep himself, worked to undermine the New Earth Government and other cults worked to corrupt humanity through vice.
Now with the cults becoming more and more blatant in their actions and the Migou becoming more aggressive in an effort to stop them, the New Earth Government has realised that the war was evolving into something new and so declared the Arcanotech War to have ended and the Aeon War to have begun.
TL;DR Human-Nazzadi (Dark Elf expies) Alliance versus the cold, technocratic Migou versus the Cult of Dagon versus The Rapine Storm (think Scourge from Warcraft) led by Hastur. Yup, everybody is an enemy. Oh and a second Migou hiveship is on its way.
System
CthulhuTech uses a system called Framewerk, known to some fa/tg/uys as 'lol poker dice'. The system uses d10s and success is based on either the single highest dice rolled or the sum of the highest sum of multiples of dice rolled or the sum of the highest straight of dice rolled (e.g. 4 5 6) hence the poker dice moniker.
The system is notoriously swingy. A script has been created to show the distribution of rolls. [1]
See Also
Stories
Character Sheets
Homebrew
- Cthulhu Void Tech: An attempt to fix the broken Framewerk System