What's Cthulhu Hack?
Cthulhu Hack is a traditional tabletop role-playing game. Friends sit around a table - or meet online - and narrate stories; as the Player, who acts the part of a character in the story, or as the Gamemaster (GM), who sets the scene, leads the tale, plays the part of non-player characters (the extras), and keeps order.
Cthulhu Hack isn't tied to a specific time period or location.
Where's Cthulhu Hack?
Cthulhu Hack is available in print, PDF and POD. You can pick up print editions from All Rolled Up (ARU) online or at UK conventions. DriveThruRPG fulfils PDF editions. You can get the 1st Edition Core Book in POD from Lulu; other books are available POD only through Lulu.
Why Cthulhu Hack?
Role-playing offers a lot of games in Lovecraft's mythos, but Cthulhu Hack focuses on simple, accessible rules and mechanics designed to emulate the slow spiral of self-destruction that dominates the original tales. Campaigns becomes about the over-arching threat against the whole of humankind, rather than the insignificant lives of just a few investigators.
Support Cthulhu Hack
As well as the expanding range of books available, Cthulhu Hack has more content available to those supporting the line on Patreon.com. As a patron you get updates, early access, playtest materials and more.
Cover images in print may vary from that shown on this site.
Cthulhu Hack - 2nd Edition
The core rules, containing: an overview and explanation of the base game mechanics, Saves and Resources; character creation - both archetype and flexible - allowing you to tailor the player experience; rules for threats, investigation and sanity; the Mythos, creatures, horrid lore and spells; an example of play and an investigation, Save Innsmouth, designed to guide you into the world of both Cthulhu Hack and running memorable and varied investigations.
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The Haunter of the Dark
A guide to using Lovecraft's stories, and tales like them, as the basis for your investigations. The back of the book contains an annotated version of the titular story, with notes on where you can mine for game elements. The beginning of the book uses these elements and a standard framework to present a sequel to the Haunter, to challenge your own investigators.
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From Unformed Realms
A store of random horrors, providing a springboard to your own creations or a simple mechanism for refreshing staid old adversaries. Dozens of carefully crafted tables enable the Gamemaster to use these system-free tables to generate strange new horrors to scare and challenge your player characters, who will face the unknown time and again with this toolset.
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Thro' Centuries Fixed
You wake groggy; your body stiff, your sight obscured. You stir; vigour oozing slowly back into your muscles like you've slept for an age. As your vision clears, you find your surroundings unfamiliar, the colours and light queer. You struggle to call out for help, but cannot find the words. You struggle to remember much of anything. A standalone adventure that starts from a blank slate and could end with the doom of the world...
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Mother's Love
Mother's Love presents three investigations within the setting of H P Lovecraft's Mythos, written for The Cthulhu Hack, set in the late 20th and early 21st Century.
- Deep Roots, written by Chloé Germaine Buckley and Jonathan Buckley
- Ggantija, written by Keris McDonald
- Gift of the Flesh, written by Kathryn Jenkins
Forgotten Duty
A visit to the University of Navarra—located in Pamplona, Spain—in search of a rare book—the chronicles of a monk who claimed to have witnessed visions of other worlds—leads to a grim investigation.
The investigation includes five pre-generated investigators. Developed and playtested with the support of Patreon.
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The Dark Brood
The Dark Brood offers a selection of content bringing the fecundity of Shub-Niggurath front and centre to your game and loosing her mindless progeny upon the world. Including notes on the Black Goat of a Thousand Young and the faithful who seek to harness some aspect of its power, along with new horrors, spells, dozens of ideas on adding the influence of the Dark Brood and Shub-Niggurath into your investigations, and three adventure seeds.
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Island of Ignorance
A guide to using an existing setting, that of 19th century penal colony Australia, with The Cthulhu Hack. Cthulhu Reborn published Convicts & Cthulhu as a setting and I enjoyed reading it - there's something horrifying about taking a ghastly situation and then layering on the presence of the Mythos.
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Valkyrie Nine
Valkyrie Nine (is a one-shot investigation, written for The Cthulhu Hack but playable with any system geared toward Lovecraftian horror. Set 100 years into the future, You're maintenance and repair units. You've activated to find power failing and no network connectivity except for short range buzz shots to other local units. Stabilize. Restore. Report. While you need the for Core Book to handle the baseline mechanics, the investigation includes five pre-generated character archetypes with modified rules for playing as automated drone units.
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Three Faces of the Wendigo
Three authors. Three chilling tales of malevolence and inhuman appetite. Taking the myth of the Wendigo as the core focus for each investigation, these three award-winning adventures span two centuries.
- Wolves in the Mountains, written by Richard August
- Lovely, Dark and Deep, written by John Almack
- Tainted Meat, written by Paul Baldowski
