So…until tremulus is finally out and available for purchase, I’m going to slap together a quick Cthulhu hack using…

11 thoughts on “So…until tremulus is finally out and available for purchase, I’m going to slap together a quick Cthulhu hack using…”

1. You could hack in the rules from Cthulhu Dark. They are pretty simple and won’t get in the way.

2. Were you a tremulus backer?

   Their version of Act Under Fire can help prevent Shock damage, which targets a Mental Health Track. Physical Health and Mental Health are sort of like countdown clocks. Once you have three levels of Shock damage you become Disturbed, then you can start suffering disorders and insanities to prevent further Shock. However, unlike a countdown clock it sounds like you only ever take 4 levels of physical or mental damage (like Monsterhearts).

   I haven’t read all of the preview tremulus rules so I couldn’t say more than that.

3. Stuart McDermid That ain’t a bad idea…I could even merge the rules from Dark right into the Apocalypse Engine, allowing players to risk their sanity by rolling a third die and taking the highest two…interesting…

4. As far as playbooks go, I’m kicking around a couple of different ideas. The simplest one is to just use only the Monster of the Week playbooks that would make sense in a Lovecraftian setting.

   The more interesting idea, though, is I was thinking the players would not have “classes” at all. They would begin the game only with the basic moves and their stats. Then I would have them pick up to three “character moves” to help define them.

5. Patrick Henry Downs Unforuntately I missed the boat on the Kickstarter, so I have NO access to tremulus until its released. I’ve tried to reverse-engineer the rules based on the publicly available playbooks and playset, but that hasn’t worked out too well.

6. Eddie Gibbs

   Yep. Simple World plus Cthulhu Dark is probably a winner. If you didn’t want to do the “risk the sanity dice thing” you could use the Barbarian move from DW where you take a D8 instead of a D6.

   In DW if a Barbarian then rolls higher with the d6 than the D8 after choosing to “follow an appetite” (read: “risk their sanity”) this is a complication (read:risk sanity”)

   Stu

7. Stuart McDermid That’s a great idea! This might be easier than I thought!

8. I also missed out on the kickstarter, but I’ve got friends who backed it and I’ve seen the preview rules pdf. It’s definitely different, but it retains enough AW familiarity that you won’t get lost in it.

   When disorders are picked up they don’t act like debilities but instead have unique moves associated with them which are all pretty bad. Night Terrors sticks out in my mind because it forces you to roll+reason, but both the 10+ and 6- results are pretty bad and I couldn’t figure out if it was better to roll high or roll low.

9. I’ve browsed Realms of Cthulhu, so there’s little doubt in my mind Mr. Preston is going to blow some minds with tremulus. Those disorders sound awesome.

   Because anything I do would be no match for tremulus, I’m not trying to do a Cthulhu hack. Instead, what I’m trying to do is more like run a Lovecraftian campaign with Monster of the Week. It’ll likely have a much more “pulpy” feel than tremulus, and I can live with that.

10. I have no idea how I missed tremulus, will have to watch out for it.

11. It’s not that harm and shock never go past 4. Default rule is a six step harm and six step shock track and maxing either is that character dead or incurably insane respectively. There are optional rules that let you opt for injuries or mental disorders instead of hitting the deep end of the respective tracks, and you can opt to use them for only harm, only shock, neither or both. I haven’t played much tremulus yet (just an extended run with the Primrose Path framework backers got) but using straight lethal harm and disorder-inflicting shock felt like the best fit to me and my players.

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