Face Fear and Fight Fascists with the Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart

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Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart

The FREE Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart is Available Now!

 

Hagley, England, 1940: an idyllic village under the shadow of the Second World War. As its inhabitants watch the sky for the terrors of the Blitz, they have no idea other horrors lie beneath their feet. Long bound by forgotten rituals, an entity creeps closer to freedom as the Old Ways die, but it will be an attempted revival of those traditions, combined with an unnatural disaster, that unleashes the ancient God Beneath the Tree on the world.

Written by Stoker Award nominated author and internationally recognized folk horror expert Sian Ingham, The God Beneath the Tree is a quickstart: everything you need, from streamlined rules to starting characters, to play its included Cthulhu Awakens scenario. By playing, you’ll not only confront the ancient creature beneath Hagley’s trees but teach yourself Cthulhu Awakens, the roleplaying game of confronting Mythos horror across a Weird Century of strange histories and cult conspiracies. All you need is ordinary six-sided dice, something to write and record your character and their adventures, and up to five friends joining a Game Master.

The Cthulhu Awakens Quickstart is available in PDF and coming soon as a full-featured Roll20 virtual tabletop product.

The full version of Cthulhu Awakens and the GM Kit is now available in print, PDF and on Roll20, and hardcovers are on the way to retail game stores near you!

And speaking of Roll20, we have a brand new NPC Token Pack available for you today as well. Check it out!

Cthulhu Awakens NPC Token Pack for Roll20

Dare the Lair of the Horned Giant, and Enter the First Fantasy AGE Dungeon

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Lair of the Horned Giant for Fantasy AGE 2nd edition!

Available Now!

 

As the new Fantasy AGE developer, I’m pleased to share something from the roots of the AGE system, updated for the 2nd edition of Fantasy AGE: a new adventure called Lair of the Horned Giant!

Long ago, a hero confronted a fierce challenge on the sacred fields of Kreyatos, and what transpired became the origin of a thousand legends—of sacred bulls slain, of a curse that fused victims with beasts, and of the Horned Giant and its cult. Now your heroes have come to investigate the legends at the fields themselves, where the cattle of the gods once roamed, and where the servants—or jailers—of a fallen hero, now given horns and an urge for bestial violence, dwell. But is there more to the Horned Giant? Beyond the rumored bull-man, what of the rumors of konotaurs and other beast-people?

Lair of the Horned Giant is an adventure our friend and very cool game designer Will Hindmarch originally created to support fans of the Dragon AGE roleplaying game who wanted to use it to adventure in other settings, but it was never published. I discovered it in our files, loved it, and updated it for Fantasy AGE’s second edition. It features an open-ended presentation like Fantasy AGE Lairs, a book for First Edition Fantasy AGE I really like, but it has a mythic resonance I think would go especially well with Fantasy AGE Trojan War, though it’s designed to slip into the classic fantasy worlds core Fantasy AGE supports.

(As I talk editions, remember that Fantasy AGE editions, and AGE games in general, are easy to convert between.)

This challenging adventure with shades of Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern mythology is best suited to characters of levels 8-10. It includes new creatures and magical treasures for Fantasy AGE suitable for a wide variety of campaigns. The mythology of the Horned Giant is even designed to be easily adapted for your own games, too.

This also inaugurates our series of new adventures called Fantasy AGE Dungeons, though some of these might not be “dungeons” in the usual sense. We’re currently working on another, Menace of the Grave Warrens, and I can’t wait to announce that too. Use them for one shots, side quests—whatever works for your table. Until then, challenge the cursed cult and dare the Bull of Heaven!

The Fantasy AGE Quickstart Arrives!

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Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition Quickstart

A neglected ship sales the moonlit seas with no living crew to guide her. Can the heroes unravel the mystery? And more importantly, can they live to tell the tale?

New to AGE games? Looking for more starting adventures for your Fantasy AGE game? That’s the teaser for “Terror of the Ghost Ship,” the adventure included in the new Fantasy AGE Quickstart up above. It’s available today! Get it in PDF at the Green Ronin Online Store and DrivethruRPG —click through to wherever you want it from.

The Fantasy AGE Quickstart also contains streamlined rules and pregenerated characters for Fantasy AGE, the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) game of swords & sorcery adventure. The current, second edition of Fantasy AGE is an evolution of the rules found in Modern AGE, The Expanse Roleplaying Game, Blue Rose: The AGE Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy, and others. The pregenerated characters, rules, and included adventure provide everything you need to run it except at least three six-sided dice, writing materials, and your friends.

AGE is designed to be intuitive and straightforward, while leaning into the swashbuckling side of adventure roleplaying with amazing stunts, cinematic combat, and a loose, four-class system that lets you shape a heroic archetype into a true individual.

After the adventure, move on to the full rules of the Fantasy AGE Core Rulebook. The Stranger Shores await—and that’s for starters. Adventures, new settings, and more are on the horizon, and we can’t wait to share them with you.

Tune in today (Thursday, 21 March 2024) at 2p Pacific, 5p Eastern for ThursdAGE, when Malcolm Sheppard and Ian Lemke join your host, Disembodied Troy Hewitt. We will not only take a look at the new quickstart, we’ll be talking about the future of the Adventure Game Engine!

Revelations of the Bacchae, the GM’s Kit, and DREADCRAWLS: New(ish) Releases for Cthulhu Awakens!

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Cthulhu Awakens, the AGE RPG of confronting Mythos horror across the Weird Century, entered electronic release last October—but since then, we’ve released more for the game, with ambitious plans for 2024! Here we go:

Revelations of the Bacchae for Cthulhu Awakens

Revelations of the Bacchae (PDF, Roll20)

Revelations of the Bacchae presents expanded notes on the Cthulhu Awakens actual play session of the same name, run by Ian Lemke during the Cthulhu Awakens Kickstarter campaign. Note that this is not a full scenario—well, not completely. Instead, the basic notes used to run the game have been cleaned up a bit and presented for your perusal or use, as you see fit. This development process means it may vary from the adventure as presented, as elements of improvisation are “set into stone.”

Revelations of the Bacchae is set in the modern day, but with adjustments can be situated earlier. The latest time-dependent element is from 1996, but the exact date isn’t important.

PDF GM's Kit for Cthulhu Awakens

 

Cthulhu Awakens Game Master’s Kit (PDF)

The Cthulhu Awakens Game Master’s Kit is a collection of resources that helps you smoothly deliver terror and adventure to your players. It provides a PDF with 3 Game Master’s screen panels that displays stunts and other essential information. The quick reference card PDF provides further assistance with commonly used rules, and the combat tracker helps you organize the action.

The true secrets of the Game Master’s Kit are revealed in Unexpurgated Texts, a PDF booklet detailing a dozen fell grimoires and their modern counterparts, each in an expanded, 2-page format listing the eldritch workings and other strange secrets each of them contains.

Dreadcrawls PDF 'zine for Cthulhu Awakens

DREADCRAWLS #0: Strange Places (PDF)

Mountains of madness, cave complexes inhabited since before history, and secret temples under moldering ruins are all part of the Mythos horror genre. With DREADCRAWLS #0: Strange Places, you can generate these bizarre, haunted locations with a few dice rolls and simple decisions. From underground complexes to hyper-dimensional locales folded into non-Euclidean shapes, create haunted lairs for the Mythos with a tried-and-true old school, table-based method.

DREADCRAWLS is the official zine for Cthulhu Awakens, the AGE roleplaying game of Mythos horror, across the Weird Century.

More Horror?

Some of these have been mentioned before, specifically for the Roll20 edition, as Jonesy talks about here. Read about Cthulhu Awakens’ full-featured Roll20 version.

Furthermore, we have four more supplements in various stages of development, so rest assured, there’s support here, and support coming. We’ll tell you when!

Valiant Adventures: Final Week, New Social Goals

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We are into the final week of the Valiant Adventures RPG crowdfunder, so it’s time to superpower this Kickstarter. To that end, we have created a new set of social goals for the campaign. These are keyed off social media shares and the total number of backers. You help us spread the word and your pledge gets better. Win, win! Here are the new goals:

Social Goals

If we hit 450 Reward Tier Backers*, dust jackets for both the Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook and Worlds of Valiant will unlock at $50,000. You will get to vote on the design of each dust jacket, choosing one of three designs for each book.

If we hit 550 Reward Tier Backers, all backers will get a free month of access to the new Atomic Think Tank on Mighty Networks, which we are getting ready to launch. We’re building the Atomic Think Tank to be THE place to connect with the Green Ronin Publishing community, the team, and exclusive insider events and activities for your favorite Green Ronin Publishing titles! When this goal is unlocked, it means that every backer gets a VIP early-access subscription for one month, FREE! No credit card, no mess, just an all-access pass to secret playtests, Dev chats, exclusive member-only campaign tools and supplements, plus you get to hang out with heroes like you—a table of friends awaits, all we’re missing is you!

If we hit 650 Reward Tier Backers, all backers will get free three months access to the Atomic Think Tank.

If you heroes help us with 200 Social Media Shares, the free 32-page adventure stretch goal will unlock at $60,000. Here are the links to share.

To the Kickstarter page: http://greenron.in/KickstartValiantAdventures

To the campaign video on YouTube: http://greenron.in/ValiantAdventures

Remember that in addition to the books themselves, we’re also offering great add-ons like Hero Point Tokens from Campaign Coins, a Valiant Adventures playmat, Condition Cards, Player and GM Journals, and more. In previous crowdfunders we’ve run, we might have done some of these as stretch goals, but we wanted all the coolness available from day 1 of the Kickstarter.

Valiant Adventures Kickstarter Add-ons!

Thanks so much for your support. Let’s unlock some social goals!

Trades of the Expanse Community Survey!

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Trades of the Expanse is a PDF series that details the occupations and professions players can explore in The Expanse RPG. Each PDF includes info on creating characters who practice a specific trade, game systems for handling their jobs, new rules content such as new ships, specializations, and equipment, and adventure hooks and ideas for the GM to craft tie-in stories. So far, we’ve published Journalist, Scout, Planetary Explorer, and Bounty Hunter, with four more trades on the list – and you get to tell us which one you would like to see written next!

In addition, we’re taking suggestions for a Trade we should add to the mix, which you can share in the survey, and by sharing your thoughts in our social media discussions! You can add your thoughts by filling out the following survey! 

Cthulhu Awakens Compendium on Roll20

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As a big fan of both the AGE system and of the Cthulhu Mythos, I was super excited when the Cthulhu Awakens Kickstarter was announced and backed it immediately. Part of what excited me was the inclusion of a Roll20 Compendium since I run games both in person and online as part of the USP actual play team. What I didn’t know, at the time I backed that Kickstarter, was that I was going to be entrusted by team Ronin to make that Roll20 Compendium a reality.  With that said we are happy to announce the stars are right and the Cthulhu Awakens compendium is now available on the Roll20 marketplace, as well as DrivethruRPG.

The compendium includes

  • Rollable Tables to randomize your character’s Social Class, Background, Profession, and Drive
  • Dynamic Lightening for all included maps.
  • Drag & Drop for support for Character Creation, including Focuses, Background, Talents, Specializations,
  • Eldritch Workings, Dangerous Texts, Artifacts, and Psychic Phenomena
  • Full drag & drop compatibility and tokens for over 40 Cthulhu Awakens adversaries

Cthulhu Awakens Roll20 compendium

Cthulhu Awakens Roll20 Compendium

Along with Cthulhu Awakens compendium we released Revelations of the Bacchae on Roll20, which features three location maps with dynamic lighting, two Challenge test trackers, Four pre-generated characters, and seven new NPCs

Revelations of the Bacchae

Cthulhu Awakens Roll20 Compendium monsters!

Lastly, we released the token set that comes with the Cthulhu Awakens Compendium as a stand-alone offering for those game masters who only need the tokens.

Cthulhu Awakens Tokens: Entities Pack

So, what is next for Cthulhu Awakens on Roll20? We are working on the Game Master’s Kit, and a couple new surprises I hope to share with you soon.

Cthulhu Awakens Roll20 Compendium Abilities

And don’t forget to tune in to ThursdAGE on the Green Ronin Publishing official YouTube Channel, today 2/8/24 at 2p Pacific/5p Eastern where we’ll do a deep dive into the Cthulhu Awakens Compendium! Your host Disembodied Troy welcomes Malcolm Sheppard, Ian Lemke, and myself to celebrate this VTT Team milestone and talk all things Cthulhu Awakens!

Valiant Adventures with Penny Arcade, Chris Pramas, and Alex Thomas TODAY!

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Watch Alex Thomas and Chris Pramas play Valiant Adventures with Penny Arcade on Twitch!

Valiant Adventures with Penny Arcade

Today’s episode of ThursdAGE will be preempted in order to bring you this special presentation!

Green Ronin’s CEO Chris Pramas and celebrity Gamemaster to the stars, Alex M&M Thomas, will be joining Penny Arcade today on their Twitch channel for a Valiant Adventures one-shot!

Valiant Adventures RPG One-Shot

ft. Penny Arcade!

With GM Alex Thomas!

 Today, Thursday, Jan 25th

1PM Pacific, 4PM
Eastern!

 https://www.twitch.tv/pennyarcade?sr=a

Again, no ThursdAGE TODAY!  We’re all going to be watching Alex and Chris on Twitch!

See you there!

Valiant Adventures has Funded & Penny Arcade Livestream

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Back Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game on Kickstarter today!

Back the Kickstarter in the first 72 hours, and receive Unity Vol 1 PDF, FREE!

I am so excited that we have finally released the Kickstarter for the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game! Steve and I have been working so hard for the past few years bringing this game to life and I’m so thrilled you’re excited to get your hands on it. There are so many exciting stories waiting to be told and I can’t wait for these dynamic new rules to hit your tables.

It’s been great hearing initial feedback for the Valiant Quickstart and seeing your speculation online about what our rule adaptations mean for combat, roleplaying, skills, advantages, and every other aspect of Mutants & Masterminds. I am particularly thrilled to see so many people saying that this iteration of the system will be new player friendly. One of our biggest design goals was to make the game seem more approachable, because M&M has some of the fastest, most cinematic gameplay in the industry and I see so many people never get to that point because of how intimidating character creation appears to be. The new design aesthetic for the book and the flow of information appears to be doing great work to ease some of that anxiety.

Now that we’ve funded, we need to keep pushing for those stretch goals! Steve and I have so many ideas for exciting content for this game and with your support we can see those goals realized. Please share the link around your friends and communities and let’s make this game the best that it can be!

Please remember to mention our 72 hour incentive, Unity Vol. 1 in PDF, to anyone you introduce the campaign to and tune in on today  at 1pm PST/4pm EST when I run a one shot for the amazing folks over at Penny Arcade!

Thank you everyone for your support so far and Stay Valiant!