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Mutants & Masterminds Reprints!

Hello heroes! I just wanted to pop by and let you all know that it is an exciting day for Mutants & Masterminds. Our new reprints of the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook, Gadget Guides, and Power Profiles are off to the printer and these amazing resources will be physically available soon. I’m personally excited because I’ll finally have my own copies of Gadget Guides and Power Profiles to finish out my third edition collection. Now is the perfect time to order your copies of these books to enrich your stories and to help your group get into the minutia of character creation to truly create the superheroes and villains of their dreams.

If you supported our Reprint Extravaganza Kickstarter campaign, or preordered through Backerkit, your books will ship as soon as we get them in from the printer. And if you missed our campaign, it’s not too late! Until May 1st, you can still Preorder the books RIGHT HERE on Backerkit. These books will also be available in retail stores soon, but we have had to adjust our pricing slightly. This will be the last time these books will be available at their original prices.

 

Reprints galore! Mutants & Masterminds Deluxe Hero's HandbookMore Reprints! Mutants & Masterminds Power ProfilesAnd even more reprints! Mutants & Masterminds Gadget Guides

In addition to these amazing reprints, did you know we also have Mutants & Masterminds novels? Our fiction imprint, Nisaba Press, has several books, short stories, and anthologies available and this campaign saw two brand new books you can pick up. The Doom That Came to San Francisco by Richard Lee Byers, and Lost & Never Found by Aaron Rosenberg. These two books make up the Arcane Secrets Duology, and you can get them together at a handy discount.

NEW M&M fiction available for the first time!

Interview with author Aaron Rosenberg

Earlier this week we shared the interview with Richard Lee Byers who wrote part one of the Arcane Secrets Duology, and now we’re back with Aaron Rosenberg, author of part two, Lost and Never Found!

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza: The Arcane Secrets Duology

Lost and Never Found: From arcane talismans scattered across the country to lost heroes scattered across the multiverse, Thomas Rhymer and his erstwhile allies have their work cut out for them if they are to stop the magical menace threatening Earth-Prime. This unlikely alliance of heroes must travel through magical doors into strange worlds, unlike anything they’ve experienced before, and make it back in time to save their own.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your work prior to this novel.

Hm, okay, the short version, then. Born in New Jersey, raised in New Orleans, educated in Kansas, long-time resident of New York City. Worked as a college professor, an animation studio director, a graphic designer, a book layout artist, and a website manager. Began writing as a kid, started professionally during college in RPGs, wrote 70-some-odd books and supplements there, segued into RPG fiction, then tie-in fiction in general, then original fiction. I mostly do novels and short stories these days, and I write everything from SF comedy to epic fantasy to superheroes to action-adventure to mystery to thrillers. Lost & Never Found is on track to be my 50th published novel, which will also be my 260th publication overall.

 

Lost & Never Found is the second book, following on the events of The Doom That Came to San Francisco. Was it a challenge picking up from where that novel ended? How much did you collaborate with Richard Lee Byers on where your book started and where it was going?

Actually, it was surprisingly easy. Richard and I have known each other for years, though this is our first chance to work together, and we had a long conversation beforehand about what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go with both books and how to dovetail them together. We read each other’s outlines, so we both knew exactly where his book ended and mine began, and I read his draft before starting mine to make sure I was also consistent on the characterizations.

 

Your novel explores the Dimension of Doors, first introduced in the Mutants & Masterminds sourcebook Book of Magic. How much did you need to develop details about the dimension and how did you decide to use it as a storytelling device?

Since Richard had set things in motion with Gatekeeper, it made sense to continue his involvement, and that gave me the perfect opportunity to really play with the Dimension of Doors. I had the basic description, of course, but it was so open I had a lot of space to maneuver, and of course you can go anywhere with it , which just gives you endless possibilities. That was really at the crux of this book, too, flinging these heroes to strange new worlds—it’s a classic comic book trope, and I had a lot of fun playing that up. Plus it gives that great dichotomy between the group still in our world and the others in these new worlds and then the few in the Dimension itself.

 

While your novel works with characters from the previous book, you also get to introduce new characters, who don’t appear in Doom. Did you choose which ones from the Earth-Prime setting you wanted to use and why those particular characters?

We discussed it beforehand, which characters Richard wanted to use and which I wanted, and the good thing is, there was a lot of overlap! But yeah, his focusing on certain members of the Sentinels meant I got to continue using them but was also able to bring in their remaining teammates. Also, I really wanted to write the Shadow Knights, Richard basically used them in his specifically so I’d get to have them available for mine. They’re just too cool for words! Rhymer is also such an interesting character, and I hope my take on him is new and exciting.

 

The arcane and magical themes in the duology make it somewhat different from the usual four-color superhero fare. Your book, in particular, shows this contrast between the shadowy arcane world and the, let’s say simpler, world that superheroes live in. Which side do you think has a harder time of it in Lost & Never Found?

Oh, the superheroes, easily. Arcane types tend to be “in the know” as far as how the world really works, the forces underlying our own, etc. Superheroes tend to be more surface-oriented, particularly in a four-color setting—they deal with immediate problems but are often clueless about the shadows pulling everyone’s strings, the cosmic-scale objectives and conflicts, things like that. And that’s especially true because folks like Rhymer seem to delight in being vague and confusing in their explanations! There’s a lot of “mere mortals were never meant to know” when you’re dealing with arcane types, so the heroes are at a real disadvantage. An arcane character is far more likely to adjust quickly to a completely new world than a superhero, if only because the arcane know about other worlds and have probably studied them, even if they’ve never been to one themselves.

Of course, on the flip side, it’s a lot more common for arcane types to get paralyzed by indecision, weighing all the possible outcomes and all the ramifications. Superheroes tend to be a lot more immediate, a lot more direct, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need.

Author Aaron RosenbergAaron Rosenberg is the author of the best-selling DuckBob SF comedy series, the Relicant Chronicles epic fantasy series, the Areyat Islands fantasy pirate mystery series, the Dread Remora space-opera series, and, with David Niall Wilson, the O.C.L.T. occult thriller series. His tie-in work contains novels for Star Trek, Warhammer, World of WarCraft, Stargate: Atlantis, Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds, and Eureka and short stories for The X-Files, World of Darkness, Crusader Kings II, Deadlands, Master of Orion, and Europa Universalis IV. He has written children’s books (including the award-winning Bandslam: The Junior Novel and the #1 best-selling 42: The Jackie Robinson Story), educational books, and roleplaying games (including the Origins Award-winning Gamemastering Secrets). Aaron lives in New York. You can follow him online at gryphonrose.com, at facebook.com/gryphonrose, and on Twitter @gryphonrose.


You can back the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza RIGHT NOW over on Kickstarter!Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza!

The Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza is now funding on Kickstarter!

You can help us get long-demanded M&M 3E books back in print and pick up two brand new Earth-Prime novels while you’re at it!

Mutants & Masterminds fans, it’s time to get many of our Third Edition titles back in print and to do that we need heroes like you. We know you’d love to get print copies of books like Power Profiles and Gadget Guides, and we want to put them in your hands. We’ve also just run out of the fifth printing of the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook and with any RPG, you’ve got to keep your core rulebook in print.

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

So, here’s the plan. The initial offerings of the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza are the Deluxe Hero’s Handbook, Gadget Guides, and Power Profiles, and our basic funding goal is $30,000. As we unlock stretch goals beyond that, we will add more books to the campaign, and you can get them as add-ons to your pledge. The Cosmic Handbook, for example, becomes available as an add-on at $42,000. It’s that simple!

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza

Still not sure? Check out these Ronin Round Table articles by Steve Kenson:

Back the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza today!

New Earth-Prime Fiction!Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza: The Arcane Secrets Duology

Two new Mutants & Masterminds novels are available in several reward tiers and as add-ons:

  • The Doom That Came to San Francisco, by Richard Lee Byers: In three alternate worlds, three arch-villains are about to meet their final dooms. Before the final strikes fall, they are snatched away and drawn into a conspiracy to conquer Earth-Prime. Quickly overcoming Gatekeeper, the guardian of the nexus between worlds, they begin a full-out offensive in San Francisco. Arcane hero Thomas Rhymer, drawn to the battle by his dark premonitions, must quickly gather allies to defend the city and Earth-Prime!
  • Lost and Never Found, by Aaron Rosenberg: From arcane talismans scattered across the country to lost heroes scattered across the multiverse, Thomas Rhymer and his erstwhile allies have their work cut out for them if they are to stop the magical menace threatening Earth-Prime. This unlikely alliance of heroes must travel through magical doors into strange worlds, unlike anything they’ve experienced before, and make it back in time to save their own.

You’ll find even more information on the Reprint Extravaganza Kickstarter page.

Gadget Guides: The Right Tool for the Job

Mutants & Masterminds Gadget GuidesYou can tell that Power Profiles was written and produced serially, because we included “Armor Powers” pretty early on: powered armor is a common type of super-power in the comics, and it starts with “A” so it was right up-front on the list of power themes. However, it quickly became apparent that if we were going to do additional power profiles on all of the various power effects involving devices and equipment that the series (and the final book) was going to be almost twice as long!

So we decided early on to set aside all of the other power themes involving devices and equipment, other than things like “Tech Powers” and things that were innate super-powers interacting with technology or the like. That list was expanded upon with other themes specific to equipment, building an outline for a new series of serially-released PDFs we called Gadget Guides.

Gadget Guides is “Power Profiles, but for equipment” so it’s no surprise that it, too, quickly sold through its print run, with copies of the out-of-print book going for sky-high prices on resale sites. Even more than Power Profiles, Gadget Guides spans styles, genres, and power levels, with chapters ranging from Archaic Weapons and Steamtech (19th century steampunk) to Alien Technology, Cybertech, and Mecha! Robots get into the act as well; we ended up writing stats and a background for the giant robot on the cover, in fact. (It’s a Terminus probot.) It’s not even all technology: Gadget Guides includes chapters on magic items and magical rituals and on psychic technology and devices.

That makes Gadget Guides a kind of “stealth” genre book for Mutants & Masterminds as well. If you want to use M&M to run adventures or campaigns for cyberpunk, far-future science fiction, the steampunk 19th century, modern super-spies, battling giant mecha, super-vehicles, or an archaic setting with magic and psychic powers, the book has all kinds of tools to help you do any or all of that. That’s in addition to its usefulness for a general superheroic setting, which has to account for all of those various sub-genres and more. Gadget Guides pairs well with the newer Time Traveler’s Codex as well as Power Profiles, covering the technology available in different time periods and settings characters might visit (or come from).

Just like Power Profiles, Gadget Guides is a catalog of inspiration when it comes to particular character types. Just flip through its pages and you’ll have all kinds of ideas for heroes and villains using particular types of technology. It’s also a handy resource for inventors (covered in Appendix I of the book, by the way) and gadgeteers: Rather than having to build-out different devices on-the-fly at the game table, you can just reference the catalog of devices already built in Gadget Guides to see if they fit your character’s point “budget”!

In short, Gadget Guides does for equipment what Power Profiles did for innate powers, and then some, giving you a complete “toybox” for arming and equipping your Mutants & Masterminds characters.


You can back the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza RIGHT NOW over on Kickstarter!

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza!

Power Profiles: Giving You the Power

Mutants & Masterminds Power ProfilesUsed copies of Power Profiles have been selling for hundreds of dollars on auction sites. On the one hand, that’s flattering; it’s nice to have a book you wrote be in that kind of demand. On the other hand, it’s frustrating, because Power Profiles was meant to be the kind of useful resource every Mutants & Masterminds group would want to have, and obviously that’s true … if only we had it to sell to them.

Power Profiles developed as a twofold idea. First, a regular series of short-subject PDFs we could develop and release electronically, then collect into a book when we had enough of them, if they proved popular. Second, we discovered that one of the things gamers liked about the DC Adventures Heroes & Villains volumes were the huge number of worked examples of powers in Mutants & Masterminds. Players could say, “I want to play a character like X” from the DC Universe, and just look in the books for that character to see how they were put together. Since we knew the DC Adventures license was limited and the books had a limited lifespan, we decided a fun PDF series would be to look at various archetypal powers (and power-sets) in M&M. Thus, Power Profiles came into being.

It breaks things down into powers by theme: Air Powers, Animal Powers, Armor Powers, and so on, as opposed to the core M&M rules, which focus on the effects of various powers. With more than thirty power categories, each with two dozen or more powers, the book has over seven hundred ready-made powers for use in building M&M characters! So you can come up with a character theme (like “Ice Powers” or “Magic” for examples) and just flip through Power Profiles for ideas. What’s more, even the powers you don’t choose can be useful, serving as a catalog of potential power stunts a character with that theme might be able to do. The book is a treasure trove of character ideas and ways to customize or expand an existing character.

Power Profiles also offers some worked examples of “How do I…?” power creation questions, how to use the existing power effects for different types of powers, perfect for both players who don’t want to do all of that work, and just want to pick from a ready-made set of powers, and for power designers who want examples of some of the things the system can do. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has asked me at a convention event about a particular character or power type in M&M and all I had to do was pick up a copy of Power Profiles and show them how those powers were set up. With the book out of print, I sorely missed that option at recent events!

Demand for Power Profiles was the initial motivator behind the Reprint Extravaganza. Circumstances haven’t aligned for Green Ronin to send the sourcebook back to the printer but now, with the core rulebook also out-of-print, this Kickstarter is your opportunity to claim all of that power for yourself.


You can back the Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza RIGHT NOW over on Kickstarter, and if you back the campaign in the first 48 hours, you’ll get the full PDF of our upcoming book Astonishing Adventures Assembled FOR FREE!

Mutants & Masterminds Reprint Extravaganza!

The Cthulhu Awakens BackerKit…Awakens. Metaphorically.

Cthulhu awakens literally, of course.

In what seems like years ago due to pandemic and post-pandemic time dilation effects, but was actually through this past March, we ran our Kickstarter for Cthulhu Awakens, an AGE system game covering Cthulhu Mythos horror from the early years of the last century to the present: a period we call the Weird Century. Cthulhu Awakens evolves the iteration of AGE first seen in Modern AGE, drawing upon innovations from newer and upcoming AGE system books, as well as special rules unique to it. Cthulhu Awakens was developed to cover an epic span of time according to an inclusive ethic, but that isn’t its point of distinction. I think what makes it special is really the broad range of periods and tones, and an interpretation of the Mythos that puts game-centered storytelling before literary homage. Cthulhu Awakens can be about lurking fear or dramatic action—it’s up to you.

Well, the Kickstarter is done…and the BackerKit is live! That’s where we manage pledges to order the game and its related, uh, game stuff. Go to:

Backerkit Pre-order Store!

If you pledged a token amount to get reminded of this, now’s the time to up your pledge. If you want to tweak your pledge, maybe adding on some last-minute books, do it there.

And if this is new to you? Well, go anyway. This is your second chance, like the kind you don’t get unless you’re a Yithian agent consulting future records of yourself to avoid mistakes…but I’ve said too much. Well, except for one thing: If you’re locking in any kind of pledge, thank you!

Cthulhu Awakens Pre-order store is live

Eldritch Texts in Cthulhu Awakens

Eldritch Texts

Art by John Anthony DiGiovanni

 

As we noted in our update about powers and eldritch workings, anyone can “cast a spell” in Cthulhu Awakens as long as they have a text to work from that contains the proper instructions rendered in a language they can understand. This of course leads us to the question of what these references are, and how they’re presented in the game.

Each text’s description passes on the following information.

Content and Effects: A general description of the text’s contents, followed by any special effects they may have.

Decipher: Ability tests and any other conditions required to understand the text.

Praxes and Workings: Eldritch workings—the “spells” of Cthulhu Awakens—are divided into categories called praxes. Each praxis is a bundle of workings with related effects so that, for example, Geometry is the praxis of manipulating spacetime.

Alienation Test: Studying a text deeply is potentially disturbing and may trigger a test to avoid the effects of Alienation: how the Mythos alters minds who witness its phenomena.

The following example lays out this information about itself. Yes, the Necronomicon is covered, though the entry is too long for an update.

Euler Manuscript of Esoteric Mathematics

Beautifully bound in red leather and inked on cotton parchment, this manuscript holds the lesser-known mathematical musings of 18th Century Swiss polymath Leonhard Euler. The only copy now sits in a forgotten storage room at Miskatonic University’s school of Physics, though MU’s librarians are aware that it was lost somewhere on campus in the 1890s. They have not entirely forgotten to keep an eye out for it. Euler’s contemporaries described its contents as “perverse theology,” and implied it was an attempt to solve physical and metaphysical questions with the same pragmatism Euler devised to his other mathematical work—and that its conclusions were abhorrent to science and faith.

Content and Effects: The Euler Manuscript contains graphs, calculations, and beautiful, full-color illustrations of mathematical theories involving the movement of the universe. Using a series of superficially simple formulae, Euler further claims the nature of the universe must parallel the nature of God—or whatever entity is constructed from first principles, which takes God’s place. Subsequent calculations show that the cosmos is simultaneously moving and unmoving, and in attaining greater self-organization only intensifies its eventual breakdown into chaos. Time only exists as a flaw in human perception designed to ignore these contradictions, and any Creator could only have set things in motion to enjoy their destruction. Nihilism is nothing new, but nihilism backed by rigorous math is another thing entirely.

As a result, upon first deciphering the Euler Manuscript, the reader must make a TN 13 Willpower (Faith) test or suffer one level of the Fatigued Condition. Furthermore, casting from the text reminds the reader that the cosmos is meaningless, prompting the test each time the Euler Manuscript is used for this purpose.

Decipher: The reader must succeed at a TN 13 Intelligence (Mathematics) test.

Praxes and Workings: Geometry (angular travel, counter geometry, hyperbolic rotation), Outsiders (intrusion, outsider correspondence)

Alienation Test: Phenomena, TN 14, when studying praxes from the text.
Eldritch Texts

Eldritch Workings and the Powers of Cthulhu Awakens

Eldritch Workings

Art by Maurice Risulmi

 

Cthulhu Awakens provides three options for characters seeking extraordinary powers. First, the Inhuman Legacy talent represents individuals who discover they’ve inherited certain strange characteristics. They might be related to ghouls, Deep Ones, or some other weird lineage.

Second, some humans and other entities possess psychic disciplines, giving them the ability to alter other minds or the environment through force of will. Those of you familiar with Modern AGE will find some aspects familiar, but not others. Some powers have been changed, and instead of spending points or rolling for fatigue, psychics make a Power Test and Price Test—and the latter can have unpredictable consequences. Still, it’s an option for characters seeking a straightforward taste of supernatural might.

But the strongest “magic” of all can be found in eldritch workings, though these straddle the boundaries between science, magic, and what might be considered a form of ritual worship, while truly being none of these, as each working represents reaching out into the unknowable for power. All eldritch workings are lengthier actions that utilize challenge tests, but they do not require characters to invest in them as abilities, though they can do so to make casting easier. Anyone can pick up a copy of the Necronomicon and if they can understand it well enough to follow instructions, they can absolutely attempt the workings within. Eldritch workings are, of course, horrendously powerful—balance takes a back seat to ripping apart the laws of nature for story reasons, as you’ll see in the following example, with annotations in italics.

Hyperbolic Rotation (Generic name of the working; it can have other specific names)

Geometry (Praxis, or category it belongs to)

This working envisions local spacetime as a hyperbolic manifold, a curved plane wrapped around itself so that the Unseen Dimensions act as a vessel for perceptible dimensions. Rotating this structure can distort the relationship between two points in space, putting them closer together or further apart.

Rote Test: Intelligence (Physics), Intelligence (Computers), Intelligence (Electronics), TN 15 (rolls for challenge tests)

Alienation Test: Phenomena, TN 16 (Alienation Rest required for casters)

Interval: Medium (one minute) (How long each roll in the challenge tests uses up)

Trappings: 1) Top of the line computer loaded with dedicated software 2) Electrically-powered gyroscope 3) Silver wire that must be placed and anchored around the target area in specific configurations (examples of components and conditions required, which may differ based on text and altered by skilled casters)

Effect: In an area with a radius of up to 50 yards per casting rank, the caster can designate a number of alternate spatial relationships equal to their Intelligence + casting rank, with points of intersection no larger than 4 square yards each, though several can be combined for a larger single intersection. This can cause a stretch of road to wrap around itself, or a door on one floor of a building to open to a room on a different floor—or in mid-air. All points must exist within the working’s radius. Within the duration, the caster can use an Activate minor action to shift one spatial relationship with range of their senses so that, for example, they can walk through a door to one destination, then ensure the next person who passes through it goes somewhere else.

This working’s effects last one hour per casting rank.

Magister Effect: It no longer requires an Activate action to shift a spatial relationship. Furthermore, at this rank the caster can fix one or more spatial relationships within the effect duration so that they become permanent, but they can no longer be shifted at will except by another casting of hyperbolic rotation. (When a character has special expertise in the working, they can accomplish this.)

Doom: The working’s area of effect vanishes from normal spacetime, with plausible environmental features filling in the gap. The area of effect now exists in a time and location of the Game Master’s choosing, such as 100 years ago, Antarctica, or Yuggoth, taking any occupants with it. (The potential result of a miscast working.)

Secret History in Cthulhu Awakens

Secret History

Art by Tentacles and Teeth

In expanding the source material to cover the Weird Century, Cthulhu Awakens presents a world with a secret history, where the Mythos is never acknowledged in public life, but still represents a pervasive, dangerous influence. This kind of thing isn’t at all unusual for horror and urban fantasy—it’s hard to keep the world recognizable and acknowledge Cthulhu is real—but in our case, this means including somewhat radical changes to the past as well, reaching all the way back to geological epochs. In the game we divide the setting’s history into the following loose epochs.

The Colonization Wars

Beginning over a billion years ago, rival alien factions battled for domination of the world. These included the city-building “elder things,” the body-stealing Yithians, the Mi-Go travelers from Yuggoth and beyond, and Cthulhu and its minions, but the Skotomorphs, a species so strange it has evidently never communicated with any other, and so destructive its actions created the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, presented perhaps the greatest danger. After that event, but in the waning aeons of this period, various hominid species evolved, and some were altered by alien factions, though the relationship between alien-modified hominids and modern humans is unknown.

Secret Human History

In Cthulhu Awakens, most people learn the same history we do, where slow waves of migration from Africa introduced humans to the rest of the world, and the first cities arise around 10,000 BCE. Only a small number of fringe scholars and subject matter experts who focus on certain highly sensitive issues for various governments and other interested parties know the truth: Humans have founded nations, forged bronze, and fought wars to drench the idols of strange gods for perhaps 80,000 years. Furthermore, nonhuman hominids (and, perhaps, beings who never descended from apes at all) had their own nations, in lost islands and vast underground realms, where they used eldritch technologies. Flood myths and other tales of catastrophe may explain why these civilizations fell.

Mundane History to the Weird Century

From 10,000 BCE on, the main course of human history is well-known to the public, but it has secret aspects ranging from the caves of K’n-yan, whose existence is kept secret by the US government, to a certain forbidden zone in Antarctica where the few authorized visitors must avoid using modern equipment to prevent accidentally teaching its clever, shapeshifting residents how to access computer systems or create horrendous weapons. The last 100 years of ordinary history constitutes the Weird Century, where Cthulhu stirs, and the effects of the prehuman colonization wars seem poised to wrench the world out of any predictable path.

The Weird Century

Weird Century

Art by Andrew Vasilchenko

The key setting concept of Cthulhu Awakens is the Weird Century, a rough period from the 1920s to the present characterized by rising Mythos activity. Isolated cults such as the Esoteric Order of Dagon become worldwide movements powered by advances in technology and global integration. Conspiracies attain greater sophistication and infiltrate governments, and governments themselves must conspire to keep humanity safe from the Mythos—at least, the parts they know about.

Classic stories in the public domain form the roots of the Weird Century, but with a proviso: We assume the accounts are unreliable, influenced by bias and incomplete information. The Weird Century provides what is, for our purposes, a more accurate view of the world under the Mythos, but still doesn’t answer every question. From a game design perspective, this approach means we can not just eliminate problematic elements of the source material and give ourselves the whole arc of the last 100 years to play in, but tailor the truth to fit the demands of a roleplaying game setting, as distinct from a world in which to set non-interactive fiction. That means finding groups characters can affiliate themselves with, as well as antagonists and conflicts that can support an extended campaign. It means we can include elements like:

The Carter-West Agency: In the 21st Century, scions of the Carter and West families join forces to start a peculiar investigation agency which eavesdrops on strange cults as often as on cheating spouses and the other mainstays of private eyes.

The Court of the Dead: Led by their queen Nitocris, the dead but ever-stirring followers of Nyarlathotep crawl across the Weird Century, though in later decades they must contend with reanimated rivals created through various versions of Herbert West’s infamous techniques.

The Implicit Cartography Group: After following leads to a cache of sensitive documents about the future, the analysts of the Implicit Cartography group use it to uncover sensitive sites in rival states…and hoard an arsenal of eldritch texts and artifacts.

Thalassology: The ocean is, of course, a ready metaphor for the primordial self and evolution, and this human potential movement harnesses that to supposedly guide followers to their best selves, especially after they spend thousands of dollars on initiation fees and sign multiple non-disclosure agreements. Coastal cities around the world host Encounter Centers, but the most prestigious is in the otherwise staid, suburb of Innsmouth.

There’s much more going on besides these examples, from the Mi-Go harvesting the brains of public intellectuals to the ambiguous effects of Yithian history manipulation—and that’s before getting alternate universes. That is, after all, the purpose of the Weird Century: to create a history filled with opportunities to tell your own stories.