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The Cthulhu Hack
The Cthulhu Hack is a standalone game of investigation horror, pitting ordinary people against the sanity-shattering horrors of Lovecraftian gods and monsters. With an elegant dice mechanic and fast, player-focused game play, The Cthulhu Hack is designed for quick and easy pick-up play - and now updated with optional rules playtested over the year since the release of the first edition.
Based on the hugely popular The Black Hack and the works of H P Lovecraft, The Cthulhu Hack uses a simple dice mechanic to emulate the dwindling investigative resources and declining sanity of ordinary people facing cosmic horrors.
Includes:
- read-to-play archetypes for quick pick-up play or a fast and flexible character creation system to tailor Investigators to your specific needs
- a range of mechanics, both standard and optional, to tailor the game to your style - including Wealth, Fortune, Adrenalin and Shock
- a complete adventure - Save Innsmouth - and a 2-page example of play
Based on the hugely popular The Black Hack and the works of H P Lovecraft, The Cthulhu Hack uses a simple dice mechanic to emulate the dwindling investigative resources and declining sanity of ordinary people facing cosmic horrors.
Includes:
- read-to-play archetypes for quick pick-up play or a fast and flexible character creation system to tailor Investigators to your specific needs
- a range of mechanics, both standard and optional, to tailor the game to your style - including Wealth, Fortune, Adrenalin and Shock
- a complete adventure - Save Innsmouth - and a 2-page example of play
44 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2017
8 people want to read
About the author
Paul Baldowski
23 books11 followersInternational playboy, raconteur, dilettante extraordinaire and abject fibber.
Writer of matters gaming and Tudor, father, reader of many books, collector of worthless knick-knacks. Not old enough to really grumble, but getting there.
Writer of matters gaming and Tudor, father, reader of many books, collector of worthless knick-knacks. Not old enough to really grumble, but getting there.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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October 9, 2021Note: I am rushing this review because I thought, for once, it might be nice to discuss a Bundle of Holding offering while it was still available -- and bonus: I like these books overall.
Available here (and as of this writing, the level up price is only $16.14): https://bundleofholding.com/presents/...
First, what is The Cthulhu Hack?
Based on the The Black Hack, a simplified/streamlined D&D (part of the Old School Renaissance, see my review of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG), this is a simplified horror RPG focused on Cthulhu. As the copy says, you can learn it in whatever amount of minutes -- but note, this wasn't the most simple RPG. I was expecting something like Lasers & Feelings and other 1-page RPGs, but the quickstart rules are actually two pretty dense pages. (See for yourself here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/... ).
So yes, your characters are basically always going to be rolling your save numbers (against threats) or your resource numbers (to make progress), but each of those has subtypes, and then maybe your occupation gives you special rules, etc. In other words, this isn't a beer-&-pretzels game to play while waiting for other people to show up.
Rather, it seems to be a simple but robust game, which also seems to have learned from a bunch of modern games, like Gumshoe. (So you always get the clue as long as you have a point in that resource, but sometimes getting the clue will lower your resource.)
What else comes in the bundle for The Cthulhu Hacck?
Several accessories:
(1) Strange Materials: based on news articles about the discovery of a gel-like substance on the moon, this short accessory gives you 6 ideas for that. A fine example of how to turn news into adventure seeds.
(2) Rhan-Tegoth: 6 pages on this otherworldly entity and how you might use it in a game.
(3)From Unformed Realms: random tables to come up with new monsters (with an appendix for coming up with an adventure background). I'm beginning to enjoy the stochastic and surreal of the random table.
(4) The Dark Brood: a sourcebook on Shub-Niggurath, a bunch of monsters, adventure seeds, notes (and random tables) on worshippers. I liked it, but here's where I started to really feel the lack of art in these books. You can only read about "excarnated human heads with spider legs" so many times before you just want to see a picture, am I right?
(5) Haunter of the Dark: an annotated version of the Lovecraft story, showing how to use it as an adventure, and more notes on how to turn any Lovecraft story into an adventure. Interesting from an emulative standpoint, but… aren’t there a lot of adventures? There is some reason to play some of the hits -- not every one is a jaded, Clark Ashton Smith-style decadent -- but at the same time, I don't see myself riffing on Lovecraft stories for adventures. (Or maybe just because I'm not GMing any Cthulhu games.)
And a few adventures and adventure collections, discussed here with spoilers:
(1) Forgotten Duty: a Roman-era trapped monster infects dreams to effect a release. Fine.
(2) Thro Centuries Fixed: something about the Great Race of Yith and what it might be like to connect with someone over being inhabited by them -- I really couldn't get into this one, might need to try again as I think it's more about trying to read at this time of night.
(3) Valkyrie 9: on a future moon mining base, a crazed miner who believes in Norse myths (which were really based on mi-go visits (eh)) attracts the the attention of the mi-go, who remove the PCs brains and put them in the mine's drones to get work done, but now the drones are trying to fight back, though their sensors can't directly see the mi-go. I'm not a huge fan of the future setting -- I like my horror domestic, so I can feel it -- but some really fun ideas here.
(4) Mothers Love: a collection of three Shub-niggurath adventures (two that didn't grab me -- about Circe as a dangerous modern-day cultist, Malta as a hotbed of cult activity -- and one that did -- about a cursed treehouse bringing home its tainted children).
(5) Three Faces of the Wendigo: originally conceived under the much better title Hello, Mr Wendigo!, this is a collection of three wendigo adventures (one that left me cold, about getting lost in the woods; one that was a little overstuffed with cultists luring hunters out of town to kill them and also going to attack the now-unprotected town -- but which has a boffo nightmare scenario with the town-as-wilderness at the end; and one really great one about a town driven to madness by eating monster meat and the horrors that people inflict on each other).
And note to Cthulhu adventure writers: please put the time period in your adventure, usually as the first thing -- heck, put it in the title.
Anything else?
This bundle also includes the Cthulhu Hack author's other game, The Dee Sanction, which has a very fun premise (and a Hack-like game engine): Queen Elizabeth has outlawed magic, but John Dee, her astrologer-spy, has convinced her to create a magic spy bureau with the discards and temporarily pardoned, who now have to protect the realm. There's some notes in the ad-copy about how the PCs are atoning or wounded, but I didn't really get that impression. In fact, while I like the premise, I feel like this is a game that might benefit from a hack of its own, as some of the mechanics (and some of the language around the mechanics, like breaking down certain character aspects into the Four Humours) seemed a little too ornate for me.
Available here (and as of this writing, the level up price is only $16.14): https://bundleofholding.com/presents/...
First, what is The Cthulhu Hack?
Based on the The Black Hack, a simplified/streamlined D&D (part of the Old School Renaissance, see my review of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG), this is a simplified horror RPG focused on Cthulhu. As the copy says, you can learn it in whatever amount of minutes -- but note, this wasn't the most simple RPG. I was expecting something like Lasers & Feelings and other 1-page RPGs, but the quickstart rules are actually two pretty dense pages. (See for yourself here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/... ).
So yes, your characters are basically always going to be rolling your save numbers (against threats) or your resource numbers (to make progress), but each of those has subtypes, and then maybe your occupation gives you special rules, etc. In other words, this isn't a beer-&-pretzels game to play while waiting for other people to show up.
Rather, it seems to be a simple but robust game, which also seems to have learned from a bunch of modern games, like Gumshoe. (So you always get the clue as long as you have a point in that resource, but sometimes getting the clue will lower your resource.)
What else comes in the bundle for The Cthulhu Hacck?
Several accessories:
(1) Strange Materials: based on news articles about the discovery of a gel-like substance on the moon, this short accessory gives you 6 ideas for that. A fine example of how to turn news into adventure seeds.
(2) Rhan-Tegoth: 6 pages on this otherworldly entity and how you might use it in a game.
(3)From Unformed Realms: random tables to come up with new monsters (with an appendix for coming up with an adventure background). I'm beginning to enjoy the stochastic and surreal of the random table.
(4) The Dark Brood: a sourcebook on Shub-Niggurath, a bunch of monsters, adventure seeds, notes (and random tables) on worshippers. I liked it, but here's where I started to really feel the lack of art in these books. You can only read about "excarnated human heads with spider legs" so many times before you just want to see a picture, am I right?
(5) Haunter of the Dark: an annotated version of the Lovecraft story, showing how to use it as an adventure, and more notes on how to turn any Lovecraft story into an adventure. Interesting from an emulative standpoint, but… aren’t there a lot of adventures? There is some reason to play some of the hits -- not every one is a jaded, Clark Ashton Smith-style decadent -- but at the same time, I don't see myself riffing on Lovecraft stories for adventures. (Or maybe just because I'm not GMing any Cthulhu games.)
And a few adventures and adventure collections, discussed here with spoilers:
(1) Forgotten Duty: a Roman-era trapped monster infects dreams to effect a release. Fine.
(2) Thro Centuries Fixed: something about the Great Race of Yith and what it might be like to connect with someone over being inhabited by them -- I really couldn't get into this one, might need to try again as I think it's more about trying to read at this time of night.
(3) Valkyrie 9: on a future moon mining base, a crazed miner who believes in Norse myths (which were really based on mi-go visits (eh)) attracts the the attention of the mi-go, who remove the PCs brains and put them in the mine's drones to get work done, but now the drones are trying to fight back, though their sensors can't directly see the mi-go. I'm not a huge fan of the future setting -- I like my horror domestic, so I can feel it -- but some really fun ideas here.
(4) Mothers Love: a collection of three Shub-niggurath adventures (two that didn't grab me -- about Circe as a dangerous modern-day cultist, Malta as a hotbed of cult activity -- and one that did -- about a cursed treehouse bringing home its tainted children).
(5) Three Faces of the Wendigo: originally conceived under the much better title Hello, Mr Wendigo!, this is a collection of three wendigo adventures (one that left me cold, about getting lost in the woods; one that was a little overstuffed with cultists luring hunters out of town to kill them and also going to attack the now-unprotected town -- but which has a boffo nightmare scenario with the town-as-wilderness at the end; and one really great one about a town driven to madness by eating monster meat and the horrors that people inflict on each other).
And note to Cthulhu adventure writers: please put the time period in your adventure, usually as the first thing -- heck, put it in the title.
Anything else?
This bundle also includes the Cthulhu Hack author's other game, The Dee Sanction, which has a very fun premise (and a Hack-like game engine): Queen Elizabeth has outlawed magic, but John Dee, her astrologer-spy, has convinced her to create a magic spy bureau with the discards and temporarily pardoned, who now have to protect the realm. There's some notes in the ad-copy about how the PCs are atoning or wounded, but I didn't really get that impression. In fact, while I like the premise, I feel like this is a game that might benefit from a hack of its own, as some of the mechanics (and some of the language around the mechanics, like breaking down certain character aspects into the Four Humours) seemed a little too ornate for me.
June 25, 2022
Fun, simple system. Simple enough that I made a random character generator for it for my players to use. Especially handy for those who don't want to buy the rulebook (though I think most did; it's also nicely priced for an RPG book)
I continue to be immensely entertained by my players getting used to a "roll under" d20 system, where rolling a 1 is good and a 20 is bad. It's very easy to create a custom monster, and adjust it on the fly if it's too weak or too strong for the current situation.
There is a second edition on its way, and I'm curious to see what's been added/changed, but if you just want a simple, easy to learn system, this is a good one.
I continue to be immensely entertained by my players getting used to a "roll under" d20 system, where rolling a 1 is good and a 20 is bad. It's very easy to create a custom monster, and adjust it on the fly if it's too weak or too strong for the current situation.
There is a second edition on its way, and I'm curious to see what's been added/changed, but if you just want a simple, easy to learn system, this is a good one.
November 26, 2023
Básicamente es un sistema de juego para jugar a la llamada de Cthulhu, más sencillo y casi sin detallar ninguna ambientación.
El sistema esta bien, pero hay mejores cosas ahí fuera para jugar a lo mismo.
La aventura que lo acompaña tampoco es ninguna maravilla, poco detallada y poco original.
No es un producto que recomendar, excepto para los muy coleccionistas de los juegos basados en los mitos
El sistema esta bien, pero hay mejores cosas ahí fuera para jugar a lo mismo.
La aventura que lo acompaña tampoco es ninguna maravilla, poco detallada y poco original.
No es un producto que recomendar, excepto para los muy coleccionistas de los juegos basados en los mitos
August 3, 2025
Cthulhu Hack, des règles simples pour jouer à du Mythe de Cthulhu.
80 pages qui s'etofferont avec une version française emplie de supplément.
En tout cas, ça donne envie de tester, malgré des scénarios que je trouve plat.
80 pages qui s'etofferont avec une version française emplie de supplément.
En tout cas, ça donne envie de tester, malgré des scénarios que je trouve plat.
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