Regency England: a time of social niceties, grand balls, romantic intrigues, and disappointments—as described in the novels of Jane Austen. Through the lens of the Cthulhu Mythos, horrors weave themselves into the hearts of everyday Georgians—from the richest to the poorest.

Regency Cthulhu: Dark Designs in Jane Austen’s England is a historical sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu.

Game designer Sandy Petersen returns again to Lovecraftian gaming with a new board game: Call of Cthulhu Terror Paths

Forty years ago Sandy’s roleplaying game Call of Cthulhu was published by Chaosium. It changed the world of gaming and also made the then-obscure writer Lovecraft and his creations (such as Cthulhu) both cultural phenomena.

Now Sandy is back with a new board game inspired by the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and produced under license from Chaosium Inc.

Get Started in RuneQuest with beautiful full-color PDF!

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is an all-new edition of one of the world’s most influential and acclaimed fantasy roleplaying games. First appearing almost 40 years ago, RuneQuest is as dynamic and vital as ever. This all-new, deluxe edition introduces RuneQuest and its setting of Glorantha to new players everywhere.

Try out a skill-based percentile system that balances experience-based progression with deadly combat!

The core rules of RuneQuest are essential for players and gamemasters, as they contain all the rules for character creation, starting homelands, background history, professions, skills, starting Runes and magic, and the cults and gods whose influence will define your character’s activities. Further, the rules for character advancement are contained here, for the times between adventures.

Fairy tales are fantastical tales in which anything—absolutely anything—can happen. Most fairy tales don’t involve fairies. Some have morals, some don’t. Some are for kids, some aren’t. The oldest were told by adults to adults.

Fairy tales are populated by the weird and the bizarre. Elves and dragons, bridge trolls and deep-sea mermaids, sprites and goblins, talking animals and talking trees and sometimes, even fairies. There are no limits to what can be used in a fairy tale, or to what a fairy tale can be about.

Once Upon an Apocalypse contains fairy tales about zombies. Or, in some cases, zombie stories with fairies, or even fairy tales in which zombies also appear.

As the Introduction states, this is a distillation of the core of Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing system, the mechanic that has powered many of the company’s best-known games such as Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest. While the full system fills many pages, it is simple enough for the core to be presented fully-playable here, as an introduction or for use with a setting other than the main game lines.

The Introduction continues with an explanation of what role-playing games are all about, particularly useful if you’re using this work as an introduction to this type of game as well as to the BRP system. In describing what role-playing consists of, mention is made of the range of genres and settings you can play in…

Cubicle 7 Entertainment is producing a roleplaying game based on the award-winning Laundry series (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, and the forthcoming The Fuller Memorandum) by the even-more-award-winning Charles Stross, and uses the also-award-winning Basic Roleplaying System (Call Of Cthulhu) by Chaosium Inc.

“We love the Laundry Files novels, so we’re really excited about this game,” said Dominic McDowall-Thomas, Cubicle 7 Director. “The world of the Laundry is a perfect mix of espionage, conspiracy and tentacled menace from beyond the stars.”

“The Malleus Monstrorum: Creatures, Gods & Forbidden Knowledge” is a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu RPG by Chaosium Inc. The book includes entries on all of the creatures described in the works of H.P. Lovecraft as well as other authors who dabbled in the Cthulhu Mythos, such as Ramsey Campbell and Clark Ashton Smith. Also included are some of the critters created specifically for CoC adventures and supplements.

Overall the Monstrorum is an excellent book, not only for CoC players, but for any fan of Lovecraft or the Mythos. It is a great source of adventure ideas just in reading the creature descriptions and story excerpts. Fans of the source material will enjoy having so many bizarre creatures in one volume, while those new to the Mythos will find themselves looking up the source material to learn more about the Elder Gods and their servants.

Review by Michael Erb

Hardboiled Cthulhu is billed as an anthology of “Two-Fisted Tales of Tentacled Terror”, and mostly it delivers. However, the quality is quite uneven, though in some cases pretty creative. For example, “Eldritch Fellas” by Tim Curran, a “Goodfellas” pastiche with the Great Old Ones as mobsters, while initially amusing, was far too long. It wasn’t really clever enough to justify its genre-bending inclusion here.

Likewise “Day of Iniquity” by Steven Shrewsbury is neither particularly hard-boiled nor terrifying.

I’ve been reading a lot of Mythos fiction lately. It started with my review of Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition, which was a lot of fun and renewed my interest in the genre once more. Since then I’ve picked up several books and was blown away by the Trail of Cthulhu RPG from Pelgrane Press. So I started digging into the fiction collections even more…

Frontier Cthulhu is a bit different, having characters explore the “frontier” throughout the ages and encountering dark, twisted horrors along the way.

In the early 1900s, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft created a series of books and short stories set in a dark world beset by cultist, monsters and unfathomable “things” from space and other dimensions. These works collectively became known as the “Cthulhu Mythos,” named for one of the Great Old Ones that slumbered in the lost city of Rályeh, awaiting the end of the world.

Chaosium’s “Call of Cthulhu” horror roleplaying game captures the feel of Lovecraft’s writings and puts players in the roles of investigators bent on uncovering, and surviving, the dark lore of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Review by Michael Erb

Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft

The Great Old Ones ruled the earth aeons before the rise of humankind. Originally they came from the gulfs of space and were cast down by even greater beings. Remains of their cyclopean cities and forbidden knowledge can still be found on remote islands in the Pacific, buried amid the shifting sands of vast deserts, and in the frigid recesses of the polar extremes. Now they sleep — some deep within the enveloping earth and others beneath the eternal sea, in the drowned city of R’lyeh, preserved in the waters by the spells of mighty Cthulhu. When the stars are right they will rise, and once again walk this Earth.

The contracts are signed in blood, the sacrifices have been made, and mighty Cthulhu has bestowed his blessings. Reality Deviant Publications is happy to announce we are the newest Chaosium licensee! RDP will focus on support of the True20 game system by bringing fans of all things Cthulhu outstanding game supplements which bring H.P. Lovecraft’s deliciously maddening Mythos to life!

“I am so excited about this agreement with the fine people at Chaosium,” said David Jarvis, president of RDP. “I’ve always wanted the chance to write and develop gaming material based on H.P. Lovecraft’s works. To be officially allowed to add our own pages to his legacy is a privilege, one which we don’t take lightly. Fans of True20 and Call of Cthulhu won’t be dissapointed.”