Call of Cthulhu RPG inspirational reading material

A follow up on my previous entry on Worlds of Cthulhu, having read the magazines I became interested in what more the RPG game Call of Cthulhu had to offer so I bought the main rulebook and a sourcebook. Just as with the Worlds of Cthulhu magazines these books make great reading material, almost like a encyclopedia of Lovecraft monsters, cults and everything else thematically connected to the weird horror of his novels.

The main rulebook, "Call of Cthulhu" contains a lot of information about the great Old ones and creatures dwelling in the dark corners of hte earth while the "Keepers companion" lists a lot of monsters, cults, characters, books and locations. Just as with the Worlds of Cthulhu magazine the books on their own make great reading material if you have an interest for Lovecraft stories and the "mythos" he has created.

There is a ton of useful stuff to pick from and use in games like pulp/horror games like Strange Aeons, especially if you are looking to create your own scenarios or have picked up a grotesque miniatures and don't have an idea what to do with it.

Great reading material and once again highly recommended if you are interested in these type of things.

Worlds of Cthulhu magazine

A few weeks ago I bought a couple of "Worlds of Cthulhu" magazines to serve as inspiration for Strange Aeons and Empire of the Dead games. Got the magazines at a sale for a discount price but even at full price they are as thick as most paperback rulebooks out on the market with roughly 120 pages of great content revolving around Lovecraftian adventures of horror.

The magazine is meant to be used as a compliment to the Call of Cthulhu RPG game by "Chaosium" and the content spans from modern to 1920's, medieval and 17th century stuff. The content is also largely made up by RPG adventures and scenarios, describing locations, monsters, agents and other relevant stuff. The modern and future adventures aren't really what interests me as my preference is in the original Lovecraft setting of the 1920's and earlier, mainly because of the decreased efficiency of weapons and more flavorful settings. Luckily there is an even distribution between all eras..

Also, what really matters the most for me as a miniature wargamer is simply the inspiration the content of these magazines provide. Many of the RPG adventures can be translated to the tabletop with little effort. And even if you don't play miniature wargames or have any interest in the RPG aspects they are often great reading material for fans of all things Lovecraft.

I highly recommend checking this magazine out if this is in your area of interest.

Strange Aeons 18th century mod Version 1.2!

Version 1.2 includes a lot of changes and tweaks.

Among the changes is the return of Close Combat Bonus to die rolls, this is to make monsters and stuff from the books easier to use. Monster weapons such as claws, teeth etc has kept their CCB but their D+1/+2/+3 has been swapped for a D6/8/10 instead to be in line with the rest of the weapons.

I added a "translation" of standard equipment found on agents and monsters, .45 handgun = Smoothbore musket and so on, The starting Build Points are increased to 18 and there are some other campaign related notes to make the transition between original and modification a bit easier.

The Dexterity bonus when dealing damage with certain weapons have been explained, and overall the rules have been divided into categories to make things easier for the reader.


Light and heavy armor (boiled leather/cuirass) but also included "Warpaint" for humans is in now as well.

Some other minor tweaks have been added, and some quirks straightened out. For instance the critical miss with a ranged weapon has been changed to adding +1 action needed to reload a weapon. This is to make weapons without "Ready" also suffer a penalty.

The length of the rules is pretty much the same, a version history page has been added to keep track of the major changes.

Version 1.1 was downloaded by 114 people to date, which is very cool. I hope that anyone who downloaded the first version will give the 1.2 version a try since this really is a pretty much finished product and the changes added sprung from playtesting the 1.1 rules.


(New working link)
Download link to version 1.2

3 games of Strange Aeons 18th century mod

Strange Aeons 18th century mod testing experience
Played a mini campaign of 3 scenarios testing my modification further.  We ran into a few quirks and a couple of small and a few larger things will need to be changed. I won’t have the time to work with these rules until after next weekend so there will be an updated version around then.

The most important change is Close Combat bonus which was actually meant to be Damage Bonus but for some reason was named CC bonus.  Quite a difference.

Small things include translating a couple of standard equipment Lurkers might start out with into the new weapon chart.
Overall the mod work but you have to keep in mind that it is still early WIP even if the framework and my vision of what I want to achieve with this is there – some things obviously need to me fleshed out further.

One thing that was noted is that while Strange Aeons vanilla was quite shooting oriented, the 18th century mod is more geared towards close combat. With weapons being slower things actually have a fair chance of catching up with you and engage in hand to hand fighting.  It certainly adds a new flavor. Also, we played 3 very brutal games. It does feel as if the lethality has increased a little – so I will push the effects of the damage chart by 1 step. Oh and since stuff has become a little more expensive we started out with 18BP rather than 15BP. You still have the chance of begin with a character and 2 agents armed with standard equipment this way. So the first 2 games were 18BP and the last was 26BP.

Lurkers during all 3 scenarios were led by a rouge Treshold agent “Lieutenant Blücher”. To his aid he had cultists, a conglomerate, giant rat and a hybrid.
The Treshold were led by character Frederic DuBois, pole armed French officer and his two assistant agents Louis and Albert..

Scenarios played were Fight, followed by Treasure hunt and finally Retrieve the artifacts.  The Treshold gang to their asses kicked in each scenario even though it was close in Retrieve the treasure hunt.

Frederic DuBois managed to survive all encounters unscathed but his followers suffered greatly.

Louis suffered from a Chest Wound, which was followed up by Agoraphobia in the last encounter. Albert was first afflicted with a Head Trauma, suitably followed by Amnesia the following game. He was retired for game number 2 and in his place the Treshold agents recruited  Agent Joseph and two civilians – Guiseppe and Bertrand. Guiseppe would me killed in the lsat scenario while Bertrand along with Frederic would just be Minor Injuries.
It should be noted that the Lurkers rolled above average on pretty much all rolls. They had quite some luck in all 3 games. Though I loved their evil rouge character and his 1 die re-roll per game rule which forced the Treshold gang to re-roll good rolls in all 3 games.
I hope all pieces will fall into place after a few more games. I don’t want to dig around in the core mechanics beyond combat and weapons though I will need to rewrite a bit more and explain things more clearly. Which would make the rule document expand by 1-2 more pages.

I’ll make a newsflash when version 1.2 is ready (again, it should be up sometime around next weekend).