Mon Dieu! Cthulhu

A few years back Modiphius released their excellent range of Achtung! Cthulhu rpg books, bringing the fight against the Old Ones to the Second World War. One of the adventures for this included a mysterious character called Seraph, who guides the heroes through a mission behind enemy lines in Finland. This adventure also came with a novella version of the adventure, which was a great little read.

Earlier today they sent out an email announcing another novel featuring Seraph called The Crystal Void. This time our mystery man is catapulted back in time to the age of Napoleon to continue the fight against the creeping darkness. It also marks the start of Modiphius' new setting, Mon Dieu! Cthulhu. Effectively Sharpe Vs Cthulhu... I'm sure someone has fan-ficced this somewhere, but the setting sounds like a lot of fun, especially if this also sees miniatures that we can use to turn Sharpe Practice into a mythos game.

If you fancy giving it a look, the pdf version is £2 from their webstore, or £1.80 if you follow this link to the store and search for Crystal Void.

Cold Ones

 

Cold ones are semi-corporial shades composed of snow and ice; found only in areas of the bitterest cold these servitors stalk their prey by appearing near (or around) their chosen target and freeze them to death.

The models are from Modiphius' Acthung! Cthulhu range (again).

Mutant Chronicles RPG is back

The guys and girls responsible for the brilliantly run Achtung! Cthulhu kickstarter, Modiphius, are back with their next campaign. Chris and co. have picked up the RPG license to the '90's classic, Mutant Chronicles. Mutant Chronicles is a dieselpunk sci-fi setting, where technology is failing due to the invading Dark Legion and the massive corporations that run the solar system are trying to fight each other as well as the incoming hordes of the Legion.

The campaign can be seen: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/mutant-chronicles-3rd-ed-rpg

In a great display of support, the campaign reached it's initial goal (and then some) in the first day, which means there are already two books, the Player's guide and the Core Rule/Setting book. If their previous campaign is anything to go by, these books will be very well produced and the PDF Master (all unlocked books in pdf) level will be well worth the buy in. The full print level of Necromagus is, currently, a little on the steep side, bug

Later in the campaign they intend to work with Prodos,  to produce a series of characters that can be used in the RPG and in Prodos' tabletop game.

The Trellborg Monstrosities

While I was away I started to read the next Achtung! Cthulhu rpg adventure, The Trellborg Monstrosities. This mission is set much later in the war than the previous two and pits the players against Black Sun operatives who have discovered a long forgotten Norse saga and the ruins of an ancient temple that the saga tells was where Odin was hung.

As usual, the adventure is well formatted with some nice maps and accompanying illustrations. Having said that, this time I'm not quite as keen on some of the images, but that's more of a clash of styles (mine and the artist's) than it being truly awful... unlike the artwork in Westwind's Secrets of the Third Reich books.

So far, it's quite good and seems to offer a few different ways of getting the party to where you need them to be, depending on your party's ability to be sneaky. You've also got the added bonus of getting a novelisation of the adventure in the Drivethrurpg download. The adventure book references pages in the book for additional ideas or tips on how to run certain situations, which I thought was a nice touch. I've yet to read the story, so I'll have to come back to that later.

The one thing that this has reminded me of though is that I never did finish the Hero Lab files for the first two books... I can't even remember now why I had to stop writing them. I suspect it was something to do with the inability to create one of the NPCs with the valid ruleset. There was one character who had been given a combination of things that isn't (as far as I could work out) actually legal with the Savage Worlds rules. With everything now in boxes, I seem to have some time on my hands to go back and try to work out the best way to approach the issue.

We should be getting the first of the core setting books for Achtung! Cthulhu sometime soon too, so I may be better off waiting for that to arrive before getting too far into things.

Dust RPG

I woke up this morning to an interesting announcement from Modiphius, the producers of the Acthung! Cthulhu RPG... they have acquired the license to produce the official DUST RPG.Earlier this year, during their A!C kickstarter campaign, they approached Paolo Parente to produce an official crossover book as a bit of fun. It seems that book has been going so well that it's spawned a full RPG of it's own.

I like the idea of the campaign books including Tactics and Warfare scenarios as well as the RPG material, allowing for a good mass combat system to be in place when needed. According to the Modiphius forum, the RPG system will not be using any of the systems A!C currently supports; it will be using the dice and some of the mechanics from Dust Tactics/Dust Warfare. Having now read this, those new scenarios make more sense. There will also, apparently, be a guide on porting characters to/from DT/DW and the RPG system.

This raises an interesting question though... recently Paolo announced that Warfare and Tactics stats/campaigns would come bundled together in the future, allowing both systems to expand at the same rate. I wonder if this announcement will extend out to include RPG stats for new characters and units next year? It makes sense and would be a great cross-sell for everyone.

And now the official announcement.

British publisher Modiphius Entertainment has announced a licensing deal with Paolo Parente’s DUST Studio to create a tabletop roleplaying game set in the DUST universe.
Scheduled for Spring-Summer 2014, DUST Adventures will consist of a core rulebook and setting guide and will be followed by supplements and campaigns. The books will feature both new artwork as well as stunning photography of DUST miniatures.

The campaigns will also feature DUST Tactics and DUST Warfare missions allowing fans of the miniatures games and roleplayers alike to enjoy the DUST universe in new ways. The system being written for DUST Adventures draws heavily on the elegant systems of DUST Tactics, uses the same familiar dice, and aims to easily bring characters from DUST Tactics in to the roleplaying game or roleplaying characters in to your DUST Tactics or Warfare games.

Campaigns will explore the background behind the major events in the DUST universe as well as presenting new storylines for players. Allowing players to create heroes from the Allies, the SSU, or independent factions, the game system is designed for both first time roleplayers as well as offering advanced rules for experienced players.

From: http://www.modiphius.com/dust-adventures.html