Cthulhu Awakens RPG Quickstart (Free PDF)

The God Beneath the Tree
A Quickstart Playset For Cthulhu Awakens (PDF)
Design: Sian Ingham and Malcolm Sheppard
Format: 44-page full-color PDF

This is a doorway less ancient and sinister than some, being a merely metaphorical portal to the Cthulhu Awakens roleplaying game. By “roleplaying game,” we mean a tabletop role-playing game—called a TTRPG in some circles, though just an RPG here—where you use pencil, paper, and dice, or various apps to communicate and store information; to play a protagonist in a world where the Cthulhu Mythos, featuring scientific sorcery, alien gods, monsters, and unspeakable secrets from the stars, influences events. The Mythos’ presence is largely secret, known only to certain academics, government officials, and cults worshipping its mightiest entities, and mostly kept out of the news.

If you don’t know what a tabletop RPG is, multiple online resources exist to orient you, including some from Green Ronin which we’ll point you toward later. This is a quickstart: cut-down rules and a playable story (also called a “scenario”) designed to introduce you to this game’s rules and ideas. It includes everything you need to start playing right away, from the streamlined rules and scenario we mentioned, to characters you can pick up and play right away. We hope you’ll enjoy giving it a try.

Cthulhu Awakens takes place between the 1920s and the present, as the Mythos stirs and evolves with the decades. We call this period the Weird Century. Within it, you might play a tough soldier, a scholar of the occult, or a grizzled private eye. While our scenario, The God Beneath the Tree, takes place in 1940, the full game provides access to the entire 100-year period.

Adventure lies ahead. Welcome to the Weird Century.

What's Included

There are three parts to this quickstart. The first is a condensed guide to the rules of the Cthulhu Awakens RPG, including a reference sheet the players can keep handy during play. The second is a scenario called The God Beneath the Tree. The third is a set of five pre-generated Player Characters.