Don't Wake Cthulhu! 🦑💤

a TTRPG by @tiiimezombie

Don't Wake Cthulhu! 🦑💤 is a quick ttrpg about some doomed nobodies roped into an eldritch-apocalypse-bait conundrum and floundering in a genre-appropriate manner.

Character Setup

Requires: 1D8, a piece of paper per person, and a pen.

Players create a doomed investigator. They need a name, basic appearance, motivation (visiting relative, paid to be here, journalist, college student).

On each paper, write the investigator’s name and numbers 1 through 8.

When a situation is dangerous, the player will roll to determine if their investigator succeeds. Rolling a number that is written on your sheet means your investigator has succeeded.

Circle a number as your anchor. Any investigator’s action under the category of “gaining new knowledge” must roll above your anchor to succeed without complication. Similarly, any other action requires a result below your anchor to avoid complication.

Finally, stab a hole in your paper with the pen to remove your anchor from the sheet. Rolling a number that is missing from the sheet results in a catastrophic failure; up to and including removing another number from your sheet.

Story Setup

Investigators (# players): a young relative, a PI, an amateur journalist, a wayward student, an old flame
Visit (1): a shanty town, a fishing barge, a foreclosed sanatorium, an uncle’s manor
Find clues (4): tattered newspaper clippings, a hopeful martyr, an overspecialized weapon, an untranslatable tome, a frenzied expert, a distinctive chemical, a frenzied testimony, a grand conspiracy
To uncover a mystery (1): a prized sacrifice, a killing ground, a theatrical summoning, a concealed nursery
And resolve it (3): get someone possessed, kill the smart one, desecrate runes, lobotomize a troublemaker, exorcise a ghost, arson
Postponing (1): Cthulhu’s awakening, a shoggoth’s spawn run, Hastur’s appointee, Nyarlathotep’s Number Station

Running the Game

Characters begin at or near the location together, introducing themselves to an important figure, who should offer them two rooms to explore. From there, offer rooms, opportunities, crime scenes, evidence when they succeed, and break things, hurt them, spawn monsters when they don’t. Write down details to keep the mystery cohesive and limited to what players need to solve the mystery. If you need ‘madness’ effects, consider unhelpful visions, persistent verbal tics, helping the wrong team, or just biting.

This rpg is based on All Outta Bubblegum by Michael "Epoch" Sullivan and Jeffrey Grant, but inspired by John Harper's Lasers & Feelings.