Cthulhu Dreamt TTRPG: Sci-fi Horror & Metal Soundtrack
Created by Action Fiction
An original near-future Sci-Fi tabletop RPG system, including a fully-illustrated campaign with an accompanying heavy metal soundtrack.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Q1 Update: Last production steps, CUSTOM DICE UNBOXING, and Festival of the Forgotten!
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 09:41:52 AM
Each step brings us closer and closer to the coming storm...
Hey, gang, Jaron here. Wanted to give you guys another update and keep you in the loop!
The text has been sent off to the publisher for the final edits. We expect a relatively quick turn-around from here, with some quick final integrations before we move into the final stage: LAYOUT!
We've been doing some test layouts in the meantime, experimenting with the visual style. Our layout artist, Cheyenne, and our art director, Bianca, have been kicking a whole lot of TRACE ass, and it's so fun to see some of the stuff they're putting together.
Here's a quick teaser of some of the stuff we're experimenting with:
Delivery Timeline - Still on track!
We're still on track for delivery this summer, likely in August. The tarriffs are putting a big question mark on the specifics of who's going to manufacture the book, but we're doing everything in our power to balance quality and cost. We aren't going to subsidize our costs with increased shipping prices, so no worries. Our shipping costs are gonna be 1:1 for what we pay to pack & ship the books. The state of the world is awful and there's no reason for you guys to suffer more than we all already are, lmao.
SICK ASS DICE UNBOXING
Reed did a VERY cool dice unboxing to see our custom Cthulhu Dreamt D12s. These are actually still available as add-ons in Backerkit, so if you want to grab them, there's still time!
I am personally a HUGE fan of this D12 shape, it's so unique, with these diamond faces.
Absolutely loving it, cannot wait to chuck these and hope my mind is not consumed by the encroaching World Storm. Wish me luck!
An RPG setting like no other, Festival of the Forgotten is a 200+ page D&D 5E 2024 Setting Supplement and Adventure, containing a complete adventure, a guide on how to create evil characters, 13 new subclasses with unique twists, and much more.
The Festival of the Forgotten is coming to your kingdom, and you are invited to attend! To witness the spectacle of your freaks and outcasts when they were nurtured and allowed to thrive. Come see the wonders beyond your high walls and try your skill at unearthly games for prizes that your peers will covet.
Festivals of the Forgotten: Revelations of the Dark Carnival features:
Over 200 pages, designed with both Players and Storytellers in mind
How to be Evil: An ST Forge guide on building villains both as PC's or NPC's
A short campaign with multiple endings and player agency options
13 new eccentric subclasses designed for 5E 2024
New Warlock Pacts & Invocations
New Carnival Games, NPCs, creatures, and magical items
Dynamic encounter design to accommodate Theater of the Mind and Grid Style play
Soundtrack and music by V is for Villains
If you play 5e and like REALLY-well-designed mechanics and a darkly rich narrative, this is definitely a campaign you wanna check out. So do that. And tell them I said hello. And that I think they're radical. ;)
Conclusion
That's it for today's update! As always, the team and I are ever-available for questions you might have, and we love seeing your comments. If there's stuff you wanna see (more music, more monsters, more behind the scenes stuff), please don't hesitate to let us know, we wanna bring it to you!
Thanks so much for making this possible and letting us tell this story. This is easily the greatest story I have ever had a hand in creating. I've learned so much in writing it, I've seen playtesters cry (sorry, Chy!), and I am so ready to bring this book to life. If you're running an actual play of this campaign, I will 100% be in the audience to share that journey with you (and happy to share it with our fans as well!).
Can't wait to talk more about this. I'll see you all very soon.
Cheers!
Jaron R. M. Johnson Fable Factory, and the Action Fiction Faction
Welcome to the New Year, Dreamers!
about 1 year ago
– Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 01:27:04 PM
2025! Hot DAMN!
It's hard to believe it, but it is now 2025. This is especially head-spinning to me, because we began work on Cthulhu Dreamt over a Zoom Call in February of 2021.
This is an excerpt from a document I tracked down called "The Wind-Up and The Pitch" - it's from the earliest days of Cthulhu Dreamt, when we were envisioning it as a 5e Dungeons and Dragons supplement, before we had the exciting, if ambitious, idea of making it with an in-house system instead
Reed, myself, Bianca (our Art Director), and the rest of the team have been living in this world for nearly 4 years, and this year, we will get to formally invite you into it. I could not be more excited.
So what's the status, Chief?
Glad you asked. I've got a whole mess of updates that'll make your head spin, melt your eyeballs, and shatter your misconceptions of what reality even is.
Read ahead, if you dare.
TTRPG Update
We got the manuscript edits back from Storyteller's Forge, who gave us some great suggestions on how to streamline the overall order of the book and the play experience. I've been hard at work making those integration updates, and I already love how some of them are coming together. For the average reader, you might not even notice some of the changes we're making, but for us on the back-end side of things, it's looking a lot smoother.
We are on-track to deliver the PDFs and these books to you this Summer! We've begun the layout process, where we're taking all of the text and the art assets and putting them into InDesign. This is really the final step before we send the files to the printer, and start shipping the books to your door!
We'll of course keep sharing updates along the way so you can see how things are coming together. We may even poll you if we can't make up our minds on things (this happens more often than I'd like to admit, lol). The last time we did a total wordcount, we were just over 100k words, and I think that'll be pretty close to the final count (but we will, of course, still share a final wordcount the moment we have it). That means this book is gonna be really, really big. So start planning room on your bookshelves!
OH! And our private playtest is nearing completion. Shout out to those wonderful playtesters who are helping us to iron out the story elements and make sure we get everything perfectly right so no players can come in and mess anything up ever.
Fun fact: for listeners on Apple Music, Reed mixed the tracks in Dolby Atmos, so if you check it out there, the listening experience is unbelievably immersive. You'll think you're lost in the labyrinthine annals of some dark metal god's infinite mind. (That's eldritch for, it'll sound really, really good)
For folks who listen on Spotify, Reed has prepared a playlist which will update every time we release more music! You can find that here:
Novel Update
Chris Durston's tie-in novel, Entanglement, has been submitted to the publisher for review! While not optional for play, it offers some REALLY wicked insight to the inner machinations of Salien-Welf and some of the characters like Sheena. This thing is gonna be sick.
Until Next Time
Thanks again for your patience and support. This game is the thing I am most proud of in my life right now, and while we always have some very cool things on the horizon (which I will be sharing soon!), Cthulhu Dreamt is, personally, my greatest game design achievement. I can't speak for the rest of the team, but I imagine they feel very similarly. And I know we all can't wait for you to play it for yourselves.
See you soon!
Jaron,
Fable Factory,
and the Action Fiction Faction
📗 The Playtest Manuscript (500+ pages) is now available. The storm is here. 🦑
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Oct 25, 2024 at 01:39:42 PM
Dreamers... The time has come.
We are so super pleased to announce that the moment you’ve all been waiting for is here.
Behold, the Playtest Manuscript. This 500+ page document contains the full, complete first draft of the Cthulhu Dreamt TTRPG, fully playable. All player handouts necessary for play are designed with placeholder art, but they will work for playtesting purposes. This means you can play the entire game, beginning to end, using this document. Right. Now. (You'll need a form-fillable character sheet too, which you can find here!)
We would love to get your feedback on the game in its current state. The most important thing for us is that YOU like this game. If you read through it or play it, please leave feedback for us HERE. The more feedback we get, the more data we have to make this the best game possible. If you have questions or want to discuss with the writing team, you can always jump into our Community Discord. We’d love to chat, answer your mind-bending questions, and generally hang out together.
We hope that you’ll be able to see how hard we’ve all been working on it, and how much blood, viscera, tears, and tentacle juice went into its creation.
Music Launch Begins!
Additionally, as you know, Cthulhu Dreamt is a game meant to be played in tandem with its soundtrack. Stoked to announce, the first of the campaign tracks has gone live today! The main campaign OST now consists of 59 separate music tracks and 7 hours, 22 minutes, and 46 seconds of audio. Reed is a monster.
Yes, with an asterisk. This document includes a first-draft version of everything that will be in the book when it comes out, in roughly the order we expect it to appear in the printed book. Obviously, as we receive feedback, small things may be added or subtracted, and we’ll be sure to keep track of everything in the changelog at the top of the document, so you’ll always know when things have been updated. For major updates, we’ll also come back to Kickstarter to post updates and share what’s changed.
Why’s it so BIG?
Because it has everything you need to play our unique system, and a fully-written campaign in it. That Includes:
All the setting information you’ll need to play
All the game rules you’ll need to play
All the creatures and NPC’s
A full-length, 7 Chapter Campaign with Session 0 and Epilogue
Form-fillable Character Sheets
Placeholder art and handouts
Links to music designed specifically for specific parts of the game (QR Codes forthcoming)
What kind of stories can I tell with this?
For now, primarily the one(s) we’ve spelt out for you in the campaign and Encounters: Near-future, Sci-Fi, horror, progressive metal games with tragedy and loss as central, guiding themes, where player characters are nobody special, and grim fates may await you at every turn.
We’ve spent a lot of time balancing everything and putting it all together into a cohesive story, so we’d really appreciate it if you considered running the campaign that’s in the book, as that’s what the rules are built around. By design, Cthulhu Dreamt isn’t meant to be a “sandbox” system, because it leans so heavily into grief and loss, and we wanted to ensure that the first and foremost story we tell with the system dips you into those emotionally dark places, but also lifts you up out of them regularly to catch your breath.
That said, if you want to run something of your own design to test out the game, we definitely won’t try to stop you! Just please note that (and any other context you’d like to share) if you submit feedback on our feedback form.
Can I run a one-shot of Cthulhu Dreamt for Halloween?
Yes, with an asterisk (isn’t that fun?!). Right now, you have a couple of options:
You could run one of the Encounters (Springfield Nocturne or R’lyehian March) we’ve released on this Kickstarter, with the updated rules. Note: both of these encounters are currently in a rough draft state, and will be edited significantly in the future; we decided to prioritize finishing the main campaign first.
You could drop your players into one of the earlier sections of the campaign and run content from the campaign as if it were a one-shot. We recommend the beginning of Chapter 3 as a good, relatively free-form section that showcases lots of rules and gameplay at once. Just be sure to tell them that if you do play a full game, things may be spoiled, and things may change.
Rest assured that we will have plenty of small one-shot adventures for you on the horizon - that’s coming up soon for us! Can’t wait to put them into your soon-to-be-blood-soaked hands.
I have thoughts on how to do things better, or how awesome you all are—where can I submit those?
If it’s the kind of thing you want to have a discussion about, our Community Discord has a whole channel devoted just to that kind of thing. If it’s something about the balance or theming of the game, please submit it to our feedback form. Using both is totally valid.
We do want to mention, at least for now, we are primarily looking for feedback on the game as it currently exists. Ideas on what would be cool that aren’t intended to fix a particular problem in the game aren’t very helpful to us right now, as we simply don’t have the time to write entire new encounters.
To clarify:
“There’s a typo on page 69, you conjugated fhtagn wrong.” Helpful.
“There’s a problem on page 420, I think if you made the roll there have a Critical Success option, it would fix it AND be a cool opportunity for roleplay. Here’s a suggestion on what that Critical Success could be.” Helpful.
“What would you think about adding a totally new specialty called “The Cleaner?” Fun, but Unhelpful.
Compliments are always welcome and appreciated on any forum. Sometimes, all you want to say is “Good job!” and that’s helpful to us, too—it tells us that you guys are feeling positive about the experience, and that we’re on the right track.
What's next?
We’re exhibiting at TORG Gaming Convention next weekend (11/1), so our focus right now is to get ready for that while waiting for your feedback or questions to pile in. Please feel free to stop by the Action Fiction booth in the Indie Dev section!
After TORG ends, we will all likely sleep for a day and a half, left to darkly dream our own dreams before we begin implementation of your feedback. From there, the plan is to submit the document in its then-current state to the publisher at the end of November, then the publishing process will begin. That is likely when our next Kickstarter Update will come out too.
As always, if you’d like to reach out to us or have any questions, please hop into our Discord in the Cthulhu Dreamt channels and ask away. Thank you so much for your support. It has meant every world to us. Please let us know what your favorite part of the game is in the comments below!
Also, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below letting us know how you’re feeling. Your comments help us to make sure we’re on the right track, and really help to bolster our morale (which, after months and months in the editing dungeons, is REALLY valuable).
Sincerely,
All of the Action Fiction/Fable Factory Faction
Tomorrow...
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 09:28:34 AM
200k+ words. 500+ pages.
Get ready.
September Update: Crypticon, Campaign Release, Art, And Music
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 11:26:07 AM
Greetings Dreamers,
Happy September! All of us here in the workshop are hoping this update finds you well. We’ve got some big announcements in this update, so let's get going.
Cue Music
Because you’ve all been so good, we have another Ambient Track here for you to enjoy! It’s called Sky Encounter Ad Infinitum. It’s very loopable, and is planned for a time in the campaign when absolutely nothing is going wrong, we promise.
Campaign Release
Speaking of the campaign. We have just finished our passthrough of Chapter 6, the penultimate chapter of the main campaign, and y’all it is just full of twists and turns that I know you are all so very ready for. Seriously, I think when you play this chapter, you're gonna lose your shit. But it's fine, we'll help you find it.
Speaking of playing the game, you’ll be able to do just that very soon! With Chapter 6 in the books (pun intended) and our in-house playtesting progressing quickly and fantastically, we are finally confident enough to say that a public, (to you, our beloved backers) playtestable version of the game and campaign will be released in October!
We’ll have more details coming soon, but the quicker and more playtesting we can get, the better. So, if you wanted to start planning your playtest games of Cthulhu Dreamt (or even just read through an early version of the book), we’ll have a setting guide, comprehensive ruleset, and a 7-chapter campaign with prelude and epilogue for you by Halloween. Please, enjoy some recently finished art from the game as we all jump with giddiness together. I mean, just look how excited this little guy is to meet you, he's practically blushing!
Enough about the Prose, now the Cons
CON-VENTIONS, THAT IS! Action Fiction and Fable Factory will be at Crypticon in Minneapolis, Minnesota this very weekend! If you’re in the area, consider dropping by! We’ll be in Conference Room D at booth #091, or just look for the image posted below!We’ll have Cthulhu Dreamt albums, art prints, stickers, patches, a DnD 5e Cryptids-based supplement, and a staff that’d be just thrilled to see you! Just let us know you’re a backer for the VIP treatment! Can't make it for the team-up at Crypticon? Here’s a list of the other conventions Action Fiction will be at the rest of the year:
Cleveland Gaming Classic 9/20 - 9/22
TORG 11/1 - 11/3
GalaxyCon Columbus 12/6-12/8
If you’re planning on being at one of those we’d love to see you!
Until next time Dreamers,
All of us at the Action Fiction/Fable Factory Faction
We’ll have Cthulhu Dreamt albums, art prints, stickers, patches, a DnD 5e Cryptids-based supplement, and a staff that’d be just thrilled to see you! Just let us know you’re a backer for the VIP treatment! Can't make it for the team-up at Crypticon? Here’s a list of the other conventions Action Fiction will be at the rest of the year: