Cthulhu Dreamt TTRPG: Sci-fi Horror & Metal Soundtrack

Happy-ish Anniversary - ⚠️ Important info about Dice Trays ⚠️
over 1 year ago – Fri, Aug 09, 2024 at 06:44:46 AM

Hello again Dreamers!!!!

It’s been 1 year since the Kickstarter campaign launched. 
Sometimes I forget how fast time actually moves, and looking back, so much has happened over the last 12 months.

One thing that’s happened is that the studio making the dice trays determined that their laser engraving was creating hydrochloric gas with the materials they were using. So, we’ve got an update and option for materials:

For those of you (of which there are 48) who have a dice tray coming, the new default will be real leather engraved with the Cthulhu design, and you don’t have to do anything. If you have any allergy, or philosophical objection, we can use the old faux leather with a vinyl transfer (similar to how graphic t-shirts are made).

Feel free to leave a comment here, or email me directly at [email protected], and we’ll make sure your request is handled appropriately. If you didn't get a dice tray and want one, you can manage that through your Backerkit 🤘

In other news: We. Are. So. Close. 

The team has finished Chapter 5 (of 7… 8 including the epilogue, which is also complete) and the internal playtest team has completed Chapter 1. Emery/Hanna/Scotia, one of our playtesters, found this worthy of reposting in the PT Discord:

The illustration is of another lovely NPC called Col. Abraham, Omar’s superior.

Anyways, the team is working hard, and we’re still targeting a final v1 to send out to backers for public playtesting in October. Once our playtests are done, that’s when we make last edits to pass to the publisher. And then we play the good old ‘waiting-more-game.’

Until our next update, don’t forget to follow along on the Action Fiction Cthulhu Dreamt Discord channel.

Your brother in Cthulhu, 

Reed, and the rest of the Cthulhu Dreamt Cult

Mid Year Update
over 1 year ago – Thu, Jul 18, 2024 at 08:31:53 AM

Hey Dreamers!!!!

Reed here from the floors of everyone’s favorite Fable Factory! I’d love to update you all on stuff from the Cthulhu Dreamt Universe!

Game: 

• The team is steadily making progress on the writing and initial editing and is about 75% of the way through drafting
• Chapters 1-4 are done, and 5-7 (and epilogue) are works-in-progress. Here’s a little screencap and art that you’ll find in Chapter 6:

• The internal playtest has begun, and you can see early progress if you want… but you may have already reddit 

Music

• All music from the main campaign is complete (unless we decide to add more later)
• 12 encounter tracks remain to be written out of the 79 total, which means the entire soundtrack is 85% complete
• I’ve begun writing Composer’s notes for the orchestral music, which will be included in the Conductor’s Study Score. Here’s a little screen cap (pre-edit) of what you can expect in addition to the sheet music of the six orchestral tracks:

The above musical snippet and note can be referenced while listening to "Binary Decision" on the preview EP on Bandcamp... (And holy buckets does this bring me back to my days in UNI following a score along with the sheet music in my hand. )

• The tablature book, which was one of the unlocked stretch goals, is now completed. This means that anyone who got the Conductor’s Study Score will get the tabs from the Liminality album included. So get your 8-string guitars ready and primed so we can jam together… asynchronously!!!

As the team gets closer to having the main campaign locked we’ll be able to give much more precise dates on the next big milestones. We’re gearing up to make sure you have something in your hands… er, electronic devices so that you can do some reading/running a game by Samhain!

Until our next update, if anyone happens to be attending Crypticon in Minneapolis, you’ll be able to find me, along with Jaron at a Fable Factory booth!!! SO, stop by and say hi, and let’s be friends in meat space 😀

Don’t forget to follow along on the Action Fiction Cthulhu Dreamt Discord channel.

With our love, 
Reed, and the rest of the Cthulhu Dreamt Cult
 

Open call for Playtesters! We need your help!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Jun 15, 2024 at 03:32:54 PM

A Playtest is Upon Us!

Dreamers, it’s finally time! We’re running our first playtest of the Cthulhu Dreamt main campaign. We’ve just polished off another chapter, and we’re ready to start running a real group of people through the game. If you’re interested, now’s your chance!

Here are some clarifying notes about the playtest:

• Game sessions will be Wednesdays from 7 PM to 10 PM Eastern
• Familiarity with Cthulhu Dreamt rules is not a requirement
• Microphone required, camera preferred (as Cthulhu Dreamt has a few meta rules and puzzles that work best in a face-to-face environment) 
• Game sessions will take place over Discord

Note: Participating playtesters will be credited by name in the printed book if they so choose.

If this sounds interesting to you, click here to fill out an application! If you have any questions, feel free to leave us a comment below. In order to be considered for playtests, you must fill out the linked survey!

If you’re interested in running your own playtest session with your own playgroup, reach out to us on our Discord! We’re working on putting the materials together for an open playtest, and we would love to have your help!

Thank you so much for your time and support. As a treat, check out one of my favorite art pieces from the book so far:

Cheers! See you all soon!

Jaron R. M. Johnson and the Cthulhu Dreamt design team

Quick Production Update
about 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 09:15:09 AM

What’s up gang, Jaron here. I wanted to take time this weekend to update everyone on the production of Cthulhu Dreamt and how the writing is going behind the scenes, in addition to all the fun snippets and previews we’ve been sharing. Also sharing a picture of my brother as Master Chief, for reasons.

Writing Progress So Far

The Cthulhu Dreamt book progress breakdown by table of contents currently look like this:

• Introduction (20%)
  • What is this book and how do I use it
  • The World of Cthulhu Dreamt
• Content for All Players (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Rules for all players, including the Facilitator. This is a pretty beefy section, currently 85 pages. This is the bulk of the game rules, but is ultimately just a very detailed version of what was in the preview rules document available at the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign.
• Content for Facilitators (75%)
  • Rules and guidelines only for the Facilitator. This section is shorter, currently only 11 pages and is likely to remain under 20. Since Cthulhu Dreamt is a game where the Facilitator doesn’t roll, most of the mechanics they need is actually in the All Players section. 
• The Mission (85%)
  • Chapter 0: Session Zero (100% complete)
  • Chapter 1: Shock & Awe (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Chapter 2: Plausible Deniability (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Chapter 3: A Faustian Bargain (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Chapter 4: Cold & Righteous Fury (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Chapter 5: We Were Fools (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Chapter 6: Picking up the Pieces (50%)
  • Chapter 7: Hope (60%)
  • Chapter 8: Epilogue (100% complete)
  • Encounter: Springfield Nocturne (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: R’lyehian March (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: Canticle of the Stars (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: Orbital Fugue (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: Ohm’s Reprise (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: Kindalnum Etude (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: [Unnamed, Whisper Machine] (90%, First Draft complete)
  • Encounter: [Unnamed, Moorlands] (90%, First Draft complete)
• Back Matter (?%)
  • Unsure what the specifics will be in this section other than index (which is, for the most part, generated by the final editor)

As you can see, we’re putting up a LOT of high numbers, which is great news! Brad, CJ, and myself have been hammering away many days of the week to make this happen. Every Friday and Saturday for the last few months, plus several weekdays throughout, we’ve been sitting down to body double and work together as a team. We’ve also done a lot of writing on our own to help bring all of this to life. So, special thanks to those guys (y’all should consider jumping down into the comments and giving the writing team a shout-out).

Production Process

After we finish writing our first draft, we’ll send it off to a dev editing team at Storyteller’s Forge, where we’ll get great meaningful feedback. After 3 months, they’ll send it back to us to spend a few weeks tackling any rewrites that need to happen. After that, the book goes into layout, and then print/ship happens. We’ll be posting an update here at each major milestone, with plenty of sneak peeks into the process behind the scenes.

Timeline to Complete

Our planned ship date for physical books was October, but due to some recent struggles (I’ll detail below for TW purposes), we’re going to have to push that back. The plan is to still ensure that you have digital products ready to go by October, in case you wanted to run Cthulhu Dreamt during the spookiest season.

TW: Family trauma, hospital stuff: In December, CJ and I caught COVID. I was also hospitalized for kidney stones. Then, my car (I’ve driven it for ten years) was totalled (not in an accident, just had a system in it die that was more expensive to fix than the car was worth). Then, to top it all off, three weeks ago, my mother was sent to the hospital for emergency surgery. She’s been in the hospital since then, and currently doesn’t have a discharge date. I have a complicated relationship with my mom, but right now, I visit her every day. It’s been one of the most difficult periods of my life, and I struggle to put it into any words which would feel appropriate to share with you as an audience of wonderful strangers who are really just here for the incredible book we’re producing.

All of this has combined to create what will undoubtedly be delays. We’re very close to the finish line for the writing phase, after which the book mostly exits our hands and goes into the hands of our publisher, Storyteller's Forge (who are amazing), after which I will mostly just need to review for changes and edits. All timeline events after the handoff remain unchanged, but at this point I’m spending a lot more time outside of our writer’s room than I had planned. Thankfully, Brad and CJ have really stepped up to the plate and helped me shoulder the writing burden in a VERY appreciated capacity, and everyone right now is writing more than they had initially anticipated. This means, you’ll still get an incredible book that we’ll all be very proud of. It’s just going to take a little longer as I navigate one of the most difficult years of my entire life.

I really need and appreciate your patience right now. I promise you that you’ll still be getting your books; making games and creating fun for folks is my purpose on this planet, and I still love doing it. This is the fourth major book we’ve released, so we know what the process looks like, and we have a lot more help this time around than we have in the past. So we’ll be making this happen: don’t you worry.

Thanks for reading.

I appreciate you all taking the time to read through this. As soon as we hand off the completed manuscript to the publisher, we’ll know the exact timeframe in which your books will be arriving at your doorsteps. Right now, the most specific we can get is “Q4 of this year.” But as soon as we have more details, we’ll share them.

Thank you again for understanding. Any positive thoughts you could send my mom’s way right now would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, talk soon.

Jaron R. M. Johnson and the Action Fiction Faction

jrmj 

Mid-January Update!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 11:18:33 AM

Hey, gang! Welcome to our mid-January update. All good things on the R’lyehian front!

Wanted to stop in and give you a quick update on how things are looking on the writing side, then hand over to Reed for the music side of things. So, without further ado, let’s jump in!

Campaign & Book Progress

We’re looking at, I would estimate, 65-70% book completion right now. The campaign is well on its way, with a few chapters fully polished, a few chapters in a completed playtestable first draft, and a few chapters still under development. (Psst... if you’d like to help us by running a playtest of the campaign for your group, leave a comment below and we’ll reach out!)

The last update I provided, I got to talk a little bit about the gross penguins we created that make an appearance in Chapter 6 (they’re heavily inspired by the haunting depiction of penguins in Mountains of Madness, but we made them so much worse). Today, I’m going to spend some time talking about the environment of Chapter 6 - SPOILERS AHEAD.

I REPEAT. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Chapter 6 is the penultimate chapter of the campaign. It comes just after a massive tragedy at the end of Chapter 5 (which takes place at the infamous McMurdo Station), where the players will lose at least one, and maybe two, characters who are incredibly important to them.

Chapter 6 picks up as the characters are trying to find their way off of Antarctica, and on to their final destination. In order to do that, they travel through The City of the Old Ones, which is an ancient metropolis buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Here, the group will hunt for an object known only as The Conduit, which they are lead to believe is their ticket out of this icy hellscape.

When designing the City of the Old Ones, I wanted to create the most disorienting atmosphere possible. I achieved this off the bat by inverting the gravity when the players are beneath the ice sheet; the ice beneath their feet is now the only light source, as light from the sun on the other side filters through. This under-lights the entire city, giving it an insidious glow, and allows characters to look up where the sky should be, and see only a yawning, shadow-dark abyss. Here, great indiscernible shapes lumber through the petrified fungal forests in the distance, and players will navigate the maze-like streets in their search for The Conduit. 

In keeping with Cthulhu Dreamt’s meta-play mechanic themes, I designed the wandering through the city gameplay to lean on multiple senses. Players will initially be given an unmarked map of the city, with no idea where to go. Then, they will use audio logs to follow a breadcrumb trail left behind by a small squadron of EDGe Troopers: Oedipus Squad (self-described as, “a bunch of mother fuckers”). The Facilitator will read the audio log to the other players, who will listen closely and use the map to try and follow along based on comments Oedipus Squad makes about their surroundings. There are also some really fun obstacles along the way, and a very horrifying creature or two that we are art-ing up as we speak, all of which I cannot wait to show you. 

Also I’m not telling you what The Conduit is or whether or not the players find it. You’ll just have to wait and see. Or sign up to playtest it (COMMENT BELOW, DON’T FORGET)...

OKAY NO MORE SPOILERS YOU ARE NOW SAFE.

Well now, wasn’t that riveting? For those of you who skipped the previous section in fear of spoilers, MAN are you missing out. But you’ll get your hands on that content in due time. And it will be worth the wait.

Especially because one of the very cool secrets we’ve got going on is this thing we hid in the music, where we--

*HRRRGHK*

Reed here, ripping the keyboard out of Jaron’s hands to give everyone an update on music progress, as well as letting you know about something special we’re doing.

We’ve been busy getting all the music ready. The curated selections for the vinyl are going through the mixing and mastering phase, and we’re finalizing the artwork for the inside of the gatefold jacket for the vinyl version of the Facilitator’s Screen.

After going through the campaign and encounters, we’re currently estimating between 70 and 80 tracks, and are figuring we may have over 5 hours of ambient music when we’re finished (cue one of those hours-long YouTube videos of Cthulhu Music lol).

Here’s a screenshot of the current tracklist (track names blurred to avoid spoilers):

And the something special: Fable Factory had Cthulhu Dreamt logo patches printed up, and they’ll be listed on the Backerkit pre-order page shortly. AAAAANNNNNND, anyone who bought (or will buy) a physical copy of the OST will get one included FREE with their order, whether you supported at the Physical Edition and higher during the kickstarter, or added the CD or Vinyl as an add-on then or now on Backerkit! 😀

So, until the next KSU, we’ll keep plugging away. And don’t forget to check out the early sample previews of the OST, artwork, and other shenanigans on the Action Fiction Discord!!

Your brothers in Cthulhu: Jaron and Reed 🦑