Actual Play – Fate of Cthulhu Alpha Playtest 1 (6/24/2016)

fate of cthluhu temporary logoGM: Sean Nittner
Players: Sophie Lagacé, PK Sullivan, Stephen Blackmoore
System: Fate of Cthlhu (pre-alpha playtest)

So… we’re doing this thing. We’re asking the question “What if Skynet was Cthulhu?” And what if it was? What if someone came from the future and told you that the world was going to end in 2035… that is when the Deep Ones take over. Would you believe them? Would you if something else came back to stop them?

This was our first playtest game. Since I’m not on the development team, I’m GMing it so the devs can see what it looks like. I’m not sure I really helped them out with that too much though. A lot of the game was about setting up the premise, so we didn’t touch the mechanics much. That will be for next session. I did, kill three of their characters and leave one of them stranded in the sweltering heat of a Guadalajara summer naked and surrounded by narcos. How did I kill three PCs and still leave one PC alive, when there were only three players? That a problem for future-now you to figure you!

FoC on Air

We’re recording our games for reference. If you’re interested in watching, this plays less like a game and more like a brainstorming session, but you might get a few kicks out of it.

Design Notes

The game was fun (yay!) and left us with a lot of questions and ponderings (more yay!). Questions like how we’ll handle multiple versions of the same character, and what kind of baddies should be coming back through the void? Should we be playing at the 2035 timeline to start, or the 2018? Should the characters in the earlier timeline be younger versions of themselves or different characters all together? Some good stuff for us to noodle on!

2035

Alfredo Garcia, Guerilla warrior from the future, Driven to Save his Sister. Corrupted by exposure to temporal radiation, corrupted further by time travel.

Sophie +3 (we didn’t actually name a lot of the PC). Saw the temporal reactor core in 2035 (three days from now) go haywire. Came back from the future present 2035 to warn everyone, however, that was the first time time travel had been successfully completed. And it wasn’t enough time to stop it.

PK +0 the scientist operating the bunker (A Mayan style modern pyramid with a nuclear reactor at its base), believed based on what he learned from Sophie +3 that his theory (presumably tested by PK +3) would work and that he could send all of them back, as early as 2018 to stop a cascading chain of events.

As they planned however, something breached the bunker’s defenses and they had to quickly enter the machine. Sophie +3, Sophie +0, Alfredo, PK +2, and two lab assistants all entered the machine and were ripped through time like a thread being forcibly pulled out of the cloth it was woven into. Unfortunately something else also came back with them and tore everyone asunder except Alfredo, who managed to push himself “away” during the quantum tunnelling.

2018

He exited the stream in Mexico desert, rolling down a hill and covered in the viscera of his companions. At the bottom he rolled into a rusted old Ford pickup and startled the hell out of the meth cook that was inside it. The runner, who had been tasked with both watching the cook, who had a habit, and picking up the drop heard the loud thump and came running, gun drawn hastily from an ankle holster.

Aspects on the scene

  • We’re Already Late
  • Blazing Hot Day

Not featured in the game but referenced, El Hefe Juan Rodrigo Perez.

Corruption

Because Alfredo is inhumanly flexible, he can:

  • Always escape ropes, chains, or manacles that bind him.
  • Gains +4 to overcome obstacles by squeezing through tight spaces
  • Walks with an inhuman gait.

 

 

2 thoughts on “Actual Play – Fate of Cthulhu Alpha Playtest 1 (6/24/2016)”

  1. It was fun watching/listening to this in 2019, knowing how the final version of the game turned out.

    You hear various ideas and observations being spitballed around, like Sophie musing that perhaps your first corrupted aspect shouldn’t always replace your Trouble first, or Sean wondering about taking some sort of automatic “corruption stress” when you use a corruption stunt, which you know with 20/20 hindsight evolved into things in the final version of the game.

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