Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

One game that got left out of the OP is The Laundry, based on the books by Charles Stross. It's modern day, and the characters work for The Laundry, the British monster-stomping agency that's probably the only secret government agency that is ISO9000 certified.

quote:

There are things out there, in the weirder reaches of space-time where reality is an optional extra. Horrible things, usually with tentacles. Al-Hazred glimpsed them, John Dee summoned them, HP Lovecraft wrote about them, and Alan Turing mapped the paths from our universe to theirs. The right calculation can call up entities from other, older universes, or invoke their powers. Invisibility? Easy! Animating the dead? Trivial! Binding lesser demons to your will? Easily doable!

Opening up the way for the Great Old Ones to come through and eat our brains? Unfortunately, much too easy.

That�s where the Laundry comes in � it�s a branch of the British secret service, tasked to prevent hideous alien gods from wiping out all life on Earth (and more particularly, the UK). You work for the Laundry. The hours are long, the pay is sub-par, the co-workers are� interesting (in the Chinese curse sense of the word), and the bureaucracy is stifling � but you do get to wave basilisk guns and bullet wards around, and to go on challenging and exciting missions to exotic locations like quaint, legend-haunted Wigan, cursed Slough and Wolverhampton where the walls are thin.

You may even get to save the world.

Just make sure you get a receipt.

It's modern Cthulhu with a dash of Paranoia sprinkled in; everything in the Laundry is mired in bureaucratic procedures, from matrix management to meetings to filing your hours you spent in another dimension on your timecard to getting your paper clips audited. On the plus side you get toys like the Necronomiphone (a jailbroken iPhone that can cast spells), basilisk guns (which turns the target to stone), and can accidentally summon a dimensional shambler with your fractal screensaver!

# ¿ Sep 3, 2012 17:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 07:09

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

moths posted:

Quoting this to the OP, if you don't mind. And I clearly don't know enough about the Laundry because what I'm reading makes me want to learn more. Does it have a US distributor? I don't think I've ever seen it on shelves.

It's distributed through Cubicle 7. $40 for the Print/PDF bundle.

mllaneza posted:

This is a huge concern for any secret agency that uses sympathetic resonances in magic all the loving time. So do the bad guys. So knowing where all your paper clips are is a vital counterintelligence procedure.

There's also a worldwide treaty with the Deep Ones; they have a seat on the UN (not that they use it), and if you're really lucky you can meet the Deep Ones' lawyers!

# ¿ Sep 4, 2012 01:22

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

A preview has been posted for tremulus: The Heir playbook.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2012 04:09

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Oh yeah, I forgot about this thread.

For those of you who weren't tremulus backers, the devs said it's okay to distribute the core playbooks out and about.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 03:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Cthulhu Megathread: It's pronounced "Khlul'-hloo" (Lose 1D10/1D100 Sanity)