Cthulhu Live: Lost Souls

Details

檔案:Cthulhu Live Lost Souls.jpeg

Front Cover

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Product Code: 0005

Publishing Year: 2000

Pages: 160

Cover Price: $17.95

Author(s): Phiilp Salmon, Robert "Mac" McLaughlin, Eric Kesler, Steven A. Dustin, Peter Devlin, Christian Matzke

Artist(s): John Fair-Holton, Christian Matzke, Philip Salmon, Robert "Mac" McLaughlin

Setting(s): 1920s, Modern

Format(s): Softcover

ISBN: 1-887911-95-2

Contents

The second sourcebook for Cthulhu Live, Lost Souls takes the game into new depths of nightmare. Expanding the revenant character concept introduced in Cthulhu Live: Shades of Gray, the Lost Souls supplement focuses on the ongoing struggle between light and darkness within every human soul. Dozens of depraved cults and veiled societies are detailed for roleplaying, including traditional favorites from Lovecraft's fiction as well as many new sects and organizations.

Player characters can opt to be willing servants of the Great Old Ones, searching for personal power or abjectly worshipping these eldritch nightmares as they fight to maintain a thin facade of normalcy to conceal their madness and the darkness of their souls. Other players may be members of the veiled societies, initiated into the true nature of the universe, and desperately fighting the Great Old Ones and their human servants to hold back the inevitable apocalypse.

Cthulhu Live: Lost Souls introduces new rules, skills and character templates to support live-action roleplaying in this grim shadow world. Essays and articles examine the psychology and motivation of cults, while the dozens of cult and society profiles offer a wealth of new roleplaying options. In cooperation with Pagan Publishing and the Delta Green partnership, Lost Souls includes profiles of Delta Green, the Karotechia, and new organizations suitable for play in Delta Green campaigns. The expanse of cult and society information makes Lost Souls more than just a Cthulhu Live supplement, but an invaluable sourcebook for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, as well as other table-top and live-action horror role-playing games on the market.

Of particular note, this book adds the rules for "Revenants" and "Façade" (mechanics for describing characters with zero SAN, and their ability to blend in with normal society). It also adds the idea of "Mythos Proficiencies" as a way of describing particular sub-sets of the Mythos that a character has familiarity with (rather than relying on the Cthulhu Mythos skill to cover this under a single percentile score).

The book is organized in chapters:

• Chapter One: Introduction
  • What is a revenant?
  • A Cultist's Lexicon
• Chapter Two: Revenant Characters
  • Mindset
  • Mythos Proficiencies
  • New Skills
  • Character Templates
• Chapter Three: Playing Revenants
  • Façade
  • Mythos Magic
  • Psychic Warfare
  • Transmogrifications
• Chapter Four: Secret Histories
  • Cults of Tsathoggua
  • Cults of Hastur
  • Cults of Cthulhu
  • Cults of Shub-Niggurath
  • Cults of Nyarlathotep
  • Alien Sects
  • Cults of Ghouls
  • Corporate Cults
  • Independent Sects
• Chapter Five: Veiled Societies.
  • New Rosicrucians
  • Brotherhood of Sleep
  • Delta Green
  • Wilmarth Foundation
  • Purity
  • Thulegesellschaft

Scenarios: contains no scenarios/scripts

Front Cover Text

Live Action Role-Playing in the World of Mythos Cults and Conspracies

Back Cover Text

Nights they would wake us, after long days of working among the wheat and the cattle, and we would follow silently into the plain black barn in the center of the fallow south field. Elder Thomas would draw open the iron doors set in the floor, his hard farmer's muscles belying his 77 years, and Elder Isham would move quickly down the steps to light the pale green witch-lamps that showed the way into the earth. My playmates and I would follow at Elder Thomas' nod, walking at attention, each of us doing our best to make the Elders proud. Marching into the earth, where the Mothers and Fathers waiting to kiss us.

The second sourcebook for CTHULHU LIVE SECOND EDITION, LOST SOULS plunges Keepers and players alike into the darkest corners of the Cthulhu Mythos. The players assume the roles of mortal servants of the alien horrors from beyond space and time. Bending themselves to the will of their unspeakable gods, the commit glorious atrocities and offer foul sacraments to the eldritch powers they serve.

From the incarnate madness of the Church of the Yellow Sign to the psychopathic ritual killers of the Mund-Caprice Family, LOST SOULS gives you everything you need to run a live-action horror campaign exploring the black rituals and foul agendas of Mythos cults and conspiracies. The book includes guidelines for creating and role-playing "revenants," the mad servants of the Mythos, as well as extensive source Material for over two-dozen cults and secret societies. LOST SOULS also offers information on the shadow organizations that battle the Mythos cults on their own dark terms, including Delta Green and the Catholic Church's Brotherhood of Sleep.

LOST SOULS introduces a number of new elements to your CTHULHU LIVE game, including:

• Complete rules for Façade, Sanity's darker sibling
• New skills
• New character templates
• New spells
• Descriptions of dozens of Mythos cults

LOST SOULS is a supplement to the CTHULHU LIVE live-action role-playing game.

WARNING: This book is intended for a mature audience. It contains violent and occult themes inappropriate for young readers. Cthulhu Live is a theater-gaming experience. Stories, events, actions and suggestions in this book are for entertainment only.

Published by FANTASY FLIGHT GAMES Under license from Chaosium, Inc.

Comments / Trivia

Dedication: "This book is dedicated to my wise and beautiful wife, Lauren, and to Sweetpea, who I can't wait to meet."

The books depiction of ghouls draws on material from other Call of Cthulhu works and general works of fiction. Specifically:

• the expatriated Parisian ghoul cult in French Guyana is borrowed from Realm of Shadows (Campaign).
• the book refers readers to the Delta Green sourcebooks for a discussion of "internal conflict between Traditionalist and Renegade factions of ghouls."
• the book cites Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones as "not only a terrific resource for Keepers and players who want a delicious look at ghoul behaviour and psychology, but one hell of a work of fiction in its own right!"

As would be expected for a set of rules which allows players to physically 'act out' a range of (sometime occult) actions of diabolical cultists, the book carries a very long and extensive disclaimer warning readers to exercise caution, and to remember that everything is for "entertainment purposes only". The disclaimer also states that the publisher won't be held responsible for any action undertaken while (or after) playing the game.

Links

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