The stars are right for Great Cthulu's return.
It's up to you to make them wrong again!
Fate of Cthulhu is a tabletop RPG published in 2020 by Evil Hat Productions, using their flagship Fate Core system.
Among a group of players, at least one of them is a time-traveller from the future, who has travelled to our present using the power of Yog-Sothoth to prevent the rise of one of the Great Old Ones. Along the way, the players have to deal with not only the constant ticking clock, the ripple effects of their actions echoing throughout the timeline and time paradoxes, but also the corrupting influence of the Great Old Ones' power mutating them beyond recognizability, combined with the increasing possibility that the only way out is a Heroic Sacrifice of some sort.
The game can be purchased here
and here.
Fate of Cthulhu contains examples of:
- Alternate Timeline: According to the game's rules, the future exists as potential from the perspective of the observer. The example in the same section mentions that this is how a PC sees her mother get killed in a new timeline before she was born after accidentally accelerating the rise of a Great Old One, but doesn't fade from existence, while another example mentions that a Temporal Duplicate she runs into lives a life separate and distinct from her own. Generally speaking, the timeline is resistant to paradoxes.
- Body Horror: Later stages of corruption can manifest as this, and the human mind's resistance to Cthulhu's Brown Note example below can still have this windup happening.
- Brown Note: Cthulhu himself - "Almost everyone who directly sees, hears, or otherwise experiences Cthulhu literally dies of fright. Even recorded or remote imaging of Cthulhu can trigger an episode".
- The Necronomicon, which shows up in the "Arrival of Great Cthulhu" and "Shub-Niggurath" campaigns. Downplayed in that simply reading it doesn't raise one's corruption so much as taking the time to delve deep into the text and understand its writings will.
- The Corruption: The game's time travel and magic system both end up causing this, twisting the users past their original human selves. This needn't necessarily be to the player's disadvantage, as pointed out with an example scenario where a player character's corruption manifests in the form of "Ghoulish Claws".
- Fish People: One Corruption example is "Descendent of Dagon", complete with the aspect, "The Innsmouth Look", giving them an off-putting froggy appearance.
- The Plague: "The Arrival of Dagon" campaign starts with a worldwide plague of an antibiotic-resistant strain of MRSA, and the PCs have to figure out why this is happening.
- Sanity Meter: Subverted in favour of a mechanic that causes exposure to the Old Ones' influence to gradually manifest as physical corruption. The book hammers this subversion home by saying that, "Corruption is not insanity", and advises the GM, "Don't diagnose".
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The entire party is hellbent on achieving this.
- Shout-Out: Comes with the territory with the use of the Cthulhu Mythos.
- The "Re-Animated" corruption example mentions West's Revitalizing Agent by name.
- Temporal Paradox: Downplayed. Paradoxes are possible, but difficult to make occur due to the game's use of Alternate Timelines. The book's section on paradoxes describes itself as, "a long-winded way of explaining that, no, you can't become your own grandfather. That would be gross".
- Whole-Plot Reference: The comparisons of this game's premise to The Terminator are immediate. Right down to the time travel system transporting biological tissue, but not clothes.
