By John Houlihan
Phew, finally the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 Quickstart is here and now you can take your first steps into the Secret War and take the fight to the nefarious forces of the Nazi occult wiht the FREE Quickstart which launched on the 23rd Feb. Here's a quick guide to what you can expect to find within!
The Intro
The Quickstart opens with an explanation of Achtung! Cthulhu itself. One of the aims of the new system is to attract new players to the setting and this section details how the game came into being and comes with a personal introduction from creator Chris Birch. Following this is a breakdown of the four main human factions: the Allies’ brave Section M and dauntless Majestic, and the Nazi villains, Black Sun and Nachtwolfe. By the time you’ve read this, you’ll have the complete backstory on how the Secret War began!
The Rules
The first half of the Quickstart is taken up by an overview of all the rules you’ll need to start playing. Naturally, this being a Quickstart, these are stripped back to the basics and focus on what you need to know, but they include sections on necessary starting equipment (two d20s, a few d6s and pens and paper for taking notes). The next section takes you through Attributes, Skills and Focuses, the building blocks of your character and then we move onto core 2d20 concepts like Skill Tests, how Momentum and Fortune work, and how the GM uses Threat to make your characters’ lives interesting!
We round things off with a slightly more extensive examination of Action, the core of the Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 experience, with rules on Attacks, Stress and Injuries. You’ll need some combat training too and Weapons, Resistance, Cover and Morale take care of that. We round things off with a look at how Magic works, as there will be a few opportunities for arcane shenanigans in your forthcoming assignment.
The Adventure
Naturally we’re trying to avoid major spoilers for the mission itself, but we can say it’s written by Brad Bell, and features all the key ingredients which make Achtung! Cthulhu so appealing. Set during the early part of the war, you are parachuted into the sleepy French village of Saint Sulac, where the arrival of a mysterious German occult force has prompted the local resistance to call for your aid. As you await the green light to jump, a strange almost unnatural storm seems to whip up, centred on the village’s chateau. Whatever can it mean?
While the adventure itself will be pretty straightforward to run for experienced GMs, it’s written to appeal to absolute novice gamemasters too, with step-by-step explanations of each new rule and mechanic as it comes into play and text descriptions to read out loud, taking some of the pressure away. This means you can concentrate on having a lot of fun, while also learning how the system works.
Characters
Finally, we round things off with five pre-generated player characters to give you a good selection of archetypes and classes to explore. Captain James Swann is a classic commander type, a veteran special forces soldier who’s seen plenty of active service. Daphne Rogers is one of Section M’s brightest young things, an investigator and occult expert with her head always in a book but also able to wield some useful magic. Sven Nillsen is a dauntless resistance operative and Norse runeweaver able to call on powerful runic forces to do his bidding. Dan Gregg is a genius mechanic and furtive infiltrator, able to tinker and improvise gadgets and gizmos and his slightly shady past lets him sneak around unobserved. Sergeant Sarah Walker is a fearless Antipodean commando, who, accompanied by her faithful dog Roo, is a powerhouse in combat and always in the vanguard of any fight.
So veteran player or complete novice, we hope you’ll enjoy exploring this new Quickstart and find out for yourself why we think its perfectly suited for the new pulp flavoured, action-orientated focus of Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20.
You can check out brand new info page here to find out even more and sign up to keep abreast of all the latest opportunities and info as we gear up for a full launch of the system, coming this spring.
We're also running a poll on the Achtung! Cthulhu fan page where you can let us know about ongoing support for 2d20, CoC and Savage Worlds systems.
If you want to see how the Quickstart plays out, or get some tips if you intend to GM it, you can find parts 1 and 2 of a complete playthrough, here, on the Modiphius YouTube channel.
We’ll see you for launch next month.