Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 Playtest

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The play test packet seems to be missing sample equipment and spells? Will these be made available to play testers?

I can’t find the pre-gen character sheets referenced in the playtest scenario in the playtest package. I’ve made one based on the example given in the character creation document, Sarah Walker, who happens to be mentioned in the Playtest scenario but the others I will have to make up unless they’re available somewhere?

There should be a new playtest pack out now with sample gear and spells. Part of the playtest is actually character generation so: yes, it’s create-your-own-Characters from the pack.

Play test character gen is missing a couple of combos. Can’t seem to find any Talents with Weird. Like ones stated you choose for picking Read from ‘Occult Book’, or ‘Escaped Experiment’. Unless I am blind and overlooking. Please let me know.

Thank you

Yeah, like ninpon78 said…no weird talents. Way too few talents (i know this will change, just feedback) and a couple other things…

  1. Focus: You can get focus before you even have a skill. At least RAW. And then even when you get your first rank in that skill it does nothing extra, it seems. I house ruled that ANY focus gives you at crits on at least 1-2 on the d20. Also there are tests that require attribute + skill + focus to EVEN make the test? That seem way too super specific. That should grant a bonus, sure, but to even test? That will require very specific builds.

  2. Talents: As stated before way more needed. Like for tactics their are only three? Less? No Weird talents? Also the keyword feature is neat. I think I do like it more than the trees of Conan. But it makes it very hard to find them. A chart with Talents BY keyword perhaps?

  3. Equipment needs to have size listed. There should not have to be made a ruling by GM on every item on the fly. Some are obvious but some not so. And for the encumbrance there should be LEVELS of encumbrance. Like for example each 2x medium and each 1x large adds one level of encumbrance? Right now you can make one character encumbered then just keep dumping stuff on them without extra difficulty added.

  4. A dying character is one with more physical harms than mental ones… To go with that; perhaps more mental than physical should lead to insanity/psychic break? That character, rather than dead, becomes an Evil antagonist NPC for the GM? Now that is puply horror!

  5. Definitely (probably relatively quickly) we need a working in-draft doc for conversions from earlier stuff in the line. Like was done for Conan d20. It will really be a ■■■■■■ if it is expected that people who have supported the line have to buy everything all over again. Or if sourcebooks that are not converted become useless. I plan on buying the new stuff (investigators Guide/GM book/ adventures/etc) but if there is no conversion guide it is going to be hard for me to consider going all in". And I have bought EVERYTHING in the line that was released in physical. And I have even bought some stuff multiple times, for example “Three Kings” BOTH in revised and in Trail of Cthulhu edition. And I might even go for a 7e CoC version. But to prevent system duplication/redundancy/customer support burnout there really has to be a way to let loyal returning customers get use out of their old stuff while they transfer over/support the new 2d20 edition. (And even need to buy new 7e CoC on top of that. Even with a conversion guide many of us will still buy the 2d20 rereleases.

Other than that LOVING IT!
“Fixes” some issues w/Conan in my opinion.
Potential to be my favorite 2d20 so far.

For some reason the forum thought the word “b u m m e r” should be censored. Really I did not swear or use profanity. I would not do that here.

Don’t worry about it. Everyone knows we have the filter screwed down pretty tight, with a lot of British slang. The first 3 letters of what you wrote are what tagged you. There’s no penalty for being tagged other tgan haveing a word blocked out.

Lot of very interesting idea’s coming through in the play test character generation. I would also like to ask about talents as the only ones i have been able to find are the archetype Talents. Having played mutant chronicles and Conan i was looking for a separate section of talents and was unable to find any. Is there a way to get a link to download the latest pack?

i’d like to ask for example of using zones in combat. From all my sessions i found this to be more of a chore to use as the scenes expanded and moves, rather than using common sense with ranges we pretty much ditched this mechanic as it felt to ‘gamey’ and restricting.

Perhaps i’m using it wrongly and a few examples would be handy.

Thanks.

Also looking at the second scenario, this is another bare bones framework. Will you be releasing anything with more meat on it? or are these the future of the scenarios? and will you be releasing scenarios with 7th edition CoC too?

Wait a minute. Second scenario? I miss something?

They’re just a structure/scenario to facilitate testing - they aren’t scenarios we intend to publish fully in future.

There’s a NEW beta iteration out in the world! You should have received an email about it on Friday! If you don’t, let us know via support@modiphius.com and they’ll get you the link.

OK, I have it. Google does wrong mark.

In the “caves” beta-test scenario there is a scene that uses Kübelwagen vehicles, but in the vehicles section there are no stats for Kübelwagen given (or did I miss them somehow?).

What would you use as stats for Kübelwagen to run this scene in the scenario?

Willy Jeep’s stats.

That’s somewhat disappointing as there are a lot of other vehicles listed with stats, but the one that is featured prominently in the scenario is not.

A bit of feedback regarding the German used in the playtest.

Often the german terms are wrong (and not a little bit, but quite wrong), somewhat or even strongly cringeworthy, and sometimes without any meaning.

For example the spell “Create Die Gefallen” which creates some kind of undead. “Die Gefallen” is german for “the favours”, plural form of a single favour. That is probably not what this spell is supposed to be named, as it actually creates undead. - Maybe the author meant “Create ‘Die Gefallenen’”, meaning “the fallen” (as in fallen on the battlefield).
The use of “Die Gefallen” or more correctly “Die Gefallenen” as a singular form is simply wrong as “Die” indicates a plural form. You would not create “one ‘several fallen’”.
The spell would be better understandable if it was phrased without the (wrongly used) article and the correct word for a fallen (dead) person: “Create Gefallene” so if you want to create a single “Gefallenen” that would be correct. If you like to create several that would be several “Gefallene”. Don’t use an article when it is not needed or even misleading or wrong.

I assumed Achtung! Cthulhu was already published for BRP, Savage Worlds and other rules quite a while ago. Therefore I would have expected the use of german terms to be at least “less incorrect” in this game - although it is not really hard to get them correct, actually.

That holds for the playtest scenario even more so. “Stärkemeister” and “Kampfingenieur” are bordering on cringe, becoming involuntarily hilarious. A combat engineer, the “Kampfingenieur” would be a “Pionier” in actual german.
The “Nachtjager” should get the Umlaut as “Nachtjäger” (if you use the Umlaut in Nachtwölfe and Stärkemeister, using it in Nachtjäger, which needs an ‘ä’ to make sense, should be a given).

But the Nachtjäger’s weapon the “Feind Sucher” won’t do at all, neither in the writing as separate words (if at all, then it would be “Feindsucher”) nor in the sense of “foe seeker” which would be a very extraordinary name for a kind of rifle. It would probably, even if a “fantasy” model, be called “Scharfschützengewehr” and then a letter-number combination indicating the type.

Of course, this is language nitpicking, but access to a decent (online) dictionary is just a few mouse clicks away, so it is quite easy to get foreign terms at least somewhat more accurate.

I hope in the final product the german terms (an hopefully those from other languages) will get corrected and “de-cringed”.

@FrankF thanks for those tips on correct German usage and spelling, we’ll make sure they’re included in the final version!