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 e
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e j Credits j
The APOCTHULHU Quickstart is published by Cthulhu Reborn. Original writing and illustration
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included in this book is copyright © 2020 by the individually contributing authors and artists. The
book in its assembled entireity is copyright © 2020 Cthulhu Reborn Publishing. APOCTHULHU
and the distinctive APOCTHULHU logo are trademarks of Cthulhu Reborn.

This Quickstart represents a streamlined and abbreviated version of the full game system, which
can be found in the APOCTHULHU core book, also published by Cthulhu Reborn.

www . cthulhureborn . com

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Original Writing: Dean Engelhardt, Chad Bowser, and Jo Kreil.

Additional Writing: Michelle Bernay-Rogers.
Illustrations: Original artwork by Reuben Dodd (of Sorrowking Studios) and Anna
Helena Szymborska. Cartography and character sheet design by Dean Engelhardt. Other
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art sourced from stock and public domain sources.

Developmental Editor, Art Direction & Book Design: Dean Engelhardt.
Copy Editing & Proof Reading: Jo Kreil and Adam Alexander
Additional help and sagely advice: Bret Kramer, Kevin Ross, Scott David Aniolowski,
Matt Puccio, Badger McInnes, Adam Alexander, Tyler Hudak, Brian Murphy, and the Weird
Works collective of tabletop horror game developers.
These rules make use of material sourced from previous publications created under the (original) Wizards of the Coast Open
Game License. For credits acknowledging these sources see the OGL statement on page 70, which also clearly describes
which elements of this title constitute Product Identity and which are Open Content.
This book makes reference to elements of the grand “shared universe” of the Cthulhu Mythos, but only incorporates mythological
elements created by H.P. Lovecraft and for which the originating stories are no longer in copyright. These mythological elements
are considered to be now part of the public domain.
 Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Playing APOCTHULHU . . . . . . . . . . 3
What You Need. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Rolling the Dice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Percentile Dice (“1D100”) . . . . . . . . 4
Survivors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Character Sheet. . . . . . . . . . . 4
Character Sheet Front . . . . . . . . . 9
Character Sheet Back. . . . . . . . . 10
Creating a Survivor. . . . . . . . . . . 11
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Sample Survivors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Game System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
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Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Willpower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Finding Things in the Global
Scrapyard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Combat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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Damage and Death . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Sanity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Insanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
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Preserving Sanity. . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Bonds Forged Through Shared
Adversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Downtime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
This Fecund Planet: A Sample
Post-Apocalyptic Setting. . . . . . 42
Amber Waves (SAMPLE Scenario) .45
Scenario Introduction . . . . . . . . . 45
Setting Up The Scenario . . . . . . . 46
Before Play Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
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Game Moderator’s Introduction.48
Wrong Place, Wrong Time . . . . . 48
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Starting the Scenario. . . . . . . . . . 49
Almost There . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Colden, KS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Locations Around Town . . . . . . . 51
Where to From Here?. . . . . . . . . . 57
Finding Gregory’s Car. . . . . . . . . 57
Rising ‘Smoke’. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Clement Home. . . . . . . . . . . . 58
At The Hanes Farmstead. . . . . . . . 59
The Blessed Rain Compound. . . . . 61
The Ungler Farmhouse. . . . . . . . . 62
The Barrel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Gregory Crump, Suspended . . . 66
Wrapping Things Up. . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Rewards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Further Adventures on the
Fecund Planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Statistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
 Introduction
APOCTHULHU is a tabletop roleplaying game
about harsh, gritty life in a Lovecraftian Post-
Apocalypse. Our familiar world is a memory,
swept away by the ravages of the terrifying
powers of the Cthulhu Mythos. Small pockets
of plucky men and women live on in this dark
and dangerous time — survivors of the end of
the world. You and your friends will take on the
roles of a group of such survivors as they search
the scarred land. For clues to the mysterious
afflictions that now blight the land. For a way to
rebuild a hint of mankind’s former civilizations.
Or maybe just for the bare essentials that will
allow them to survive another day.
If you have never played a tabletop
roleplaying game before, or have no idea who
H.P. Lovecraft was or what his Cthulhu Mythos
is like, see the nearby boxes which give some
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starting resources that will clue you in.
What sets APOCTHULHU apart from most
roleplaying games with Post-Apocalyptic themes
is the nature of the cataclysms that have caused
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society to collapse, and the ways in which they
have shaped the world that has emerged. While
most games consider end-of-the-world scenarios
such as nuclear annihilation, global pandemics,
A.I.s gone wild, or alien invasion, APOCTHULHU
is explicitly optimized for Apocalypses created
by Lovecraftian forces of cosmic horror.
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What does this mean? It means that the
game is mostly concerned with threats from
powerful, perhaps cosmic, entities that might
have lurked behind the scenes on our planet
for aeons or might have been summoned to our
world by insane cultists. Perhaps grand cosmic
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cycles have allowed the horrors into our world,
or maybe it was humanity’s folly or hubris. But
somehow the uncaring forces have blindly
swept humanity’s centuries of culture and
civilization to the scrap heap, perhaps without
even noticing, making light of our former sense
of invulnerability. They rule now, where once
mankind ruled.
But there is still some hope. People like the
Survivors who you will play in the game live on,
and while they live there is always some chance
humanity can limp onwards and perhaps even
one day win back its place.
APOCTHULHU differs from most roleplaying
games in that it does not aim to present a single
Post-Apocalyptic setting for you to play in.
Rather it provides you and your friends with a
set of rules and resources that can be used for
any number of different Lovecraftian “end of
the world” settings. The game provides some
example settings — like “This Fecund Planet”
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outlined on page 42 — but your group can
just as easily build your own. The core rulebook
has a range of resources to help with this.
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What is a Tabletop
Roleplaying Game?
There is a mountain of excellent material out there on
the Internet which explains the principles of tabletop
roleplaying a lot better than we could here. So, if the
whole format is new to you, we’d suggest perhaps
checking out some of these websites:
•
•
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabletop_role-
playing_game
http://wheelhouseworkshop.com/2016/04/27/
what-exactly-is-a-tabletop-role-playing-
game-anyway/
• http://unpossiblejourneys.com/
• https://wiki.roll20.net/Introduction_To_
Tabletop_RPGs
An even better way to get the hang of what tabletop
roleplaying is all about is to see it in action. A few
targeted searches on YouTube will discover a wealth of
videos, e.g.:
• “actual play cthulhu”
• “lovecraft tapes”
Recordings of Lovecraftian game sessions are also
available as podcasts; an excellent site to explore is
Skype of Cthulhu (www.cthulhu.me) which has over 600
recordings available for free download.
The absolute best way of learning what tabletop
roleplaying is about is by playing in a game yourself. If
you have friends who are gamers, or if you are a member
of a game club which sometimes plays roleplaying
games, asking to get included in a game — whatever
genre or rule system — will very quickly give you an
appreciation of what the hobby is all about.
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 Who was H.P. Lovecraft, and what is the
Cthulhu Mythos?

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H.P. Lovecraft was a horror author who lived in the early part of the 20th Century. Although somewhat
obscure during his lifetime (and for many decades afterward), his unique style of horror fiction has
become remarkably popular and influential in recent decades.

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Lovecraft and his small circle of 1920s and 1930s weird fiction writers sought to create an entirely new set
of horrific “creatures,” entirely divorced from the traditional terrors of real-world folklore (like vampires
and werewolves). They did this because, even in their time, they believed that traditional horrors had
become hackneyed and ho-hum. The collection of new monstrosities they invented during the massive
game of “collective mythology invention” came eventually to be called the Cthulhu Mythos.

Much has been written about H.P. Lovecraft and his creations. The curious reader is directed to the
following sources:

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https://www.hippocampuspress.com/h.p-lovecraft/about-hp-lovecraft/the-rise-fall-and-rise-
of-the-cthulhu-mythos
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• https://www.biography.com/people/hp-lovecraft-40102
• https://arkhambazaar.com/who-is-h-p-lovecraft/
H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction has fallen into the public domain – it is easy to find copies of his fine tales available
for free online, e.g.:
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• http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/
For the purposes of APOCTHULHU, there are three important aspects of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction and world-
view that shape the types of stories which feature in the game:

1. Nihilistic Cosmic Horror: Lovecraft liked to highlight exactly how insignificant humanity is in the
bigger cosmos.
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2. Humanity’s Time is Over: In many of Lovecraft’s short stories the (somewhat disturbing)
revelation is made that other intelligent creatures dominated Earth before humanity arose, and
other non-human beings are destined ultimately to take — or retake — humanity’s top place.
3. Humble, Everyday Protagonists: The main characters in Lovecraft’s fictions aren’t super-human
heroic types, but average people. Physical strength or firepower doesn’t help much when one is
facing unstoppable forces from places beyond our understanding.

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 Playing APOCTHULHU
As with most tabletop roleplaying games,
when playing APOCTHULHU one player takes
on the responsibility of setting the scene
and narrating the events which make up an
APOCTHULHU adventure. That individual is

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termed the Game Moderator. This term is
often abbreviated GM.
All other players take on the roles of
individual people who have somehow

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survived the downfall of humanity. These
characters are called Survivors (with the
term capitalized for clarity). Survivors
undertake adventures and investigate
horrors that are described by the GM.
Players who control Survivors describe
how their Survivor will act and react, and
the GM will describe what happens next.
During an adventure, Survivors

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will encounter a multitude of other
characters whose roles are not being
played by other players — those
characters are called Non‑Player
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Characters (or NPCs) and their
actions are controlled by the GM.
The core APOCTHULHU rulebook
contains two fully fleshed-out adventures that
a GM can pick up and run without much effort. What
There’s also a smaller introductory adventure,
You Need
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“Amber Waves” at the end of this book. The

GM needs to read an adventure thoroughly
before running it; other players should avoid
reading the adventure since it will spoil their
enjoyment of playing it. Many GMs enjoy making
their own adventures from scratch: the core
APOCTHULHU book has resources to help
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With this book you have everything you need
to play APOCTHULHU. In this book you’ll find
rules for creating Survivors and a full set of rules
for running adventures in a Post-Apocalypse
world of your group’s choosing or devising.

make that easy. In addition to this book, you also need

The ultimate goal of any APOCTHULHU
game is to have fun while creating a shared
imaginary world in which dark forces threaten
the very survival of the human race. There’s no
one formula for what makes for a fun game.
Games which engross all players with perilous
adventures, intriguing mysteries, and terrifying
secrets are definitely a great place to start. And
that — in a nutshell — is what you should aim
for in APOCTHULHU.
pencils to record changes to your character
sheet, scratch paper to draw sketches and take
notes, and dice.
APOCTHULHU uses polyhedral dice
common to tabletop role-playing games: four-
sided, six-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, twelve-
sided, and twenty-sided. The game plays best
when you have a few of each on the table. Or
you can find automated dice rollers on the Web
and as mobile apps.

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 Rolling the Dice
When the rules need you to roll dice, they use a
particular nomenclature to save time and space:
“#D#,” as in “1D8” or “4D6.” The first number is the
number of dice. The “D” stands for “dice with the
following number of sides.” The second number
is the number of faces on the die. “1D8” means
roll one eight-sided die. “4D6” means roll four
six-sided dice and add the numbers together.
Sometimes you add or subtract a number from
the roll. If it says “1D6+2,” that means roll one six-
sided die and add two to the result.
Percentile Dice (“1D100”)
Actions in APOCTHULHU are resolved using
percentile dice. That means you roll two ten-
sided dice to get a number from 1 to 100. To do
this, you don’t add the individual die values
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together but instead treat each number as a
digit (0—9). Before you make the roll, designate
one die as the tens digit and the other as the
ones digit. A zero (0) on the tens die counts as
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zero except when the ones die is also 0; then the
0 on the tens die counts as 10. For example:
• The tens die comes up “0” and the ones
die comes up “3”: 03, or 3.
• The tens die comes up “3” and the ones
die comes up “0”: 30.
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• Both dice come up “0”: 100.
• The tens die comes up “6” and the ones
die comes up “2”: 62.
Survivors
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APOCTHULHU revolves around player
character Survivors — usually just called
Survivors. The rules define Survivors in great
detail to help you bring them to life.
The Character Sheet
Take a look at the Survivor character sheet
on page 9 and page 10. All the ingredients
of a Survivor are there.
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Name
What’s your Survivor’s name? The types of
names that would be realistic in your group’s
Post-Apocalyptic setting will depend on when
and where the game is set, and how long ago
the world suffered its cataclysm. Work with
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your GM and the other players to develop
names that sound like they might all be part of
the same place and time.
Setting
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Your Survivor has been shaped by the
specific conditions of the Post-Apocalyptic
world he or she inhabits. Keep a note of which
setting the Survivor has been designed for.
Archetype
Not everybody in the Post-Apocalyptic
world fills a similar role or purpose. Some
people survive off their brawn, others rely on
their wits or their ability to lead other people.
And other people get by thanks to their ability to
scrounge and procure rare items or resources.
To represent the differences between these
types of Survivors, APOCTHULHU caters to
several different character archetypes.
Picking an archetype for your Survivor is
perhaps the most important decision you’ll
make. Archetype determines your Survivor’s
skills, his or her connectedness to others, and the
resources available for scrounging up unusual
gear. For games set shortly after the Apocalypse,
common archetypes are: Former Law Enforcer,
Former Scientist/Technician, Former Student,
Former Priest, and Former White-Collar Worker.
Many other archetypes are described in the
APOCTHULHU core rulebook, including some
which particularly cater to Survivors born long
after the time of the Apocalypse.
Gender and Age
Your Survivor can have any gender or age
that you like. Depending on the setting, there
may be social implications to either or both, but
neither has any impact on game mechanics.
 Birthplace and Current Home
Where was your Survivor born? Where did he
or she grow up? And what place is currently home?
Statistics
Six statistics (stats) define what your
Survivor is good or bad at in very broad terms:
Strength (STR), Constitution (CON), Dexterity
(DEX), Intelligence (INT), Power (POW), and
Charisma (CHA). They indicate overall qualities,
not specific training. Each has a score from 3
to 18. Most human adults have 10 or 11 in each.
Stats lower than 6 or higher than 15 are rare.
Each stat has space for its “×5” rating.
Multiply the stat by 5 and fill in that number.
That’s the percent chance that your Survivor
can use the stat successfully in a crisis.
Each stat has a space for “Distinguishing
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Features.” If the stat is below 9 or above 12, it
stands out in some way. Write an adjective or a
short description to illustrate it. If INT is 15 you
might write “Very clever,” for example.
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Other Attributes
Your Survivor’s Willpower Points (WP)
indicate his or her mental fortitude and drive.
The maximum value is derived from his or her
statistics, but WP may go down during play.
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Other situations may also cause your Survivor
to become exhausted.
If your Survivor has a STR that is either lower
or higher than the human norm, he or she may
have a Damage Bonus which modifies the harm
caused by hand-to-hand and melee weapons.
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Wearing protective equipment
may give your
Survivor a rating in Body Armor. There is room for
detail in the Gear section on the reverse side of the
sheet, but you can copy details for your Survivor’s
most commonly-worn protective gear here.
Hit Points and Permanent Injuries
Hit Points (HP) indicate physical health. The
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starting/maximum value is derived from your
Survivor’s statistics, but HP may go down during
play. A meter is provided on the character sheet
for you to track the current value. Your Survivor
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may become stunned due to events that occur
in or out of combat — when this happens circle
the “Stunned” box inside the meter.
The Permanent Injuries box below the meter
is a place where you can make note of any
permanent repercussions your Survivor suffers
as a consequence of being injured.
Sanity Points and Mental Disorders
Sanity Points (SAN) indicate a connection
with humanity and reality as most people
perceive it. The starting value is derived from
your Survivor’s statistics, but SAN may go down
(and sometimes up) during play. A meter is
provided on the character sheet for you to track
the current value.
There is a maximum theoretical value which
your Survivor’s SAN can ever reach. There is
also a Recovery SAN value which represents
the highest score reachable through mundane
recuperation.
The Breaking Point is the exact point of SAN
at which your Survivor has been worn down
enough by trauma to develop a new, long-term
mental disorder. If SAN reaches that point or
below, subtract your Survivor’s POW from the
new SAN. That’s your Survivor’s new
Breaking Point.
Also below the Sanity Point meter
are two sets of three check boxes — one
for Violence, another for Helplessness.
They track how close your Survivor is to
becoming psychologically adapted to that
kind of trauma. If your Survivor loses 1 or
more SAN due to Violence or Helplessness
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 but doesn’t go insane, mark the appropriate
check box. If your Survivor goes insane due to
that type of trauma, erase all the marks. See
ADAPTING TO SANITY LOSS on page 40 for
details.
Your Survivor starts with five motivations:
personal beliefs, drives, or obsessions.
Motivations aren’t as powerful as Bonds, so they
don’t have scores. Bring them up in play to show
what motivates and supports your Survivor and
makes life worth living. Each time SAN hits the
Breaking Point, replace a motivation with your
Survivor’s new mental disorder.
Skills
A skill is a body of specialized knowledge
that takes months or years to learn and decades
to master. Each skill has a percentile rating, from
zero to 99. That’s your Survivor’s percent chance
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of using the skill in a crisis.
To the left of each skill name is a check box.
Check a skill when you attempt to use a skill
and fail. Between adventures your Survivor can
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learn from his or her failures and increase the
skill rating.
The skills are defined in detail in the
APOCTHULHU core rulebook. They’re self-
explanatory with a few exceptions:
• Craft is the mastery of some difficult
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trade such as mechanics, locksmith,
farming. Jury-Rigging is a common craft
in the Post-Apocalyptic world, allowing
temporary lash-ups of gear to perform
some task.
• Insight is the study and deciphering of
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behavior and motivations.
• Post-Apocalypse Lore is knowledge of some
aspect of the world as it exists now, after
the Apocalypse.
• Scavenge is the ability to scrounge up
useful gear, buried in amongst the
ubiquitous rubble and junk.
• Technology Use is knowledge of how to
use the technological items that existed
before the Apocalypse.
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• The Unnatural skill indicates knowledge
of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know,
the most awful secrets of reality.
What Skill Ratings Represent
Every skill has a base value in square
brackets, like “Athletics [30%]”. Every Survivor
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starts with at least that much of the skill. Having
a skill above the base value reflects additional
training and experience.
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Rating What the Rating Represents
01% to 19% Dabbler.
20% to 29% A dedicated hobbyist; with a foreign
language you can have rudimentary
conversations.
30% to 39% Equivalent of a pre-Apocalypse
College minor or basic training.
40% to 59% Equivalent of a pre-Apocalypse
College major or years of experience;
with 50% in a foreign language you
have native fluency.
60% to 79% Decades of experience, or equivalent
of a pre-Apocalypse graduate or
doctoral degree.
80% to 99% A lifetime’s pursuit or equivalent
of multiple related pre-Apocalypse
doctorates.
Resources
As described in FINDING THINGS IN THE
GLOBAL SCRAPYARD on page 33, one of the
constant challenges facing everyone in the Post-
Apocalyptic world is obtaining the things needed
to survive, and finding pieces of technology to fix
or repurpose to make life bearable.
Each Survivor has a personal collection of
resources over which he or she can claim sole
ownership. The size of this pool is represented in
an abstract form by your Survivor’s Permanent
Resources score. This is a number between 0
(bereft and close to starvation) and 20 (access
to an enviable amount of high-quality stuff). In
the Post-Apocalypse this number is the closest
thing to a measure of “wealth.”

The
abstract pool
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of resources is in addition
to the named items of gear found
elsewhere on the character sheet. It can be used
to pull out unforeseen but useful items when
they become useful during the game.
Your Survivor’s Resources rating can go
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up or down during play, for example if he or
she stumbles upon a brand new stockpile of
unclaimed equipment, or if someone robs a
significant proportion of stored or carried items.
If your Survivor’s Permanent Resources
score is 6 or less, he or she can carry everything
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around everywhere (in a pack or similar). Any
more than that, and some proportion of your
Survivor’s pool of goodies will need to remain
in a vehicle (“stowed”) or left at a permanent
location (“in storage”). There is a place on the
character sheet to show how your Permanent
Resources total is split between carried (“at
hand”) items and these other two.
For example, if your Survivor has a Permanent
Resources score of 8, he or she can keep 6 points
of resources “at hand” but will need to spread
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the
remaining
2 points either stowed
in a vehicle or in storage at a
fixed location. This breakdown might become
important if your Survivor needs to rummage
through the carried resource-pile somewhere
remote — he or she might only be able to call
on the 6 points being carried rather than the full
score of 8
Bonds
Your Survivor is not an island in this Post-
Apocalyptic world. He or she has relationships
with other people who represent significant
figures in daily life. Your Survivor is likely
also a member of one or more communities
of like-minded, or just socially co-dependent
individuals.
Both types of relationships are represented
in the game by Bonds.