Timeline Shifting: Great RPG Mechanics

#RPGMechanics: Week Five

I really dug the idea of Fate of Cthulhu. Then I actually read Fate of Cthulhu and it blew my mind. I’m an impulse ttrpg buyer– there are companies which I’m always going to check out new releases from and, if they even sort of match my interests, I will pick them up. Right now that’s Evil Hat, Sine Nomine, Modiphius, and Pelgrane, it used to be more Free League and Magpie. 

So when I saw that EH was doing a Lovecraftian horror game set in the modern era while taking on the shitty stuff from Lovecraft, I was sold. So I backed it and promptly forgot about it. That’s not accidental– more often than not I put Kickstarted things out of my head so I don’t anxiously await them or wonder when they’re coming out. That’s allowed me to remain even tempered about several things I never expect to actually get like Project: Dark or Super Dungeon Explore 2nd Edition.  

I try not to read anything about the game and, if I’ve backed the physical version, I don’t even look at the advance pdf about half the time. Such was the case for Fate of Cthulhu. Seriously. I just assumed it was a Fate version of Cthulhu Now or Delta Green and I was absolutely OK with that. 

So when it came I actually realized what it was: Cthulhu meets The Terminator with characters coming back to stop one of an amazing set of richly conceived apocalypses. And I am absolutely on board for that– despite my general disinclination for time travel games and stories. 

Fate of Cthulhu overcame my hesitation by building a structure which brilliantly blends Fate’s strengths with a concrete mechanism for changing the timeline. In brief each apocalypse has a major foe and series of events which led to their rise. At least one of the PC comes from that future and has been sent back to change things. But those characters aren’t armed with the full story. They only know pieces and fragments of history which have remained after the fall. 

In mechanical terms they know of the basic shape of four key events. They know where and when these things happen and some of the major characters. But they have major gaps and no specifics on how it fits into the catastrophe. Your characters interact and impact those events. We play out scenes to figure out connections and try to stop the climactic event fifth event which is always the final rise. Mechanically these events each have four catalysts– represented by Fate aspects- each with a value.  

In play two parallel timeline tracks exist: The Great Old One and The Resistance. Various things tick these boxes. For example the GOO track increases when a player invokes a corrupted aspect, a player marks corruption, or a GOO minion succeeds at a goal. On the other hand, the Resistance increases when players invoke timeline aspects and succeed, players foil a GOO minion, players make heroic last stands, or players change the timeline by dealing with an event. 

When these tracks fill they create a Ripple and change the ratings of other events down the line. Players want to eventually change the ratings of the aspects for fifth and final event, to make dealing with that easier. They can also ripple other inciting events they haven’t yet dealt with in order to shape their task. 

When I first saw the timeline, it confused me. But as we played and I understood how it worked, I came to dig it. I like that it begins with a concrete set up– events you have to deal with. I also like that the players don’t necessarily have to approach them in any order. There’s still timey-whimey nonsense, but that’s anchored by these key points in time. Evil Hat has provided a great set of apocalypses– most based on Lovecratian Great Old Ones– all executed smartly and compellingly. They’ve also included a couple of non-GOO challenges, like the Zombie Apocalypse.   

The timeline set up is rich and fun to explore, but it's also skeletal enough that GMs can easily build their own. This is honestly what the best of the tools for Fate do. Simple structures with deep play value. One of the two Fate of Cthulhu series I played in reworked the foe to be the returning Faerie Queene. I can imagine a ton of other possibilities, like doing a superhero story with Kang taking over, Darkseid, Thanos, or another similar cosmic event.