Tabletop Game / Pulp Cthulhu

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Pulp Cthulhu is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game Spin-Off of Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, created by original developer Chaosium in 2016.

As the title of the game indicates, the game takes the Cthulhu Mythos more in the direction of pulpy Two-Fisted Tales (Indiana Jones being a common comparison). While it uses the same fundamental mechanics as normal Call of Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu is very much an Actionized Sequel, with more emphasis on combat and death-defying stunts and less on investigation and suspense. The game is also more survivable, with relatively higher-powered PCs who are less likely to get killed and/or go insane from meeting up with gibbering horrors.

The default setting is Earth during The Great Depression, allowing for plenty of appearances by Those Wacky Nazis in adventures given several major NSDAP figures' historical association with occultism.

Pulp campaigns and scenarios

• The Two-Headed Serpent
• A Cold Fire Within
• A Time to Harvest
• The Disintegrator
• Waiting for the Hurricane
• Pandora's Box
• Slow Boat to China

Pulp Cthulhu provides examples of the following tropes:

• Big Storm Episode: The scenario Waiting for the Hurricane has the Heros race to stop the Esoteric Order of Dagon from performing a sacrificial ritual and creating a hurricane powerful enough to destroy an entire city in Florida.
• Black Widow: The modus operandi of Scarlet Arachnis, a potential Pulp Villain, is to charm and marry a wealthy man, gain his wealth, and later kill him as an offering to the Dark Mother, Shub-Niggurath.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: One of the possible choices for criminal occupations players can choose for their Pulp Hero is a cat burglar, more so if Femme Fatale is chosen as a possible archetype.
• Covert Group with Mundane Front: Caduceus and the Ambrosia Foundation are influential organizations operating as charity programs, Caduceus providing medical care and Ambrosia championing scientific progress. The former, however, uses their global charity as front to secretly take the fight to the Mythos across the world and the latter is used by a Ythian called The Shard to accomplish its own nefarious goals.
• Egomaniac Hunter: The Gray Tigers, one of the villain organizations Keepers can use for campaigns, is a group of big game hunters who hunt creatures from the Mythos for profit and thrills under the leadership of Caleb Lusk.
• Femme Fatale: One of the Archetypes a player can choose for their Pulp Hero. Can become a Femme Fatale Spy should the player choose to have their Hero's occupation be a spy.
• Getaway Driver: A solid choice of occupation for a Pulp Hero, especially in any pulp scenario where vehicle chases can occur.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The rulebook provides Department 29 as an example of a heroic pulp organization. It's a covert agency of the U.S. government created by J. Edgar Hoover to investigate and combat Mythos related threats to the United States. It's basically Delta Green in everything but name.
• Great White Hunter: Players can choose to play a big game hunter as their Pulp Hero's occupation, possibly a heroic example to contrast the Gray Tigers and Caleb Lusk.
• Insistent Terminology: While player characters in Call of Cthulhu are referred to as Investigators, PCs in Pulp Cthulhu are Heroes, befitting the change in genre and tone of the latter.
• Intrepid Reporter: Occupations such as Investigate Journalist and Reporter are fair choices for either roleplaying social scenes or investigating for clues depending on the archetype chosen.
• Large Ham: Invoked, with the rulebook encouraging both the Keeper and players to act larger than life in their narration and actions to emulate pulp adventures.
• Lighter and Softer: As Pulp Cthulhu's tagline "Two-Fisted Action and Adventure Against the Mythos" notes, the game is far more patterned off the Two-Fisted Tales that the original Lovecraft stories were concurrent with and has more of a focus on guns blazing than trying not to go crazy.
• Magnetic Medium: Pulp Heroes with the skill Medium can communicate with spirits or an alien presence, but there's the risk of a malevolent presence that will attempt to hijack the situation and endanger the medium.
• Mana-Emptying Spell: Player characters can, at any time, spend their entire reserve of Luck to negate an effect that would have killed them. The rulebook encourages them to come up with a suitably contrived explanation for how they survived.
• Mind Over Matter: Pulp Heroes can move objects with their minds using Telekinesis, usually requiring a combined roll with Throw during combat.
• No One Could Survive That!: Turned into a game rule. As long as a character has a minimum of 30 Luck points left, they can burn all their Luck to survive something that should have killed them, and the player is encouraged to come up with a suitably absurd explanation of how their character survived.
• Professional Killer: Pulp Cthulhu occupations such as bounty hunter and hitman fit the bill, especially under recommended archetypes, and can be useful for combat.
• Private Detective: A suitable Hero occupation for those who love to play a professional investigator, can be a Hardboiled Detective if the Hardboiled archetype is chosen
• Psychic Powers: An optional talent and skill players can apply to their Pulp Hero and/or to the Pulp Villain.
• Psychometry: Pulp Heroes with the skill Psychometry can piece together impressions of the original owner of the object, with further information provided at the Keeper's discretion.
• Reptilian Conspiracy:
  • The campaign The Two-Headed Serpent pits the Player Characters against an ancient race of serpent people who Kill and Replace multiple people, including eventually one of their quest-givers.
  • Sample Pulp villain Susan Pulaski's backstory has a Serpent Person, believing their premature awakening to be a sign from Yig, conspiring to take political control of the American government with their kin infiltrating the ranks of influential people.
• Sidekick: A possible Archetype a player can choose for a Pulp Hero, especially if they have affiliation with another Pulp Hero.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: In Pulp Cthulhu, the Lovecraftian monsters could become bigger threats with increased numbers, and the villains can be various scaling of threats against humanity depending on the campaign or scenario where they take center stage.
• Success Through Insanity: A generous Keeper may offer the option of granting Pulp Heros an Insane Talent, which allows the Hero to pull off crazy abilities at the cost of a portion of sanity.
• Taking the Bullet: Mooks often have an ability called "Look out, master!" wherein they can sacrifice themselves to foil an attack that would have killed off the Big Bad too early in the mission or campaign.
• Those Wacky Nazis: Given the historical association of certain figures of the NSDAP with occultism (particularly Himmler) and their utility as baddies in the Two-Fisted Tales that inspired the setting, the Nazis are recurring baddies in game scenarios, often involved with the occult or having super technology.
• Weird Science: Befitting Pulp Cthulhu taking inspiration from Two-Fisted Tales, players can have their Pulp Heroes build skills in weird science depending on which archetype they are playing.