What Do I Know About Reviews? Fantasy Age 2nd Edition: Cthulhu Mythos
Green Ronin has adopted a strategy of releasing smaller PDF products to support the various lines they publish. I like this development because some of Green Ronin’s properties have been extremely interesting, but supporting everything they release with physical releases seemed to bottleneck a lot of support. While some of these products in the past have been smaller releases, like single villains or teams for Mutants and Masterminds, many of the AGE system releases have been about half the size of what modern publishing would likely publish in hardcover format.
Today, I’m going to look at a supplement for Fantasy AGE 2nd Edition, Cthulhu Mythos: Cosmic Horror Swords & Sorcery. Some of these supplements adapt material developed for the Modern AGE-powered Cthulhu Awakens. While the two systems are very similar, they aren’t identical. But this isn’t just an adaptation of Cthulhu Awakens material; it also presents fantasy from an angle that resembles some of the more sinister, horror-adjacent Conan stories, and the introduction even mentions the connections between Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.
Disclaimer
While I have received review copies from Green Ronin in the past, I purchased my copy of this product to review. I have yet to have the opportunity to play with or run games with material from this supplement, but I am familiar with the AGE system.
Fantasy Age 2nd Edition: Cthulhu Mythos
Writing and Design: Steve Kenson, Jack Norris, and Malcolm Sheppard
Adventure Game Engine (AGE) created by Chris Pramas
Development: Steve Kenson and Malcolm Sheppard
Editing: Steve Kenson
Graphic Design: Hal Mangold
Art Direction: Hal Mangold
Cover Illustrations: Krasen Maximov & Cardin Yanis
Interior Art: Joewie Aderes, Michele Boceda, Carlos Diaz, Danil luzin, Krasen Maximov, Victor leza Moreno, Mirco Paganessi, Julie Sakai, Andrey Vasilchenko, and Cardin Yanis
Publisher: Chris Pramas
The PDF for Cthulhu Mythos is 66 pages long. It includes a front and back cover, a credits page, and a table of contents. Green Ronin’s products have amazing artwork, which continues in this PDF. There are many adventurers fighting mythos creatures, like deep ones and ghouls wearing wizard robes and carrying a staff.
Eldritch Verses
Like most AGE game products, the material in the product is modular, meaning that most of it can be used without using other parts of this supplement. That said, some concepts, like the Dreamlands, require you to adopt some of the rules in one section to use other rules in the supplement. The sections of the PDF include the following:
- Mythos Characters (player character options)
- Exploring the Mythos (new game rules)
- Mythos Magic (standard Fantasy AGE spellcasting and rituals)
- Mythos Game Mastering (tone, campaign styles, deities, monster qualities, new monsters)
As mentioned above, the introduction mentions the connection between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and mentions the elements introduced into the mythos beyond Lovecraft’s stories. It also contains the standard “Lovecraft was Racist” section, which I am all for.
Mythos Characters
This section contains a pair of new ancestries: the Deepblooded and the Dreamghoul. The Deepblooded are people with Deep One ancestry who have manifested some of the traits of the Deep Ones. Dreamghouls are a species of ghoul that often develop their traits later in life and are connected to the metaphysical Dreamlands.
Like other ancestries in the game, there are a handful of traits that all members of that ancestry will have, like movement speed, special senses, and special movement rates (like having a swimming speed). Like other ancestries, there are charts of additional traits that can be chosen or rolled randomly. Each character gets two of these, so if a character wants to reflect a character with parents of different ancestries, one of the two benefits can come from that ancestry.
These have similar benefits to the game’s core ancestries. Both are logical additions to a fantasy campaign that is introducing mythos elements. While the Deepblooded are presented more as “you have elements of surface humanoids as well as Deep One traits,” the Dreamghoul still plays with the Lovecraft trope of “you might pass for some other ancestry until your true bloodline comes out.” They also have to eat intelligent creatures, so a little additional guidance probably wouldn’t be bad.
There are several new talents, some of which are good additions even in a non-mythos Fantasy AGE game. Bookworm and Stalwart Style are good examples. I love Strange Estate, where you inherit a weird location from your family and gain certain benefits from this bizarre inheritance. Some traits interact with the other rules in the products, like gaining access to Eldritch Rituals or having an enhanced ability to interact with the Dreamlands.
The Strange Legacy trait reintroduces some of the “you’re changing into your precursors” flavor that you don’t get in the Deepblooded ancestry, where you have one of many different traits, like gills that let you breathe water, unnaturally armored skin, wings, or natural weapons. I like that this trait mentions that it could come from proximity to Eldritch sources of power, but any “you had ancestors that were different than what you expected” just makes me want to make sure everyone knows you don’t want to engage in Lovecraft’s “isn’t it scary that your bloodline might not be pure” tropes.
The following specializations are also included:
- Alienst (Envoy or Mage, you analyze the psyches of others)
- Antiquarian (Mage or Rogue, you specialize in learning about hidden ancient history)
- Cultist (Any, you have traits based on the practices you endured while in the cult)
- Eldritch Sorcerer (Mage, you gain access to the ritual rules)
- Unconquered (Warrior, you’re Conan, you’re just Conan)
- Weird Explorer (Envoy of Rogue, you’re a fantasy version of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft)
As with the talents, several of these work fine for Fantasy AGE games that don’t focus on the mythos, either. I also appreciate that this product presents an Alienst as someone who assesses another person’s mental state. I’m looking at you, D&D 3e. You know what you did.
Exploring the Mythos
This section includes expanded rules for Fear Tests. In the core rules, spells and creatures might cause the character to gain the Frightened Condition, but this adds more instances of how to include Fear Tests in other aspects of the campaign. It includes examples of what would trigger a fear test and what the Target Number would be to resist fear in that instance.
There is a section that expands on Relationships and Bonds. It’s meant to reframe these in light of how they can be used for a game where cult entanglements or ties to organizations can affect the character, but I’ll be honest. For some reason, reading through these examples, I understood Relationships and Bonds better than I did reading the core rulebooks.
Cthulhu Awakens introduces the concept of Alienation. Instead of framing the stress of learning the reality-warping truths of the mythos as causing mental illness, Alienation introduces the idea that the more you are exposed to the mythos, the more your thought process tries to make sense of the rules of the mythos, making it harder to focus on the physics of day to day life.
Alienation is tracked by establishing a bond to the element causing the adventurer’s mental stress, creating a bond to Terror and a bond to Enlightenment. Eventually, a character with enough Alienation gains a Distortion, a trait that your character adopts to process mythos truths that may hinder your day-to-day life. Some of these resemble what other games would present as sanity effects. One key difference is that these don’t involve diagnosing a character with real-world mental illnesses or randomly assigning an actual mental illness to someone based on stimuli that may make no sense for the person’s history and the event witnessed.
There are two new Stunt tables, the Enlightenment Stunts Table and the Terror Stunts Table. Once you have bonds to an Enlightenment that has occurred to you due to supernatural mental stress, you can spend your stunt points for new stunts, like temporarily being skilled at something your character has not trained in or gaining a clue about something going on. Terror Stunts are adverse modifications that the GM can spend stunt points to trigger, giving you an additional challenge, like second-guessing your actions and forcing you to reroll in future tests.
The Dreamlands
This chapter lays out rules for the Dreamlands, including how to enter the Dreamlands and what statistics change when you are in the Dreamlands. Because this supplement references mythos stories, the Dreamlands have specific trappings, like the Cavern of Flame and the White Ship. To get this out of the way, if you die in the dream, you just react badly to the experience until some healing can be applied to you.
Waking up before your dream ends forces you to make an Alienation test, potentially giving you a Melancholy bond (which makes it harder for reality to be more attractive to the Dreamlands), or, if you roll poorly, something makes its way out of the Dreamlands when you wake up.
Mythos Magic
This section introduces several new rules to Fantasy AGE 2e. The first is the concept of Eldritch spells. Eldritch spells don’t use magic points; they use a Price Test, a check that shows what toll the spell takes on your character. This exists alongside the standard version of a spell, so you can know an Eldritch version of any spell. If you know the Eldritch and non-Eldritch versions, you can cast the spell as an Eldritch spell, but you may end up paying the points and making an Eldritch Price Test for the same casting. Every Eldritch version of a spell manifests disturbingly compared to its typical manifestation. Since every spell can be learned as an Eldritch Spell, there isn’t a list of these spells, and you’re on your own to make up your disturbing manifestations.
Eldritch spells become progressively more dangerous, adding to the difficulty of Price Tests. You can rest to lower the threat that is building up, and when you suffer Alienation, you reduce the difficulty that’s been building up because you’re seeing the reality where those Eldritch spells make more sense. Failing a Price Test has many potential dangers, from an ongoing penalty to spellcasting, fatigue, injury, or uncontrolled spells.
Eldritch Spells have their own Stunt Table, which allows you to change what abilities the target uses to resist the spell, frighten everyone witnessing your spell, or enable you to manifest the Elder Sign in addition to the spell you cast.
This section also introduces the Astral, Draining, Radiant, and Spacial Arcana, with eight new spells for each Arcana. While these are grouped under the heading of Eldritch Arcana, these spells aren’t automatically Eldritch spells, but all of them can be learned as Eldritch spells. This is probably one of the best examples of material that would be useful outside a mythos-themed campaign. The most overt mythos element is the Radiant spell Color out of Space.
Rituals are long-form magical workings that include the following steps:
- Define the Ritual
- Gather Participants
- Choose Subjects
- Perform the Ritual
- Apply Potential
- Spellcasting Test
- Pay the Cost
Some example rituals show you what spells are needed for them, the total score you need to accumulate from your stunt dice, what some of the standard elements are (which may affect the difficulty if they aren’t present), and what applications are used. In addition to the example rituals, spells can be boosted by adding applications to the spell, letting you affect additional targets, cast the spell at range, and other modified effects. Each one of the applications adds points to the Potential of the spell, which is the total of the stunt dice needed to activate the ritual.
This section wraps up with Eldritch Items, in this case defining the traits of Eldritch Grimoires. These usually allow someone to learn the Eldritch version of spells included in the book, as well as detailing some rituals, granting bonuses to someone using the book to repeat the ritual. Examples of grimoires include The Book of Dead Names and The Rule of Yith.
Mythos Gamemastering
For a shorter supplement, there is some solid advice on running mythos or fantasy campaigns featuring unknowable supernatural elements. I like easily digestible advice, and I appreciate that after a few paragraphs on each topic being addressed, there are a handful of bullet-pointed examples.
The section on running campaigns includes three different ways to include mythos elements:
- Garnish
- Spice
- Ingredient
Each section explains the difference between using the mythos sparingly, as one of many recurring themes, or as the primary theme of the campaign and provides an example of what that looks like in a campaign.
The monster section includes some of the monstrous qualities from the core rules that are especially suited to mythos-themed games and discusses how these qualities may appear in a mythos setting. There are eleven brand-new qualities in the PDF, as well as the following templates:
- Deep-Dweller
- Otherworldly Stalker
- Eldritch
- Starspawned
The following new stat blocks appear in the supplement:
- Amorphite
- Cultist
- Deep One
- Knight of Yith
- Minion
- Thanatosaur
A sidebar also talks about what monsters from the core rules work as mythos-adjacent campaign elements.
Elder Sign
This is a packed supplement for standard Fantasy AGE 2e and mythos-themed campaigns. The talents, specializations, and arcana are accessible introductions into a campaign that doesn’t require too much modification to the standard Fantasy AGE 2e assumptions. There is very effective advice on gamemaster advice for mythos-themed campaigns.
Unspeakable Knowledge
The core Fantasy Age 2e book does a good job of explaining the importance of not overgeneralizing typical members of an ancestry, but I think we could have used a more focused discussion on some of Lovecraft’s “tainted bloodline” themes. I like Alienation and Rituals, but both are very involved sets of rules that may complicate the standard level of complexity in Fantasy Age 2e.
Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.
I continue to enjoy these Green Ronin supplements for various games, especially for the AGE system. This is a very good supplement, but to get maximum value from it, you and your table may need to be willing to embrace rules that are a little more involved. Some great inclusions work with just the core game, but it helps to want mythos material that brings in its own additional rules for maximum effect.
#Cthulhu #CthulhuMythos #FantasyAGE #FantasyAGE2e #ffcc00 #GreenRonin #rpgs #ttrpgs

