The Open Mythos: A Free/Open Resource for TTRPGs

Today is an exciting day … especially if you are a creative game designer who has ever dreamed of unleashing your original Lovecraftian scenarios, campaigns, or freaky new TTRPG settings.

Why? Because today we are thrilled to be announcing the completion of a collaborative project we have been running with our excellent friends at the German Lovecraft Society … an initiative to create a truly free and open set of game statistics for all of the unique horrors invented by H.P. Lovecraft and used to dreadful effect in his stories.

We are calling this collection of game elements the “Open Mythos”. It is available right now online at: www.cthulhueternal.com/open-mythos/ … and is published under an open license, meaning the full text (and artwork) is re-usable by anyone, either for personal or commercial purposes (as long as the terms of the licenses are met).

The Open Mythos covers five major areas: Lovecraftian Entities (gods and monsters), Unnatural Rituals, Terrible Tomes, Strange Artifacts, and organized Mythos-related Cults. The entries in the Open Mythos have been scrupulously researched in order to ensure that they are purely derived from Lovecraft, and more particularly from Lovecraft stories that are universally recognized as being in the public domain. A major objective of ours was to create a Mythos corpus that is reliably free of the kinds of “licensing complications” that plague other similar bestiaries and game books which have draw upon a broad selection of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, including stories which are still under copyright.

The Open Mythos game descriptions are written to be compatible with the rules engine we have built for both the Cthulhu Eternal RPG and it’s twisted post-Apocalyptic sibling APOCTHULHU. These systems are also highly compatible with the FHTAGN roleplaying game released by the Deutsche Lovecraft Gesellschaft. In theory you could also use these game statistics for other D100 games with a minimum of tweaking.

A principal motivation shared by both ourselves and the German Lovecraft Society is the creation of a set of game resources that everyone in the Lovecraftian TTRPG community can use for free, to add creative fuel to the flames of your imagination. From speaking with many gamers, one of the most commonly cited barriers to self-publishing original game creations is the hurdle of having to either license or build-from-scratch an entire Lovecraft-fuelled game world, complete with game stats for everything. With the release of the Open Mythos we hope we have lowered the bar for indie publishers to get their unique new ideas out into the marketplace, and into the hands of gamers around the world.

For those who are curious about the details of what is in the Open Mythos write-ups, here’s a quick summary. The full gory details can be obtained via the link above.

• 40 Lovecraftian Entities: Azathoth, Beings of Ib, Bholes, Bokrug, Cats of the Dreamlands, Colour Out Of Space, Cthulhu, Creeping Corpses, Dagon & Hydra, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Formless Hunter, Ghasts, Ghouls, Gnorri, God of the Sunken Temple, Great Race of Yith, Gugs, Hounds of Death, Hypnos, Keziah Mason, King in Yellow, Leng Folk, Mi-Go, Moon Beasts, Night-gaunts, Nodens, Nyarlathotep, Polyp Horrors, Rat Things, Resurrected Abominations, Resurrected Corpses, Shantaks, Shoggoths, Shub-Niggurath, Spiders From Leng, Star Spawn, Winged Servant, Yog-Sothoth, Zoogs
• 21 Unnatural Rituals: Accelerated Healing, Aklo Sabaoth, Annihilation, Banish Entity, Body Swap, DHO-HNA Formula, Dominate Will, Elder Sign, Elixir of Life, Erase Memories, Essential Saltes, Forge Ancestral Bond, Inflict Harm, Music of the Spheres, Open Dimensional Rift, Powder of Ibn-Ghazi, Prolong Life, See Through The Ages, Sign of Koth, Summon Entities, Voorish Sign
• 14 Terrible Tomes: Azathoth and Other Horrors, Book of Azathoth, Book of Dzyan, Brick Cylinders of Kadatheron, CTHULHU CULT (Angell’s Files), Daemonolatreia Libri III, Ilarnek Papyri, The King in Yellow (play), Liber Damnatus Damnationum, The Nameless Book, The Necronomicon, Pnakotic Manuscripts, Scientific Notes of Dr. Herbert West, Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan.
• 8 Strange Artifacts: Cthulhu Idol, Golden Tiaras of the Deep Ones, Great Race Mental Projection Apparatus, Jade Soul-Amulet, Mi-Go Brain Cylinder, Mi-Go Communication Implant, The Shining Trapezohedron, The Silver Key
• 8 Mythos-related Cults: Cannibal Cult of Leng, The Cthulhu Cult, Cult of the Wise Ones, Cult of the Worm, Esoteric Order of Dagon, Shepherds of Hastur, Starry Wisdom Sect, Witches Covens

With all this free and fully-open game content at your fingertips (or pseudopods, we’re not ones to judge), there is no end to the horror that can be unleashed upon the gaming world.

And that’s a great thing!