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PROJECT UPDATE
Minds Vision
CREATOR
Project Update: Advanced Rules and Tables Preview: Attention Rule
We finalized the scope of The Legacy of Cthulhu: Advanced Rules and Tables and are eager to share more with you. That book is for players who already know the Core Rulebook and want more decisions to make over a long campaign. Every rule is optional, and all rules use the Stats, Skills, and checks from the Core Rulebook.
In this first preview, we will talk about Attention, a new rule inspired by our upcoming release of The Legacy of Cthulhu: The Board Game. Attention deals with how much notice a Tile draws when it is searched more than once in a day.
Why Attention exists
In the Core Rulebook, a Survivor finds items by taking whatever turns up or by spending hours hunting for one specific item. The risk of staying in a Tile never changes: after each action there, the player rolls a ten-sided die, and a 1 or 2 means a Violent Encounter. With only that risk, nothing stops a Survivor from searching the same Tile all day.
The Advanced Rules make searching more strategic and focused, letting players get what they need and move on without feeling like they have to grind for something vital. Both Core actions remain, and a third kind of search sits between them. It takes two hours, and the player chooses what the Survivor is looking for: Weapons and Armor, Equipment, or Resources. The first search of the day in a Tile carries only the usual risk, unless something else has already raised the Tile’s Attention. Every later search adds 1 to it. The player then rolls a ten-sided die, and a 0 counts as 10. On a roll no higher than the Tile’s Attention, something finds the Survivor and a Violent Encounter begins.
After each search, the player decides whether the Survivor leaves with what they have found or stays and searches again. With the Investigation Skill, a Survivor can search methodically. On a successful Investigation check, the player rolls twice for the find and keeps one result, but a failed check adds 1 extra Attention, even on the first search. A Survivor with the Survival Skill can make a required Attention roll before committing to the search. If the result would mean being found, they can walk away instead. Walking away costs no action or time and does not raise Attention, but that Survivor cannot search the Tile again until the next day.
Edith’s morning (Gameplay Example)
Edith is a Survivor with a Mind of 4 and the Investigation and Survival Skills. Her Shelter is short of Food and Medicine, and she finds a dental clinic in a Ruins Tile. The player makes the Core Rulebook’s usual rolls after each search, and Edith gets through them all safely this morning.
8 AM
Edith searches the clinic methodically, looking for Resources. The player makes an Investigation check, rolling a ten-sided die and adding 4 for her Mind and 2 for the Skill. A total of 10 or more succeeds. The player rolls a 6, for 12. Because the check succeeds, the player rolls twice on the Resources table and keeps one result. The two results are Fuel and a small find of Food or Medicine. Edith keeps the small find, and a further roll makes it 2 units of Medicine. It is the first search of the day, and the check passed, so the Tile’s Attention stays at 0.
10 AM
A second search will raise Attention to 1, or to 2 if the Investigation check fails. Because Edith has the Survival Skill, the player makes the Attention roll first. The Investigation check comes later, so the player assumes it will fail and counts Attention as 2. The player rolls a 7, higher than 2, so Edith goes ahead. That 7 is her Attention roll for this search.
For the Investigation check, the player rolls an 8, for 14, and succeeds again. This time the two results are Parts or Ammunition, and a larger find of Food or Medicine. Edith keeps the larger find, and further rolls make it 9 units of Food. The clinic’s Tile now has an Attention of 1.
12 PM
A third search will raise Attention to 2, or to 3 if the Investigation check fails, so the player counts Attention as 3. The player makes the Attention roll first and gets a 2. Even if the check succeeds, Attention reaches 2, and a roll of 2 means a Violent Encounter. Edith walks away without searching. That costs her no time, but she cannot search that Tile again until tomorrow. She leaves with 2 units of Medicine and 9 units of Food and heads for another Tile.
Investigation and Survival gave Edith’s player control over every search, but they took two of her three starting Skills, so she has one left for fighting, running, or treating wounds. She can buy more Skills later in the campaign with experience points.
Also in the book
- Noise: firing a gun without a Silencer in a Tile, or driving a Vehicle through it, also raises the Tile’s Attention.
- Searching together: when several Survivors search the same Tile, all their searches add to the same Attention.
- Trouble at home: if a search in the Shelter’s own Tile leads to a Violent Encounter, the Encounter arrives at the Shelter.
- Limits: a Tile can have at most four completed searches per day, regardless of who performs them. A search abandoned through Survival does not count, and some places cannot be searched at all.
Attention means making every extra hour in the ruins count. What you need could be just one search away—but so is whatever's been listening. The full rules add more ways for noise, repeated searches, multiple Survivors, and even your Shelter's location to matter.
This is just one of the optional systems in The Legacy of Cthulhu: Advanced Rules and Tables. We’ll share more previews as the campaign continues, so stay with us!
PROJECT UPDATE
Minds Vision
CREATOR
Project Update: The Legacy of Cthulhu - Advanced Rules and Tables Preview!
If you have been following our delivery schedule for the campaign, you probably noticed that we are slightly behind it with The Legacy of Cthulhu - Advanced Rules and Tables (LoC:ART). However, we have good reasons for that and would like to explain in more detail what’s in the book, what’s not, and how we are finishing it.
The main idea behind LoC:ART is that your Survivor, like pretty much everyone on the planet, was caught by surprise when Cthulhu emerged, and the Great Old Ones brought human civilization to its knees. Trying to live during those early days was brutal, and the vast majority didn’t make it. However, those who survived and lasted more than a few months grew stronger, savvier, and more experienced. They managed to make smarter choices, develop better protection, optimize routes and routines, be more attentive to what’s going on around them, and predict the next moves of hostile forces. In sum, this book helps you take your Survivors to the next level of resistance while still ensuring they remain human in a world overtaken by otherworldly beings with insanity-inducing effects.
Also part of our game design principles is player agency. All rules in the new book should feel completely optional and modular; you pick and choose what you like for the story you want to tell. We also try to keep things as simple as possible, so you don’t have to keep jumping from the core book to this one all the time. There’s no secondary sheet, and the game still uses the same stats and core principles, so it feels familiar; and there’s no power creep that will allow you to magically be able to punch Cthulhu in the face.
So far, we have a fairly strong list of features that are locked in and ready to share with you. The book has added 30 new tables so far, numbered 35 to 64, continuing straight on from the Core Rulebook and running in reading order so nobody has to flip back and forth mid-session. We will also share a few other things that we considered but eventually scrapped after testing (for different reasons). Lastly, there’s a list of items responsible for the delay in the book: the things we still want to add to the volume but are trying to figure out how to include.
So, what’s in:
Part I: New Rules
- Environmental Hazards such as collapsing floors, drowning, fumes, live electricity, debris, bad water, and more. These also include sustained hazards, traps and trap effects, spotting and disarming traps, and more.
- Lasting injuries, long treatment for permanent effects, infected wounds, and other lasting damage consequences.
Part II: The Survivor
- 38 new Survivor traits (passive and active)
- Expertise and Mastery, granting specific new abilities without ever raising a Skill bonus.
- Manifestations, the specific ways a mind starts to give as Insanity Markers accumulate, surfacing long before a Survivor reaches their limit.
Part III: Sorcery
- New Power Bonus for the original Spells, with scaling, duration, targets, range, damage, and effect explanations.
- More details about Spell consequences, relationship with insanity, and power bonuses.
- Literal readings for the Artifacts a Survivor asks something of, showing how the object understood the request.
- Other smaller adjustments and optional rules.
Part IV: Shelter Improvement
- Shelter sites with a history and a permanent fault, costing no Space or Technology but shaping play from the first session.
- How to manage Residents and their effects, including operation of Vegetable Gardens, Breeding Pens, Water Collectors and other resources.
- Improved defense management, including barricade repairs, weapons and alarm systems, preparation and more.
- Situations where resources are scarce, and players choose who eats and who leaves, with no Morale score and no modifier attached to the decision.
- Management of a Shelter during a Horde Attack while away from the Shelter.
- Evacuation strategies and casualty management.
- Optional scaled Horde Attacks, keyed to the Shelter’s permanent Defense so the threat grows as the walls do.
Part V: Exploration and Salvage
- New attention mechanic to improve exploration and salvage
- Tile exhaustion of specific resources and tiles that can’t be searched.
- Water Tiles (thank you, MattGreenBean!) and swimming mechanics.
- Social tables for bartering, recruiting followers, deescalating conflict, and more.
- Other Shelters that become permanent communities on your map, with a Disposition that shifts on how you treat them, needs they will tell you about, better trade rates, and armed people who turn up when your own walls are hit.
- Crafting tables with upgrades, specialized crafts, weapons, armor, and other modifications.
- Vehicle rules including combat, chases, upgrade slots, travel, and fuel consumption.
- Two new Special Tiles: the Library, where experience points buy a Skill or an Expertise rank, and the Power Station.
Part VI: Companions
- Follower archetypes, built on fewer points and fewer Skills than a Survivor.
- Managing group combat.
- Sending Followers to Missions, Recon, and Shelter Defense.
- Loyalty, death, and other systems for NPC management.
Part VII: Expanded Oracle and Tables
- Added an expanded Oracle with Likely, Even and Unlikely probabilities.
- “No, and worse than that” and “Yes, and better than that” results.
- Tables with simple answers beyond simple Yes or No.
- Multiple tables for flavor (final quantity still TBD)
What’s out:
- What the City Remembers – a way to make this more “legacy-style” game, but it required a tremendous amount of writing and recording, turning into a full journaling game. We figure some players would still enjoy it, so we can save for another occasion.
- Seasonal Tiles and Events – the idea behind this one was to reuse the original tiles and add a different flavor based on the time of year or even the part of the day. But, similar to the first point, it made the story run much more slowly due to all the tracking required.
- Cult offers and other dealmaking – things you can negotiate that will leave a permanent mark, either in your mind, body, or soul. But we went so deep that we felt it could be better explored in other supplements.
- Hail Mary mechanic, scarring, overlapping terrain effects, and other smaller systems.
What’s still being analyzed:
- Scenario objectives and more information about all of the core book’s original cities.
- NPC factions with backstory, politics, and decision-making tables.
- More flavor tables.
As you can see, it is a hefty list of features that we are trying to fit into the book, delivering quality-of-life improvements and new ways to play while keeping complexity in check. We plan to finish the scope of the book this month, September, putting a new tentative date of distribution of the PDF in October. At the moment, however, we don’t expect to delay the physical version of the book, since we added padding to the production process to account for potential delays. As a reminder, because these systems need to be compatible with each other, some of the 'locked' systems might undergo changes or cancellations based on final gameplay tests.
As usual, we will keep you informed of all developments. Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions, suggestions, or simply a hello!
PROJECT UPDATE
Minds Vision
CREATOR
Project Update: Final digital deliveries on the way! (for now)
Hello everyone,
We just blasted our two digital books from the campaign to all backers: How to Play (And Enjoy) Solo RPGs and the Solo 10 Guide!
As the title suggests, How to Play (And Enjoy) Solo RPGs is an experimental book where we try to explain the logic behind most Solo RPGs and how you need to adjust your mindset and gameplay instincts to get the most out of it. Please keep in mind that it wasn't written as the only way to take Solo RPGs, but as a gentle starting point, especially for those who feel very dependent on a GM figure to help with storytelling and creating a compelling story.
Solo 10 Guide is very exciting because it pops the hood and shows the engine that runs the Dark Legacy games. It covers the basics and, if people like it enough, we plan to expand to include information on more intricate subsystems and other features that never made it into any of our games (yet?). With it, we also plan to foster the creation of more community content and, with that, some sort of repository where people can upload and collect it.
For those folks who still reported issues with the delivery of the other digital titles, we are also blasting extra copies. Please remember that we haven't started the distribution of The Legacy of Cthulhu - Advanced Rules And Tables or the stretch goals yet.
Thank you again for your support, and don't hesitate to contact us in case of questions or issues!
We just blasted our two digital books from the campaign to all backers: How to Play (And Enjoy) Solo RPGs and the Solo 10 Guide!
As the title suggests, How to Play (And Enjoy) Solo RPGs is an experimental book where we try to explain the logic behind most Solo RPGs and how you need to adjust your mindset and gameplay instincts to get the most out of it. Please keep in mind that it wasn't written as the only way to take Solo RPGs, but as a gentle starting point, especially for those who feel very dependent on a GM figure to help with storytelling and creating a compelling story.
Solo 10 Guide is very exciting because it pops the hood and shows the engine that runs the Dark Legacy games. It covers the basics and, if people like it enough, we plan to expand to include information on more intricate subsystems and other features that never made it into any of our games (yet?). With it, we also plan to foster the creation of more community content and, with that, some sort of repository where people can upload and collect it.
For those folks who still reported issues with the delivery of the other digital titles, we are also blasting extra copies. Please remember that we haven't started the distribution of The Legacy of Cthulhu - Advanced Rules And Tables or the stretch goals yet.
Thank you again for your support, and don't hesitate to contact us in case of questions or issues!
PROJECT UPDATE
Minds Vision
CREATOR
Project Update: Delivery updates & Lycanthrope Errata
Hello everyone,
All backers who completed the survey and their payment should have received their digital copies of the following titles:
All backers who completed the survey and their payment should have received their digital copies of the following titles:
- The Lycanthrope - Blood Curse
- The Witch - Pact of Shadows
- The Vampire - Alone in the Darkness
- The Legacy of Cthulhu
- Before the End (Add-On)
- Nomads Unbound (Add-On)
- Infaernum (Add-On)
With this step finished, we're moving on to distribute the digital bonus books, How to Play Solo RPGs and The Solo 10 System, later this week. After that, the only remaining digital delivery before the stretch goals will be The Legacy of Cthulhu – Advanced Rules & Tables, scheduled for August.
If you haven't received any of the titles listed above, please let us know and we'll resend your order. There are still a few backers who haven't completed their survey or are experiencing payment issues; those will need to be resolved before we can deliver their files. Also, please remember that physical orders will require shipping to be paid later, once we're ready to send the books.
In the meantime, we're publishing a small errata thanks to a report from one of our backers (thanks, Bill!). It affects the Game Example on page 73.
In the example, Xavier transforms into his Monstrous Shape during the day and keeps that form throughout the fight. As a tamed Lycanthrope, he must spend 1 Willpower point each round to maintain that form outside a full moon. The example incorrectly has him spend that point only once.
The rules themselves are not changing. This update simply brings the example into line with the rules already described on page 37. We'll update the digital file shortly, and the final printed book will include the correction.
As always, if you spot anything else, please let us know. Your feedback helps us make these games even better. Thank you again for all your support!
PROJECT UPDATE
Minds Vision
CREATOR
Project Update: Digital titles are out!
Hello everyone,
It took us longer than normal to finalize this process but those were growing pains of relearning how to do crowdfunding campaigns after a while and in a new platform. The good news is that you should receive emails from DriveThruRPG with links to retrieve all digital books, which the only exception being Advance Cthulhu, which still is under development and should arrive in August.
Please keep in mind that you might not receive all items at once; so take your time and check carefully every message since it will be one email per drop. If until next week you don't receive any email or something is missing, please reach us out at [email protected] and we will send you an alternate link for redemption.
Also remember that these books aren't locked yet; we might still tweak them in many ways, so if you find any issues or want to share any gameplay feedback, please message us (same email) with your notes while there's still time to adjust things.
The bonuses from this campaign, How to Play Solo and the Solo10 system ebooks, might be distributed via our own website, so let us know if have problems getting them.
Thank you so much for your support so far! We still have a lot more content to share with you in the upcoming weeks and months!
It took us longer than normal to finalize this process but those were growing pains of relearning how to do crowdfunding campaigns after a while and in a new platform. The good news is that you should receive emails from DriveThruRPG with links to retrieve all digital books, which the only exception being Advance Cthulhu, which still is under development and should arrive in August.
Please keep in mind that you might not receive all items at once; so take your time and check carefully every message since it will be one email per drop. If until next week you don't receive any email or something is missing, please reach us out at [email protected] and we will send you an alternate link for redemption.
Also remember that these books aren't locked yet; we might still tweak them in many ways, so if you find any issues or want to share any gameplay feedback, please message us (same email) with your notes while there's still time to adjust things.
The bonuses from this campaign, How to Play Solo and the Solo10 system ebooks, might be distributed via our own website, so let us know if have problems getting them.
Thank you so much for your support so far! We still have a lot more content to share with you in the upcoming weeks and months!
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