Achtung! Cthulhu Solo Actual Play Session 0

 

Achtung! Cthulhu Solo Actual Play Session 0

Bold text: mechanics
Italics text: Roleplaying
Plain text: Out of character explanation

Materials used: Achtung! Cthulhu Core, A!C Vive la Resistance, A!C Secret War Documents, Mythic GME 2e, Juice Oracle, Wikipedia, Starsmith Expanded Starforged Oracles

Image from Achtung Cthulhu Wallpaper Village of St Sulac

I recently picked up the Achtung! Cthulhu bundle containing the GM guide, Player’s Guide, and several other supplements and adventure modules.  It is a 2d20 game engine, similar to Fallout 2d20 with some elements of SWADE in there.  I haven’t seen any solo actual plays in this system, but I have seen some of SWADE, so I decided to give it a try.   I was pleasantly surprised at the large number of oracle tables included in the Vive La Resistance material.  They have tables for randomized missions, locations, plot hooks, etc.  It’s quite nice for a low prep GM, or a solo person like me. 

I’ve been re-reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway recently, and so I was inspired to start my character off in the Spanish Civil War, like Robert Jordan, an American volunteer partisan.  I don’t have a plan for the occult in this first “quick” mission, but who knows where the random table selections will guide me!  I’ll be using Mythic 2e and Juice for my GME.  This will NOT be a historically accurate let’s play (never mind the addition of the occult), so I want that to be VERY clear.  We’ll establish a little background for our current mission, then do our character creation.

 

1938 El Ferrol, Spain

Diego Vega took a drag on his cigarette as he watched the freighter, Bessel, get tugged into docking position.  He took out the telegram he had received warning him of “tractors” being shipped from Germany to the fascist Nationalists in Spain. 

He lit the edge of it on fire with his cigarette and let the burning ash get nearly to his fingers before dropping it into the sea from the dock beside him.  According to the dockmaster’s logbook, the Bessel was arriving from Germany with agricultural materials, Diego knew from other sources that it usually meant Panzer I tanks.  Nevertheless, he was here to do a job, and that was to make sure those Panzers were never unloaded from the ship.  He could see German “tourists”, all men with military issue haircuts, waving enthusiastically from the Bessel to people on the docks.  He spat and flicked the butt of his cigarette into the water.  He rubbed the light brown stubble that was growing on his face and picked up the rope coiled at his feet.  Taking this day laborer job at the docks would pay well for the Republican forces if he could prevent that armor from reaching their enemy.  He spoke with a few of the other dockworkers, under the guise of staying busy, and discovered the ship was due to be unloaded sometime tonight.  Of course, they couldn’t unload tanks during the day and still pretend it was agricultural equipment. 

He looked at the sun and decided he would have enough time to finish his work here, meet his contacts, gather his gear, and be back tonight to make sure the Bessel and her armored cargo didn’t cause trouble for his fellow Republicans. He had no idea who SM was, but they had been feeding him intel for some time now on targets he could make go boom. 

He had not always been a saboteur of course, in fact he was not even born in Spain.  Diego Vega was the American son of the Spanish immigrant, Antonio Vega.  He was barely 20 years old and was only in Spain now because of his father’s murder at the hands of the fascists.  They had returned to Spain only a few years before the civil war began, due to his grandfather’s death.  His father had intended to stay and care for his grandmother until she could be brought with them back to the United States.  Then the war came.  Since his father was considered an “intellectual,” he had been culled from the village Trujillo.  University educated people who were not quick to delcare for the Nationalists had been some of the first to fall victim to their vile purges.  Diego had a certain amount of guilt about the fact he had not been there, he had been studying engineering in Madrid.  Ultimately, had he been there, he would have shared his father’s fate.

Character Creation

Some of the terminology will be unfamiliar unless you’ve played Achtung! Cthulhu (A!C for short), but I’ll do my best to explain what Talents, Focus, etc all mean as they are being used during play. 

Starting Attributes (max of 12)
Agility, Brawn, Coordination, Insight, Reason, and Will all start at 6

Archetype
I’ll be choosing the Saboteur from the Vive La Resistance module.
Attributes: Brawn +2, Coordination +1, Reason +2, Will +1

Skills (max of +5)
Atheltics +1, Engineering +2, Medicine +1, Observation +2, Stealth +2, Vehicles +1

Focuses (Choose any 2 from Engineering, Observation, or Stealth) Skill focuses  increase the chance for a critical hit on your skill checks.
Explosives — covers an understanding of explosive substances and the purposes they are most suited for, as well as a knowledge of how to employ them effectively, including how to create and defuse bombs and mines.
Combat Engineering — covers work done to support or hinder troop movements, including the construction and demolition of roads, trenches, fortifications, and other military infrastructure.

Talent
Demolitions - You’re skilled in making, setting, and defusing explosives. Whenever you attempt an Engineering test to create, set, or to defuse an explosive device your first bonus d20 is free. You can also ignore the first complication(critical miss) on an Engineering test involving explosives once per scene.

Equipment

A demolition kit
Concealed explosives
A rifle or SMG and a pistol of your choice. Grenades.

Nationality
United States of America (English and Spanish languages)

Background
Partisan (from Vive La Resistance Module)
Attributes: Agility +1, Brawn +2, Coordination +1, and Will +2
Skills: Athletics +2, Stealth +1, Survival +1
Focuses (Choose 1 focus from Athletics and 1 focus from any other skill.):
Throwing - covers throwing objects from Olympicstyle shot putt, javelin, and hammer-throw, to the use of grenades and knives.
Foraging — covers the skill of gathering food from the local environment, being able to identify edible flora, and safely recognising natural toxins.
Talents: Choose 1 Athletic Talent- Hail Mary. When you use a thrown weapon you may generate 1 Threat to increase the range category of the weapon by 1 (from Close to Medium, for example) and increase the damage of the weapon by +1 dice.
Truth: Fueled by Vengeance (truths come into play when you are determining the difficulty of skill checks during a scene. And they help shape the narrative.)
Belongings: a piece of covert communications equipment

Characteristics
Anti-Fascist (from Vive La Resistance Module)
Attributes: Reason +1, Will +1, Coordination +1
Skills: Fighting +1, Engineering +1, Athletics +1, Resilience +1
Talent: Sharpshooter- When you take the Aim minor action before making a ranged attack, the first bonus d20 you buy is free. In addition, the attack gains the Piercing quality or improves the weapon’s Piercing quality by 1.
Truth: Anti-Fascist

FINISHING TOUCHES

Attributes: Agility 7, Brawn 10, Coordination 9, Insight 6, Reason 9, and Will 10
Skills: Athletics +4, Engineering +3, Fighting +1, Medicine +1, Observation +2, Resilience +1, Stealth +3,  Survival +1, Vehicles +1
Focuses: Explosives, Combat Engineering, Foraging, Throwing
Talents: Sharpshooter, Hail Mary, Demolitions
Truths: Fueled by Vengeance, Anti-Fascist, United States of America, English, Spanish
Stress Track: Brawn+Resilience=11
Armor Resistance: 2
Courage Resistance: 2
Bonus Challenge Dice: +2 melee, +1 ranged
Carrying Capacity: 1 major item ; 3 minor items +2 minor from Brawn=5 minor items
Minor Equipment: A demolition kit, 3 Concealed explosives (1 minor),  3 Mills grenades  (1 minor), M1911A1 Pistol, covert communication equipment (leave in safehouse)
Major Equipment: Lee-Enfield Rifle

Name: Diego Vega
Mannerisms: Speaks Spanish in clipped way due to American accent
Traits: Angry, Quiet

That was a lot of work for character creation!   A!C is a pretty “crunchy” RPG, and I usually am a little wary of trying to solo those, but I thought I would give it a try!  In the next session, we’ll see how Diego tries to sabotage these incoming Panzers!

Be sure to check out the next session next week!