Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 - Review

I just played A Quick Trip to France, the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart adventure. 

There were two competing WW2 Cthulhu RPGs: Achtung! Cthulhu and World War Cthulhu (now out of print, but it's in Chaosium's queue for a new edition).

Achtung! Cthulhu (A!C) is pulp action with the Nazis using Cthulhu magic to further their aims in the war. In World War Cthulhu, WW2 is the setting and the PCs are assigned to a special section of British Intelligence tasked to fight the Mythos. I always liked spies and a more gritty WW2 game, so I preferred World War Cthulhu. That said, if you wanted to shoot lots of Nazis and especially Nazis with a Cthulhu taint, then Achtung! Cthulhu is what you want to play. Think Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.

This new edition of Achtung! Cthulhu uses the Modiphius 2d20 system, the same system used for Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Dune. The 2d20 system is designed for pulpy cinematic action, so it's a good match for Achtung! Cthulhu.

If you are looking for a simulationist version of WW2, then this would disappoint you. In real life, war is really a contest of attrition and resources. The side with more people, weapons, and supplies wins. People are expendable resources. In OSR games, where PCs have few hit points and can be killed easily, one lucky bullet and you buy the farm or a ticket to the field hospital. In those games, PCs need to work smart to stay alive.  So, you do as much possible to reduce risk and work the terrain and situation to your advantage.

In real life, marines carried on average 117 pounds of equipment (75 lbs in WW2, a M1 rifle is about 12 lbs). Weapons, ammo, food, and their full kit. In Achtung! Cthulhu, PCs can carry 1 Major item (rifle) and 3 Minor items (pistol, knife, grenades) before they become encumbered. If you have a Brawn bonus you can carry 1-3 more Minor items. 1 Major items = 3 Minor items. You may decide to be Encumbered and carry either 1 more Major item or 3 Minor items. When Encumbered, you can't run and various test difficulties are increased by 1. This isn't realistic, but in the world of Sgt. Fury, this matches the comic books. They run into combat with a major weapon and secondary weapon and that's it. No backpack filled with rations or a water canteen.

In the QuickStart, I played Corporal Sarah Walker, an Aussie with a dog and Boomerang (her signature weapon). My issue was that her one Boomerang was a Minor item and if she had a normal Brawn, her pistol, trench knife, and ammo belt (each a Minor item) would already encumber her. There's no room for an entrenching tool, canteen, or food. Luckily her Brawn allowed her two more Minor items. I decided I wanted a flashlight (Minor item). Carry anything else and she can't even move (I exaggerate here, but I think you get what I mean). Her Boomerang doesn't return if it hits and if it is thrown as a Salvo (for Stun), it doesn't return if it misses.

The really weird thing is that her Boomerang (range Medium) has a longer effective range than her Thompson Machine Gun (range Close Quarters). So, if the target is in the same zone as her, the Thompson is better, but if the target is one zone away, the Boomerang is better. In real life, a Thompson Machine Gun has an effective range of 164 yards. A boomerang 44 yards.

I wanted grenades, but that would have encumbered me. WTF? In real life, soldiers carried at least 2 and sometimes 2 dozen, depending on where they're going. I also asked about an entrenching shovel, which is standard equipment for digging foxholes and burying your sh*t. That also would encumber me. Now, this is starting to be really annoying.

When we found lanterns (Minor item), any PC picking one up risked being encumbered. More annoyance. Taking enemy weapons (Major item), more encumbrance. 

My PC had the Sharpshooter Talent. My first bonus die was free if I used a ranged attack and aimed. It also gained a Piercing effect +1. And the normal Aim minor action allows you to reroll any single die. Now, the stupid Thompson Machine Guns are Inaccurate (you can't aim with them). But the Germans used MP40s which have the exact same stats as the Thompson except you can Aim with them and they're Reliable (first Complication with the weapon is ignored). So, I immediately changed weapons with a dead German. Not only that, German and Allied weapons make a different sound when fired. So, when you're behind enemy lines, it's preferable to use a German weapon. There's a chance someone might think it's just an accidental discharge or friendly fire vs enemy action. Also behind enemy lines, there's lots of German ammo lying around (usually found on dead Germans).

During combat, I found the Range of the firearms very limiting and unrealistic. In our final encounter. We entered a large room consisting of 3 Zones: two Zones for the large room and a final Zone for the dais where the bad guys were performing a ritual. To shoot them, we would have to enter the room (if we didn't, firing would cross 3 Zones and be impossible) and fire at Long Range to hit the cultists. Considering the Thompson (and MP40) are Close Quarter weapons, it meant that we needed 3 successes to hit anybody on the dais. Since you start with 2d20 without any bonuses, it's unlikely you can hit anyone. And if you do a Salvo, which is to empty your clip, you only gain the Stun effect. It doesn't increase your chance to hit. We wound up moving 2 Zones before we were combat effective. This is crazy bad. The combat turned out to be more like Conan than WW2. We were mostly toe-to-toe with the bad guys in the same or adjacent Zone, firing guns. It wasn't very realistic, but more cinematic.

Another thing is that the PCs have Truths. If applicable they reduce (or increase) the difficulty of a skill check by one. e.g. Give an automatic success (or require an extra success). If your PC had Army as a Background, you could pick Paratrooper, Trained Marksman, or Deadly Commando as a Truth. Well, my PC had Deadly Commando as a Truth, so when I asked if it applied to Stealth or Combat, the GM decided it was too broad, affecting almost all of my combat die rolls, and decided no. It only applied to sneaking into an enemy camp, in darkness, and garroting an enemy. Basically making the Truth worthless in most cases. After trying to use the Truth (asking the GM if it applied) a few times and failing, I stopped asking. My feeling is that if this was overly broad, why did they list it as the 3 choices in character creation? I then went to the Modiphius forum and found an answer. Truths are only supposed to be used rarely, in clutch situations where success and failure are important. The Truth should also be invoked with some creativity.

An aspect of Fortune points got nerfed compared to Conan and Star Trek Adventures. Instead of adding an extra die set to a 1, you must set one of your dice to a 1 before you roll the rest of your dice. In Conan and Star Trek Adventures, using a Fortune point is like gaining 2 extra successes, but in A!C, you lose one of your dice which makes a big difference.

Now, for the good stuff. I really like how they did magic.

One of our PCs was Sven Nilsen, a Runeweaver. In CoC, Odens sometimes help humans against the Great Old Ones. So, Sven has spells to call on Thor to smite the Black Sun German cultists seemed spot on. Seeing Germans get hit by lightning is pretty cool. What's even more ironic is that the Third Reich leaned heavily on old Norse Mythology and iconography. And having Thor be like up your ass is like having your own Gods punish you for being bad.

Since PCs and NPCs use magic, the magic system works really well. Spells cost stress to cast, so the question is just whether you are healthy enough to do the deed or whether you're willing to hurt yourself to cast a necessary spell.

In our game, the bad guys were casting a ritual. They were held to the same rules as the PCs. To complete their massive ritual, it was an extended test where they had to get multiple successes. If they had too many Complications, then their ritual would fail. We got lucky, on the last round of casting their ritual, if the bad guys succeeded, they would have summoned something horrible (impossible for us to kill), but they got two Complications on that last casting roll, and what they summoned wasn't too happy (he must have called the Old One with the wrong name, you know how annoyed people get with a wrong number phone call or when someone tries to sell you an extension on your car warranty) and grabbed the summoner and dragged him elsewhere. 🙂

I found this spell mechanic much more interesting than CoC's. In CoC, PCs generally don't cast spells and bad guys only have to make one die roll to succeed, so PCs try to disrupt the ritual by killing the caster or messing up the intricate ritual (damaging the ritual circle, damaging spell components, freeing the human sacrifices). To make the PCs's task harder, the ritual caster generally has cultist mooks and some sort of magical barrier. And that generally is about it for CoC. But in Achtung! Cthulhu, the Complication level goes up for the spell caster as the PCs do their shenanigans, thus having a clear mechanical affect on the caster's die roll vs the GM having to guestimate whether what the PCs did had any effect on the ritual.

The sanity mechanic in Achtung! Cthulhu is pretty much weak sauce. You just make mental stress tests, damage affects the Stress track (mental and physical stress is not differentiated on the track, stress is stress). If it's horrible enough, you get a mental injury / scar. But since this game is pulpy action, it's no fun if your PCs wind up going crazy and running away, so this generally won't happen. This is not CoC.

During combat, Sven did an all-in-spell casting to smite the Black Sun leader, but the backlash from casting the spell Injured him and would have killed him except, our Born Leader, Captain James Swann, gave Sven a Fortune point to Avoid Defeat (Sven had used his last Fortune point to help cast the spell).

So, Achtung! Cthulhu works for pulpy cinematic games where you jump into a room full of Nazis and open fire with a submachine gun or punch them, carry only the clothes on your back and a few trusty weapons, and death only happens to NPCs.

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p.s. I found out that the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart - 15th Feb 2021 Final.pdf (as of 8/11/2022) has rules that are different from the published Player's Guide. The Player's Guide rules supersede whatever rules are in the QS.

Core book differences (there may be others, but these are the ones I noticed):

• Helmets do not give any armor benefits (QS gave a +1 Armor). 
• Thompson Machine Gun: Salvo: Stun (instead of Area); Qualities: Inaccurate (only, no Stun).
• Fortitude is a focus under Resilience (not Survival).
• One Fortune point may be spent per skill test or combat round (not per Scene).

What soldiers carry: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25644619/soldier-weight/

The Thompson Machine Gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_submachine_gun

WW2 Guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_weapons_of_the_United_States

Boomerang range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang#:~:text=A%20right%2Dhanded%20boomerang%20makes,22%E2%80%9344%20yd)%20range.

M-1943 Entrenching Tool: https://www.historynet.com/m-1943-entrenching-tool-the-swiss-army-knife-of-field-spades/

Modiphius forum post on Truths (look for post by Modiphius-Nathan [Modiphius Staff] March 24, 2022): https://forums.modiphius.com/t/truths-in-combat-casting-spells-attribute-bonuses-when-spellcasting/16256/6

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p.s.s. I'm playing Operation Vanguard. GM is running it Rules As Written (RAW).

Sneaking around is a long series of stealth tests. Initially, I thought it would be a good way to improve our Momentum Pool, but having 4 PCs sneak around always lead to failure on multiple occasions and using up our Momentum especially if you need to make a long series of tests. But so far, it doesn't seem to lead to much in consequences. So, why make us do so many tests?

There's also no group stealth roll (one die roll for the whole group), unless you can use the Assisting Other Characters rule. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

This also leads me to think that the scenario is poorly designed. It might be better to have escalating random encounter tables based on the number of failures. There should be consequences for failure, but not so serious you wipe out the commando group.

Combat takes forever and is a slog. In one combat, we took 4 sessions x 4 hrs = 16 hours for one long extended fight. This one combat showed me how unrealistic and boring combat is with A!C. PCs took multiple bullet hits. Nazis took multiple bullet hits, even Mooks. It just made for very long, boring fire fights. Part of it is waiting for the GM to tell us our Difficulty Number.

The limits on Encumbrance also came up as very unrealistic. Pickup one grenade or pistol (over your 1 major item [a rifle] and 3 minor items [ammo belt with 3 reloads, a knife, and first aid kit]) and you can't Rush. And if you try to Rush and fail your die roll, you can't move (or after some complaints to the GM, you can only go as far as just using your Minor Movement Action). And if you're Encumbered, it's harder to Move (difficulty level increased by 1) which includes Stealth. So, if you're a commando group behind enemy lines and if you take a realistic full kit, you can't move and can't be sneaky. Our commando group didn't have any grenades because of the encumbrance rules, we decided to bring rations with us instead.

Weapon ranges are crazy an unrealistic. I made a character with a Longbow. Its effective range is Long. A rifle or machine gun's effective range is Medium. Using a machine gun in Salvo mode (using a clip of ammo) does not increase the chance to hit, but just allows you to hit additional targets (Area). At one point, I was using a mounted canon. Its range was Medium. There is no distinction in ranges between artillery and small arms. So, my Longbow can shoot further than the canon (or a .50 caliber machine gun whose range is also Medium).

Truths are broken. I took the Truth Army: Trained Marksman. Because this seemed to apply to most shooting situations, the GM thought it was too powerful and too generic, so decided it almost never applied. If it's too generic, then why hardbake it into the rules of character creation? And if you're supposed to limit its usefulness, then why have it at all? And why are the example Truths so broad? If the intention is to only apply in "clutch" situations, then why not call it: "Once on a blue moon, I'm a lucky shot." Or limit its use to only once per game or session? Why not just throw away the Truths and just use Fortune points? Or say you can only use a Truth with a Fortune point, it's a triple success?

The scenario took 8 sessions. I gained 15 XP from GM Threat spends of 3 or more (otherwise he couldn't hit my PC). And at least 15 XP from failing a skill test when at least 1 bonus d20 is purchased. 2 to 4 XP for most heroic per session (we forgot to count this) = min of 16 XP. 4 XP is awarded for achieving a main mission objective. So, if my PC survived, he would have gotten at least 50 XP. It takes 10 XP to Improve an attribute, Skill, or add a Focus or Talent. If this is the standard pace for XP awards, then it wouldn't take too many scenarios before he turns into Captain America.

My PC spent 3 Fortune points to stay alive, but kept on getting shot and died each time he got up and tried to do something. Spending the Fortune point allows you to take another Injury, but doesn't remove any Stress, so any new damage would cause another Injury and Death, unless you spend a Fortune point. So, spending Fortune points to stay alive only works if you play dead and wait until the end of the scene, so you can recover all your Stress.

Overall, I would never run A!C RAW. It's too crunchy for a pulp game, slowing every action to a crawl, and it's too restrictive. A pulpy game needs to be fast paced and loose. There are major mismatches between the system implementation and its premise.