LITE

of

CTHULHU
Microlite20 / Cthulhu / RPG

1.0 / MMXXVI
 LITE
of

CTHULHU
Microlite20 / Cthulhu / RPG

Never Explain Anything

–
H. P. Lovecraft

Based on
M20/Cthulhu by Eric Bullis
Microlite20 by Seth Drebitko
•
Edit & redesign by WRK
•
License:

Game: OGL 1.0a

Design: CC-NC-SA

Artwork: Public Domain

 I LITE of CTHULHU / Character

CHARACTER Stats Players allocate a total of 6 points between three main Character
statistics: Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX) and Intelligence (INT).
4 maximum to any STAT. A well-rounded character would be STR +2,
DEX +2 and INT +2.

Sanity & Each character also begins with 60 + (INT x 10) in Sanity Points (SAN).
Hit Points Hit Points (HP) = (STR bonus x 2) + 10 + 1d6/Level.

Skills There are 4 skills: Physical (PHYS), Subterfuge (SUBT), Knowledge

(KNOW) and Communication (COMM). Each character starts with
1 point in each skill, and gets 4 points to distribute as they wish into
the skills, with a maximum of 3 points in each skill. When the GM
calls for a skill roll, he will declare the type of skill roll, which stat the
skill roll falls under, and any situational modifiers and the player will
make a skill roll. For example:

Climbing STR + PHYS

Dodging DEX + PHYS
Hiding DEX + SUBT
Finding Traps INT + SUBT
Diplomacy INT + COMM
Researching INT + KNOW

Characters may select an occupation that represents a broad base of

I know always that I am an outsider;
a stranger in this century and among
those who are still men.
– +1 for each doubling of the number of foes. Add up the Encoun-
H. P. Lovecraft, The Outsider
Occupation
skills and knowledge, e.g. Detective, Engineer, Scientist, Librarian,
Psychologist, Sailor, Archaeologist, Journalist, etc. The Game Master
will consider the character’s occupation when deciding if a character
will succeed with an action. For example, Engineer should have
a much better chance of damming a creek or building a bridge over it
than a Journalist.
Level Encounter Level (EL) = Hit Dice of defeated monsters, or the given
Advance EL for the trap, solving of a puzzle, neutralization of threat, etc. Add
ter Levels. When the total = 10 x character’s current level, they’ve
advanced to the next level. Reset the total to 0 after advancing. Each
level adds: +1d6 to Hit Points, +1d6 to SAN, and +1 to all Skills.

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 II LITE of CTHULHU / Rules

RULES Difficulty
Class
Roll d20 + STAT + SKILL or higher than the GM assigned Difficulty
Class (DC) and any situational modifiers to succeed.

10 easy
15 somewhat difficult
20 difficult
25 exceedingly difficult, etc.

Saving When subject to an unusual or magical attack, characters get a saving

Throws throw to avoid or reduce the effect. Roll 1d20, add modifiers based on
the type of saving throw (and any circumstantial modifiers).
A natural roll of 1 automatically fails. A natural roll of 20 automati-
cally succeeds. Otherwise, the saving throw is successful if the total of
the roll and modifiers is 20 or greater.

FORTITUDE STR + PHYS

REFLEX DEX + PHYS
WILL INT + Level

Sanity Whenever a disturbing event is experienced by a character, they

make a check, rolling a WILL Save (set by the GM) to avoid Sanity
(SAN) loss. If the character fails the roll (or sometimes, even if they
succeed), Sanity is lost, based upon the following criteria:

Seeing a minor monster or reading an occult book 1d6

Seeing a significant monster or learning a powerful ritual spell 2d6
Meeting a huge tentacle monster face-to-face 3d6

Any time a character loses more than 5 points of Sanity, the character
must make a WILL save (DC 20) check or develop a neurosis/psycho-
sis. Characters with 0 or lower SAN are permanently insane.

The process of delving into the black abyss

is to me the keenest form of fascination. Magic Magic is only learned through sacrificing Skill Bonuses and SAN.
– Spells are learned through researching mind-blowing arcane texts.
H. P. Lovecraft, Letter to Frank Belknap Long They are rare and are designed by the GM.

Hazards Falling: 1d6 damage per 10’, Extreme Heat & Cold: Take 1d6
half damage on REFLEX save. damage on each failed (FORT DC
DC = depth fallen in feet 15) save, per 10 minutes.

Spikes: Add +1 point to falling Poison: FORTITUDE save to avoid

damage per 10’ fallen, max +10. or for half, depending on poison.

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 III LITE of CTHULHU / Combat

COMBAT Combat Roll d20 + DEX bonus for initiative order. Everyone can do one thing
each turn (run, attack, load a gun, etc.) Add attack bonus to d20 roll:

Melee attack bonus STR + Level

Missile attack bonus DEX + Level
Magic attack bonus INT + Level

If higher than your opponent’s Armor Class (AC), it’s a hit. A natural
20 is automatically a critical doing maximum damage. If HP reach
0, the character is unconscious and near death. If the total bonus is
+6 or more a second attack can be made with a -5 penalty. Add STR
bonus to melee damage.

Weapon Unarmed  1d2 Small caliber pistol 1d10

Damage Dagger  1d4 Large caliber pistol  2d8
Light weapon  1d6 Shotgun 3d6/2d6/1d6
Medium weapon  1d8 Rifle 2d10
Heavy weapon  1d10 Submachine gun  2d12

Burst Fire: a burst directed at a single opponent takes a -4 penalty to

hit, but success results in a doubling of damage.

Auto-fire: an automatic weapon can spray a 10’x10’area with bullets.

The attack must hit AC 14. If successful, anyone in the area must
make a DEX check (DC 15) or be hit.

Fragmentation grenade 3d6 (20’ radius)
Plastic explosive (C4)  6d6 (15’ radius)
Pipe bomb  3d6 (15’ radius)
Dynamite 4d6, +1d6 for each additional stick
(10’ radius + 1’ per additional stick)

It is true that I have sent six bullets through

Armor Armor Class (AC) = 10 + DEX + Armor bonus.
the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show
  
by this statement that I am not his murderer. Light  +2 AC Leather jacket, small shield
– Medium  +4 AC Chainmail, bulletproof vest
H. P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep Heavy   +6 AC Plate armor

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 IV LITE of CTHULHU / Monsters

MONSTERS Monsters and Minions all have one thing in common: they are
dangerous! Most of the monsters have damage reduction and
devastating attacks. Minions are just plain crazy and don’t respond
predictably to injuries or diplomacy. Many monsters break the rules
in terms of stats, skills, etc.

To weaken or strengthen a monster or minion, simply subtract or

add hit dice. This also results in a subtraction or addition to skills.
Please note that these monster statistics are guidelines rather than
rules. Additional abilities can be added for the sake of flavour,
tension or necessity.

BYAKHEE
...(T)ame, trained, hybrid winged things
that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or
sound brain ever wholly remember. They were
not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards,
nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed
human beings; but something I cannot and
must not recall. They flopped limply along,
half with their webbed feet and half with their
membranous wings...
– HD 8d10+40 (84 HP), AC 21, fast heal 5, 4 ten-
HD 4d8 (18 hp), AC 15, DR 5, Claws +3/+3
(1d4+3), Fly 60’, immune to cold, vacuum, etc.
STR +3, DEX +2, INT +0
PHYS + 3, SUBT +7, KNOW +2, COMM +0
CHTHONIAN
Flowing tentacles and pulpy gray-black,
elongated sack of a body... no distinguish-
ing features at all other than the reaching,
groping tentacles. Or was there—yes—a lump
in the upper body of the thing... a container of
sorts for the brain, basal ganglia, or which-
ever diseased organ governed this horror’s
loathsome life!
–
tacles +12, 2d4+7 each + crush. Immune to heat,
cause earthquake, vulnerable to water.
STR +8, DEX +1, INT +3
PHYS +10, SUBT + 6, KNOW +6, COMM +2

COLOUR OUT OF SPACE CULTIST, NOVICE

It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and
over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous
It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol
amorphousness, that alien and undimen-
representing a monster, of a form which only sioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the
a diseased fancy could conceive. well-seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scin-
– tillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in
HD 1d6+2 (8 HP), AC 9, Pistol +1 (1d10)
STR +1, DEX +0, INT -1
PHYS +1, SUBT +1, KNOW +1, COMM + 0.
CULTIST, DANGEROUS
HD 5d6+10 (30 HP), AC 14, Pistol +4 (1d10)

H. P. Lovecraft, Call Of Cthulhu

its cosmic and unrecognisable chromaticism. STR +1, DEX +1, INT +1
– PHYS + 3, SUBT +4, KNOW +6, COMM +2
HD 10d8 (45 HP), AC 14, Envelop +12 (1d6 + abil-
ity drain - FORT DC 20 or lose 1d3 in each abil- CULTIST, GRANDMASTER
ity/round), incorporeal, disintegrate, immune HD 10d6+20 (58 HP), AC 14, Pistol +7 (1d10)
to cold, vacuum, vulnerable to magnetism. STR +1, DEX +1, INT + 2
STR +6, DEX +4, INT +1 PHYS +6, SUBT +6, KNOW +12, COMM +6
PHYS + 6, SUBT +14, KNOW +6, COMM +4

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Monsters / LITE of CTHULHU
DEEP ONE
I think their predominant color was a
greyish-green, though they had white bellies.
They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the
ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms
vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their
heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious
bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of
their necks were palpitating gills, and their
long paws were webbed. They hopped irreg-
ularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes
on four. I was somehow glad that they had no
more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying
voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held
all the dark shades of expression which their
staring faces lacked... They were the blasphe-
mous fish-frogs of the nameless design - living
and horrible.
– GHOUL
HD 2d8+4 (13 HP), AC 15, 2 Claws +5 (1d4+4) and
Bite +0 (2d4+2)
STR +4, DEX +2, INT +0
PHYS +3, SUBT +3, KNOW +0, COMM +0
DARK YOUNG OF SHUB-NIGGURATH
The mouths was like leaves and the whole
thing was like a tree in the wind, a black tree
with lots of branches trailing to the ground,
and a whole lot of roots ending in hoofs. And
that green slime dribbling out of the mouths
and down the legs was like sap!...
It came crawling up the hillside to the alter
and the sacrefice, and it was the black thing
of my dreams-that black ropy, slimy, jelly
tree-thing out of the woods. It crawled up
and it flowed up on its hoofs and mouths and
snaky arms. And the men bowed and stood
back and then it got to the alter where they
was something squirmin on top, squirming
and screaming.
– –
HD 8d8+24 (60 HP), AC 12, DR 20, 4 tentacles
+12 (1d6+10 each), constrict, STR drain
STR +10, DEX +3, INT +3
PHYS + 6, SUBT +8, KNOW + 8, COMM +2
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DIMENSIONAL SHAMBLER
HD 3d8+9 (22 HP), AC 12, DR 5, Claw +8 (1d6+6),
planar jaunt
STR +4, DEX +1, INT +0
PHYS + 4, SUBT +6, KNOW +2, COMM +0
FIRE VAMPIRE
HD 2d8, AC 17, DR 20, Touch +1 (1d6, +1 STR
drain), Fly 10’
STR -4, DEX +3, INT +1,
PHYS +1, SUBT +5, KNOW +0, COMM +0
FORMLESS SPAWN
HD 5d10+25 (53 HP), AC 15, 4 pseudo-pods +8
(1d8+5), ooze qualities, grab, swallow
STR +4, DEX +5, INT -1
PHYS + 8, SUBT +5, KNOW +2, COMM +0
HD 2d12 (13 HP), AC 14, 2 Claws +4 (1d6+3) and
Bite +0 (1d6+1), grab
STR +3, DEX +1, INT +0
PHYS +3, SUBT +3, KNOW +0, COMM +0
HOUND OF TINDALOS
HD 4d10+4 (26 HP), AC 15, DR 5, Fast Healing 5,
2 Claws +6 (1d4+2) & Tongue +2 (1 STR drain)
STR +3, DEX +1, INT +4
PHYS +3, SUBT +5, KNOW +3, COMM +1
MI-GO
They were pinkish things about five feet long;
with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of
dorsal fins or membraneous wings and several
sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of
convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes
of very short antennae, where a head would
ordinarily be. (...) a sort of huge, light-red
crab with many pairs of legs and with two
great bat-like wings in the middle of the back.
HD 2d8+2 (11 HP), AC 12, DR 10, 2 Claws +1 (1d6)
or Lightning Gun + 3 (2d6), immunities
STR +0, DEX + 2, INT + 4
PHYS +1, SUBT +2, KNOW +5, COMM +2
LITE of CTHULHU / Monsters
NIGHTGAUNT STAR VAMPIRE
Shocking and uncouth black beings with It was red and dripping; an immensity of
smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant pulsing, moving jelly; a scarlet blob with myriad
horns that curved inward toward each other, tentacular trunks that waved and waved. There
bat-wings whose beating made no sound, ugly were suckers on the tips of the appendages, and
prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed these were opening and closing with a ghoulish
needlessly and disquietingly. And worst of all, lust... The thing was bloated and obscene;
they never spoke or laughed, and never smiled a headless, faceless, eyeless bulk with the
because they had no faces at all to smile with, ravenous maw and titanic talons of a star-born
but only a suggestive blankness where a face monster. The human blood on which it had fed
ought to be. All they ever did was clutch and revealed the hitherto invisible outlines of the
fly and tickle; that was the way of night- feaster.
gaunts. –
– HD 4d8+12 (30 HP), AC 15, DR 5, 4 Claws +6
HD 4d8+4 (22 HP), AC 14, DR 15, Grab +7, clutch, (1d6+4, +1 STR damage), invisibility
tickle, immunities STR +4, DEX +1, INT +1
STR +4, DEX +3, INT +2 PHYS +2, SUBT +8, KNOW +2, COMM +0
PHYS +3, SUBT + 6, KNOW + 2, COMM +1
ZOMBIE
RAT-THING It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity,
HD 1d6 (3 HP), AC 16, Bite +7 (1), jaw lock and dissolution; the putrid dripping eidolon
STR -4, DEX +4, INT +1 of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring
PHYS +1, SUBT +4, KNOW +0, COMM +0 of that which the merciful earth should always
hide. God knows it was not of this world – or no
SERPENT PEOPLE longer of this world – yet to my horror I saw in
HD 2d8+2, AC 15, Bite + 2 (1d4 + poison) its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a
STR + 0, DEX +0, INT +3 leering, abhorrent travesty of the human shape;
PHYS +1, SUBT +1, KNOW +4, COMM +0 and in its mouldy, disintegrating apparel an
unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.
SPIDER OF LENG –
HD 10d10+30 (85 HP), AC 16, DR 10, Bite +12 HD 2d12+3 (16 hp), AC 11, DR 5, Slam +3 (1d6+1)
(2d6+6+poison) STR +1, DEX -1, INT -4
PHYS +14, SUBT +10, KNOW +4, COMM +2 PHYS +2, SUBT +3, KNOW +0, COMM +0
Remember that the original game focused upon investigation, dis-
covery and horror. Try to avoid a “hack-and-slash” style of play. It will
only get the investigators killed. Instead, steer towards hidden truths,
dark secrets, insane cultists, local superstitions, mysterious phenome-
non and horrifying endings.
Also remember that a shotgun might make an investigator feel
brave, but it won’t do much against a Nightgaunt. Actually, a grenade
launcher won’t do much either.
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 V LITE of CTHULHU / Appendix

APPENDIX
A. Lovecraft Country B. Occult Lore
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DAEMONOLORUM PNAKOTIC MANUSCRIPTS
MYTH-PATTERNS OF LATTER- • •
DAY PRIMITIVES WITH ESPECIAL DE FURTIVIS LITERARUM NOTIS REGNUM CONGO
REFERENCE TO THE R’LYEH TEXT Giovanni Battista della Porta Filippo Pigafetta
Prof. Laban Shrewsbury • •
• DE LAPIDE PHILOSOPHICO REMNANTS OF LOST EMPIRES
ARS MAGNA ET ULTIMA Johannes Trithemius Otto Dostman
Raymond Lully • •
• DE MASTICATIONE MORTUORUM SADDUCISMUS TRIUMPHATUS
ATLANTIS AND THE LOST IN TUMULIS Joseph Glanvill
LEMURIA Ranft •
W. Scott-Elliot • THE SAURIAN AGE
• DE VERMIS MYSTERIIS Banfort
AZATHOTH AND OTHER Ludwig Prinn •
HORRORS • THE SEVENTH BOOK OF MOSES
Edward Pickman Derby IMAGE DU MONDE •
• Gauthier de Metz THE SOUL OF CHAOS
THE BLACK RITES • Edgar Hengist Gordon
Luveh-Keraphf INVOCATIONS TO DAGON •
• • SUSSEX MANUSCRIPT
BOOK OF AZATHOTH KEY OF WISDOM •
• Artephius THE TABLETS OF NHING
BOOK OF DZYAN • •
Blavatsky KRYPTOGRAPHIK THAUMATURGICALL PRODIGIES
• J.H. Klüber IN THE NEW-ENGLISH CANAAN
BOOK OF HIDDEN THINGS • Rev. Ward Phillips
• LIBER DAMNATUS •
BOOK OF THOTH • THESAURUS CHEMICUS
• LIBER INVESTIGATIONIS Roger Bacon
CLAVIS ALCHIMIAE Geber •
Robert Fludd • TRAICTÉ DES CHIFFRES
• MAGYAR FOLKLORE Blaise de Vigenère
COMMENTARIES ON WITCHCRAFT Dornly •
Mycroft • THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN
• MARVELLS OF SCIENCE EUROPE
CRYPTOMENYSIS PATEFACTA Morryster Dr. Margaret Alice Murray
John Falconer • •
• NECRONOMICON UNAUSSPRECHLICHE KULTEN
CTHULHU IN THE Abdul Alhazred Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt
NECRONOMICON • •
Prof. Laban Shrewsbury NIGHT-GAUNT WE PASS FROM VIEW
• Edgar Hengist Gordon Roland Franklyn
DAEMONOLATREIA • •
Remigius OCCULTUS ZOHAR
Heiriarchus

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 LITE
of

CTHULHU
Character Sheet

Name: STR

Occupation: DEX

Description: INT

PHYS

SUBT

KNOW

COMM

LVL HP

EL SAN

Equipment:

Weapons Damage Ammo Mental state

Shield: AC: