Built on Evil Hat’s Fate Core System, Fate of Cthulhu combines time travel with the horror style of H.P. Lovecraft.  Players can take on the role of characters sent back in time from a dystopian future in which the Great Old Ones have taken over the world or the modern-day allies that they have recruited to their cause.  Either way, their goal is to change the future enough to prevent the rise of the Great Old Ones and save the future Earth.  But as they fight Cthulhu and its forces, they are slowly corrupted and transformed into nightmarish creatures themselves. 

Fate of Cthulhu adds some new elements to the Fate Core System, including rules for corruption, time paradox and ripple effects, stats for Lovecraftian monsters and villains, rules for making “heroic last stands,” a new magic and spell system, and sample timelines game masters can use for their own campaigns.  The book also includes the complete Fate Core ruleset, condensed to 50 pages.

Evil Hat is raising funds to produce the game through a Kickstarter campaign that has attracted $38,879 in pledged support from 1,052 backers as of this writing (an average of $36.96 per backer), with 26 days remaining.  The campaign includes a retailer-only backer option that offers six copies of the game, access to the downloadable PDF versions, and free shipping.  Backer fulfillment is scheduled for December, with general release into the trade to follow.

Another Fate Core System-based game, Monster of the Week, is enjoying a boost in popularity after it was showcased on The Adventure Zone podcast (see “‘The Adventure Zone’ Bump--Sales of Little-known RPG Surge”).