An epic sandbox campaign made for Cthulhu-based RPGs — "it's Firefly in the imperial pre-Great War era, with tramp steamers!"

THE YEAR IS 1900. It is an age of imperial intrigues, daring missions, and creeping dread. Steamships ply the farthest feral seas, and explorers stir the darkest sorceries from forgotten, sunken eons.

YOU ARE A CREW OF ROGUES AND SCOUNDRELS, eking out a living on the tramp steamer S.S. SHANTUNG, hauling contraband and passenger, adventuring port to backwater port, day after weather-beaten day...

And then, on a storm-wracked sea, in a smoke-wreathed tavern, at the blood-stained altar of a savage land, you hear the whisper on the wind, the chant of the beast, the chorus of the mad: CTHULHU...it sleeps...it dreams...it rises...

RAIDERS OF R'LYEH: FROM THE TIDELESS SEA, is our newest expansion for the RAIDERS OF R'LYEH tabletop roleplaying game and other d100 GAMES based on H.P. Lovecraft's 'Call of Cthulhu' and other mythos or pulp stories. Inside this campaign, encompassing 564 pages, mercenary rogues requisition weather-beaten ships, travel strange seas, and challenge an epic and world-spanning, shadowy conspiracy.

The expansion is:

• A tribute to the 'Sargasso Sea' tales of William Hope Hodgson
• The ultimate horror adventure open world/sandbox
• An epic, world-spanning, earth-shattering conspiracy involving world empires and cosmic forces (inspired by the legendary Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaigns for the Call of Cthulhu RPG)
• A massive world sourcebook and collection of toolkits for your own unique RAIDERS OF R'LYEH campaign — or adapted easily for use with other d100 games or settings

With these toolkits, gamemasters may facilitate a Traveller-esque or Firefly-like type of open world game, where players assume command of a merchant vessel plying its trade in dangerous seas and eventually caught in a web of intrigue, adventure, and/or cosmic horror.

Or, gamemasters may use the toolkits to randomly generate factions, ships of all sizes and designs, adventuring NPCs (both seafarers and passengers), enemy timelines, scenarios, mysteries, set pieces, and dozens of other campaign elements — to be integrated into their own settings.

While designed as an expansion for RAIDERS OF R'LYEH, the game mechanics are derived partly from the classic 1d100 rules that have been released under the Open Game License and share compatibility with those old school systems.


What's in this massive setting?
Our newest expansion is more than just a seafaring campaign. In fact, it comprises THREE GUIDES. Both the PDF and HARDCOVER combine all three guides into one complete book, comprising 564 PAGES, to be used at the table.

The PLAYER'S GUIDE includes:
Rules for the creation of merchant steamships ('tramp steamers') and their crews, and customization options based on in-game experience and rewards; also included are thorough rules for creating any vessel type of the era from a rough schematic, or even from a vessel's gross tonnage — plus options for artillery and other customizations applicable to the players' ship and to a wide variety of other ship types found in the setting.

New seafaring backgrounds, skills, and other options for players including an upgraded mariner background plus resources for creating over 80 new professional backgrounds including ship personnel, passengers and seafaring rogues, and other ship-based adventurers.

Various new game mechanics relevant to a seafaring campaign, in alphabetical order for easy reference, covering things such as: Communication and Sight at Sea; Damage & Repair (of ships experiencing things such as collisions, fouling, grounding, storms, etc.); Diving (and the creation and customization of diving equipment); Naval Combat (including artillery, torpedoes, mines, and even harpoons); Scaled Forces (including titanic monsters capable of threatening ships); and Survival (including new rules for survival horror at sea); to name only a few categories.

Options for merchant campaigns, including voyaging, charters, and seafaring missions — plus an entire structure for running a tramp trade — moving cargo and passengers throughout the world — and leading a merchant vessel crew (or even a shipping company).

The GAMEMASTER'S GUIDE includes:
Exhaustive setting information, character and faction generation tools and rules (including ship and character tables for creating on-the-fly stats and names of ships, crew members, and passengers from a multitude of countries), an encyclopedia of ship types — including warships, gunboats, submarines, merchant vessels, and a host of auxiliaries, among others — and other elements (e.g., custom houses, diplomatic missions, pirates, navies), plus an entire campaign creation section (with myriad tables for generating enemies, timelines, missions, plot hooks and more), to name only a few of the resources.

Creation tools for ports of call, including a system for statting up various types of ports and other seafaring regions — plus a quick-reference table of over 140 ports, hideaways, and lost worlds of the era.

Step-by-step instructions for creating a wide variety of (mythos- or adventure-based) seafaring missions, mission nodes (for investigations, explorations, voyages, etc.), and plot hooks — and includes an example scenario outline ('Secrets of the Sargasso Sea') illustrating the scenario creation process.

An epic, world-spanning campaign involving Ancient Ones and other evils, powerful conspirators, seafaring cults, mythos minions, and an assortment of interrelating factions — with a lonely, isolated cargo liner caught in the middle of the chaos. And designed as a sandbox of tools (not as a railroad) — this is YOUR CAMPAIGN.

New spells, occult paths, and monster rules for hordes and titanic-sized, ship-threatening horrors, among other resources.

The WORLD SOURCEBOOK includes:
Over 65 heavily-researched, multi-page write-ups of ports of call, maps of key ports drawn from historical sources, campaign hooks (to be integrated into the world-spanning campaign, used independently, or synchronized with third party settings), faction leader dossiers for every circle of influence, and hundreds of pages of information about the historical era.

OTHER RESOURCES include:
A bibliography of sources, characters sheets, campaign maps, and other gamemaster tools — including complete stats for the merchant vessel, Shantung, plus character sheets for her key crew members.


This ultimate campaign is a must-own for:

• Lovecraftian RPG fanatics wanting a tramp steamer sourcebook and massive sandbox full of seafaring cults, strange ports of call, scheming factions, and epic conspiratorial plots
• Traveller RPG players wanting to try the Traveller experience but with seafaring cargo liners in the pre-Great War era. In other words, "it's Firefly in the imperial pre-Great War era, with tramp steamers!"
• Pulp action or historical gamers wanting toolkits, toolkits, and more toolkits, plus an exhaustively researched sourcebook covering the 1900-1914 era of seafaring travel and derring-do

Best of all, RAIDERS OF R'LYEH: FROM THE TIDELESS SEA expands on the rich Edwardian setting and lore established in RAIDERS OF R'LYEH — offering a new seafaring sourcebook for players wishing to expand their preexisting mythos campaign, as well as modular mission and campaign resources for gaming in 1900-1914.


See a more detailed preview (copy and paste the urls):

• Preview https://bit.ly/3pb3UYY
• Character Sheets https://bit.ly/3p7HWWP
• Maps https://bit.ly/3PkjX0Z

The PDF is available now at DriveThruRPG, with Hardcover POD following soon.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/412990/Raiders-of-Rlyeh-From-the-Tideless-Sea