We're pleased to announce that our latest Kickstarter project – World War Cthulhu: Cold War – is now live! (and funded in 3 hours!)

World War Cthulhu: Cold War is a Call of Cthulhu setting full of thrilling espionage, tense horror and sudden betrayal set at the height of the Cold War in the 1970s. The tangled webs of the spymasters tear and rejoin, double and triple agents make their moves and counter-moves, and it's hard to be sure which side you're really working for. Nuclear destruction hangs over everyone, and a few people at the heart of western intelligence continue their personal battle against the insidious influence of a much older enemy...

The Kickstarter runs until Tuesday, 21st July, and there are some great books for you to get your hands on – including a deluxe, limited-edition copy of the core setting book. You can pledge your support here.

The Plan
We're launching a brand-new setting for Call of Cthulhu, set at the height of the Cold War in the 1970s, one of the most paranoid and chaotic conflicts of the 20th century.

If you love the novels of John Le Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy et al), shows like Homeland,The Americans and The Sandbaggers, or comics like Greg Rucka's Queen & Country then this is the Call of Cthulhu setting for you!

But we need your help to bring this setting to life with a bang, create the best core setting book possible and develop awesome expansions. As a backer, you can choose from a range of rewards including a copy of the hardcover core setting book, a deluxe edition of the core book, and a range of supplements to really get you started! There's loads more detail about what's included below.

The Cold War setting forms part of our wider World War Cthulhu line, which covers a range of conflicts (see here for more info). You don't need any other World War Cthulhu products to play Cold War – it is a standalone setting – but it forms a part of the over-arching World War Cthulhu narrative. You will need a copy of the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook though.

The Setting
Western intelligence is possessed. Very few have heard of Section 46, and even fewer actually believe it exists, a loose cabal of agents drawn from across the western powers' intelligence and military apparatus. Agents who have had a brush with something unworldly, alien and evil. Agents like you.

You work for the shadowy spymaster N against the insidious influence of the Mythos, but the enigmatic H also haunts the dreams of many agents. Active players in the Cold War, you need to maintain the confidence of your 'home' agency amid an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion. At any one time you might be engaged in multiple missions for multiple agencies, but not really clear as to where any of them have come from. Which mission objectives are valid and which must be kept deniable? Which are right, which are wrong? And can you really tell the difference?

You are forced to deal with forces the human mind cannot comprehend – the balance of power, the threat of nuclear war, and the ever-present danger posed by the Mythos. You don't know who to trust any more – least of all yourself.

The Kickstarter
We want to bring you a fantastic new hardback setting book filled with evocative background, intriguing mysteries, inspirational advice and stunning artwork, to really do this era justice. Not only are we offering you the chance to get hold of the World War Cthulhu: Cold War hardback core book, but also to get a very limited-edition deluxe copy of the book too.

If you've seen any of our books before, you'll know we pride ourselves on our high production values, and World War Cthulhu: Cold War will be no exception. Cubicle 7's previous Call of Cthulhu products come very highly recommended, and have won ENnie and Origins Awards.

As well as the award winning core Cubicle 7 team, we've assembled an awesome team of industry heavyweights such as Mike Mason (Call of Cthulhu line editor at Chaosium), Paul Fricker (co-author of Call of Cthulhu 7th edition), Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan (line developer for The Laundry RPG and author of The Darkening of Mirkwood for The One Ring) and Scott Dorward (line developer for World War Cthulhu). We'll have amazing art from the likes of Jon Hodgson, Scott Purdy and others.

The Books
This Kickstarter includes the following books:

World War Cthulhu: Cold War core setting book
The hardcover core setting book contains all the information you need to run a World War Cthulhu: Cold War game, brought to you by our amazing team of designers, writers and artists. As well as a standard hardcover, we're also making a deluxe embossed, foil-stamped editions.

Section 46 Operations Manual - Player's Guide
A handbook for players, designed to teach them how best to succeed and survive in this murky world, or at least how to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

Our American Cousins – Setting Supplement
Provides additional character creation options for American agents of Section 46, along with details of the intelligence agencies they have infiltrated and a number of missions tied to American covert missions on both domestic and foreign soil.

Yesterday's Men - Campaign Book
A small team from Section 46 will need to head into enemy territory to learn the truth and deal with this consequences, no matter where this takes them.

Covert Actions – Scenario Supplement
This collection of scenarios presents all the dangerous missions, unreliable allies, confused agendas and blatant falsehoods you'll need to keep your players looking over their shoulders for months to come.

We'll be taking a closer look at each of these books as the campaign progresses, as well as delving deeper into the Cold War setting too.

The Kickstarter runs for a month until the 21st of July and we'd really appreciate your help, not just by pledging your support but also by helping us to spread the link – so make sure you share news of the campaign far and wide on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other social media. The more people who back the project, the bigger and better the setting will be for everyone!

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/461807648/world-war-cthulhu-cold-war-for-the-call-of-cthulhu

We've broken through a couple of stretch goals, which are expanding the Cold War Campaign Book! This means that the campaign has grown to become five-parts. Now, up until recently all we'd said about the campaign is its name: Yesterday's Men. But I've just been handed a manilla folder by a shady man in a trenchcoat that reveals some more information...

"Renke and his team, loyal members of Network N, stayed behind in East Germany after the Iron Curtain fell. For almost thirty years they have pretended to be good citizens to the authorities, good spies to their controllers in SIS and good cultists to those they were really infiltrating. As retirements and deaths erode N's hidden network within SIS, Renke's team are all but forgotten, ghosts in a foreign land.

A sudden crisis brings Renke's team back to N's attention, and the questions start to mount. Who are they working for now? Have their minds been destroyed by the horrors they've witnessed or perpetrated? How much of a danger do they now pose to their supposed allies? A small team from Section 46 will need to head into East Berlin to learn the truth and deal with the consequences, no matter where this takes them."

The premise of the campaign is that a Network N cell, designed to find intelligence on Mythos activities, was left behind the Iron Curtain in 1946. N was worried that the Eastern Bloc could become a blind spot for his operations, so he set this unit up under the pretext of non-Mythos espionage, but with the remit to filter any eldritch rumours back to N. The unit has actually provided some useful information about new Soviet weapons and troop movements, but this is just the icing on the cake. They have been operating secretly in East Germany for thirty years, headquartered in Berlin.

Now, in the 1970s, the unit is getting less attention and funding. Worse, the toll that dealing with the Mythos has exacted has been severe. The men and women of the unit are demoralised, isolated and half-insane. Some of them have been corrupted by the Mythos so much that they no longer know which side they're fighting on. There is the fear that others may have been compromised by the Stasi or allied with extremist groups on both the left and right, feeding false intelligence back to the UK. This is heading towards a crisis point.

Investigators from Section 46 are sent to East Berlin to find out just how bad things have become. This opens a can of worms that connects the unit's activities to violent extremist groups in Italy, Palestinian paramilitary training grounds in Jordan, politically motivated heroin smugglers in Ukraine, and an aircraft hijacking in the Somali Democratic Republic. At every stage the team will have to deal with threats from the Stasi, extremists, Mythos sects entangled in the confusion of the Cold War and the larger threat of annihilation from both human and inhuman madness, all while never being entirely sure who to trust, who is giving the orders and why their dreams seem to be growing more real than the waking world...

As you can see, it's going to be a globe-trotting adventure of intrigue, mystery, betrayal and conspiracy that will take the agents of Section 46 into some of the most dangerous flashpoints of the Cold War.

And, with your support and help spreading the word, we can make the campaign even bigger and better as, at £25,000, we'll be able to add a sixth-part to Yesterday's Men!

Here are some handy links if you'd like to help with the sharing:
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The World War Cthulhu: Cold War Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/461807648/world-war-cthulhu-cold-war-for-the-call-of-cthulhu/

We're at the half way mark on our World War Cthulhu: Cold War Kickstarter with just 14 days left to go. We're already funded and are now in the business of breaking through stretch goals, so now's a great time to join in. In today's C7 blog post we asked the question: what do you do in the game?



In World War Cthulhu: Cold War, you play intelligence agents for one of the Western powers, working to counter the Soviet threat, but you are also part of Section 46, fighting against the agents of the Mythos. You serve many different masters – your various intelligence chiefs, the mysterious N, the enigmatic H appearing to you in your dreams, intelligence officers pursuing their own agendas and assets looking to turn the tables – and this is reflected in how a mission plays out in the game.

In a mission, you will be tasked with both an espionage mission and a Mythos mission that you must accomplish. These missions will often be contradictory, requiring hard choices to reach the best outcome in a desperate situation. You might have to go completely off-mission in pursuit of their Mythos objectives, bringing you into conflict with enemy counter-intelligence or agents from your own side!

For example, your mission might look like this:

• Your team have to plant a bug on an office used by Soviet agents, but at the same time rifle through the archives there to find evidence of local cult activity.
• Or, you're sent to tail a suspected mole, but at the same time pick up a dead-dropped grimoire left for you by your own informant.
• Or you're sent to Cuba to extract a compromised agent, but whilst you're there you're tasked with stopping the Cult of Dagon's midnight meeting with Deep Ones.

If you've played our Second World War setting for World War Cthulhu – The Darkest Hour – before then you'll already be familiar with the mission structure. But, in the Cold War, with the paranoia and tension turned up a notch, there's an added complication in that the lines of loyalty are not so clearly drawn. You can never be entirely sure about where your orders have come from, their validity or whether the whole thing is some sort of elaborate trap. The investigators will rarely feel confident that they are doing the right thing for the right people.

Take that last mission – say it's the CIA who have sent you into Cuba, with N piggybacking his mission against the Deep Ones onto the back of the Americans' own agenda. But what if you've received a tip off that the CIA handler has already been turned? Can he be trusted? Do you call the mission off? And which part of the mission does this compromise – after all, has he been turned by the Russians... or by an agent of the Mythos?

At any given time you will have at least two objectives on the go, but you'll also have innumerable questions to answer as a team. Can we trust these orders? Do we know if we're meant to follow them? Which mission is more important? Can we afford to fail?

Whose side are we really on?


World War Cthulhu: Cold War is a Call of Cthulhu setting full of thrilling espionage, tense horror and sudden betrayal set at the height of the Cold War in the 1970s. The Kickstarter runs until 5pm on Tuesday, 21st July. You can pledge your support here.

We are down to the last couple of hours for our World War Cthulhu: Cold War Kickstarter and are hitting stretch goals left and right. So this is your last chance to get involved (and grab a copy of the limited-edition core book or the Kickstarter-exclusive Cold War handouts) before it comes to an end.

Here's what's currently on the table - who knows what else we'll add before the end!

• 240-page Core Setting Book - with extra material on the intelligence theatres of the Cold War.
• Limited-edition, deluxe version, foil-stamped of the Core Setting Book.
• 6-part campaign - Yesterday's Men.
• 6-scenario supplement - Covert Actions.
• Player's Guide - Section 46 Operations Manual.
• Kickstarter-exclusive handouts - now in print!
• World War Cthulhu: Cold War is a Call of Cthulhu setting full of thrilling espionage, tense horror and sudden betrayal set at the height of the Cold War in the 1970s. The Kickstarter runs until 5pm on Tuesday, 21st July, and there are some great books for you to get your hands on – including a deluxe, limited-edition copy of the core setting book.

You can pledge your support here - but only for the next two hours!