Magic & Psionics for CthulhuTech: The Shadow War RPG

WELCOME!

CthulhuTech: The Shadow War is a game where you face an eldritch apocalypse in a near future science fantasy world. Where players fight back against otherworldly forces who have invaded earth and radically changed it. A mystical apocalypse threatens the people of Earth as dark, inhuman god-like entities reawaken and horrific alien beings invade.

It hasn’t taken long for the world to dramatically change. Though formalized, industrialized, and heavily-regulated by the authorities, magic is real and has changed many facets of society. The most significant is the blending of magic and technology, known as arcanotechnology, which has unleashed a massive wave of advancement. In the recent past, the Earth was attacked by an extraterrestrial enemy, a cloned people called the Nazzadi, who ultimately turned on their masters and are now an important ally in our fight for survival. Those same masters, the alien Migou, followed shortly thereafter to finish their invasion.

Now the Old Ones return, dark god-like entities beyond mortal understanding. Their cults spread out across the globe, some through armies of monsters, some through sinister infiltration. In the Shadow War, you’ll mostly be concerned with Nyarlathotep, a being that is a primal force of the universe. Their cult on Earth is the Children of Chaos, and they have infested one of the largest companies in the world.

Who is WildFire Games?

WildFire games was initially founded in 2002 and our debut release was the first edition of Cthulhutech, an award winning RPG initially published in 2007 with 8 core books, and a 15 year print run. The WildFire team also produced the award winning card games Poo: The Card Game and Nuts!. Additionally, we are responsible for the popular Traveller setting Chthonian Stars and its spin off RPG The Void. With 23 years of operation and over a century of combined game publishing experience, WildFire Games has demonstrated our commitment to writing and delivering quality game content.

This isn't our first Kickstarter either! Last year we launched CthulhuTech: The Shadow War, hit our pledge goal in under 24 hours, and fulfilled all rewards within 7 months!

Try it NOW for FREE!
If you want to sample CthulhuTech: The Shadow War RPG, we’ve already got some quick-start rules available for download. They include six ready-to-play characters and a premade adventure, which are designed to teach you about the setting and the mechanics all while you’re playing the game.

Want to participate in the conversation? Join our Discord!

Upgrade Your Game!

The Magic & Psionics book expands the CthulhuTech setting and gives you new and exciting characters to play! Tame the forces of the universe as a sorcerer, unleash the power of your mind as a psion, or become a pinnacle of competence as a mortal champion.

For GMs, Magic & Psionics also gives you a host of new enemies—large and small—for your players to encounter, along with more fascinating, yet dangerous secret places for them to explore.

What is Magic?

Within the last century, the people of Earth have reclaimed the ability to wield eldritch power—something lost since the Third World of Humans—commonly known as arcane science or magic. Only those who are “arcano-gifted” from birth can learn to harness magic, either through the analytical mind of a sorcerer—capable of understanding the mechanics of the cosmos—or the intuitive mind of a psion—with a natural biological ability to mold cosmic energy. Regardless, magic taps into the power of creation itself and the modern world has only scratched its surface.

When one can tap into the spaces between dimensions, they can channel and control the enormous, raw power found there. D-engine arcanotechnology does this by using infinitesimal pin holes to breach the barrier between worlds. Psions create a similar effect within their own brains, their biological processes continually flooding their bodies with power. Sorcerers use their mind to create these breaches externally and channel them into manifesting their version of reality on the world. All three of these methods construct a dimensional gradient which forces the normally chaotic dimensional energies present in the multiverse to flow in a specific pattern and change the very fabric of reality.

Magic allows an arcano-gifted person to bend or circumnavigate the laws of the universe as mortals understand them. Sorcerers and psions can perform incredible feats such as manipulating electricity, healing the body, remaking structures, or even warping time and space. Human cultures have traditionally been made uneasy by the idea of magic, and even now there are those who try to avoid the influence of a barely understood powerful and chaotic force. The industrialization and demystification of magic has positively impacted this perception, as people are less leery of mystical power when it comes with an advanced university degree and a career path.

Magic Formalized & Industrialized

Sorcerously-inclined young people are given a chance to develop their abilities at one of the world’s magic-focused boarding schools known as arcane academies. The institutions are designed to teach young sorcerers the basics of magic to prepare them for recruitment into an accredited arcane university—as well as keep them safe from their own growing power. To meet the rigid requirements for accreditation, arcane academies are operated either by the government or by large companies. Ashcroft has a prestigious academy, preparing students to matriculate into the Ashcroft Institute of Arcane Sciences. Likewise, Chrysalis maintains several arcane academies, regularly using them to scout promising talent early in their studies. Students at Chrysalis facilities get given summer internships, guidance and assistance on choosing universities, and ultimately promised a career at one of the many Chrysalis companies if they stay the course. The Office of Internal Security and the Armed forces also have their own civil service academies, designed for those interested in law enforcement or military service respectively. In spite of these organizations’ urgings, some sorcerously-inclined individuals decide to pursue careers outside of magic. While most go on to live normal lives, the Office of Internal Security still tracks them in case they decide to develop their abilities later in life.

There are a variety of accredited post-secondary institutions which provide a degree in Applied Arcane Sciences. In addition to the prestigious Ashcroft Institute of Arcane Sciences, many notable and long-standing universities offer the undergraduate and graduate programs required to become a professional sorcerer. The Office of Internal Security and the Armed Forces also have their own post-secondary institutions, which lead directly to government service. For those not interested in a STEM, law enforcement, or military professions, there are smaller arcane universities which are accredited and approved by the government, many of which offer excellent educations.

Excellent employment prospects exist for sorcerers. Those who attended an Armed Forces or law enforcement university will enter service immediately upon graduation, usually for a four-year term. While still compensated like a government worker, they are at the highest bands for their positions. Formally-trained sorcerers entering the private sector are generally more valuable than their non-magical peers, many entering employment for the company which gave them a signing bonus. Others—along with the informally-trained—discover there are still many valuable careers available in government, business, social sciences, or the performing arts. 

Psionic academies are boarding schools, accommodating students ages ten to eighteen. Though moving to an elite academy is not optional for a young psion, the academies send out competitive offerings to make it seem very attractive to them and their parents.

There are several psionic academies throughout the world operated by the New Sol Coalition, which are kept far away from population centers. These locations are a carefully guarded secret, as young psions must be removed from society for safety and security. Students’ parents may elect to move to facilities adjacent to the academy, but they’ll be cut off from the world and have to work while monitored and under surveillance. While there’s enough diversions and entertainment for families, adults soon grow tired of the limited options and restricted lifestyles over the years their young psion is in training. Many families cannot make the move, instead regularly making monitored video calls, and occasionally braving the process of being sworn to secrecy, blind-folded, and transported to visit their children during one of the frequent visitation days and weekends, where they can enjoy quality time together under surveillance.

Psions have far less choice in employment than sorcerers, and upon graduation from their academy will work for the government in some capacity. While psions can be subcontracted to a company who acquires a psion hiring permit, they’re never legally employed directly by private entities.

Sorcerer Characters

Your magical ability is determined by your skills and how good you are at them, as you can only perform magic within the boundaries of what you understand about the world.

• Sorcerers who cultivate Alertness refine perception into an arcane instrument.
• Athletics sorcery enhances physical performance, mobility, stealth, and natural survival skills. 
• Body Fighting & Gun Fu are represented by combat magic. 
• Business & Politics magic governs three intertwined forces of modern influence, shaping perception, collective emotion, organizational behavior, and public sentiment.
• Computers & Communications magic manipulates the invisible lattice of computation, signal flow, machine cognition, and networked systems that permeate modern life. 
• Construction & Engineering sorcery is the magic of making, unmaking, and understanding built things. 
• Convince magic governs short-term cognitive influence: redirecting attention, shaping emotional framing, planting impulses, and overriding immediate responses. 
• Hidden World magic reveals the unseen architecture of reality: magic, dimensions, entities, causality, and the currents that bind them beneath the mundane world.
• Humanities magic manipulates the stories, symbols, emotions, and cultural memory that underpin human civilization. 
• Law & Crime sorcery governs control, concealment, interdiction, protection, forensic truth, and magical enforcement. 
• Lie magic governs the fabrication and manipulation of perception: illusions, sensory distortion, and zones of false presence. 
• Medicine magic governs healing, harming, and transforming living bodies. 
• Piloting sorcery governs motion, coordination, and controlled manipulation through space. 
• Science magic governs humanity’s most dangerous impulse, the unfailing urge to understand, deconstruct, and rebuild reality itself.

Psion Characters

Unlike sorcerers, psionic abilities don’t require any understanding of the world to use, but their powers are more narrowly focused. Psions fall into one of five identified types, each strange and unexpected:

Brood (Mu-Class Psion): To Brood psions, their bodies are mutable environments where instinct, will, and biology converge. Every muscle, organ, and cell is a resource to be repurposed and optimized for survival, adapted for dominance, or reshaped simply because it’s possible. Their psionic powers govern Adaptation, Form Shifting, and Revivify.

Harlequin (Phi-Class Psion): Harlequins live by rules no one else can see. Where others treat the laws of physics, causality, and time as immutable, they drift beyond those constraints, unmoored from the conventions that anchor ordinary minds. Their psionic powers govern Entropy, Reality, and Time & Space.

Rewriter (Xi-Class Psion): Rewriters perceive the universe as a malleable narrative. Where others see immutable laws or objective reality, Rewriters see stories, contracts, and shared belief structures waiting to be revised. Their psionic powers govern Communication, Meaning, and Truth.

Slate (Tau-Class Psion): Slates blur the boundaries between mind, flesh, and machine. Where others see biology, psychology, and technology as separate systems, Slates experience them as parts of the same underlying program. Their bodies are mutable vessels, living firmware to be optimized, debugged, and rewritten. Their psionic powers govern the Body-Machine Interface, Body Programming, and Mind Programming. 

Sprite (Iota-Class Psion): Sprites experience reality as a living rhythm. Where others might see disorder or chafe against the perils of chance, they hear harmony or synchronicity. They’re tuned to the hidden tempo beneath existence, the cosmic flow that guides causality, beauty, and intent. Their psionic powers govern Cosmic Flow, Inspiration, and Perception.

Only Humans, Nazzadi, and Amlati can be psions. It’s an inexplicable phenomenon tied to Humans and their closest kin.

Game Mechanics

Magic, both sorcery and psionics, builds off the core CthulhuTech mechanics. You'll first take a Complex Action to activate your powers, risking cosmic backlash if you fail. When you want to change up your powers, or affect an unwilling target, you'll take another Complex Action, but this one only risks failure. By its very nature, magic is flashy and obvious to anyone seeing it in use. Trying to obfuscate your power is one of the main ways your magic becomes more complicated. Another way to complicate your magic is by bringing the power from multiple skills or abilities into play at the same time.

All magic involves the use of resources you track during play, determining how long you can last before your power drains you.

Power at a Cost

There are serious risks to a sorcerer’s health, including the possibility of extra-dimensional backlashes which threaten to rip them apart, permanent and unnatural changes to their bodies, or unwanted shifts in the way they think, perceive, or feel. The older and more powerful a sorcerer becomes, the more their bodies are twisted from the power they wield and their reality deviates from the accepted norm. When they burn out their aetheric resistance, they further risk becoming untethered from reality, potentially dying a horrific and haunting death. Continuous use of magic exacerbates these risks, forcing mortal sorcerers to take long breaks without casting to recuperate.

While the ravages of magic are visited on the sorcerers themselves, psions most often unleash them upon the world around them. They leave enduring scars on the world when their control over their abilities falters. Psions also face the reality of psi-sickness, which can come on from exhaustion as well as deliberately ignoring their abilities. Unchecked severe psi-sickness can lead to horrific, but spectacular deaths.

When you roll poorly, a number of fascinating and sometimes gruesome things can happen. Here are a few examples:

• You leave visible footprints, which fade after a short amount of time. They can be scorch marks, shadowy, skeletal, or anything else unusual. (magical mark)
• Random strangers stare at you everywhere you go, meaning there are always witnesses to your presence and behavior in public. If asked, they don't even know why they're staring. (magical mark)
• You periodically vomit forth live leeches and worms. (horrific change)
• Your ribcage turns into a slavering maw with your ribs as teeth, and this is how you have to eat now. (horrific change)
• You explode into a large pile of your corpses, one for every way you could have died in this situation. It happens instantly. Describe this. (horrific ending)
• An intangible echo of yourself in this moment will now appear here annually for one hour, for the next two decades. (psionic scar)
• The area now hosts an invisible and massive horn which sounds at midnight every night, for a year. (psionic scar)
• While it looks like people within Radius 10 are crossing the zone, they always emerge exactly where they entered, for a year. (psionic scar)

Mortal Champions

For those who want to play the regular person when everyone else is a super hero, this book contains Mortal Champion characters. They embody competence as power, exceptional people who have reached the pinnacle of mortal capacity through discipline, experience, and adrenaline-fueled instinct. They lack eldritch powers entirely, but through expertise and raw survival instinct, they can keep pace with those who wield cosmic power. When magic fails, these are the people who still get the job done.

Mortal Champion characters are those who have distinguished themselves in some way to be allowed to operate with a pack of Tagers and are those who naturally attract attention to themselves by their capabilities. They have been people who were always on this path in life, or those who suddenly discovered this was who they were through crisis.

Mortal Champions are more than ordinary people and gain access to special abilities of their own. There are four categories, in addition to a more serious gear kit than other characters:

• Adrenaline Pushing your body to the limits
• Expertise Coordinating and supporting teams
• Combat Instincts Mastering the ebb and flow of battle
• Killer Instincts Interfering with or ending your enemies

More Secret Places to Adventure

Magic & Psionics also presents six new secret places. Try to reach Kadath in the harsh Antarctic wastes, hunt for magical cures in the shadow of the Behemoths of Althinesis, or attempt to impose your will on reality by risking everything in the Center of All Things. Each one presents exciting places to visit to break up your time on Earth.

More Enemies, More Threats

With more than eighteen new foes for you to cross, you can avoid monster fatigue. Unleash out of control Shambling Horrors when the naive neighborhood teens carelessly play at summoning, try to strike a deal with the unsettling Ceraphon from the unspeakable Labyrinth of Voab’r, escape an eldritch living town and its hollow puppet residents, or seek the wisdom of the Cats of Ulthar. 

With the addition of magic, new sorcerous enemies emerge, including liches who have transcended mortality through vile acts, the reality-fraying chosen of the Hastur, the Desolate Ones, and the twisted sorcerers who test their mortality by worshiping the Old Ones.

Backing

The book is nearly complete. We need some art and some layout , along with last minute details like the index. This allows us to follow the same blueprint as last campaign where we were able to finalize the book and get copies in backers hands in just seven months!

Kickstarters can really kill a tiny company like ours if you’re not careful with all the things you add to it. That’s why the campaign is simple: so we can fulfill as quickly and completely as possible. What’s available is the book in print and digital editions, along with retailer and "come teach me" tiers. There are also add-ons.

Kickstarter collects local taxes as part of pledge management. Click here to learn more.

Missing the Core Books?

If you want the core books, we’ve provided a pledge level to get them along with this new book.

If you just want one or the other, they are available as add-ons to your pledge.

Stretch Goals

Are There Exclusives?

THIS IS KICKSTARTER, SO THAT’S NOT ALL! If you’re a backer, you want something special for being in on the ground floor, more than just being cooler than your friends who weren’t. During the campaign, we’ll be writing new micro-fiction (specific to this campagin) to send out with updates, only appearing here, and at the end you’ll get a nicely produced digital compilation book of them!

Additionally, backers will receive a Magic & Psionics digital assets pack - including desktop and smartphone backgrounds - to help jazz up your life with some cool CthulhuTech artwork.

About Digital Editions

Having a physical book is awesome, but also having a PDF is a good idea. Digital editions are documents which we can easily live update with any errata which might come up and then push you out the most current content for books you own. In short, we can keep PDFs up to date.

So What Are The Add-Ons Then?

You can buy more copies of the books, in addition to items from our back catalog!

You Create Success

We are a small team doing this as a passion project, because we love CthulhuTech. Small businesses rely on word of mouth, so please spread the word if you like this game (use hashtag #cthulhutech)!

Who Are These People?

Matthew Grau, an established professional with over twenty years of design and development experience, probably best known for League of Legends.

Robert Glass, an established professional with over twenty years in the industry, probably best known for Agents of Gaming and Babylon Five Wars.

Steve Pitcher, an industry professional, probably best known for NeonCon in Las Vegas.

The dedicated developers who've spent years on this project: Jacob Bleier, Casey Chastain, Op Flarsheim, Eric Talbert, Lorelei Witwer.

International Shipping: YIKES!

We're a small outfit, which means our international shipping costs are expensive, in most cases as much as or more than your pledge. That's insane! It sucks and there's nothing we can really do about that, given our size and the crazy cost of shipping these days. We want to support our international fans, but also encourage you to pledge for digital products to save your hard-earned money.

On the other hand, if we get 500 or more international backers (from outside North America) ordering physical copies, we can explore upgrading to an international fulfillment company to negotiate better shipping prices.

Road Map