Rulebook/Introduction

Lovecraft League Champions is a full campaign setting and rules fork for the Pokéthulhu Adventure Game by Cumberland Games. While retaining the original idea of, it is much more detailed and complex, in order to provide a more convincing world and fun game.

The Idea
"Pokéthulhu" is a play on the words "Pokémon" and "Cthulhu", and is, as you might expect, a humorous combination of the Pokémon franchise (in particular the spirit of the TV show, though mechanically it may feel like the games), and the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft and others. Lovecraft League Champions is meant to have a light mood, with a lot of black comedy.

What's New?
If you're already familiar with, you're off to a good start. Cultists have been completely overhauled to allow for more interesting characters as well as advancement through campaigns. The battle system is the same as it was in the original game, but now there is an experience-based advancement system that more closely resembles the way Pokemon are trained.

GUMSHOE
While combat is left to the monsters, all of the adventuring is the job of the cultists, so they needed a lot more detail to make them individual and interesting. While trainers in the Pokémon games usually didn't have much more detail than a class and a set of Pokémon, the trainers in the TV show had habits, aspirations, and specific attitudes toward training and battling. In addition, cultists needed to be more like the investigators of the Cthulhu Mythos, piecing together arcane lore, discovering horrible truths, and losing sanity the whole time. To give the game a more investigative flavor, we used the GUMSHOE system by Robin Laws, using its implementation in the Trail of Cthulhu game whenever possible. The GUMSHOE system is based on the idea that finding clues in a mystery story should never be left to chance; it's putting the clues together that should be the challenge. Because the cultists are kids, though, cases are less like those of Sherlock Holmes or CSI and more like those of junior detectives Encyclopedia Brown and Cam Jensen. This means the set of investigative abilities is a bit simplified and more kid-specific; there aren't a lot of kids running around New New England who have expert knowledge of ancient Sumerian mythology!