# Loner: Cthulhu! tags: #game/rpg/loner-cthulhu ![[Loner Cthulhu (cover).jpg|300]] **Loner: Cthulhu!** is the cosmic-horror dial on **[[Loner]]** — a solo tabletop RPG set in a world where something waits just beyond the veil of reality, and the very act of looking at it rearranges you. Same Chance-vs-Risk oracle, same tag-based characterization, but now the Twist Counter is doing eldritch architecture in the background. You are a single investigator in the Jazz Age, and sanity isn't a score you watch drain; it's a thing that *changes you*. ## Setting The World of Cosmic Horror is the familiar 1920s — the Jazz Age, speakeasies, pulp newspapers and university libraries — but with the wallpaper peeling back to show an indifferent universe underneath. Investigators are scholars, journalists, and the merely curious who stumble over mysteries that shouldn't be solvable. The book leans hard into the idea that forbidden knowledge doesn't just cost you; it transforms you. Hypervigilance isn't a complete horror: you'll notice the thing sneaking up on you more easily, but sleeping is going to suck. That trade-off is the heart of it. You're supported by factions and organizations that orbit the truth, the roster of Great Old Ones and Outer Gods doing their usual patient work, a menagerie of eldritch creatures, and a hefty block of adventure tables. It's very much the "lightweight minimalist mechanics spreading through the world" end of the hobby, built for one player and their own creeping dread. ## Mechanics The engine is straight Loner: roll a Chance die against a Risk die for yes/no, read the tie as "Yes, but…," pile up the Twist Counter. What Cthulhu! adds is the sanity-as-transformation angle — the narrative permission to be better at some things and worse at most others as exposure mounts, rather than a simple depletion track. It keeps the solo investigation loop (follow the trail, consult the Oracle, make sense of the answer yourself) and wraps it in the specific tone the genre demands. Because you're playing a setting whose whole trick is that the universe doesn't care about you, Loner's "you do the rest of the work yourself" ethos fits it almost too well. It's also worth grabbing **[[Ensemble]]** if you want to hand a couple of these tables to a table rather than a single skull — the multiplayer sibling runs the same engine with a light mechanical shift. ## Editions A single 2026 supplement (released June 2026). *In the library.* ## References - [Loner: Cthulhu! - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572931/loner-cthulhu) - [Announcing Loner: Cthulhu! - Zotiquest Newsletter](https://zotiquest.substack.com/p/announcing-loner-cthulhu-solo-cosmic) - [Loner SRD (free full text) - Zotiquest Games](https://lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner - Official Website](https://loner.zotiquestgames.com/)