# Loner: Cthulhu! Crawls From the Abyss tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/loner ![[Loner Cthulhu (cover).jpg|300]] Well, look at that. Something new hit my email. A new standalone supplement for *[[Loner]]*. *Loner: Cthulhu!*. - https://zotiquest.substack.com/p/announcing-loner-cthulhu-solo-cosmic Look, I've just already bought my copy because $5 is a perfectly fine price to pay for an RPG. The interesting thing here is the approach to sanity. It doesn't just make you crazy when it goes away, it changes you. It transforms you in some way. Narratively, you are better at some things and worse at most others. Hypervigilance isn't a complete horror. You'll be more likely to notice if someone is sneaking up on you, after all. Of course, sleeping is going to suck. It's that kind of trade-off idea that is quite interesting. *[[Call of Cthulhu]]* is huge in Japan. It would be interesting to see super lightweight minimalist RPG mechanics start spreading through that side of the world. Frankly, I think you could have a fascinating, if bizarre, mashup by grabbing a couple of the fairly broad swath of books available and just rolling with it. My preference has always been for a *Spacer*/*Cthulhu* mashup, so I'm tempted to give that a try. --- As a side note, it's worth noting that if you're interested in multiplayer Cthulhu, then picking up the loner-adjacent *[[Ensemble]]* is a good idea. Very slight change to the mechanics. You can use all the tables in *Loner: Cthulhu!* and have a great time. In fact, I encourage you to do so. You know, one of the things that occurs to me that really appeals to me personally in *Loner* is the fact that so much has been released as standalone genre-specific books. The mechanics are really just a couple of pages. Everything else is tweaks for that particular setting and tables which describe it. They are lightweight, really low cost, fairly well laid out, and you can literally fill your shelf with mix and match components. The last game that really felt that way for me was first edition [[Big Eyes Small Mouth|Big Eyes, Small Mouth]]. Not second, third, or fourth edition -- those were definite steps back, but first edition specifically. Small physical format, lightweight mechanics, clean open layout. You can literally pick it up and be playing with people in a couple of minutes because it's fairly obvious how to do things. Being a mix and match specialist was absolutely and totally doable. I get that feeling again from Loner and I like it.