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Tramp Steamers vs Cthulhu in the Pre-Great War Era of Adventure

Tramp Steamer Shantung from Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Based on Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories

It’s Firefly in the imperial pre-Great War era, with tramp steamers!

Love Raiders of R’lyeh and looking forward to its first, massive expansion? Then Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea will be a ‘must own.’

But the book will also be a must-own for:

  • ‘Call of Cthulhu’ fanatics wanting a tramp steamer sourcebook and massive sandbox full of seafaring cults, strange ports of call, scheming factions, and epic conspiratorial plots
  • Traveller players wanting to try the Traveller experience but with seafaring cargo liners in the pre-Great War era
  • Pulp action or historical gamers wanting toolkits, toolkits, and more toolkits, plus an exhaustively researched sourcebook covering the 1900-1914 era of seafaring travel and derring-do

And don’t forget to sign up for news about the upcoming release.


Posted on March 13, 2022. Contains 126 words and is a 1 minute read.


Sandboxing Call of Cthulhu Part Three — How to Build a Call of Cthulhu Sandbox Campaign

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Tramp Steamer Rules for d100 Games Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and other pulp and weird tales

Our new upcoming expansion is now more than just a seafaring campaign. In fact, it comprises THREE BOOKS.

Don’t worry, the upcoming Kickstarter campaign will include a deluxe version of the campaign, combining all three books into one tome.

The player’s book includes:

  • Rules for the creation of merchant steamships (‘tramp steamers’) and their crews, and customization options based on in-game experience and rewards; also included are thorough rules for creating any vessel type of the era from a rough schematic, or even from a vessel’s gross tonnage — plus options for artillery and other customizations applicable to the players’ ship and to a wide variety of other ship types found in the setting.
  • New seafaring backgrounds, skills, and other options for players including an upgraded mariner background plus resources for creating over 80 new professional backgrounds including ship personnel, passengers, and other ship-based adventurers.
  • Various new game mechanics relevant to a seafaring campaign, in alphabetical order for easy reference, covering things such as: Communication and Sight at Sea; Damage & Repair (of ships experiencing things such as collisions, fouling, grounding, storms, etc.); Diving (and the creation and customization of diving equipment); Naval Combat (including artillery, torpedoes, mines, and even harpoons); Scaled Forces (including titanic monsters capable of threatening ships); and Survival (including new rules for survival horror at sea); to name only a few categories.
  • Options for merchant campaigns, including voyaging, charters, and seafaring missions — plus an entire structure for running a tramp trade — moving cargo and passengers throughout the world — and leading a merchant vessel crew (or even a shipping company).

The gamemaster’s guide includes:

  • Exhaustive setting information, character and faction generation tools and rules (including ship and character tables for creating on-the-fly stats and names of ships, crew members, and passengers from a multitude of countries), an encyclopedia of ship types — including warships, gunboats, submarines, merchant vessels, and a host of auxiliaries, among others — and other elements (e.g., custom houses, diplomatic missions, pirates, navies), plus an entire campaign creation section (with myriad tables for generating enemies, timelines, missions, plot hooks and more), to name only a few of the resources.
  • Creation tools for ports of call, including a system for statting up various types of ports and other seafaring regions — plus a quick-reference table of over 140 ports, hideaways, and lost worlds of the era.
  • Step-by-step instructions for creating a wide variety of (mythos- or adventure-based) seafaring missions, mission nodes (for investigations, explorations, voyages, etc.), and plot hooks — and includes an example scenario outline (‘Secrets of the Sargasso Sea’) illustrating the scenario creation process.
  • An epic, world-spanning campaign involving Ancient Ones and other evils, powerful conspirators, seafaring cults, mythos minions, and an assortment of interrelating factions — with a lonely, isolated cargo liner caught in the middle of the chaos. And designed as a sandbox of tools (not as a railroad) — this is YOUR CAMPAIGN.
  • New spells, occult paths, and monster rules for hordes and titanic-sized, ship-threatening horrors, among other resources.

The world sourcebook includes:

  • Over 65 heavily-researched, multi-page write-ups of ports of call, maps of key ports drawn from historical sources, campaign hooks (to be integrated into the world-spanning campaign, used independently, or synchronized with third party settings), faction leader dossier for every circle of influence, and hundreds of pages of information about the historical era.

Other resources include a bibliography of sources, characters sheets, campaign maps, and other gamemaster tools — including complete stats for the merchant vessel, Shantung, plus character sheets for her key crew members.

Sign up to the newsletter to receive updates and resources, and to know when this massive epic expansion drops.

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Sandboxing Locations from Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories


Posted on March 10, 2022. Contains 609 words and is a 3 minute read.


Sandboxing Call of Cthulhu Part Two — Building a Call of Cthulhu Sandbox Campaign

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Sandboxing Locations from Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories

We designed Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea, our newest expansion for Raiders of R’lyeh and other d100 games based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and other Mythos or pulp stories as:

With these toolkits, gamemasters may facilitate a Traveller-esque or Firefly-like type of open world game, where players assume command of a merchant vessel plying its trade in dangerous seas and eventually caught in a web of intrigue, adventure, and/or cosmic horror…

Or, gamemasters may use the toolkits to randomly generate factions, ships of all sizes and designs, adventuring NPCs (both seafarers and passengers), enemy timelines, scenarios, mysteries, set pieces, and dozens of other campaign elements — to be integrated into their own settings.

Sign up to the newsletter to receive updates and resources, and to know when this massive epic sourcebook drops.

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Sandboxing Locations from Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories


Posted on March 9, 2022. Contains 236 words and is a 2 minute read.


Sandboxing Call of Cthulhu Part One — Can Call of Cthulhu Work as a Sandbox Campaign?

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Sandboxing Locations from Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories

By default, the newest expansion for Raiders of R’lyeh and other d100 games based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and Mythos stories, supports a non-linear and open-ended setting — sometimes referred to as a ‘sandbox’ — allowing for the mariners’ exploration and investigation of its expanding mysteries. There are no mandated storylines to follow, the mariners’ plans are not always assumed or predetermined, and their choices are not confined to any preordained script — or ‘railroad.’

However, given that players in Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea own and operate ships capable of traversing the globe, it is important to consider some useful ways of structuring such a setting to provide parameters of play, while still encouraging player proactivity and freedom. Mariners without purposeful motivations or clear directions may wander aimlessly; likewise, a disorganized gamemaster may end up with a disconnected series of plot threads leading nowhere.

Unlike the author of a story, the gamemaster responding to the setting’s unfolding events is not required to predict and account for every possible ‘plotline’ that may occur. Instead, the gamemaster creates a living, breathing world, and seeds it with interesting plot hooks tailored to the players’ characters — with each hook suggesting conspiratorial plots, potential enemies, and intriguing locations. It is up to the players to determine which conspiratorial plots are worth investigating, which locations are worth exploring, and how they will react to events that unfold in response to their intervention or nonintervention.

With some structured planning, these threads may eventually suggest a growing threat and unfolding drama (should the players be coaxed into following their leads). The newest expansion for Raiders of R’lyeh provides hundreds of pages of resources for developing such a campaign.

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Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Sandboxing Locations from Call of Cthulhu and Other Mythos Stories


Posted on March 8, 2022. Contains 305 words and is a 2 minute read.


Raiders of Rlyeh: From the Tideless Sea — A Look at Character Sheets

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Tramp Steamer Rules for d100 Games Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and other pulp and weird tales

A playable PDF of From the Tideless Sea is almost ready!

From the Tideless Sea is entirely written — save for a few paragraph-length entries in the Campaign chapter, plus some last-minute tinkering that occurs in a project of this scope. Layout is also complete — save for the images. As a point of reference, with the core rules book, images took roughly a month in layout. We are also tinkering with the campaign map, which is a double-sized (i.e., 11x17) handout given to players to plot their voyages — or to be used by any gamemaster designing a globe-spanning campaign.

We are still not exact on dates of release yet. Most likely backers will receive pre-release documents as we tinker through the last stages, if they want to be party to the creative behind-the-scenes. We do plan on a Kickstarter for the final hardcover, but legacy backers will receive a PDF of the expansion regardless of their involvement in this new Kickstarter.

Here is a look at two character sheets — for both a ship and an adventurer — from the book (in From the Tideless Sea, merchant vessels like the Shantung are treated as characters with their own sheets). [Edit: Our site is still being renovated. Not all links are working yet!]

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Posted on December 14, 2020. Contains 233 words and is a 2 minute read.


Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Outline

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Tramp Steamer Rules

Here is the breakdown of the Raiders of R’lyeh expansion, From the Tideless Sea!

Chapter One includes rules for the creation of merchant steamships (“tramp steamers”) and their crews, and customization options based on in-game experience and rewards; also included are thorough rules for creating any vessel type of the era from a rough schematic, or even from a vessel’s gross tonnage — plus options for artillery and other customizations applicable to the players’ ship and to a wide variety of other ship types found in the setting.

Chapter Two provides new seafaring backgrounds, skills, and other options for players including an upgraded mariner background plus resources for creating over eighty new professional backgrounds including ship personnel, passengers, and other ship-based adventurers.

Chapter Three lists the various new game mechanics relevant to a seafaring campaign, in alphabetical order for easy reference, covering things such as: Communication and Sight at Sea; Damage & Repair (of ships experiencing things such as collisions, fouling, grounding, storms, etc.); Diving (and the creation and customization of diving equipment); Naval Combat (including artillery, torpedoes, mines, and even harpoons); Scaled Forces (including titanic monsters capable of threatening ships); and Survival (including new rules for survival horror at sea); to name only a few categories.

Chapter Four covers all the options for merchant campaigns, including voyaging, charters, and seafaring missions — plus an entire structure for running a tramp trade — moving cargo and passengers throughout the world — and leading a merchant vessel crew (or even a shipping company).

Chapter Five includes nearly 100 pages of toolkits for the gamemaster, including exhaustive setting information, character and faction generation tools and rules (including ship and character tables for creating on-the-fly stats and names of ships, crew members, and passengers from a multitude of countries), an encyclopedia of ship types — including warships, gunboats, submarines, merchant vessels, and a host of auxiliaries, among others — and other elements (e.g., custom houses, diplomatic missions, pirates, navies), plus an entire campaign creation section, to name only a few of the resources.

Chapter Six adds an entire chapter devoted to ports of call, including a system for statting up various types of ports and other seafaring regions — plus a quick reference for over 140 ports, hideaways, and lost worlds of the era.

Chapter Seven connects directly to the campaign creation resources in chapters five and six, providing step-by-step instructions for creating a wide variety of (mythos- or adventure-based) seafaring missions, mission nodes (for investigations, explorations, voyages, etc.), and plot hooks — and includes an example scenario outline (“Secrets of the Sargasso Sea”) illustrating the scenario creation process.

Chapter Eight focuses on a specific Ancient One and other enemies (the identities of which are to be kept secret from the players); it provides a complete resource for developing an epic, world-spanning campaign involving ancient evils, powerful conspirators, seafaring cults, mythos minions, and an assortment of interrelating factions — with a lonely, isolated cargo liner caught in the middle of the chaos. Also included are new spells, occult paths, and monster rules for hordes and titanic-sized, ship-threatening horrors, among other resources.

Other resources include a bibliography, characters sheets, a campaign map, and other gamemaster tools — including complete stats for the merchant vessel, Shantung, plus character sheets for her key crew members.

Sign up to the newsletter to receive updates and resources, and to know when this massive epic expansion drops.


Posted on December 1, 2020. Contains 568 words and is a 3 minute read.


Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Announcement

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea Tramp Steamer Rules

The year is 1900.

It is an age of imperial intrigues, daring missions, and creeping dread. Steamships ply the farthest feral seas, and explorers stir the darkest sorceries from forgotten, sunken eons.

From the Tideless Sea is a seafaring expansion for the tabletop roleplaying game, Raiders of R’lyeh. With it, mercenary rogues captain weather-beaten ships, travel strange seas, and challenge shadowy conspiracies.

The expansion includes new rules and toolkits for:

  • Playing a world-spanning, epic sandbox
  • Operating merchant steamships and leading crews
  • Navigating to far-flung ports and lost worlds
  • Running trade and missions in hostile foreign territories
  • Handling adventures in mysterious ports of call
  • Battling seafaring cults and other menaces — both human and inhuman — hidden across the globe
  • Salvaging secrets from eldritch ruins
  • Investigating an existential and conspiratorial threat overshadowing the world

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and Lovecraft’s circle of influences, sea adventures, and especially the Sargasso Sea tales of William Hope Hodgson, the expansion provides everything a gamemaster needs when players ditch dreamy Arkham to investigate the missing HMS Terror, to pursue coordinates found in an 18th-century wreck pointing to fabled R’lyeh, or to smuggle contraband out of Cairo right under the nose of the British Empire.

Best of all, From the Tideless Sea expands on the rich Edwardian setting and lore established in Raiders of R’lyeh — offering a new seafaring sourcebook for players wishing to expand their preexisting Mythos campaign, as well as modular mission and campaign resources for gaming in 1900-1914.

(Note that From the Tideless Sea is not a stand-alone roleplaying game, but rather an innovative expansion to be used with Raiders of R’lyeh and other d100 systems based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ or on other pulp adventures.)

Coming soon in PDF to legacy Raiders who supported the original game, and as a 280 pp nearly 500 pp NEARLY 600 pp (!) hardcover book to new backers via Kickstarter!

Sign up to the newsletter to receive updates and resources, and to know when this massive epic expansion drops.


Posted on November 30, 2020. Contains 339 words and is a 2 minute read.




Raiders of R’lyeh

The year is 1910.

It is an age of crumbling empires, dangerous adventures, and rotting decadence. Rifles crack across the untamed Khyber pass, sorcerers stir from eldritch crypts, and dark things dream and lurk in secreted, fetid corners of the globe.

Raiders of R’lyeh is a stand-alone roleplaying game and sourcebook in which mercenary rogues explore forbidden frontiers, unearth ancient artifacts, and outwit villainous scum.

The game is crafted for compatibility with other d100 percentile systems. It emulates not only adventures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of influences, but especially the savage and evocative feel of Robert E. Howard’s weird and pulp stories.

Buy Now

Raiders of R’lyeh: From the Tideless Sea

The year is 1900.

It is an age of imperial intrigues, daring missions, and creeping dread. Steamships ply the farthest feral seas, and explorers stir the darkest sorceries from forgotten, sunken eons.

From the Tideless Sea is a seafaring expansion for the tabletop roleplaying game, Raiders of R’lyeh. With it, mercenary rogues captain weather-beaten ships, travel strange seas, and challenge shadowy conspiracies.

The expansion includes new rules and toolkits for:

  • Playing a world-spanning, epic sandbox
  • Operating merchant steamships and leading crews
  • Navigating to far-flung ports and lost worlds
  • Running trade and missions in hostile foreign territories
  • Handling adventures in mysterious ports of call
  • Battling seafaring cults and other menaces — both human and inhuman — hidden across the globe
  • Salvaging secrets from eldritch ruins
  • Investigating an existential and conspiratorial threat overshadowing the world

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and Lovecraft’s circle of influences, sea adventures, and especially the Sargasso Sea tales of William Hope Hodgson, the expansion provides everything a gamemaster needs when players ditch dreamy Arkham to investigate the missing HMS Terror, to pursue coordinates found in an 18th-century wreck pointing to fabled R’lyeh, or to smuggle contraband out of Cairo right under the nose of the British Empire.

Best of all, From the Tideless Sea expands on the rich Edwardian setting and lore established in Raiders of R’lyeh — offering a new seafaring sourcebook for players wishing to expand their preexisting Mythos campaign, as well as modular mission and campaign resources for gaming in 1900-1914.

(Note that From the Tideless Sea is not a stand-alone roleplaying game, but rather an innovative expansion to be used with Raiders of R’lyeh and other d100 systems based on H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulhu’ or on other pulp adventures.)

Coming soon in PDF to legacy Raiders who supported the original game, and as a 280 pp nearly 500 pp NEARLY 600 pp (!) hardcover book to new backers via Kickstarter!

Join the Raiders

And get insider news, free resources, and updates about our upcoming epic expansion, From the Tideless Sea.