Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG Game Hall

"No luck again."

Liu Xing looked at the text message on his phone, sighed helplessly, then set it down and lay back on the bed. "Studying medicine really ruins your life."

Liu Xing, male, 22 years old, graduate of Rongcheng University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, unemployed and living at home.

Half a month ago, Liu Xing had gotten into an argument with his department director. Still young, he had quit in a fit of anger.

Over the past half month, Liu Xing had continuously applied for jobs at major hospitals. However, having just graduated and lacking useful connections, the result was always the same: "Please go home and wait for further notice."

"Do I really have to go home?" Liu Xing found his father's number in his contacts.

Liu Xing's family had practiced medicine for three generations and owned three clinics. When Liu Xing had first graduated, his father had wanted him to stay home and help out, but Liu Xing had refused. He did not want to be tied down to one place at such a young age. He wanted to go out and make something of himself.

"Fine, but I'll give you one last five thousand yuan for living expenses. After that, you'll have to earn your own keep." Liu's Father had said at the time, "If you can't make it out there, come back honestly. You can take over whichever clinic you want."

"Forget it. Going back after only two months would be too humiliating." With that thought, Liu Xing still turned off his phone. He knew his father's personality; if he went back now, he would be mocked for the rest of his life.

"I've got a thousand left. That means I'll run out of food in a month at most." Liu Xing took out the last of his savings from his wallet and stared gloomily at the ceiling.

"Ugh, why think so much? Time for LOL. I'll stomp some elementary school kids and cheer myself up."

No sooner said than done, Liu Xing sat up and turned on his computer.

An hour later, Liu Xing tossed aside his mouse with an unhappy expression and stared speechlessly at the screen.

"It's only Monday. Why are there so many elementary school kids?!"

Speechless, Liu Xing closed LOL and decided to watch some new anime on bilibili, the country's biggest website.

"Grandpa's downloading Madoka doujins again." Liu Xing stroked his chin and reached the correct conclusion.

"Forget it. I'd better go tease some girls in the group chat." Liu Xing opened QQ.

"Beep beep beep."

The moment he logged in, a pop-up window took up more than half his screen.

"Damn, *Xun has gotten this shameless? Ads have gotten this huge now?" Liu Xing was startled by the enormous pop-up.

"Play now and get 100,000 yuan!" Liu Xing stared at the bright red words in the pop-up, utterly speechless.

He had seen plenty of browser game ads before. After all, as a middle-aged man born in the '90s, what online game slogan had he not seen? But this was the first time he had seen an ad boldly promising one hundred thousand yuan outright.

Thinking that, Liu Xing could not help muttering, "That's pretty awesome. One hundred thousand yuan... Fine, just for that ad, I'll click it and see. It's not like clicking once will cost me anything."

Thus, Liu Xing clicked "Join Game" beneath the slogan.

"Ding."

After a soft chime, Liu Xing's computer screen went black.

"F*ck!" Liu Xing let out a roar,"

Just as Liu Xing, heartbroken over the files on his computer, was about to restart it, the computer automatically returned to normal. However, he noticed that a new game icon had appeared on the desktop.

"Thank goodness." Liu Xing hurriedly opened a hidden folder. The files inside were all intact.

"So that was the game installing itself?" Liu Xing looked at the strange game icon on his desktop. Still, the icon looked somewhat familiar—it was Cthulhu's head.

Cthulhu was an evil existence from the Cthulhu Mythos created by American novelist Howard Phillips Lovecraft, hereafter referred to as Lovecraft. Its head resembled an octopus, its face was covered in countless tentacles, its hands and feet bore enormous hooked claws, and its back had leathery, bat-like wings. Players of Warcraft should be able to connect it to a boss from the game—C'Thun—which was a tribute to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Liu Xing had first encountered the Cthulhu Mythos when one of his good friends had dragged him into a board game room to observe a game of Cthulhu Mythos RPG.

Thinking of that, Liu Xing raised an eyebrow and took a closer look at the title beneath the game icon. Just as he had expected.

"Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG Game Hall?"

Simply put, Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG was a board game extremely popular in Europe and America. Unlike popular domestic board games such as Werewolf Game and Three Kingdoms Kill, Cthulhu Mythos RPG was a role-playing game. Its defining feature was that you could immerse yourself in your role, and within the limits of the rules, each Player's actions could lead to all kinds of open-ended story developments. For example, in other games, when you encountered an enemy, you could only choose to defeat them before advancing the plot. But in Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG, you could choose to sneak past the enemy, bribe the enemy, persuade the enemy, or even join the enemy. All of those were possible.

However, combat was never the main theme in Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG, because generally speaking, combat meant a Total Party Kill. After all, the enemies faced by the explorers played by the Players were all Mythical Creatures!

Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG naturally drew its material from Lovecraft's series of novels, which were collectively known as the Cthulhu Mythos. After Lovecraft's death, many authors also wrote Cthulhu Mythos fanworks, eventually shaping an entirely new mythological system—the Cthulhu Mythos System.

As the poster child of this mythological system, Cthulhu was an important deity among the Great Old Ones, one of the major factions within the Cthulhu Mythos System. Among the "fire, wind, earth, water" factions, it represented "water." It had now been sealed by another powerful opposing faction—the Elder Gods—and slept in the undersea city of R'lyeh in the South Pacific Ocean. When affected by cosmic alignments or other external factors, Cthulhu's seal would automatically loosen and it would emerge upon the sea. However, because the seal had not been completely lifted, Cthulhu could not travel far from R'lyeh. When the stars shifted again and the seal's power was restored, Cthulhu would return to R'lyeh and continue its slumber. Once Cthulhu truly broke free of its seal, the world would surely be destroyed.

From Cthulhu's setting, it was clear that Cthulhu had the ability to destroy the world, yet it was not even the strongest being in the Cthulhu Mythos System. Furthermore, in Cthulhu Mythos RPG, Cthulhu could kill a random number of Players unconditionally, and its attack speed far surpassed that of the Players. In other words, when Players encountered Cthulhu, they could basically just wait to die.

Of course, Cthulhu was a boss-level existence and would not appear casually. But beneath Cthulhu were all kinds of Mythical Creatures. The weakest among them were probably Ghouls and Deep Ones—basically fishmen, though there were some differences in the details. Still, no matter how weak Ghouls and Deep Ones were, their combat abilities were comparable to the world's Boxing Champions and Fighting Masters.

Of course, Liu Xing, still a newbie at the time, had once asked the friend who introduced him to the game: even if they were Fighting Masters or Boxing Champions, wouldn't one shot take them down?

That friend had chuckled and told Liu Xing that he was overthinking it. In Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG, the characters played by the Players were mostly Ordinary Humans, with the more special ones being police officers, detectives, and the like. At most, they had a handgun. And although Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG offered a high degree of freedom, every action had to remain within the rules. For example, an Ordinary Human could not possibly obtain weapons such as assault rifles, nor could he casually carry weapons around everywhere. Besides, Ghouls and Deep Ones completely surpassed Ordinary Humans in every attribute.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, humans had no chance of defeating these Mythical Creatures. Of course, there were exceptional cases, because Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG was highly flexible. Some groups chose to make their own rules, such as adding certain bizarre skills...

The specific forms of Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG were divided into Face-to-face Games and Online Games. Face-to-face Games naturally referred to Players gathering in real life to play, while Online Games referred to playing online through communication apps such as QQ and related tools. Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG also required a great deal of time and energy. A game could last as little as one or two hours, or as long as several years. Unlike Werewolf Game and Three Kingdoms Kill, where one round could be played in a dozen or so minutes, this resulted in relatively few domestic Players participating in Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG.

More importantly, Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG did not have dedicated online platforms or mobile apps like Werewolf Game and Three Kingdoms Kill. This meant that after many Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG enthusiasts successfully introduced the game to their friends, they helplessly discovered that they had nowhere suitable to play with them. Liu Xing had been like that back then. Although he had really wanted to try Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG, he had never gotten the chance to truly participate in one. After all, organizing a Face-to-face Game was not easy, since everyone needed to free up several hours at the same time, while Online Games had the awkward problem of lacking a professional platform.

And now, staring at "Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG Game Hall" on his computer desktop, Liu Xing could not help smiling. He had never expected to come across a platform dedicated to Cthulhu Mythos tabletop RPG. It really was beyond his expectations.