Tekeli-li!

“The universe is not only queerer than we imagined, it is

queerer than we can imagine.” —J. B. S. Haldane

OVERVIEW
Tekeli-li! contains the following sections:
• “What is Tekeli-li!?” on page 2
• “Rules Additions to Fuzion” on page 3
• “Creating the World of Tekeli-li!” on page 11
• “Using Other RPG Resources” on page 14
• “Designer Notes” on page 15

Tekeli-li! – 1
What is Tekeli-li!?

A. What is Tekeli-li!?
This is a supplement for using Fuzion™ to run Lovecraftian horror, such as one gets
with Call of Cthulhu®, in either its Chaosium or D20 incarnation. Horror games, in
other words, but a particular kind of horror: something slow, insidious, and wrong. It is
not mad slashers chasing nubile teenagers; it is encounters with things that drive
humans mad, and risking insanity to banish those things.
In H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, Earth is an exception. The laws here are not the same as the
laws Out There, and we, who have evolved in this benign environment, cannot stand
the harsh light of reality.
Oh—Tekeli-li! was the cry of the strange beings that lived “At The Mountains Of Mad-
ness.”

IMPORTANT NOTE
This is not, of course, a role-playing system for Lovecraft specifically; that’s under
trademark and I have not licensed it. Oh, you could convert published CoC material to
it (see “Using Other RPG Resources” on page 14) but I’m not saying you have to.

TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS

Tekeli-li! written by John McMullen, December 2002.
The following are acknowledged as copyrights and trademarks of others, and no
infringement is intended by their use here.
Call of Cthulhu is Chaosium’s registered trademark for its roleplaying game set in the
worlds of H. P. Lovecraft, copyright 1981, 1983, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998.
Fuzion is the FUZION Labs Group™ trademark for its multigenre game system,
copyright 1998 by FUZION Labs Group.

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 Rules Additions to Fuzion

B. Rules Additions to Fuzion

Tekeli-li! uses the standard Fuzion characteristics (Intelligence, Will, Presence, and so
on). It adds two new characteristics (Madness and Soul), modifies the derived charac-
teristic Humanity (described in the Fuzion rules), and adds two new skills (Mythos and
Rationalization).

MADNESS
Madness is a measure of your insanity. It is a difficulty to test against, and it starts at 13.
It can grow indefinitely. (If it helps, you might think of it as something separate from
the character, an inner self he or she wrestles with.) A player only tests Madness when
encountering something truly horrific, something that is utterly outside their normal
sphere of experience. The more times you fail to conquer your Madness, the more dif-
ficult it becomes to conquer.
Your base Madness is 13 plus your level of Mythos skill (Mythos skill is explained
below). Each time you fail a Madness check, your Madness increases; these increases
can be erased by therapy or by visibly defeating the creatures and agents of the Mythos.
Some Complications may add to the difficulty of Madness rolls under certain circum-
stances. This is up to the GM.
At the GM’s discretion, the Talent “Eidetic Memory” may add 5 to a character’s Mad-
ness; one of the themes of this sort of fiction is that failure to remember is a blessing,
not a curse.

HUMANITY
Humanity is almost exactly as described in the core Fuzion rules, except it’s calculated
slightly differently. Humanity is calculated as (PRE - Mythos) × 10. The higher your
Mythos skill, the lower your maximum possible Humanity. Most people have a
Humanity of 10-30; saints could go up to 70.
When making rolls to attempt Mythos tasks, your character can “burn” Humanity to
help ensure that the
As in the core rules, every 10 points of Humanity lost is -1 to all PRE-related when
dealing with things of this earth (people and animals).
Characters can regain Humanity in the same way as Madness can be reduced: by ther-
apy or by visibly defeating the creatures and agents of the Mythos.
At 0 Humanity, a character is precariously balanced. At -10 Humanity a character goes
permanently insane, and control is given to the GM.

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Rules Additions to Fuzion

SOUL
Soul reflects how much magic a character can perform. It is calculated identically to
Resistance, 3 × WILL. (It is included as a separate derived characteristic for those GMs
who use both Resistance and Soul.)
When a character’s Soul drops to zero, the character falls unconscious. If some mecha-
nism (such as a spell) subtracts further Soul points, the character’s body may live, but
his or her spirit is gone. The character is effectively dead at -10 Soul.

MYTHOS SKILL
Mythos is your knowledge and ability to deal with the Mythos. It starts at 0 and func-
tions as a skill—INT+Mythos is your chance to know something about the Mythos
without doing further research. WILL+Mythos is your chance to cast Mythos spells.
(The GM may require binding spells to use PRE+Mythos.)
No character starts with Mythos skill (so it is always paid for using the Experience
rules). There are two in-game ways to increase your Mythos skill:
• Research through Mythos-related tomes—experience points already saved and cost
paid for in standard way (5 OP × the new level: 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on up until 35).
• Insanity—cost paid by the accumulation of appropriate Complications (see “Going
Mad,” below).
A character who goes temporarily insane does not necessarily gain Mythos skill. The
player can refuse to take additional Complications to pay for any insights.
The more Mythos you know, the harder it is to stay sane. Mythos also functions a little
bit like a Characteristic: it's involved in calculating your maximum Humanity (which
can be negative), and it's involved in calculating your Madness, a derived Characteristic.
As soon as a character improves Mythos, maximum possible Humanity drops. If the
character’s current Humanity is above the new maximum, it is lowered too, but the
character need not go insane.
Players should record the spells they learn and research; no amount of Mythos skill will
help a player cast a spell if he or she hasn’t yet learned it.

RATIONALIZATION SKILL
Rationalization is your ability to fit odd or unbelievable items into your current world-
view. It’s used when making a Madness check. Normally one rolls WILL+Rationaliza-
tion.
Most people simply don’t need to develop a rationalization skill since they ignore or
don’t encounter the odd and unbelievable. Normally it is developed through psycho-
therapy.
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 Rules Additions to Fuzion

A beginning character should have no more than 2 in Rationalization, and that should
indicate a very troubled mental past and subsequent therapy. At character creation, the
GM may request that the Madness level be increased by 1 for each point in Rationaliza-
tion.
Example: Gabriel Rowan is a petrochemical geologist
called back home after the mysterious death of his father.
He has INT 5, WILL 4, PRE 3. His Madness is 13, because
he’s a starting character. His starting Humanity is 30, and his
starting Soul is 11.
Because the player wants a character with a troubled past, he
asks the GM to allow 2 points of Rationalization (reflecting
past therapies; there’s a reason Gabe picked a career that
would take him far from home). The GM agrees, but she
says that Gabe’s player must up his Madness to 15 to reflect
these troubles and must take a Complication to reflect it.

GOING MAD
When your character encounters something beyond the pale, make a Madness check
The process of checking Madness is described below:

Checking Madness

1. Make a Madness check of WILL+Rationalization vs. current Madness.

If it succeeds, the GM will tell you if you still lose Humanity and how much.
2. If it fails:
• Roll to see how much Humanity you’ve lost; the GM will tell you how many dice to roll.
• Add one to your Madness
3. If you’ve lost more Humanity than your PRE, you are temporarily insane for 1d6 hours for each
point over your PRE. Let the GM control your character briefly.

Example: Gabe has gone to the ancestral tomb to investi-

gate fragmentary memories of his father recently uncovered
by therapy. The whippoorwills fall silent as he unlocks the
heavy doors decorated with peeling gilt. Inside he finds the
most recent graves open, the bones scattered, and his
father’s desiccated corpse on the ground in an attitude of
supplication.
Gabe must make a Madness roll. His Madness is 15, his
WILL is 4, and he has a Rationalization skill of 2. He rolls
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Rules Additions to Fuzion

3d6+6 against the difficulty of 15, and rolls an 6: bad luck

for Gabe. He loses Humanity and his Madness increases to
16.
Since the evidence is indirect, the GM asks Gabe’s player to
roll 1D6 to determine loss of Humanity. He rolls a 3, exactly
Gabe’s PRE. He lowers Gabe’s Humanity to 27.
If the player has a critical failure (a roll of 3), the character loses maximum Humanity
for the situation. Had Gabe’s player rolled a 3, Gabe would have lost 6 points of
Humanity.
When you lose more then your PRE in Humanity, you go temporarily insane. Tempo-
rary insanity lasts 1d6 hours for each point lost over your PRE. When you lose half
your remaining Humanity, you go insane for longer: 2d6 months.
Normally once something has driven you to a Madness check, you’re inured to it for
the course of the adventure (subject to GM’s call). However, new information may
bring the horror of the events back to you, calling for another check.
Example: Panting with fear, Gabe bends to examine the
long bones scattered about the tomb. He succeeds at a
Notice roll and realizes that the bones show signs of being
gnawed, and that the tooth marks match his father’s teeth.
Gabe’s player checks again against Madness (this time a dif-
ficulty of 16), and has a critical failure, rolling a 3. He loses 6
points of Humanity, which is more than his PRE of 3.
Gabe’s player marks Gabe’s Humanity down to 21, and
Gabe runs from the tomb, gibbering with fear and leaving
the door wide open. His temporary insanity will last 3d6
hours. (And twelve hours later, Gabe becomes aware that he
is naked in a slaughterhouse, covered in pig’s blood, with no
memory of how he got there.)
Insanity in Tekeli-li! may be temporary, indefinite, or permanent. Temporary insanities
go away, but they may leave scars (Complications; see below). Permanent insanity puts
the character under the GM’s control.
If the character gained Mythos knowledge from the insanity. In that case, the character
gains Complications to pay for the new Mythos knowledge. Usually a character gains
Psychological Complications, Phobias, or Compulsive Behaviors, but could conceiv-
ably gain Personality Traits (“disbelieves in supernatural”) and Responsibilities (“vows
to hunt down ‘things’”) or even Physiological Complications (“gouged out one eye

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 Rules Additions to Fuzion

while in throes of madness”). The new Complication should be appropriate in some

way to the circumstances of the insanity.
These additional Complications are usually minor in game terms.
Example: Gabe delved into his father’s occult library for
some hint as to the family’s ancient curse. Unfortunately, the
reading drove him insane, and Gabe’s player doesn’t have 5
OP to buy the 1 point of Mythos skill.
So his player looks at the list of Complications and decides
that Gabe is now obsessed with the strange events going on.
He will be reckless in his attempts to investigate and all con-
versations will eventually lead there, even when it isn’t
appropriate. This happens more than once a session (Con-
stantly, 15 pts), and it’s a Strong compulsion (10 pts). This
has no effect on combat skills, so it’s Minor (25/5=5). Per-
haps later, therapy will help Gabe...
Normally the GM dictates what happens to the character during temporary insanity,
but the GM may choose to let players describe the results, so long as it’s still entertain-
ing and fair to the rest of the group.
Note Some Fuzion games have an advantage called “Humanity Defense” which reduces the
amount of Humanity lost. Tekeli-li! does not have this advantage, and in the Tekeli-li!
universe it doesn’t work.

CALCULATING HUMANITY LOSSES

Your character loses Humanity in encounters with these Things Man Was Not Meant
To Know. Failing a Madness check causes a character to lose Humanity; sometimes
even succeeding a Madness check still causes a character to lose Humanity, so horrific
are the creatures of the Mythos.
The GM should recognize that Humanity loss comes in levels:
TRIVIAL. Indirect evidence that doesn’t personally affect the character. The important
thing is the cap: in case of a critical failure, the GM doesn’t feel that this would result in
a temporary insanity. Normally 1d2 or 1d3.
MINOR. This loss of Humanity may drive “normal” people temporarily mad, but char-
acters are usually made of sterner stuff. Normally 1d6, 1d6-1 or 1d6+1. Direct evi-
dence of humans acting in a loathsome manner or indirect evidence that points to the
character or the character’s family in some way. Discovering the truth of one’s ancestry,
for example, or viewing creatures that are reasonably human-like, such as ghuls.

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Rules Additions to Fuzion

SIGNIFICANT. Most people will be driven temporarily insane by this, if they succumb to
madness at all. 2d6, possibly 2d6-1. Some Humanity loss is to be expected even if the
character succeeds at the Madness check, usually 1, 1d2, or 1d3.
MAJOR. Madness is almost sure to follow: 3d6, and may follow even if the character
makes the Madness check (1d6 loss even for successful Madness check). In the normal
run of events, a character loses at most 3d6.
CATASTROPHIC. Some entities are worse and may instantly drive a human mad; seeing
them is worth 5d6 (average loss 17) or more.
On a critical failure, you lose maximum Humanity for that encounter.
When performing Mythos skill tasks, you can “burn” Humanity to improve your
chances, but you can never burn more Humanity than your Skill level. (And some
Mythos tasks will cost Humanity anyway.)

THERAPY AND RECOVERING HUMANITY

Therapy will help you recover. Your Madness is the difficulty the therapist has to beat.
Successful therapy has one of two effects: You can gain back 2d6 Humanity or erase
one point of temporary Madness, player’s choice. (Your Madness can never go below
13+Mythos.) Normally one rolls for therapy every month, and the character has an
extended stay away from all things unnatural.
If the therapist fails the roll, the character loses 1d3 Humanity, and the therapist must
make a Madness roll or lose 1d3 Humanity.
If for some reason the therapy is being tried in the midst of some Mythos-related activ-
ity (“Snap him out of it! He’s the only one who knows the spell!”), add 10 to the char-
acter’s Madness for the purposes of the therapy roll.

MAGIC
A character may cast any spell he or she knows, given the time, material components,
and Soul points. The difficulty of the spell is determined by the GM; the acting value is
WILL+Mythos. A player can increase the chances of success by “burning” Humanity
points, up to a maximum of one’s Mythos skill. (Yes, you can guarantee temporary
insanity this way.)
Note that Mythos spells can work without an understanding of the Mythos (that is, with
no Mythos skill).
Most spells have a difficulty between 10 and 21; additional tactics may be used to
improve the chances of a spell working. (GMs should be liberal with these, since it’s
often the fate of the world at stake.)

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 Rules Additions to Fuzion

A spell may cost Soul points. Soul points regenerate each day, after a night’s sleep.
(Dreaming is an important part of the character’s connection to magic.)
Example: A thing has possessed the corpse of Gabe’s
father, and Gabe has managed to trap the desiccated clatter-
ing horror in the bedroom. He has learned a dismissal spell
in his father’s old copy of Affari dei Mostros, and casts it.
Since Gabe now has a Mythos of 2, the player decides to
burn two additional Humanity points to make his acting
value WILL + Mythos + 2, or 4 + 2 + 2 = 8. The difficulty
is 18, so he further decides he will take an hour to prepare
for it and cast it instead of 20 minutes, for an additional +1
to his skill. He rolls a 9—and succeeds. Gabe’s player sub-
tracts 3 Soul points from his total, and 2 more points from
his Humanity.

EXPERIENCE
Experience is given out as described in the Fuzion rules. A successful end to the
adventure (in which the plans of the horrors are defeated or averted) should also be
accompanied by a reward of Humanity or a decrease in Madness or both.
Example: Since he defeated the horror, the GM gives out
experience points, and tells Gabe he can erase 1 point of
Madness and regain 6 points of Humanity.

CHARACTER CREATION
A typical Tekeli-li! campaign uses characters built on 40 Characteristic Points and 40
Option points, with up to 40 more Option points in Complications. That’s sufficient
for characters to have 4 in each primary characteristic: very competent but not yet
heroic. Guns and other humans are still a threat to the characters.
To recap items already mentioned:
• Characters have the additional characteristic of “Madness” which starts at 13.
• With the GM’s permission, players can buy the skill “Rationalization” for the nor-
mal cost, but each level of Rationalization will also raise the character’s Madness
level by one.
• Characters have the additional skill of “Mythos” which must start with a value of 0.
• There is no “Humanity Defense.”

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Rules Additions to Fuzion

THE INTERLOCK OPTION

I'm assuming 3d6 rolls; if you are using the Interlock option, subtract 5 from difficul-
ties mentioned here. Base Madness becomes 8+Mythos; foxhole therapy adds 5 to the
existing Madness, not 10.

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 Creating the World of Tekeli-li!

C. Creating the World of Tekeli-li!

You can just use materials straight from the Cthulhu Mythos. (See “Using Other RPG
Resources” on page 14.) Several advantages to this:
• Lots of material already exists
• Material created by many different people so there are some startling differences—
it doesn’t have a sense of “sameness” that can be boring
• Many players already familiar with the background
Or you can create new equivalents to Lovecraft’s creations. This is a lot of work
(though you can do it slowly) but it, too, has its advantages:
• Players uncertain: they have no way of knowing that the book Liber Mortis is roughly
equivalent to the Necronomicon, and when they ask about the Necronomicon, you
calmly explain that that’s something an author named H. P. Lovecraft wrote about
and they can find a knockoff in the used book store.
• Tuned to what scares your players (perhaps the dehumanization of possession
doesn’t bother you, but dehumanization through computers does)

THEMES
Lovecraft’s stories display a number of recurring themes and elements that you may or
may not want to play up. Tekeli-li! accepts the basics: the universe is fundamentally
unknowable and to know the truth will drive humans mad.
• In the nature vs. nurture argument, heredity—“bad blood”—will win out.
• It is possible for people to degenerate under stress, especially if they have bad
blood.
• Certain groups or cults are degenerate in nature; they are “less evolved.”
• Since the universe is unknowable, the monsters are largely indescribable.
• Possession, either by magicians or alien intelligences.
• Cannibalism.
Your group may find other things frightening; or you may want to bring these themes
into the 21st century. (The current discussion of genetic markers for some traits
sounds very much like Lovecraft’s belief.)

TOMES
To get you started, here are a couple of books that contain Mythos material in the
world of Tekeli-li!
• Liber Mortis, translation into the Latin supposedly by the Comte de Ste-Germaine.

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Creating the World of Tekeli-li!

• Traffick with Air, collection of spells and incantations supposedly used by Edmund
Kelley, published 1601 by a Venetian press.
• Cyclopes of the Sea, a discussion of odd tribal customs and worship of gods through-
out the oceans of the world, written by Olaf Kringhaus, 1878.
• Affari dei Mostros, transl. from the Greek by unnamed Italian monk approx 1430.
• Circuits Never Rust, Internet document, anonymous author; apparently incoherent
but discusses superiority of certain kinds of “recorded intelligence.” Some versions
differ, apparently due to transmission errors.

MAGIC
Magic in Tekeli-li! is not like most RPG magic. Most magical acts are done through alien
servants, often described in old grimoires as “demons” or “angels.” The principal types
of spells are:
• Summon/dismiss spells, one for each kind of creature
• Binding spells, one for each kind of creature
• Curses
• Create enchanted object
• Possession or soul destroying spells

CREATURES
The most significant danger comes from people: people worship these creatures, these
things, and work for them even if the creatures are not free to work unless summoned.
Creatures come in three kinds: the Tainted, the Servant Races, and the Unutterable.
TAINTED. Tainted creaturs are not necessarily affiliated with the others, but serve as
markers of their presence. Some family bloodlines are intertwined with the Tainted
creatures and members of those families may in fact degenerate into Tainted beings.
For example, the ghuls are hyena-like cannibals who frequent places of the dead search-
ing for food. They seem to have been with us always. They do have religion but no
families—no one has ever observed an infant ghul. It may be that they start as humans
and through unspeakable actions revert to the ancestral line. Seeing a member of the
Tainted without preparation is usually a Minor Humanity loss; a group of characters
should be able to defeat a smaller number of Tainted.
SERVANT R ACES. These are races under the control of the Unutterable. They rarely
come to Earth of their own free will but spells to summon and control them may be
given as a gift to loyal cultists. Seeing a member of the Tainted without preparation is
usually a Significant or Major Humanity loss, 2d6 or 3d6; a group of characters may be
able to defeat a single member of a servant race, but usually cannot.

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 Creating the World of Tekeli-li!

THE UNUTTERABLE. The Unutterable may have factions of different power within them,
but they do not come to Earth—they cannot, except when conditions are right. They
are beings of unimaginable power, and it is often the goal of their worshippers to bring
them here. The ones who are concerned with Earth often communicate through
dreams. Other Unutterable forces may have no concern with Earth at all, but can be
summoned in some form or another, usually with disastrous results for the humans
concerned. The Unutterable cannot be defeated if they fully manifest; seeing one is a
Catastrophic Humanity loss, 5d6 or more.

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Using Other RPG Resources

D. Using Other RPG Resources

This supplement was inspired by Norbert Franz’s BRP to Fuzion notes, and I recom-
mend those to you if you want to convert characters from BRP to Fuzion. See his
notes at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fuzionforum/files/Conver-
sions%20to%20FUZION/Revised%20Conversion%20Notes%202.doc.
(I disagree with Norbert’s skill conversion—in Call of Cthulhu characters with more
than 100% in skills are disallowed—but dividing the CoC skill rankings by 15 gives a
fair estimation.)
A couple of extra notes not covered by Norbert:
Q How do I convert Armor?
A Values for Armor translate directly. The BRP and Fuzion damage scales are quite different, but the figures
provided for damage stopped by Armor are roughly compatible.
Q What about Damage?
A Don’t translate weapon damages; use the damages given in the various Fuzion plug-ins. When converting BRP
monster damages, try this rule of thumb: Calculate the average damage done by a roll, halve that, and have the
Fuzion version do that many DCs in damage. For some of the monsters, you will have to convert to Kill.

The Cthadran has claws, a tail, and a Damage Bonus of

+5d6. The claws do 1d6+5d6, or 6d6; the average for 6d6 is
21 points; this will kill Joe Normal in BRP. The Fuzion ver-
sion does 10 DC in damage, which will kill Joe Normal in
Fuzion.
Q How do magic pointstranslate?
A Magic points translate directly to Soul points. Spells work exactly as they do in CoC.

Q How do Sanity losses translate?

A See this table. Because Tekeli-li! uses modifiers and multiple dice, the distributions of results are often different:
rolls will have a higher minimum or cluster closer to the average.

Die Average Roll Tekeli-li! Equivalent

1D2 1.5 1D2 (Roll 1D6: odd, 1; even 2)
1D3 2 1D3 (Roll 1D6, divide result in half, rounding up)
1D4 2.5 1D6-1
1D6 3.5 1D6
1D8 4.5 1D6+1
1D10 5.5 1D6+1D3
2D10 11 3D6
1D20 10.5 3D6

Tekeli-li! – 14
 Designer Notes

E. Designer Notes
I was reading a lot of Lovecraft and then I ran across Norbert’s conversion rules of
BRP to Fuzion. It intrigued me, so I thought I would extend those notes to Fuzion.
There were a couple of other interesting aspects. First of all, CoC is a low-key, gritty,
often desperate, system. Characters are not in control of the world, and this extends
right down to character creation, which is largely random. Fuzion is broader and much
more optimistic: characters are in control of their world. The mechanics of the two are
opposed, and the scale of skills and attributes in Fuzion is much more compressed.
I think it’s noteworthy that the average human is in the middle of the BRP scale for
humans (10 or 11 in a range of 3-18) while the average human is skewed far to one side
in Fuzion (2 in a range of 1-7).
I’ve added several significant chunks to the Fuzion mechanics. For one thing, several of
the characteristics I’ve added are beyond the player’s control, and the line between skill
and characteristic is blurred.
For Sanity, I wanted a mechanism that gets steadily more difficult to beat, yet it must be
possible to fail even at the very beginning and it must be possible to succeed even at
the very end. Some kind of reasonably large scale should be used, so that the feel of
eroding sanity is maintained. Human max of 7 is assumed, and for now I'll assume 3d6
method of skill rolls. The mechanism should keep to the Fuzion standard of high roll
= good.
And I wanted a Fuzion mechanic, not one lifted directly from CoC.
Madness is not under the control of the player, which was important to me in keeping
the feel of the source material. An “average” human with a Will of 2 and a Rationaliza-
tion of 0 makes the first Madness roll at 2+3d6 vs. 13, and needs 11+ to succeed (50%
chance of failure). A player who maxes out on WILL (value of 7) makes the first Mad-
ness roll at an acting value of 7 vs. a Madness of 13, and needs 6+ to succeed (4.4%
chance of failure).
The Humanity characteristic was provided in Fuzion without hints as to how one loses
Humanity. I originally had all sorts of convolutions involving rolling against (100-
Humanity)/3, and that looked to me too difficult to calculate.
Therapy here is more effective than in CoC (where one only gains 1d3 for a successful
month of therapy), but the fact that you can burn Humanity and that I'm using gener-
ally larger average die rolls means that Humanity should bounce up and down more.
The more Mythos you learn, though, the lower your maximum Humanity is.
It’s also difficult controlling how quickly characters learn Mythos skill. They need to
learn some and in the source material it’s clear that not all spells are learned through
Tekeli-li! – 15
Designer Notes

insanity (though insanity can grant those insights). My compromise here puts it in the
control of the players: they must want to spend the points or they get no Mythos skill.
The madness Complications are simply a way of paying the points in the context of the
Fuzion advantage/disadvantage system.
You can be a really powerful Mythos sorceror—you just won't be sane. A character
with WILL, INT, PRE, Mythos, and Rationalization all at 7 can hover at 0 Humanity
for a long time, being mentally fragile, but since the Madness checks become AV 14
+3d6 vs. DV 21, about half the time he or she will lose Humanity, and it's not that far
from 0 to -10 and permanent insanity.
I think the easiest thing to do is borrow wholesale from the Chaosium material, but
want to include enough information so you don’t need to do that: material that could be
dropped into a CoC game or replace it.

TO DO
I’d like to include a character sheet, some creatures of the Mythos, a cult, sand some
sample adventures. Also, I think the system as a whole needs playtesting.

Tekeli-li! – 16
 Index

F. Index
A Madness checks
armor 14 critical failure 6
example 5, 6
C making 5
Call of Cthulhu 2 magic
characteristic points 9 casting spells 8
characteristics Soul points 4
Humanity 3 spell difficulties 8
Madness 3 Mythos skill 3, 4
Soul 4 and Madness 4
Complications 9 increasing 4
Compulsive Behaviors 6
N
F Necronomicon 11
Fuzion 2
O
H Overview 1
Humanity 3
calculating losses 7 P
recovering 8 Personality Traits 6
regaining lost 3 Phobias 6
use in Mythos skill checks 8 Psychological Complications 6
Humanity Defense 9
R
I Rationalization skill 4
Interlock difficulties 10 example 5
Responsiblities 6
K
Kelley, Edmund 12 S
Kringhaus, Olaf 12 Soul 4

L T
Liber Mortis 11 Talents
Eidetic Memory 3
M Humanity Defense 7
Madness 3
base 3 W
Complications 3, 6 weapon damage 14

Tekeli-li! – 17
Index

Tekeli-li! – 18