Handbook on German Military Forces

Published during the Allies' campaign in Europe, the Handbook of German Military Forces (1945) is a huge War Department publication prepared for use by US forces in Europe. I saw an edition recently at Half Price Books that has a much better cover. But the bottom line is that if you are running Assault on the Mountains of Madness, it is an appropriate period resource with all sorts of practical details, from the organization of the German army (including lots of details on special departments) to where the safety is on a Luger. You can order it online, but you can also download a free PDF. You'll need to be patient with the PDF download, which is slow.

Assault on the Mountains of Madness

My gaming group began an Achtung! Cthulhu campaign in May. I presented three possible campaign ideas:

• A Spanish Civil War game
• Shadows of Atlantis 
• Assault on the Mountains of Madness

Madness won out.

The question was which core books should I use for the campaign? I own, and have run the Fate edition of Achtung! Cthulhu. I like the Fate rules, but the group opted for me to run the campaign using the Savage Worlds rules for Achtung! Cthulhu. Quite frankly, I was excited at the prospect of doing that because I have never had the chance to play or run the Savage Worlds system.

Like a good gamer, I first ordered the core books at my FLGS. And then I waited and waited and waited.  I waited for at least six months, even though the core books were out in distribution thoughout the United States. My game store even had supplements for Achtung! Cthulhu - but no core books. Finally, when I visited Calgary last Fall, I purchased the combined core books at the well-stocked Sentry Box game store. 

Problem-solved.

We've had two sessions so far, and I'll do brief posts on those games in the near future. I plan to document the campaign here, as well as provide other posts on World War II and adjacent topics.