Cthulhu How? So you want to play a Horror Alright, let's see. Once upon a ferociously thunderous night... RPG with Cthulhu... H.P. Lovecraft M aybe there is a movie you can watch instead. It all goes back to the life's work of this Rhode Island racist who wrote a lot of weird stories and letters up to 1937 when he ou can simply Download the Quick Start died from cancer without literary success: Y Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Rules for CoC 7 and play the adventure in the back. His pen pal August Derleth founded Arkham http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.ph House and published what Lovecraft had p?products_id=6900 not been able to sell, as well as other works by different authors in the same vein, including his own. The stories are mostly short episodes about You're still here? Hm. Maybe this will work... disturbing unnatural events in some corner of our world beyond human perception or http://www.miskatonic-university.org/ understanding full of old and mighty beings http://www.esotericarchives.com/ whose very existence is so far removed from our reality and scale that merely a h ttp://www.scp-wiki.net/ glimpse of that lore drives a lot of http://www.palinola.com/projects/lab/greenbox/ characters to insanity or a pitiful demise. The entirety of Lovecraft's works and those http://paranormaldatabase.com/ of many others paying homage to his ideas http://thefearmythos.wikia.com/wiki/The_Fear_M form the Cthulhu Mythos. It is not a consistent continuity but a collection of ythos_Wiki frequently mutually exclusive fragments. http://www.creepypasta.com/dear-abby/ Have a look, it works in interesting ways. http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/PROPDOCS/Fr http://hplovecraft.com/ (complete works) eeProps.html Lovecraft's intention was to unsettle his audience. He did not just write creepy tales, ast chance? he designed them so that they would affect L the reader. For this he used any device at http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/121 his disposal. Plot, pacing, language, 30366/ implication, subconscious association, he was more like a modern movie director than a contemporary author in what he attempted to achieve. Table of Contents erhaps my questionable qualifications can H.P. Lovecraft........................................................................................................2 P More than just Lovecraft.................................................................3 discourage you. I have been playing Call of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu............................................................3 Cthulhu and some other Horror genre RPGs Systematic Intimidation.........................................................................4 for barely 10 years, have been the GM of Delta Green .................................................................................................4 lousy convention games, played LARP and Laundry .............................................................................................................4 online Horror rounds with morons and idiots, Cthulhu Dark.................................................................................................4 and have been an occasional OP on /tg/ Trail of Cthulhu........................................................................................4 for over 5 years now. Beyond that I have Nemesis................................................................................................................4 been working with movie props on set and Dread........................................................................................................................4 off (nothing you have seen) and I dabble in game design but am not getting shit done. Dungeoncrawl below Dunwich?..........................................5 Plot Structure of Despair...................................................................6 Written in 2013 Mindfuck.........................................................................................................................7 More than just Lovecraft Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu Lovecraft: The universe is older, bigger, Since 1981 Chaosium has released 7 editions and weirder than anyone could ever of Call of Cthulhu (CoC) using the Basic imagine. Mankind is insignificant. There is no Roleplaying System (BRP). The editions do not good or evil, or any other ordering differ much in crunch and are fully structure man can grasp except might. And compatible as far as I have seen. people who glimpse a shadow of these old powers are like a snowflake in a furnace. Players roll standard attributes and select Man and his morale can prevail. skills from a list that is on every character Derleth: sheet. Any skills including weapon skills and There are malicious things lurking in every even sanity are expressed in numbers from dark crevice as there always have been. 0 to 100+ (masters of their field can But humans carry a spark in them that can sometimes exceed 100). Any task including at times overcome the deepest darkness combat is resolved with a d100 roll that is and shine into every corner with interpreted to be as good a result as the compassion and safety in numbers. Or it amount the roll is below the skill value. It is can fail and be infested by the evil it was very simple and quick to play. charged to dispel. he GM can have a character roll directly Poe: At night the most mundane T circumstances can construct demons in our against an attribute value when no skill fits minds, and those demons kill. This creates the task. There are also secondary an overlap, an ambiguity, and anyone attributes derived from the primary ones. caught in this paradox will either fashion Things like Power (magic) or Luck can be his own demise out of fear and mistrust, or tested with dice. But these details are of explain away the perceived threat only to minor relevance and only involve a tiny bit then be overcome by it. of math at character generation. Shelley: There is infinite beauty and truth It is a system very flexible in genre from to be found in the most unlikely and cave men to astronauts, just adapt the skill revolting places. But unable to overcome list and you are ready to play. But the fear and revulsion man cannot grasp that scope of the mechanics and the ways to wisdom and himself becomes the monster express characters are limited to mostly in his efforts to protect against them. skills. Backgrounds only find expression in skill cost, there is no mechanism to motivate Eco: (sneaked him in there) Every mind players to use character flaws, no way for constructs the world from individual players to insert details into the plot, and experience, and although seemingly the sanity stat is a bit too one dimensional coherent at the surface, expectations and in some cases. Combat is deadly and context differ wildly from individual to somewhat random. individual. In this chasm madness is born and carried into the world as lies, cruelty, The beauty of CoC is in the fluff. Chaosium and murder. Over generations this becomes has mastered the art of providing elaborate an ordering principle to the pitiful demise settings and adventures with superb of the innocent, the inspired, and the honest. handouts that lavish in the era from the late 19th to the early 20th Century. Little Use what you think is best. Lovecraft islands of dread in a world changing at a Mythos roleplaying is not limited to scary pace with ingenuity, art, even Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Call of decadence at its iconic pinnacle while vast Cthulhu is not limited to the Lovecraft parts of the world remain to be mapped - Mythos. Just be aware of where it all came which means exploited - and war looms from. As long as you do not start mapping over every continent... It is a very nice dungeons on graph paper with encounters game. to be fought and loot to be taken you should be fine. And even if you do, I am Even if you pick another system to play, the sure it could work somehow. CoC splats are the best in the industry and are a great resource for any GM setting up a flavorful game in the era. Systematic Intimidation Trail of Cthulhu (http://www.pelgranepress.com/site/?cat=10 ) You can of course use any system you like Pelgranepress publishes this variation of and play anything you want with it. But the Gumshoe system (from Esoterrorists on some make it easier or put the focus on the same website). It attempts to model an certain things that might matter to your investigation so that the players cannot group. So let's have a look at the field and miss vital clues because of bad luck with make sure to pick the right crunch for you. the dice. Generally it seems to come out less scary and more pulpy. This is where Old Man Henderson is still looking for his Delta Green (http://www.delta-green.com/) wee men. (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man _Henderson). Imagine CoC in a modern world with aliens. Delta Green is a BRP system by ArcDream and Pagan to run agents of a vast and Nemesis (http://www.arcdream.com/pdf/Nemesis.pdf) confusing conspiracy along the lines of the mysterious Blue Planet Project book The One Roll Engine (ORE) does just that, it (http://www.metatech.org/BluePlanetProject.pdf ) with resolves the entire round of a character Greys, Majestic-12, Area 51, but also plenty of with one roll of a simple dice pool. Into that Mythos lore, that secretly runs the world pool go stats, skills, but also pretty much and does so rather badly. Hopefully 2014 will anything else you design your game to do, finally bring a new edition, the devs have like Relationships