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This month will be a little light here. I have something
special planned for next month.
Recently, I picked up a Call of Cthulhu rulebook. It was
rather old, although not nearly as battered as it is since Ive
bought it. It definitely had seen a lot of use. I promptly put it
aside and forgot about it for a while.
Ive always been a big fan of H. P. Lovecrafts stories. I first
encountered him in an indirect way, by watching Army of
Darkness. One of my friends mentioned that the
Necronomicon came from a Lovecraft story, and sometime
later I recognized the name while at a bookstore. If you
havent read his stuff, you should. Many of the more famous
modern day horror writers used him as an inspiration. While
his stories were similar to those of Ambrose Bierce and Poe,
his writings seemed to focus more on the psychological
aspects of horror. This immediately attracted me, as Ive
often wondered how myself, or any other real person would
react to some horrific situations.
In any case, Call of Cthulhu quickly turned out to be one of
my favorite gaming books. Now, this is version 5.2, not the
d20 stuff that theyve recently put out.
The game itself uses a system that I like. There are no levels,
or character points that your character is rewarded with. Each
skill has a rank that you purchase when you make your
character, and thats the rank that it will stay at, unless you
use it. Skill usage causes the skills to up. This both gives the
game a good sense of realism (which is good for a game thats
based on Earth Life), but it also means that the skills youre
good at are the ones that you need to use time and time again.
An interesting thing I found was that it uses Education as an
attribute (along with Strength, etc.). Im not sure whether I
like or dislike this, but I had certainly never seen it before.
As with all games, this game has hit points as well. Unlike
many other games, the hit points maximum do not go up or
down unless the appropriate attributes change as well. This
makes sense . . . you dont magically get tougher when you get
more experienced.
Ok, back to the layout of the book.
The first few sections are standard fare . . . instructions on
making characters (with a useful walk-through and an
example of a character), along with descriptions about what
each of the attributes and skills do.
Shortly after that is the Sanity section. The only game that
Ive seen that could match the depth of the information they
put in here was Rifts, and even that didnt have definitions of
the different phobias and mental disorders. Of course, this is
a game based on horror, and like Lovecrafts stories, the
psychological effect it has on people. Its understandable that
it would be a larger section.
Much of the rest of the book is also fairly standard fare. It
explains grimoires, spells, creatures and monsters, interesting
places. The section on scenarios is well put-together, and
provides rather useful information for setting up games,
without forcing you into a set path.
After the scenarios section is where it gets interesting. They
have a well written biography of Lovecraft. This would be
worth the read even if you were just interested in the game. It
gives a good sense of the background and mind of the person
that the game is based on. There are various timelines,
explaining real events of the times (the game can take place
anywhere from the 1890s to the present), events in Lovecrafts
stories (that may or may not have happened in your game),
disasters, and odd occult-related events that may or may not
have happened in real life.
There is a really great section on forensic pathology that
explains police methodology of the 1890s, 1920s, and 1990s.
That alone made this book worth the price of admission. It is
certainly useful for adding realism to the game. Another thing
that helps to add realism are the price charts . . . an index of
how much a variety of average items cost in each of the three
time periods.
I normally find it hard to run games set in Earth (modern day
or otherwise) because I try to make certain things as true as
possible. Id hate having to guess how much a glass of good
wine cost back in the 1850s, or how much a longbow would
have cost in the 1300s. Id hate the time that Id have to
spend researching it, too. This book makes it easy to do,
though, as the comparison of prices for the items that they
have would help me even figure out items not on the list.
Realism itself is important in this game. Like in his stories,
Lovecraft believed that true horror could really only be
achieved against a backdrop of reality. It makes those
unnatural things seem even more horrifying.
I havent seen the new d20 version of this game, and I dont
plan on doing so. Sometimes, newer isnt always better.
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