The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Call of Cthulhu is considered a classic, and there's good reason for it. Call of Cthulhu is focused on horror, and that ultimately makes it an above-average horror role-playing game.

However, my experience with horror role-playing games went only as far as Beyond the Supernatural and Ravenloft. Beyond the Supernatural virtually set up the idea that you should blow the Unholy Horror to smithereens with a minigun, as indicated by the screaming guy in the cover who's toting an uzi. Ravenloft never pulled horror off completely because the human element was often lost on spell-blasting elves and hammer wielding dwarves.

The latest version of Call of Cthulhu doesn't have anything so direct, and heavily discourages these kinds of confrontation. This probably has something to do with the fact that a GE Mini-Gun gets 33 attacks in a round for 2D6+4 damage each. 528 points of damage could blow even Azathoth off the map. That's not what this game is about -- although I openly admit that there is something appealing about the Nega-Psychic from Beyond the Supernatural screaming, "Buncha freaks!" and tearing a hole through yet another extra-dimensional entity.

This ain't that kind of game. Horror's the thing, and the rule that keeps players mindful of horror being horrible is the SAN, or Sanity, statistic. Sanity gets lost a lot, and is rarely gained. This is not a game for a hero, but there's plenty of room for heroics. Fools who run in with guns blazing (which is a pretty good indicator of low sanity anyway) will probably curl up into fetal positions and serve as a nice snack for a Great Old One. Ultimately, characters who grow in power lose more and more Sanity. Coc's one of the few games where the longer you've been around, the more likely you are to kick off or go bonkers.

Anyone who wants to run a Call of Cthulhu game should have to see Curse fo the Blair Witch as a prerequisite. It's the definition of "what happens when you fail a SAN check."

Perhaps the most immediate and disturbing conclusions I came to caused my own SAN checks -- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ripped off Call of Cthulhu in absurdly obvious ways, in much the same way that AD&D ripped off Tolkien. Mind flayers, Froghemoths, Ropers, Kuo-Toa, Ghouls, Ghasts are all here. This is almost comforting in a disturbing sort of way.

The Call of Cthulhu mythos come from a wide variety of books written by a lot of authors and every fool who thinks he can pen horror and slap a recognizable name on it. Some of the stories are excellent, some are dense, some are simply awful. Far more important than the CoC's mechanics is the fact that it draws upon its rich source material and unifies it in such a way as to smooth over contradictions and organize the Cthulhu Mythos into a genuine mythology. This is probably Chaosium's greatest achievement -- only Iron Crown Enterprises can boast a similar task (and I can't attest to how successful they were in digging through Tolkien's massive body of work).

The original progenitor of this game is H.P. Lovecraft himself (who ironically, wasn't fond of games at all). Call of Cthulhu doesn't let you forget it either. He's got his own section, and there is an eight page short story which is meant to invoke the feel of Call of Cthulhu. The only problem with this short story is that it's incredibly dense, as I can only assume much of Lovecraft's works are. I prefer Mervyn Peake's equally dense but less dry narrative over Lovecraft's any day.

Character generation is straightforward, professions are generic, skills aren't very detailed. That's on purpose. It's all to keep you focused on role-playing, and less on your ability to sock a Deep One in the face.

Insanity is covered in detail in Call of Cthulhu because your character is likely to go insane -- as opposed to the reprinted sanity rules in every Palladium book. There are also Spot Rules, neat little "do what you want" entries that Keepers (that's what they call Game Masters) can invoke when they feel that level of detail is necessary. A lot of people think this is an amazing idea, but it's called "House Rules" in other games. It's when people use and discard rules in a mutually agreed upon fashion because they feel like it. People have been doing it for a long time, Call of Cthulhu merely puts a name on the rule and presents it appropriately.

There are three settings in which to play Coc: 1890s, 1920s, and 1990s. I find the first two very appealing, and the last nearly unplayable without some heavy altering to the spirit of the rules. Cell phones and automatic weapons make the terror of isolation difficult to keep up. It's the difference between playing the X-Files and the marines in Aliens. It can work, but the Bad Guys have to work a lot harder. The end of the Victorian age, and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties are perfect settings for uncertanity and confusion, where science pretends it has a very strong grip over the state of affairs but in reality it's still terribly precarious. The 1940s is notably missing, for Indiana Jones type scenarios, but tinkering doesn't seem too difficult with Call of Cthulhu to update the game to any era.

Except for one setting, and that's the Dreamlands. There's a sizable critters section -- including "common" creatures, the Mythos monsters, and God-types. Gods aren't necessarily the fantasy god types, they're really very powerful aliens. Keeping that in mind keeps them in perspective. A large number of these are set in the Dreamlands. But what's the Dreamlands? How do you get into the Dreamlands? How do you get out of the Dreamlands?

Well, that's for another book. In fact, Call of Cthulhu is not very eager to reveal everything, and perhaps this is a wise thing to do. No being gets a full page, encylcopedic treatment like in other games. If you want to find out more, Call of Cthulhu expects you to read the stories in which they take place. Sometimes this makes the game seem more mysterious and horrible. Sometimes, it's just annoying.

The surprisingly large spells section suffers from this same problem. In some cases, there are spells which only work in the Dreamlands, in still others they summon beasts that aren't in Call of Cthulhu (but presumably, were in the module they were reprinted from).

The book is rounded out by NPCs, premade characters, a series of references for each Call of Cthulhu setting, and three modules. I liked the modules, although I would have preferred one module and more information on the Dreamlands.

Ultimately, Call of Cthulhu is undeniably appealing, because it is part science fiction, part fantasy (Hyperborea is where Conan came from, remember), part new age spiritualism (as much of the Mythos have their roots in Theosophy), and part horror. This means with a little imagination, you could conceivably set Call of Cthulhu on Yith (through the Mi-Go), in the Dreamlands (through sorcery), or even to the age of dinosaurs (through Yog-Sothoth).

Beyond the Dreamlands exclusion, Coc still suffers from typos. This is bizarre considering the number of reprints. It's not a lot of typos, but by version 5.5, I consider more than one to be unforgivable.

So is it the supreme role-playing game of all time? No, but then again, it doesn't try to be. Call of Cthulhu is a tight game. It reminds the Keeper that monsters don't bargain, they don't make sense, that things should be mysterious, and you should never say, "A Mi-Go lands next to you." Call of Cthulhu is about role-playing in a shared universe of horror that's ultimately doomed, but it's all about fun too, because it's a GAME. Call of Cthulhu is about a very serious subject and yet it doesn't take itself too seriously. If anything is perfect in Call of Cthulhu, it's in presenting the act of role-playing itself. Other role-playing games could learn something from its presentation.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Call of Cthulhu
Author: Sandy Petersen & Lynn Willis, et al Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium, Inc. Line: Call of Cthulhu Cost: $29.99 Page count: 287 ISBN: 1-56882-134-4 Capsule Review by Michael Tresca on 08/08/99. Genre tags: Horror	Call of Cthulhu is considered a classic, and there's good reason for it. Call of Cthulhu is focused on horror, and that ultimately makes it an above-average horror role-playing game. However, my experience with horror role-playing games went only as far as Beyond the Supernatural and Ravenloft. Beyond the Supernatural virtually set up the idea that you should blow the Unholy Horror to smithereens with a minigun, as indicated by the screaming guy in the cover who's toting an uzi. Ravenloft never pulled horror off completely because the human element was often lost on spell-blasting elves and hammer wielding dwarves. The latest version of Call of Cthulhu doesn't have anything so direct, and heavily discourages these kinds of confrontation. This probably has something to do with the fact that a GE Mini-Gun gets 33 attacks in a round for 2D6+4 damage each. 528 points of damage could blow even Azathoth off the map. That's not what this game is about -- although I openly admit that there is something appealing about the Nega-Psychic from Beyond the Supernatural screaming, "Buncha freaks!" and tearing a hole through yet another extra-dimensional entity. This ain't that kind of game. Horror's the thing, and the rule that keeps players mindful of horror being horrible is the SAN, or Sanity, statistic. Sanity gets lost a lot, and is rarely gained. This is not a game for a hero, but there's plenty of room for heroics. Fools who run in with guns blazing (which is a pretty good indicator of low sanity anyway) will probably curl up into fetal positions and serve as a nice snack for a Great Old One. Ultimately, characters who grow in power lose more and more Sanity. Coc's one of the few games where the longer you've been around, the more likely you are to kick off or go bonkers. Anyone who wants to run a Call of Cthulhu game should have to see Curse fo the Blair Witch as a prerequisite. It's the definition of "what happens when you fail a SAN check." Perhaps the most immediate and disturbing conclusions I came to caused my own SAN checks -- Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ripped off Call of Cthulhu in absurdly obvious ways, in much the same way that AD&D ripped off Tolkien. Mind flayers, Froghemoths, Ropers, Kuo-Toa, Ghouls, Ghasts are all here. This is almost comforting in a disturbing sort of way. The Call of Cthulhu mythos come from a wide variety of books written by a lot of authors and every fool who thinks he can pen horror and slap a recognizable name on it. Some of the stories are excellent, some are dense, some are simply awful. Far more important than the CoC's mechanics is the fact that it draws upon its rich source material and unifies it in such a way as to smooth over contradictions and organize the Cthulhu Mythos into a genuine mythology. This is probably Chaosium's greatest achievement -- only Iron Crown Enterprises can boast a similar task (and I can't attest to how successful they were in digging through Tolkien's massive body of work). The original progenitor of this game is H.P. Lovecraft himself (who ironically, wasn't fond of games at all). Call of Cthulhu doesn't let you forget it either. He's got his own section, and there is an eight page short story which is meant to invoke the feel of Call of Cthulhu. The only problem with this short story is that it's incredibly dense, as I can only assume much of Lovecraft's works are. I prefer Mervyn Peake's equally dense but less dry narrative over Lovecraft's any day. Character generation is straightforward, professions are generic, skills aren't very detailed. That's on purpose. It's all to keep you focused on role-playing, and less on your ability to sock a Deep One in the face. Insanity is covered in detail in Call of Cthulhu because your character is likely to go insane -- as opposed to the reprinted sanity rules in every Palladium book. There are also Spot Rules, neat little "do what you want" entries that Keepers (that's what they call Game Masters) can invoke when they feel that level of detail is necessary. A lot of people think this is an amazing idea, but it's called "House Rules" in other games. It's when people use and discard rules in a mutually agreed upon fashion because they feel like it. People have been doing it for a long time, Call of Cthulhu merely puts a name on the rule and presents it appropriately. There are three settings in which to play Coc: 1890s, 1920s, and 1990s. I find the first two very appealing, and the last nearly unplayable without some heavy altering to the spirit of the rules. Cell phones and automatic weapons make the terror of isolation difficult to keep up. It's the difference between playing the X-Files and the marines in Aliens. It can work, but the Bad Guys have to work a lot harder. The end of the Victorian age, and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties are perfect settings for uncertanity and confusion, where science pretends it has a very strong grip over the state of affairs but in reality it's still terribly precarious. The 1940s is notably missing, for Indiana Jones type scenarios, but tinkering doesn't seem too difficult with Call of Cthulhu to update the game to any era. Except for one setting, and that's the Dreamlands. There's a sizable critters section -- including "common" creatures, the Mythos monsters, and God-types. Gods aren't necessarily the fantasy god types, they're really very powerful aliens. Keeping that in mind keeps them in perspective. A large number of these are set in the Dreamlands. But what's the Dreamlands? How do you get into the Dreamlands? How do you get out of the Dreamlands? Well, that's for another book. In fact, Call of Cthulhu is not very eager to reveal everything, and perhaps this is a wise thing to do. No being gets a full page, encylcopedic treatment like in other games. If you want to find out more, Call of Cthulhu expects you to read the stories in which they take place. Sometimes this makes the game seem more mysterious and horrible. Sometimes, it's just annoying. The surprisingly large spells section suffers from this same problem. In some cases, there are spells which only work in the Dreamlands, in still others they summon beasts that aren't in Call of Cthulhu (but presumably, were in the module they were reprinted from). The book is rounded out by NPCs, premade characters, a series of references for each Call of Cthulhu setting, and three modules. I liked the modules, although I would have preferred one module and more information on the Dreamlands. Ultimately, Call of Cthulhu is undeniably appealing, because it is part science fiction, part fantasy (Hyperborea is where Conan came from, remember), part new age spiritualism (as much of the Mythos have their roots in Theosophy), and part horror. This means with a little imagination, you could conceivably set Call of Cthulhu on Yith (through the Mi-Go), in the Dreamlands (through sorcery), or even to the age of dinosaurs (through Yog-Sothoth). Beyond the Dreamlands exclusion, Coc still suffers from typos. This is bizarre considering the number of reprints. It's not a lot of typos, but by version 5.5, I consider more than one to be unforgivable. So is it the supreme role-playing game of all time? No, but then again, it doesn't try to be. Call of Cthulhu is a tight game. It reminds the Keeper that monsters don't bargain, they don't make sense, that things should be mysterious, and you should never say, "A Mi-Go lands next to you." Call of Cthulhu is about role-playing in a shared universe of horror that's ultimately doomed, but it's all about fun too, because it's a GAME. Call of Cthulhu is about a very serious subject and yet it doesn't take itself too seriously. If anything is perfect in Call of Cthulhu, it's in presenting the act of role-playing itself. Other role-playing games could learn something from its presentation. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)