Anyone ever play the Cthulhlu roleplaying game?

[Captain Campion]

I mentioned in another thread that 20 years ago I worked for a small roleplaying game company. One of our competitors--a company named Chaosium--did the Cthulhu roleplaying game; a pen and paper game in the same vein as Dungeons and Dragons.

We played it once (marketing research I tell myself) and I held on to a couple of handbooks filled with sketches of Cthulhu creatures.

Of course it's hard to put such insane visions into illustrations, but I still found them quite creepy. I suggest you look them up sometime if you're a Lovecraft fan: they were called "S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters" and "S. Petersen's Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands".

I don't know if the roleplaying game is around, but it begs the question: why so few Cthulhu computer games? I've seen one in recent years but that' it.

 

[w h pugmire esq]

I'm going to play it for the first time in January at MythosCon.

 

[HareBrain]

I played Call of Cthulhu 20-25 years ago. It was based on the Runequest system. Great fun, and genuinely scary (not that it took much to scare me in those days), though our GM had some weird interpretations of the rules -- he insisted on making us roll on our driving skill any time we took a car anywhere, even down the shops. Good job we had lots of money for repairs.

To save me looking through all your threads, CC, what RPG company did you work for?

 

[Ningauble]

Sure, it's still going strong in its 6th edition. And there are lots of great sourcebooks for it. Check out the Delta Green stuff in particular.

 

[Captain Campion]

I played Call of Cthulhu 20-25 years ago. It was based on the Runequest system. Great fun, and genuinely scary (not that it took much to scare me in those days), though our GM had some weird interpretations of the rules -- he insisted on making us roll on our driving skill any time we took a car anywhere, even down the shops. Good job we had lots of money for repairs.

To save me looking through all your threads, CC, what RPG company did you work for?

West End Games. My first job out of college. Long time ago (early 90s).

 

[HareBrain]

West End Games. My first job out of college. Long time ago (early 90s).

Ah, Paranoia. My only memory of that game is spending about five hours trying to come up with a witty character name with a capital "R" in the middle.

 

[Ningauble]

West End Games. My first job out of college. Long time ago (early 90s).

You made an excellent Star Wars RPG, if memory serves me right.

 

[Viatorium Press]

I've never played but I'm fascinated by the whole culture of the game. It's great that there's a whole aspect to HPL fandom in the modern era that wants to imagine and play in his universe in this way. Gaming is a huge stimulant to the imagination and to creativity in general.

Does anybody know if there are any gaming groups playing in Seattle that would welcome someone sitting in and maybe just observing them play?

 

[Anne Lyle]

Used to love that game, and a bunch of other non-D&D RPGs: Runequest, Paranoia, Cyberpunk 2020...

I'll get me coat.

 

[J-WO]

I ran a game ooh, gawd years ago, now. One of the players was an AD&D veteran, the sort who beat up/killed entire villages of fantasy world peasants when he wasn't running around dungeons. He tried to pull the same trick with a tommy gun in 1920's Boston--I'll always treasure the look on his face when I explained to him his character was going to the chair.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Our characters usually went insane first. Although one of the more dim players - who really should have know better - spoke the name of a certain elder deity out loud in his temple and got his arm bitten off (and then wondered why the GM reduced his roll for trying to shoot byakhee left-handed)

 

[J-WO]

I like to think HPL would have been rather proud of COC. It is, after all, the premier Role playing game of intellect and reasoning. Plus it generally eschews the Derlethian take on the mythos in favour of the original nihilism. A brave thing for an RPG to do, considering its contemporaries. Derleth's set up would surely have made the safer bet.