Ah, the spiritual grandparent of horror roleplaying. Call of Cthulhu used to stare at me from the shelves at Hasting's beckoning me to dip into a different kind of roleplay. I purchased the 4th Edition and devoured it- but couldn't get my friends to play it. As I mentioned in a previous character post, we were deep into ass-kicking games, being a group of teenage boys who hadn't yet coaxed girls to play with us. This changed as soon as we all got to High School, and we never had a lack of female players again, but in our 7th and 8th grade gaming- all, to use the 80s slang, "duuuuuuudes."
Once I started going to gaming cons, I took the opportunity to play in a CoC game at Millennium Con- it was set during the US Civil War. Our pregens were a white Union officer, a number of black Union enlisted men, and a single Confederate Major- the character I drew. Of course I was a captive of the Union troops, and we were traipsing across a plantation trying to get back to Union lines. We came across a foreboding plantation manse as darkness fell, and the Union Captain decided we would approach and ask for shelter. And that's where it became a CoC adventure. The house was under siege throughout the night by mysterious zombie-like creatures, and as if that wasn't bad enough, when we tried to make a break for the barn to grab a horse and cart, the horse was some sort of undead thing giving birth to another undead thing. We ran back to the mansion and eventually discovered the owner was trying to use dark magics to cause a Confederate victory, and managed to eventually defeat him and his homunculus. HOLY CRAP. THIS GAME WAS AMAZING. Seriously. There was only a little combat, and what there was felt tense and hopeless. Most of the game was atmosphere, a rising sense of doom, and learning things we wish we hadn't learned.
It was an incredible roleplaying experience. We managed to do so many things I've not done since in a one-shot convention game. We didn't just (barely) escape our dire situation, we explored the social order of Civil War America, looked into the relationships between the characters. The Confederate officer's respect for the black Union corporal he fought alongside, the Union officer's assumption his men were illiterate, but at the end of the day one was fighting on the side of emancipation and the other of slavery. And when presented with a way to earn his nation's independence, the Confederate officer had to weigh the bravery of the men - the enemy - who had given him back his sabre and pistol in light of their situation - and the dark powers with which his mad countryman was about to conjure a victory for the Confederacy. We all hung on each other's roleplay and choices, all the while trying to just survive the night with some semblance of sanity intact.
THIS was what I kept reading about. THIS was what made Call of Cthulhu so revered in the gaming community. I was hooked - but doomed to be stuck trying to sell Cthulhu to a group of players who just didn't grok it. A couple of them did, but never an entire table. I attempted to run a wonderful Cthulhu module with a plane crash in the Amazon in the 1930s, but the group overall was so used to conventional RPGs that they ended up trying to fortify the wreck and hold out until help arrived - with their only weapons a revolver taken off the body of a deceased passenger, and a flare gun. In CoC, "fight" is almost never the right decision until you've uncovered something about your foe. If you can beat it without research, it's probably just a minion of whatever is really out there. This game ended in frustration for myself and the players. I've not been able to sell it to my group again.
Just two years ago, I had another great experience with a three-session mini campaign in CoC. Once again, great roleplay, a real sense of doom, and creepy as hell revelations. If you can get a group to try CoC, and play it, DO SO. It's entirely worth it, even if it is a very hard sell to the average player group.
CoC, in all the main editions, is part of what's now called the Basic Roleplaying Engine. Variations of this engine show up in Runequest and Elfquest, and even a version swapping the d100 for a d20 in Pendragon. BRP has been released as a standalone game, and the Big Gold Book is a great resource. Basically, a trait or stat roll is d100, roll under. Simple. Where the system gets interesting is the SAN roll, your Sanity is rated in this game, and seeing/learning things Man Was Not Meant To Know damages Sanity. Characters can go temporarily or permanently insane, and the more you know about what's really going on- the lower your maximum Sanity.
So... let's answer the call.
Character Creation
We're using the 5th Edition of CoC for this exercise, but most editions are very similar. It's my policy to use the first version of a game that I've played, but my 3rd Edition book is currently in storage along with many, many books as we wait to have work done on our house. It's not in PDF, either. So here we go with 5th, the edition I've played the most of at this point.
1. Determine Characteristics.
Time to roll 3D6 for Strength, Constitution, Power, Dexterity, and Appearance. 10, 10, 8, 17, and 12. Now 2D6+6 for SIZ and INT. 14 and 17. Nice. Now 3D6+3 for Education. 9. Not super hot, but not horrible. Starting SAN is POWx5. Ugh, POW is the worst stat... so starting SAN is 40. POW, or Power, is used for force of presence, and the ability to use magic. The rest of the stats are pretty much what they say on the tin.
2. Determine Characteristic Rolls.
Idea is INTx5. The Idea roll is used when a character might make a realization or have an idea based on clues. Luck, another sort of saving roll, is POWx5. Know is EDUx5, this is a roll to know academic facts. STR+SIZ yields a damage bonus for melee combat. And finally, we enter 99 for "99-Cthulhu Mythos." As I mentioned above, the higher your knowledge of what's really going on, the less sane you can be. As the Chtulhu Mythos skill goes up, max sanity goes down, down, down.
3. Determine Derived Characteristic Points
Hit Points are an average of CON+SIZ. Magic Points are equal to POW, not so great for us. Sanity points are equal to the SAN stat.
4. Determine Occupation & Skills.
Roll for yearly income and property. We're playing in the default 1920s, and roll a 9, so we have a $10,000/yr income, and $50,000 in assets. That's quite a bit of money in the 1920s, the equivalent of $130,000/yr and $650K in assets, so this character is pretty darn well off.
There are two big culture-defining events of the time period - the Great War, and Prohibition. So this character will have an Occupation of Military Officer, he's a cavalry officer who comes from a monied family, who fought Over There, and returned to a very different America than the one he left, having spent a couple of years in France postwar, and coming home to Prohibition.
Now that we have income and occupation, we multiply EDUx20 to get skill points. That's 180. They must be spent on skills that are part of the Occupation. These are Accounting, Bargain, Credit Rating, Law, Navigate, Persuade, and any one other skill as a specialty. Ride, of course. Now, that low EDU is troublesome, so let's do some number rationalization. Lots of money, but low education, and former (or current?) Military Officer. So, our son of privilege lies about his age to join the Army to fight, dropping out of school before graduation, but being given a commission due to his family name. Points spent. Now, we have INTx10 in personal interest points. This nearly doubles the skill points we had earlier from EDU.
5. Determine weapons.
Our former Cavalryman has a revolver and a sabre. Specifically, an M1917 Smith & Wesson .45 revolver, and an M1913 "Patton" Cavalry Sabre. The pistol was probably used in combat in France, the sabre, not so much.
6. Determine Additional Background.
Our investigator is attending Miskatonic University in his hometown of Arkham, Massachusetts, now that the Great War is over and he's returned home from France. He's picked up a little French and a lot of cosmopolitan ideas in Europe that he's brought home with him, as well as what we would now call PTSD, but back then was just a shameful lack of nerve. The main thing he has going for him is his family money and his stories of his dubious adventure overseas, he has yet to develop many practical peacetime skills.
The Character
William Hildebrandt Covington, of the Arkham Covingtons. A privileged young man growing up in the venerable Covington home, one of the oldest in Arkham, young Willie was never one to study too hard, though he had obvious wit and deft hands. Bored with the life of ease, he conspired to join the US Army as the news of the Zimmerman Telegram inflamed Americans, so recently isolationist, to intervene in Europe. Young Covington was soon commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry, given his riding experience and family name, and before long he was on a ship bound for Over There.
The War was sheer horror, the glories of past cavalry charges traded for months on end calf-deep in the mud of the trenches. Rats, trenchfoot, and sickness killed more men than the enemy during the long stretches at the front. Gas killed more still, and William, no longer Willie, can still hear the desperate gasps of dying men when he closes his eyes.
When the war ended, William stayed on in France with a number of others. He spent most of his time trying to wash away the memories, learning only what French he needed to order his next drink. When that life failed to suit him, he finally returned home to Arkham for Christmas 1921. How things had changed, how trivial were the matters that seemed important to his family. He had to do something, somehow the easy life he had left was no longer easy, and he yearned to fill his time. He enrolled at Miskatonic University to further his abruptly stunted education, and at present just can't shake the feeling that something is amiss in Arkham. Is it ghosts of the war, or something else?
My Thoughts
I do so wish I could get a group to do CoC on a regular basis. I've eyed the Beyond The Mountains of Madness campaign for years, and I've heard that Masks of Nyarlathotep is also brilliant. But alas, as with other games, so many games, so little time.
There's nothing but creepiness and atmosphere in CoC, and it has none of the implied humor in Chill, and even less of the "sexy monsters" from Vampire or Nightlife. This game is about the kind of horrors that keep you awake at night, in a state of existential dread. No camp. No laughs. No Kate Beckinsdale in a leather cat suit. This is some truly scary shit. And I recommend it.
Wow. Is that all I want to write here? I mean, there's not much more I want to really drive home except - it's definitely disturbing horror, it's extremely well-written, and it's very much worth playing.
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