This is the third in a series of posts looking at ten (or so) roleplaying games, of the traditional pen-and-paper variety, that I’d highly recommend you play. Last time I talked about Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes; in this post we’re going for something a bit more spine-tingling….

7) Call of Cthulhu

It seems to me, at least in recent years, that Call of Cthulhu has finally taken a place alongside Dungeons & Dragons as one of the pillars of roleplaying. While it’s always been a great game – and unlike D&D, has never needed to radically reinvent itself – I think sheer longevity, perhaps coupled with the fact that it matures exceedingly well, has given it a near legendary status. It’s well deserved.

I should be clear from the off that I’m no Cthulhu scholar. I’ve played it fairly infrequently in my 20-odd years of gaming, and generally I’ve enjoyed it, although I never wanted to run a game myself. I’ve always been aware of it though, as right from the start Cthulhu had something about it; a sense of being ‘grown up’ for lack of a better term.

If you’ve never encountered it, then as the covers say, Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game set in the worlds of HP Lovecraft, an early 20th century novelist who was probably a few hammers short of a toolbox. Created by Sandy Petersen for Chaosium in 1981, and then later revised and expanded upon by Lynn Willis, the game won multiple awards from its inception.

Players take the role of investigators into the occult and the supernatural, with what may start off as ‘conventional’ ghouls and ghosts ultimately giving way to much more powerful and mysterious eldritch horrors – the Great Old Ones, Lovecraft’s ultimate evil from beyond the stars. These ‘gibbering horrors’ have been so influential over the years that Lovecraft probably deserves to be put on a plinth next to Bram Stoker, but when CoC first debuted, the idea of fighting monsters who were so terrifying that mortal man could not even look on them without going mad was still pretty revolutionary.

Especially in RPGs, of course, where every foe was ultimately just a collection of statistics that needed to be defeated somehow, so you could steal its stuff. It didn’t matter how terrifying the creature, there was always a way to beat it, and whether it involved some sort of clever ruse (“A-ha! We need a mirror!”) or just overwhelming firepower (“I cast fireball!”), you were going to be victorious in the end. Right? Heck, even if you died, one quick resurrection spell later and you’d be back in business.

Not so in Cthulhu, and you can imagine the reaction my young mind had to this new set of playing circumstances. ‘Investigation’ in CoC meant, well, actual investigation; talking to NPCs and trying to figure out clues, not sticking a torch into a darkened room. When the bad guys were ultimately revealed in CoC, if you were lucky they were human – but if you were unlucky they were many-tentacled monsters, usually very deadly, and you could only ‘win’ by getting out alive. As players, it didn’t seem to matter how much we stacked the odds in our favour; we were destined to fail – and to go mad as part of the process, rendering your character useless for much beyond a few games.

Yes, my young self didn’t really quite get Cthulhu, and why should I have – after all, the idea of life being a long drawn-out struggle with no guarantee of a happy ending wasn’t exactly my worldview at 12 years old. I remember distinctly arguing with my friends that there was little to no point in playing this stupid game, because ultimately our characters were all going to die, go mad or just fail somehow – where was the fun in that?

Ah, how your definition of ‘fun’ can change, because these days as I’ve mentioned previously, I’d much rather roleplay a long investigation than spend the evening rolling for damage.

Thinking back on it, there was one other element that put me off Cthulhu, and that’s the fact that I’m a bit of a wimp. While I’ve read a few horror books and comics in my time and even seen the odd movie, generally speaking I steer clear of stuff that goes squelch in the night, and I know that one too many Cthulhu games would probably have made an unfavourable impression on my young mind.

Nevertheless, these days with the benefit of hindsight, experience and a slightly braver mindset (Hey, the news is scarier than anything Lovecraft could create) I’ve been enjoying Call of Cthulhu more and more. It’s one of the best roleplaying games I’ve ever played for pure roleplaying, given the huge likelihood of death, failure and/or insanity at the end of a session. With those sorts of odds, what’s written down on your character sheet almost seems to become irrelevant – and the game is all the better for it.

Still, subject matter wise, it’s kind of a bummer, ain’t it? I can solve that with my next pick….