Dicing with Death (Call of Cthulhu (PC))

Member Name: Diaz

Product:	Call of Cthulhu (PC)
Date:	20/09/01 (140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very atmospheric spooky game

Disadvantages: Can be a little formulaic

The following represents excerpts from the diaries and estate of Lord Lawrence Havesham...
“Jan 24th 1924. Who should I bump into down the Drones today but Percy, or should I say Squadron Leader Percy Dempster, the old cove was fresh from a tour in the Americas with his barn storming troupe. Of course I had to stump up for the bill, but that was always the way with Percy, dashed charming fellow but never particularly solvent. Dinner was spectacular as ever, the Drones Plum Duff has to be tasted to be believed.

Over dinner he put a rather interesting proposal to me, he fished out a newspaper clipping from The Sunday Review and well the long and short of it was he wanted me to accompany him on a jaunt to Scotland. Since I had a free weekend and the scenery North of the border is particularly charming this time of year I agreed.

It turned out we were to be accompanied by a particularly pretty young thing by the name of Marianne DeHavelande apparently a dashed accomplished photographer by all accounts. Oh I forgot to mention the reason for our visit, we were to investigate a particularly brutal murder.”

If anything you’ve read so far makes no sense to you at all I maybe should explain a few things about role-playing. What you’ve just read is the account of an entirely fictional character created and played by me, in one of my first Cthulhu games, the story in case anyone reading happens to be player is “Horror of the Glen” a particularly excellent story from the acclaimed Games Workshop release Green and Pleasant Land, this was in the days when GW published quality material. The Call of Cthulhu is a role-playing game (RPG) created by Sandy Petersen, based on the works of HP Lovecraft.

Role-playing was invented as an offshoot from wargaming where grown men played soldiers with intricately painted lead miniatures. It’s commonly acknowledged that Gary Gygax created Dungeons and D
ragons, the first role-playing game, as an extension of a fantasy version of tabletop wargaming. The idea was this what if I could control what my little lead wizard actually said, did and felt. Role-playing was born. For quite a while it stayed in the realms of fantasy, think Xena complete with metal bras, early role-playing dealt mainly with stereotypes and concentrated on dice rolling and statistics. Although there was the option to flesh out characters and give them detailed backgrounds when faced with a story which involved a bunch of barbarians clad in loin cloths entering a dungeon to thwart an evil wizard who populated his home (all 10x10 rooms) with an array of monsters, traps and treasure, the scope for character development simply wasn’t there.


When “Call of Cthulhu” (can you say Kuh-thoo-loo) by Chaosium in 1981 it caused a splash. When you consider the game was hung around a mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft, an American writer who died in 1937 you wouldn’t expect it to do much but it was a complete departure from traditional role-playing. Call of Cthulhu (CoC) changed all that, the stories although highly formulaic tend allowed players to actually role-play and interact with the Non Player Characters which populate Lovecrafts world. There are investigation phases where role-playing is key to solving the scenario and key skills required for this have nothing to do with combat at all. This stopped the powergaming which was prevalent in games like D&D where some players only goal was to make themselves as powerful as possible, quests for the +10 dragon slayer can really become tedious. Skills like speaking Latin or making a good strong cup of tea can really flesh out a character.

“Jan 28th, 1924. After a quiet but charming trip to Inverness we booked in overnight at the Black Stag. I think Ms. DeHavelande has quite a thing about Percy, the charming gel was mooning almost all the journey. Hardl
y surprising really, he is a charming devil and the very picture of a British Officer right down to wax on his moustache. I only hope the cad doesn’t break the young girls heart.

We paid a visit to an Inspector Sinclair of the Inverness constabulary, an old friend of my fathers and explained our situation to him, we were investigating the case on the behalf of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research. He allowed us to interview the suspect, young Jamie McCloud, a mere slip of a lad. The poor boy was understandably upset, after all he could be off to the gallows. He maintains his innocence merely saying he fell asleep in the old Strathmorn Manor and it must have been the ghosts. Of course we couldn’t give any credence to his story but the least we could do was listen to him. Poor blighter.

Later we visited the morgue to view the body, I wasn’t keen myself I’d seen enough of that in the trenches but Percy was insistent. I must say I was greatly impressed by Marianne. The plucky thing went straight in there and started snapping away. I find it quite difficult to talk about but then I found it difficult to talk about my experiences in the war too. I do find it difficult to believe that young McCloud, or indeed any man, was capable of such an atrocity.”

The world of H.P. Lovecraft is a macabre one, he wrote most of his novels around the 1920’s and they generally were tales of academics trifling with matters with which they did not understand and generally paying the price for it. This tends to be the case in the game too, players investigate a horrific event and get caught up in it, usually leading to their untimely demise.

The Cthulhu mythos was built around a number of short stories, primarily the Call of Cthulhu itself. Lovecraft once wrote “All of my tales are based upon the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significa
nce to the cosmos at large.” Lovecraft had a bleak interpretation of reality in general and was in fact institutionalised several times, which of course fuels speculation amongst anoraks that maybe he did have an insight to the true nature of the universe. I don’t own an anorak.

In the mythos there are a number of gods, immensely powerful beings, the majority of them are blind and mindless, the most powerful of these is Azathoth (Ah-Zah-Thoth) daemon sultan, who dances at the centre of the universe to a demon flute. The Other Gods spin mindlessly around this mass. Nyarlothotep (Ny-Ah-low-thow-Tep) acts as a messenger for these gods and is the most likely to influence human affairs. There are a whole bunch of others, Elder gods and Great Old ones (of whom Cthulhu is in their number) it all gets very confusing just who is who in the pantheon.

To give you an idea of what you are dealing with here is a description of Great Cthulhu from the Call of Cthulhu
“a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and for feet and long narrow wings behind. This thing.... was of a somewhat bloated corpulence... It lumbered slobberingly into sight and groping it squeezed its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway... a mountain walked or stumbled”

Now Lovecraft was never one to cut a description short, you should hear how he goes on about gable ended houses, but it wasn’t necessarily the word craft of his writing, which in a modern context seems over elaborate and clumsy to say the least. His legacy is the uncompromising bleakness of his vision.

“Jan 30th, 1924. Our first day in Strathmorn was quite inconclusive, the locals are friendly enough but when it comes to talking about young McCloud or Donald McColl, the victim, they clammed up. Percy plans to search the Manor, Mari
anne agrees, but then I think Marianne would follow Percy most anywhere. Of course we won’t be so foolish to explore during the evening”

Chaosium games tend to be a little more complicated than most to set up, you are presented with a character sheet with an array of statistics from basics like Strength, Intelligence and Dexterity to more complex things like Botany, Hide and Library Use, that’s right Library Use is a CoC skill. Actually it’s probably one of the more important skills to have since the first part of any CoC game generally involves collecting information, knowing that your apparently indestructible nemesis has a weakness for daylight can be quite useful.

Other statistics include hit points, how many times you can be hit and survive, and sanity points, this was another innovation of Chaosiums. Since the characters are likely to face cosmic horrors on a regular basis it can grate away at your general sense of well-being, too much and the character can easily spend the rest of the game bouncing around in a rubber room. Maybe not a fate worse than death but it can be a bit annoying for a player.

The statistics are tested when a character faces a certain task, for example shooting a gun or fast talking your way around a security guard. The statistics are expressed as a percentage number and the player rolls two ten sided dice the first die represents the tens and the second die represents units, thus a number between 01 and 00 (read as 100) is created. If a player rolls below his/her score in a skill they succeed over and they fail, if they score between 95-100 then they fluff it anyway with dramatic results, a critical failure. For instance a player trying to sneak past a doorman might end up tripping over and getting themselves strung up by the doorman, a critical failure with a firearm might result in the gun blowing up, firearms in the 1920’s were notoriously unreliable.

The system
is very simple once it has been set up and it doesn’t tend to interfere with the flow of the game, in a game that is based around building up an atmosphere this is extremely important.

Since atmosphere is such an important feature of the game it’s important to create the right atmosphere. Candles or subdued lighting work very well for relaxing players thus allowing them to get into character more easily. Music is another great tool for creating atmosphere, classical music can relax or build up tension, Carmen Burana is superbly spooky. Alternatively you might want a scene in a speakeasy, jazz music might be best for this situation. Actually playing out scenes physically can help in some situations though I don’t recommend any physical contact.

An inherent weakness in the game lies in the stories themselves, when faced with the cosmic horrors bent on destroying reality as we know it people can be very expendable and that includes player characters. Since loosing a finely crafted character with a great deal of investment of time and indeed emotion can be quite demoralising players can become discouraged The other weakness is that veteran players expect to die, if you have a story which requires the players to survive to the next chapter reality has to be fudged to accommodate.

“Jan 31st, 1924. At the manor things were very quiet, we arrived in the late afternoon and ended up spending the night there, rather than brave the elements in a trip back to village. We found a few interesting bits and bobs including a particularly macabre looking statue, apparently the late Laird was quite a buff when it came to African relics.

If our night was quiet it was quite the opposite in the village, strange things were afoot. Apparently several sheep were butchered by a pack of wild dogs. The villagers plan to hunt them down. We plan to investigate the manor fully tonight. Although Percy normally plays his hand pr
etty close to his chest when it comes to the ladies I think he is quite fond of Marianne, I’m not surprised really the girl is simply enchanting.”

The strength CoC has is the world with which it deals is not very much different from our own and so it is very easy for new players to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves into the spooky story. In the past I’ve had novice players (and a few veterans) jump with fright and induced the occasional nightmare, I’m perversely proud of that.

CoC is an ideal introduction to role-playing games, granted it can be quite adult in the material it deals with but then teenagers love horror movies as much as if not more than adults.

“Feb. 24th, 1924. The doctors are pleased with my progress, I took my first walk outside and although I found had difficulty going near the trees, dendrophobia apparently, it was very pleasant and quite cathartic. The surgeons say I will probably have a permanent limp but I happen to think it gives me a certain air.

Percy isn’t quite as lucky as me, although he was physically unscathed by that nights events he took Mariannes death particularly badly, I suspect he feels a certain amount of guilt after all the jaunt was partly his idea. We developed Mariannes last photographs and although the images were blurred we could clearly see the creatures but it would be easy to misinterpret them and simply disregard those terrible claws as a tangle of branches. Percy and I have vowed never to talk of it again, people simply wouldn’t believe us.”

More information can be found @ Chaosium.com Call of Cthulhu is published by Chaosium, ISBN 1-56882-148-4 and costs $37.95

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