The Ubercon Report: Part Two: Call of Cthulhu - It's like Anti-D&D

During Ubercon I played not one, but two games of Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu is kind of like Deadlands, except that it takes place in reality (not the steam-punk universe) and you just can't win.

Call of Cthulhu is a game of frustration - and in this key way it differs wildly from Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D, you are given (or find, or it is fairly easy to obtain) armor and weapons. You fight monsters. You gain experience points. In Call of Cthulhu you are very rarely given weapons or armor, you hardly ever find a monster - and if you do you can't (or shouldn't) fight it. Should your character go on to fight in another game, you will lose sanity points for your experience.

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An example of the frustration of Cthulhu:

Keeper: You see a very strange, hoof-like footprint in the mud.
Me: I have a Natural History stat - I'll roll that - I made it! Do I recognize the footprint?
Keeper: It looks like nothing you've ever seen before.

The Player is thwarted at every turn in Cthulhu - should one be unlucky enough to actually see a monster, one must roll one's sanity. If you lose that roll, you'll be lucky to be able to fight anything - at least for a few hours. If you get hurt there are no clerics, but there is some basic first aid. In the off-chance your character knows any magic, you spend sanity points to cast your spells.

There is very little dice-rolling in Cthulhu, and the games are light on combat. In each game I saw, the "Keeper" (DM) only cracked the source book once, and none of the players seemed to have or need a Player's handbook. There simply was no opportunity to bicker over the rules.

I really liked the game for three reasons:

1. It appealed to my self-destructiveness.
2. There were very few rules and modifiers to worry about.
3. The stories were very good and reminded me of episodes of Doctor Who.

Those of you who've gamed with me will notice that I tend to play self-destructive characters, like my four-armed drug-addicted J-pop star in our Cyberpunk game. I guess I'm just nuts - in my fantasy life I destroy myself instead of wielding big guns and destroying other people. I'm not sure why.

In a typical episode of Doctor Who the Doctor lands on a planet where something weird (and evil) is going on. He always gets mixed up in whatever sort of trouble it is, and through his superior intellect and good nature he usually manages to solve everything and help out whoever is in trouble (often without using weapons). The natives of the planet, in any given episode, are typically freaking out and can't handle whatever it is that's going on. Call of Cthulhu is like what the natives would do if the Doctor never showed up.

In the end there is no beating Cthulhu - even if you saw Cthulhu himself and you didn't go insane, and managed to fight and kill him (highly unlikely) - he'd just regenerate and come back later. Most of the game is dealing with Cthulhu cultists, or lesser evil creatures. In the two games I played nobody died or went permanantly insane, in fact, we achieved the objectives in both modules. However, we did not defeat any of Cthulhu's followers. After our games they were sure to spread across the earth...

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February 19, 2003 10:23 PM, N. said:

Actually, these were the only two games of CoC I've ever played where the entire party survived the encounter (although to be strictly accurate, my character in the second game was doomed to live a very short life).

I love Call of Cthulhu. Because of the overwhelming odds, players have to keep their wits about them at all times. If one actually manages to survive the entire session... it's a feeling of enormous satisfaction, I tell you what.

February 19, 2003 10:51 PM, Agnieszka said:

Erin, have you read Lovecraft? Often when watching Dr. Who it occured to me that it was like Lovecraft stories, except at the point where everyone dies or goes insane, Dr. Who comes in and saves things. If you feel like, and can, slack off at work,you can find almost all (or maybe even all) of Lovecraft's works on line here:
http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/index.htm

February 20, 2003 09:22 PM, kerry said:

CoC is awesome, but I can never find people who want to play. Also, it is best as a one-shot kind of game, because you don`t want people to invest emotionally in their characters. The 80`s chainsaw version is fun, too, but a very different feel.

February 21, 2003 08:57 AM, N. said:

I didn't like CoC: Now the one time I played it. For that sort of monster-investigating action, Bureau 13 was the superior game. CoC is firmly lodged in a Pre-WWII time period, and that's fine with me.

February 21, 2003 10:10 AM, Erin said:

What?? Why did you want to play it so badly at Ubercon if you didn't like it, N.??

February 21, 2003 10:32 AM, N. said:

No, no, no!!!! The 80s chainsaw version of Call of Cthulhu that Kerry is referring to is known as 'Cthulhu: Now,' (also by Chaosium) a more modern version of the game in which players have access to advanced weaponry which greatly skews the power balance of the game (think Army of Darkness). I've only played it once, but I didn't like it very much. Old school Call of Cthulhu is more my bag.

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