what is call of cthulu?

[inuroku842]

Ok, I've been into rpg's for some time now. With inducted with AD and D, then moved to 3.5 and pathfinder. Lately I've been hearing a lot about cal of cthulu though, what is it? How does it work? Is it anything at all like d and d?

[VenomousFiligree]

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=Call+of+Cthulhu

[Leonal]

I've not played it, but from what I've heard it is hardly like D&D. More investigation and battles preferably avoided or you're dead (or so they say).

The one for sale on FG (There are other systems for Cthulhu too AFAIK) uses a d100/% system like Basic Roleplaying and the Warhammer Fantasy/40k rpgs, though I'm not sure how similar they are in it's implementation.

The rest you'll find on Google from the link above.

[damned]

i clicked on the link curious as to the meaning of the letters - i almost got it right but not quite - very clever
sadly whilst there i clicked on images and on one particular image and it started installing a trojan - i think i got it - i hope i got it - before it completed.
off to report site to google....
https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/

[vodokar]

"Call of Cthulu" is an rpg that was first released in 1981 by Chaosium and has been a longstanding cult classic. It is based on the horror works of H.P. Lovecraft and others who developed a horror mythology known as the "Cthulu Mythos" or often simply "The Mythos".

The game is currently on it's 6th edition. As someone else said, the game engine that runs it is the "Basic Role Playing Engine" (BRP) or it is more correct to say that a modified version of the "Call of Cthulu" game engine became BRP.

Discussions of game engines aside, the "Cthulu Mythos" property is far larger than the specific "Call of Cthulu" game system or Chaosium, as Chaosium has licensed out the "Cthulu Mythos" quite liberally to support card games, board games, books, as well as other roleplaying games in the Mythos.

On Fantasy Grounds, there are at least a couple of good viable ways to play a "Cthulu Mythos" campaign. First is, of course, the "Call of Cthulu" ruleset, which is a great option since there has been 25 plus years of support from Chaosium for modules, splat books and such, some of which are considered classic. The other really good option is to get the "Realms of Cthulu" setting book for Savage Worlds. If you already know how to play Savage Worlds, you get to use a system fun and familiar to you and there are relatively easy conversion rules contained in the book from which you could convert any of the "Call of Cthulu" material into Realms of Cthulu Savage Worlds, thus still being able to leverage all of the good adventure material.

Ok. So that gives a little historical perspective and a couple of options of how you can play a Cthulu campaign. But, it still doesn't really explain what it is and how it differs from almost every other rpg out there.

Think of it this way. In D&D, you have heroes which have quite a bit of power. They face monsters and enemies along the way that challenge them. But, you mostly expect that the heroes will likely find a way to overcome those challenges and win the day.

Throw out all those assumptions with Cthulu. Cthulu doesn't have heroes, for the most part. The player characters play regular people; perhaps a private eye, or an archeology professor or Joe the Baker; just average people -- not larger than life by any means. They are pitted against a very spooky mystery with things that go bump in the night. It's like a horror movie. The characters have a very real chance of dying or of going insane from the horrors that they are exposed to. The focus here is definitely not on the characters and building of their powers and abilities -- no cool lootz and phat powers to gloat over here. The focus is totally on the story and how the group hopefully scrapes together enough luck and clever play to somehow survive to fight another day. Success can be measured by survival and in discovering that these horrible things are out there and maybe throwing a monkey wrench into things. But, there is no real winning as in going in and killing all the horrible stuff. The dark side will win eventually; it is inevitable. It is likely inevitable that your character will die a very gruesome death sooner or later, if not simply go stark raving mad.

It's quite a different experience. One that every roleplayer should try. Be forwarned: It may give you nightmares. Muah ha ha ha!

[peterb]

Nice summary of CoC and what it is and what it's not.

For the (nerdy RPGer) record one thing needs a little bit of correction:

As someone else said, the game engine that runs it is the "Basic Role Playing Engine" (BRP) or it is more correct to say that a modified version of the "Call of Cthulu" game engine became BRP.

The true origins of the BRP game system is to be found in the game RuneQuest from 1979. BRP is a scaled down version of that system that was shipped with RQ. CoC is the first full scale game that used the BRP system. Others include Elric!/Stormbringer, ElfQuest and Ringworld. A few years ago Chaosium released an aggregated set of rules called BRP which is a collection of all the rules from out of print and in print BRP game systems sans RuneQuest (due to trademark reasons).

[vodokar]

Cool. I didn't know that. I've heard and seen all of those games. I didn't know that they all descended from Runequest.

[Griogre]

A good summary earlier by vodokar of Call of Cthulu. It important to point out this is a horror genre RPG. Some groups don't do these well because as vodokar pointed out they are use to playing larger than life heroes that usually win. We use to call C of C - "Victims and Veggies" because the heroes were all going to die or go insane - the question was just how long could you keep them alive and more or less functional.

[Oberoten]

Wanna Min-Max characters in CoC?

Illiterate track-runners seems to do well.

- Obe

[Valarian]

We use to call C of C - "Victims and Veggies" because the heroes were all going to die or go insane - the question was just how long could you keep them alive and more or less functional.

Just reading a few of the HP Lovecraft stories in the public domain would give you an indication of the expected lifespan of a character. I feel fortunate to have survived two Dark Age adventures with the same character. He only has a few minor personality quirks as a result of his adventures (like paranoia, social withdrawal and a berserk rage).