Review 1999: Cthulhu Companion

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore was published in 1983. It was the first supplement for Call of Cthulhu, a roleplaying game which in its forty-year history has had relatively few supplements compared to the number of campaigns and scenario anthologies. It brings together a collection of essays and scenarios, some of which are drawn from the pages of Different Worlds, providing the Keeper with source material and extra scenarios, all set within the classic period of the Jazz Age. The supplement actually opens with a quick guide to adapting a Keeper’s campaign from the first to the second edition of Call of Cthulhu. The changes here are to what is recognisably the version of Call of Cthulhu which would form the basis of the roleplaying game for the next few decades until the advent of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition.

The opening essay in the supplement is ‘The Cthulhu Mythos in Mesoamerican Religion’ by Richard L. Tierney. This builds on Zealia Bishop’s novella, ‘The Mound’, to draw correlations between the Cthulhu Mythos and the religions of Mesoamerica. Thus, Cthulhu is the Aztec Tlaloc, Yig is Quetzalcoatl, Nyarlathotep is Tezcatlipoca, Shub-Niggurath is Coatlique, and more. It suggests that there are signs of Cthulhu worship at Chichen Itza, explores the role played by the Mythos in the Aztec religious practices, and so on. A more contemporary sourcebook, for example, The Mysteries of Mesoamerica: 1920s Sourcebook and Mythos Adventures for Mexico and Central America from Pagan Publishing might not necessarily equate the deities of Mesoamerica with those of the Cthulhu Mythos quite so readily, instead leaving it up to individual cults and cultists to interpret however the Keeper wants. Nevertheless, as one of the first articles on comparative theology for Call of Cthulhu and on Mesoamerican religion, there is much here for the Keeper to work with if she wants to develop the parallels for her scenarios. This is followed by William Hamblin’s translation [sic] of the Bulgarian scholar, Phileus P. Sadowsky’s ‘Further Notes on the Necronomicon’. This is a linguistical examination of the Kitab al-Azif or the Necronomicon which works from Arabic through Greek, Latin, and Egyptian to explain the meanings derivations of the names of various Mythos entities and races. It is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of faux scholarship which could worked into a campaign or scenario as a lengthy handout.

One of the great additions to Call of Cthulhu is ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’, both an almanac for the Jazz Age and an expansion to the rules. The Cthulhu Companion expands upon this with ‘Sourcebook Additions’. These include a range of prisons by Lynn Willis, such as H. M. Deathoak Prison, Great Britain and the American Wayshearn Co. Work Farm. Each includes a physical description, the penal theory in force, routine functions, staff, and more. These are all horrid places and the Investigators best hope that they never end up behind the walls of any of these establishments, but in case there is plenty of detail here to help the Keeper bring them to life should an Investigator end up a prisoner for crimes he did, or did not, commit. Keith Herber details two skills, Photography and Lock Picking. The former is more interesting than latter, hinting at the difficulties of taking and developing photographs of the Fungi from Yuggoth, ghosts, and similar entities. This is an aspect, if only a small one, which Call of Cthulhu would revisit later. Sandy Petersen pens a ‘Lovecraftian Timeline’ for the various works of H.P. Lovecraft, running from the disappearance of the Starry Wisdom cult in Providence, Rhode Island in 1877 (from ‘The Haunter of the Dark’) to the autopsy performed on the Eridanus mummy in late 1932 after its attempted theft and deaths of the would-be thieves (from ‘Out of the Eons’). It is a handy little thing for the Keeper who wants to tie her scenarios into particular events depicted in Lovecraft’s fiction.

The ‘Rulesbook Additions’ gives new content to supplement the core rulebook for Call of Cthulhu. Glenn Rahman provides a long list of ‘New Phobias’, everything from Acrophobia, Ailurophobia, and Algophobia to Verbophobia, Vestiophobia, and Zoophobia. More phobias are always useful, as are the two Insanities—Quixotism and Panzaism—which Sandy Petersen contributes before working with Alan K. Crandall and Glenn Rahman on ‘Additional Deities, Races, and Monsters for the Cthulhu Mythos’, an expanded ‘bestiary’ of more Mythos entities for the roleplaying game. Many, like the Atlach-Nacha, Gnoph Keh, Gugs, Moon Beasts, and Lloigor will be familiar in the Call of Cthulhu canon today, but this article marks their first appearances and they would have been welcome additions, though not necessarily what the Cthulhu Companion would be remembered for.

‘Excerpts and Prayers’ collects pieces drawn from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, J. Ramsey Campbell, Frank Belknap Long, and Clark Ashton Smith and includes excerpts from the Necronomicon and Revelations of Glaaki as well as others. Much like the earlier ‘Further Notes on the Necronomicon’, these are all begging to be used as handouts in a campaign or scenario where they would add to their flavour and sense of verisimilitude.

If the Cthulhu Companion is remembered for anything, it is its four scenarios. These begin with John Sullivan’s ‘Paper Chase’. This is a then rare, one-on-one, one Investigator, one Keeper scenario in which the Investigator is hired to find out who is stealing some books. The trail quickly leads to a nearby cemetery where the Investigator will encounter the ghoul who is not only responsible for the thefts, but was the previous owner of the books! This is a classic which would be included in ‘Book Three—Paper Chase and Other Adventures’ of the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. ‘Paper Chase’ is fairly benign scenario, really only deadly depending upon what the Investigator decides to do. Of course, there is the sanity-sapping realisation that the truth of the world is not as the Investigator knows it be, but this is a gentle introduction to Lovecraftian investigative horror and shows how although the Mythos is antithetical to mankind, aspects of it are not necessarily actively working against mankind.

The first long scenario in the Cthulhu Companion is ‘The Mystery of Loch Feinn’ by Glenn Rahman. Set in Scotland, it concerns the death near Loch Feinn of Professor Willard Gibbson, a noted palaeontologist working at the British Museum, whose last words were that he was onto “the biggest scientific discovery of this century or the last!” Putting aside the fact that ‘Feinn Loch’ is actually in the west of Scotland rather than due north of Inverness in the east as ‘Loch Feinn’ here, the scenario brings together the Loch Ness monster (or its equivalent) and the Mythos, a backward Scottish clan, a gothic ruin, and the first appearance of the Lloigor in a scenario. There are moments of silliness, such as giving an NPC the surname ‘MacGuffin’, but there is lots to investigate here and the scenario has an eerie, mystery of the moors feel to it, with very nasty encounters both below the castle and—if the Investigators venture out—on the waters of the loch.

Lynn Willis’ ‘The Rescue’ is a much more linear affair, taking place in the Appalachians where a US State Department official has been found dead and his daughter has gone missing. Joining the search party leads to encounters with the lowlife and the poor of the nearest town before the search sends them into the nearby hills, where the culprits behind the death and the abduction are lurking. The scenario turns feral as those responsible decide to hunt the Investigators. This is physically brutal confrontation with a Wild West style shootout in a ravine as the culprits—now revealed to be werewolves—stalk the Investigators. The scenario funnels the Investigators into this confrontation and that and the fact that it involves Lycanthropy is a potential issue. This may or may not fit the Keeper’s view of the Mythos, but the scenario gives a means of passing the Lycanthropic curse, treating it as a form of rabies.

The longest and grandest scenario is ‘The Secret of Castronegro’ by Mark Pettigrew and Sandy Petersen. Intended for moderately experienced Investigators, it sends them to the town of Silver City in New Mexico where there has been a rash of disappearances, including a Professor of Psychology, an anthropology student, and a local man from the nearby town of Castronegro. The clues should lead the Investigators to Castronegro, an odd, out of the way place dominated by two corrupt Spanish families, the de Diaz and the Vilheila-Pereira families, noted for their long teeth, black hair, and vibrantly green eyes. The Mythos seems to have run quietly wild in the town, a weird combination of Port Merion and Innsmouth, but both set in the desert. One notable establishment in the town is ‘The Tomb’, bizarrely stuffed with Mythos gewgaws and doodads for sale! The town’s inhabitants reactions to the Investigators’ presence and questions will be slow at first, but ramp up to daily pot shots and nightly bad dreams and then a kidnapping. The latter is unfortunately, a deus ex machina, that the player and his Investigator can do nothing about once it happens, forcing the player to create a new Investigator. Looming over the town is the Casa de Diaz and it is here that the Investigators will confront the scenario’s ultimate villain. Unfortunately, he only ever appears in the confrontation, never taking an active part in the scenario until the very end, which is a waste of a good villain. If the preceding investigation has been weird and creepy, the confrontation is likely to be physical and combative and this perhaps is the biggest weakness of the scenario. It either ends in combat against tough opponents here in the almost dungeon-like or lair-like house or not at all.

The Cthulhu Companion draws to a close with ‘Poetry’. This includes four poems by H.P. Lovecraft taken from The Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Tales, but also includes the one item that the Cthulhu Companion is really remembered for. This is ‘The Lair of Great Cthulhu’, an eyebrow raising set of Filk lyrics by Joan Carruth and Larry Press set to the tune of Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Lastly, Morgan Conrad’s ‘Sanity Quiz’ which anything other than that, but instead a lengthy, two-page listing of every adjective that H.P. Lovecraft used in his fiction to describe his unworldly creations. It is either useless, or a priceless list of descriptive words for the Keeper to add to her vocabulary with describing the monsters of the Mythos at the table.

Physically, the Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore is very well presented. The artwork is uniformly good and the cartography, if a little quirky, is as good. The cover depicts a desperate explorer trying to climb up out of a walled pit, chased by grasping tentacles. The inclusion of the fedora being knocked from his head hints at Indiana Jones, if only a little…

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Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore was first reviewed in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf Issue No. 51 (March 1984) by Jon Sutherland. He awarded it 7 out of 10 and ended his review with, “In conclusion, this tome is really of use only to the Keepers of Arcane Knowledge and given that this does not set out to fundamentally change any of the basic rules themselves, again this will limit appeal. The scenarios are quite good and altogether, this represents a predictable package and is reasonable value for money.”

Graeme Davis reviewed ‘The Cthulhu Companion’ in the Game Reviews department of Imagine No. 15 (June 1984). He was slightly dismissive of the supplement’s poetry, ‘Sanity Quiz’, and other bits and pieces, and said, “Apart from these, there is nothing which is not immediately useful to any campaign, and it is to be hoped that future supplements will maintain the very impressive standard of the Cthulhu Companion. The value for money is excellent, and no Call of Cthulhu referee can afford to be without it.”

Lastly, it was reviewed in Different Worlds Issue 36 (Sep/Oct 1984) by Steve Marsh. He said, “I liked the Cthulhu Companion. For a keeper who uses a great deal of background and whose investigators live for giblets of lore, it is easily worth the price. For a keeper who uses preset scenarios (I rarely do but will use some of these) it isn’t bad deal excepting for the hack-and-slash elements of the last scenario. Pricewise a keeper might be better off purchasing one of the scenario packs available for Call Of Cthulhu if not inclined to use the material in the Companion except such are by far too rare.” He expressed disappointment that more of the source material could not have been integrated into the supplement’s gaming content, but concluded that, “However, on the net, it is a good buy for the money. It meets Chaosium’s demanding physical product standards. Every article can be easily understood. Everything does have a use even if requiring a bit of work. Its only failure is that it is merely a good solid work instead of the brilliance I was expecting.”

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The Cthulhu Companion would be reprinted in the 1986 collated Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition, which for the British audience would be the definitive edition of the roleplaying with hardback from Games Workshop. ‘The Secret of Castronegro’ would be reprinted in 1989 in Cthulhu Classics, along with Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, and of course, in ‘Paper Chase’ in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. The other scenarios and the rest of the volume’s content has not.

In 1983, there can be no doubt that the Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore greatly added to Call of Cthulhu—new supplementary information, new Mythos monsters, and four scenarios—and all of it useful in some ways. It was a good supplement, which set the blueprint for the subsequent, but nowhere near as good, Fragments of Fear: The Second Cthulhu Companion, and the superior, Island of Ignorance – The Third Cthulhu Companion. Today, the content of the Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore is still playable, although by modern standards too many of scenarios emphasise combat solutions over other means of resolution. Yet the Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore genuinely added to Call of Cthulhu, expanding its background material and exploring the types of scenarios which the roleplaying game could support.

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An unboxing of the Cthulhu Companion – Ghastly adventures & Erudite Lore can be found here.

The previous release in 1982 from Chaosium, Inc. for Call of Cthulhu was Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. The next would be the anthology, The Asylum & Other Tales.

[Fanzine Focus XXXI] Polaris Issue 1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, for fanzines of some roleplaying games, it is necessary to look to the past.

Polaris Issue 1 was published in the summer of 1987. As the cover states, it is “For Players Of The ‘Call Of Cthulhu’ FRPG’, it is a British fanzine—actually published less than two miles from where I write this review in Birmingham, which came out towards the end of the British fanzine boom of the period and at a time when the highly regarded Dagon fanzine from Carl Ford was going strong. The concerns of the thirty-six-page volume will be familiar to the Keepers of today, and certainly will be familiar to veteran players and Keepers of Call of Cthulhu. Thus, it contains articles about how to create and maintain an atmosphere of fear around the table, examinations of particular Occupations and Mythos tomes, a description of an occult tradition and its parallels with the Cthulhu Mythos. It also contains two scenarios and so edited by Simon Prest, the issue contains quite a lot of content that is both playable and applicable today.

Written for use for Call of Cthulhu, Third Edition and named after H.P. Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, Polaris Issue 1  opens with a very English concern. This is Green and Pleasant Land: The British 1920s-30s Cthulhu Source Pack, Games Workshop’s seminal sourcebook for the United Kingdom. First, in ‘The Lamp of Alhazred’, Andy Smith reviews the book to positive effect, although he does not think much of either Brian Lumley’s short story, ‘The Running Man’ or the scenario which precedes it, ‘Shadows over Darkbank’. Both are notable low points in the supplement, which otherwise still stands up as a very playable affair. ‘Down To Earth With A Bump’ by Peter F. Jeffery is a set of optional rules for handling aircraft damage, whether from another attacking aeroplane or a flying Mythos creature, such as a Byakhee. Originally submitted as an accompaniment to the aviation article in Green and Pleasant Land, the rules were ultimately rejected and printed in the pages of Polaris. They handle the effects of damage as a series of escalating saving throws, with the amount of damage determining the percentile target which if rolled under has the undesired effect. The base roll is to see if the aeroplane crashes, makes a crash landing, a forced landing, or suffers structural damage, the percentile target more or less doubling each time. Supported by several examples, this is both simple and complex at the same time, with lots of dice rolls which would slow down play at the table and it is clear to see why they might not have been accepted for inclusion in Green and Pleasant Land.

Andy Bennison’s ‘The Heat on the Streets’ is the first of the two scenarios in Polaris Issue 1 . It casts the Investigators as private detectives thrown into a classic Film Noir-like case involving a mysterious femme fatale, a missing man, gangsters, Prohibition, and a grumpy police detective. Not only does the police detective not like the Investigators, but he is also not far off retirement, and these are just the most obvious of the scenario’s clichés. Angelica Peach wants her brother, Jonathan, found as their mother is terribly sick. Given some names to contact, the investigation leads to the door The Dragon Club, a restaurant owned by local gangster, Valentino D’Al, and the first of many shootouts in the scenario. The author admits the scenario is linear and it is also heavily plotted. It leans more into the Pulp style of play and is suitable for a group who prefers a more action orientated type of mystery. The Keeper will also need to provide more a few sets of stats for the various NPCs and there are a few areas where she will also need to add names and personalities to various NPCs. It is also never explained who the femme fatale is, but her presence does lead to some nice moments of horror in the scenario.

Under the Keeper’s Lore department, Dave Hallett makes the point that ‘Fear Is The Key’. This looks at ways in which fear can be invoked in Call of Cthulhu and maintained. His advice is to ground the game in the mundane, the engage and keep the attention of the players, involve all of the senses, and so on, before moving on to undermine the Investigators’ sense of reality, and using tools such as false alarms and ambiguity. It is a well-worn path, seen in subsequent articles over and over, but good advice, nonetheless. ‘The Dark Brotherhood’ by Simon Prest is not a regular feature about cults as the title might allude to, but rather a look at Occupations, that, what the Investigator did before he began investigating the unknown and tries to do whilst suffering its travails. Here the Occupation is the Author, with suggestions as to what the author might be writing about, what publications he writes for, and so on. Overall, it provides some useful questions for the player to think about when creating his Investigator.

The subject of ‘Illuminating Manuscripts’ is another perennial favourite of Call of Cthulhu—Mythos tomes, showing even back in 1987, the roleplaying game did not provide much in the way of information about for the Keeper. The particular tome covered by Adrian Jones here is The G’harne Manuscripts, taken from Brain Lumley’s The Burrowers Beneath. The article examines its history and its content, referencing the various works by Lumley where the book has appeared. It is a decent examination of the book with plenty of detail that the Keeper can include should her Investigators want to find and study a copy. Even in 2023, it shows how the Mythos tome is an important part of the game, but there is no definite treatment of them for the roleplaying game. They very much deserve their own supplement. The article adds the spell, Call Shudde-M’ell, and provides guidelines for handling the Chthonian susceptibility to water.

‘The Secret Doctrine’ by Michael S. Carter is an article about Kabbalism, the Jewish esoteric mysticism which for Call of Cthulhu, played a significant role in the scenario The City Without a Name from Curse of the Chthonians. Explored in more detail elsewhere for Call of Cthulhu, the article does not delve too deeply into its subject before making an odd swerve into discussing the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its dissolution and then back again to link Kabbalism to the Mythos by drawing parallels between the former’s Tree of Life and its circles and Yog-Sothoth of the latter. This includes the travel required by separating spirit from body and journeying onwards to make contact with god. The article avoids the subject of numerology and is thus short, direct, and to the point.

It is also the inspiration for the second scenario in Polaris Issue 1 . ‘The Acolyte Of The Ultimate Gate’ by Simon Prest is set in London, but feels a little like ‘The Vanishing Conjurer’ from The Vanishing Conjurer & The Statue of the Sorcerer and ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind with a secret cult operating in the city about the enact a terrible ritual. The scenario opens with the Investigators staying at a friend’s house for Christmas, when one of the guests collapses to the floor, and before he dies, thrusts a letter into an investigator’s hand and utters a warning. What dread occurrence is he warning about and what was it that was keeping him working even as the other guests enjoyed the celebrations? The Investigators must overcome doctor-patient privilege to get to the nub of the situation and identify the threat, before finding a way to deal with it. Of the two scenarios in the fanzine, this needs less effort upon the part of the Keeper, the Investigators have greater freedom to explore the situation, and the tone is far more restrained and mannerly. It is thus the better of the two and much easier to add to a  United Kingdom campaign set during the eighteen nineties, nineteen twenties, or nineteen thirties.

Elsewhere in the fanzine, there is a decent piece of poetry from J. Pentalow, The Beast of Yaem’, and as with all fanzines, the adverts capture the feel of hobby at the time of their publication. As the first issue, there is very little in the way of adverts or classified adverts in Polaris Issue 1 , but there is a little dig by author Paul Mason at Games Fair for his own convention, Koancon, which points to the attitudes of the hobby at the time.

Physically, Polaris Issue 1  feels slightly rough and is slightly difficult to read in its choice of typewriter typeface, but this is really only at the beginning of readily available desktop publishing software. Yet, much of the artwork is quite reasonable and the layout is tidy.

It is disappointing that it only ran to the one issue because Polaris Issue 1 is a surprisingly good first issue. There is much that will be familiar to veterans of the Call of Cthulhu, and the various articles would have definitely useful at the time of its publication, if not today. That said, both scenarios could be run today if the Keeper wanted, and likewise, the Keeper could definitely draw inspiration from one or two of the other articles. Overall, Polaris Issue 1 is impressively solid and any Keeper would have been glad to have had this in 1987.

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An unboxing of Polaris issue 1 can be found here.

1982: Shadows of Yog-Sothoth

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

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In 1981, Call of Cthulhu would revolutionise the roleplaying hobby, introducing the works of the Lovecraft, if not to the industry, then to the wider hobby; creating horror as a genre; making Player Characters or Investigators mortal and fragile; introducing the concept of Sanity and suffering mental damage; and more. The first supplement for Call of Cthulhu, published the following year, was just as revolutionary. Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind was the first campaign for Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. It introduced the concept of the onionskin campaign. This has the investigators stripping away layers of information like the skin of an onion as the players progress through the campaign, revealing more of the evil cult’s plans and coming closer to the heart of the adventure. There had been campaigns before, such as G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth, D3 Vault of the Drow, and Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition, which were connected and could be run as a campaign. However, each part was available separately and could readily be run independent of the others, whereas each and every chapter of Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was integral to the plot and thus awkward to dismantle and run on their own. It was the first campaign to be set in a historical period and the first campaign to be set in a modern historical period and the first campaign to take its Player Characters around the world. In this way, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth set the blueprint for many the Call of Cthulhu campaigns we have had since, many of which would go on to improve upon the format, but Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was there first.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind also introduced the first cult to Call of Cthulhu, the Lords of the Silver Twilight, whose members range from centuries old wizards to the undead. It is their aim to force the rise of the sunken city of R’lyeh under the Pacific where Dread Cthulhu has slumbered for aeons and so unleash the Great Old One upon the world and bring about the end of mankind’s dominion over the Earth. The stars though, are not yet right to bring about such a calamitous event and there is a chance that the Lords of the Silver Twilight will fail. When they discover the plans of the Lords of the Silver Twilight have for humanity and the Earth, a group of stalwart Investigators set out to thwart them, an effort which takes them to Boston to New York, then Scotland, California, Maine, and finally Easter Island and the South Pacific. In the process, they will discover dread histories and the darkest of secrets, place both their minds and their bodies in harm’s way again and again, learn things that man was always best not knowing, and ultimately, confront an alien being beyond their comprehension.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth opens in Boston in 1928. In ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’, the Investigators are invited to join the eponymous and rich, well-to-do, misogynistic fraternity with a reputation for charitable works, not unlike the Freemasons. The order has several ranks though which the Investigators will quickly progress to the point when its reveals to them that in truth, its inner circle is dedicated to worshipping an unearthly god and is awaiting the time when the stars come right, and alien species can reclaim what once was theirs. The location and rituals for The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight are all sketched out in some detail and once they are initiated into the upper ranks, there is the constant nagging question of, “When is knowing too much just too much?” Yet as the Investigators are promoted through the ranks and exposed to unspeakable things and expected to commit increasingly despicable acts, they have the chance to learn both what the order knows and what its aims are. This includes sneaking into some of the more secret areas where they will find horrors indeed.

‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’, the first chapter of the campaign, is detailed and rife with roleplaying possibilities combined with skulduggery and stealth. As written though it does not support that with any ease, there being no other members described other than the cultists and their acolytes, and similarly there is no real reason for the Investigators to join The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight except as a means to begin the plot. This despite the fact that Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is intended for fairly experienced Investigators. Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Second Edition, published in 2004, addressed some of these issues, but not all. It is easy to be underwhelmed by ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’, but set-up and the plot definitely has possibilities. They just await the hand of a good Keeper to really fillet them out.

After the Investigators have learned all that they dare and fled the headquarters of The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight, they receive the first of several letters which will alert them to strange events around the world. This is a device that the campaign will use again and again, typically letters which draw their attention to something which turns out to be connected to the main plot, but does not look like it first. This is one of the major complaints about the campaign, that the use of letters as a narrative device is clumsy and clichéd. In hindsight this is undeniably true, but at the time of publication this was not the case. 

The second scenario, ‘Look to the Future’, is a radical departure from the rest of the campaign, a piece of weird Science Fiction which takes the Investigators to New York where they will infiltrate an odd self-help and self-actualisation organisation. The Investigators are easily able to attend a meeting which is held in an oddly bare bunker-like building. In return for ready donations of money and unaware donations of Power—at this point in Call of Cthulhu’s rules, magic is fuelled by raw Power rather than Magic Points—at regular ceremonies, attendees are rewarded with small items of advanced technology, such as disposable lighters, digital watches, and non-stick frying pans. In addition, there is strange technology in the basement if the Investigators can gain access. Meddle too much and there is the possibility that one or more of their number will be killed, to the point that there is the possibility of all of them being killed. Even if they do not, they should find further links to the activities of the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight and its masters, but the scenario leaves a lot for the Keeper to develop if the Investigators want to explore beyond the walls of Look to the Future’s bunker. Curiously, this scenario involves Nyarlathotep, here indicating for the first time the involvement of the Crawling Chaos in the numerous machinations of those involved in the Mythos and other scenarios and campaigns for Call of Cthulhu. This is despite the fact that the campaign is called Shadows of Yog-Sothoth and famously Yog-Sothoth appears nowhere in the campaign. 

More letters direct the Investigators to Scotland to check upon one Henry Hancock, renowned big game hunter and local amateur archaeologist. ‘The Coven of Cannich’ is a sprawling sandbox populated by numerous masters and mistresses of the Mythos as factions from the Lords of the Silver Twilight search for parts of an artefact believed to be buried in an ancient temple on the shores of Loch Mullardoch. These are not the only Mythos forces in the area, and there seems to be a medley of them, most far too powerful for the Investigators to face. The scenario is very much one of who the Investigators can trust from among the NPCs, and the difficulty is that because there are some twenty of them, the Keeper just has too many to handle and make them stand out from each other. There is potential to camp this up a bit a la Hammer Horror, what with the screeching ghost and the accents of the locals, but ‘The Coven of Cannich’ is a difficult scenario to run and prepare, and there is little in the way of advice for the Keeper.  

Back in the U.S.A., the Investigators are hired by a Hollywood movie mogul to investigate a supposedly ‘haunted’ film set out in the Mojave Desert after the film was shut down, the director committed suicide, and the lead actor, all but a vagrant. Again, as a scenario, ‘Devil’s Canyon’, feels unconnected to the campaign as a whole, but again the Investigators will find what also seem like coincidental links. Yet there is some fun investigation to conduct in Hollywood before the Investigators set out the eponymously named Devil’s Canyon. There they find the ruined set of what would have been an epic film. After the bucolic highlands of Scotland and the city streets of Boston and New York, there is a sense of space, sunlit and dry, in this scenario’s desert setting, but even with that feeling of openness the Investigators quickly find themselves trapped and stalked by invisible things. Their invisibility is balanced by their cowardice and if they can harness the technology available, the Investigators might be able to reveal what they are. Where the Mythos and the monsters are overdone in the other scenarios, here they are restrained and creepy, and the scenario really benefits from that. However, the scenario does not add much to the overall campaign, and it comes across as a diversion rather than essential to the plot.

The campaign then takes a turn for the worse for the Investigators in ‘The Worm that Walks’. They are offered further clues, even patronage and respite, by one Christopher Edwin, but in following them up, they face increasingly nasty dangers—a family of cannibalistic backwoodsmen, an attack by a shoggoth whilst they are aboard their new patron’s yacht, and then when one of them is poisoned, stalked by something in the hospital. By the time it gets to that point, the likelihood is that the Investigators do not trust him—even if they ever did given the typical player sense of paranoia—and they have every reason not to. Edwin is out to kill them as part of the Lords of the Silver Twilight’s revenge upon the Investigators, and whilst that is understandable, to come at a point so late in the campaign when there is the possibility again of all the Investigators being killed, in what is already a campaign a deadly campaign designed for experienced Investigators, is well, overkill. 

Penultimately, the campaign switches from reactive mode to proactive mode as it nears its climax. Up until now the Investigators have been reacting to letters received, but now they have the chance to begin moving against the cult, in ‘The Watchers of Easter Island’ and then in ‘Rise of R’lyeh’, the last two parts of the campaign. In the first, ‘The Watchers of Easter Island’, they travel to Easter Island, which during the period when Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is set, is a colony of Chile and under military rule. If the Investigators can make contact with the indigenous islanders and the survivors of an archaeological team, all of whom have suffered attacks and disappearances. There is something strange going on and the island is under martial law, the local commandant curious as to the reason for the Investigators’ visit and wanting to be kept aware of their activities. The indigenous islanders will guide the Investigators to a local, elderly priest who can advise and suggest the cause, and even equip them to fight the fearsome figure responsible for the disappearances. Getting to both priest and threat is physically gruelling and the end confrontation is challenging. ‘The Watchers of Easter Island’ does feel superfluous to the campaign itself. If they fail, the Investigators will be attacked on their voyage to R’lyeh at the beginning of the next chapter, but otherwise, the Investigators’ success or failure in preventing the final preparations being conducted by a Lord of the Silver Twilight have little effect on the campaign’s climax.

At last, in ‘The Rise of R’lyeh’, the efforts of the Lords of the Silver Twilight and their acolytes come to fruition and the island of R’lyeh rises out of the south Pacific, and they attempt to call Dread Cthulhu from his slumber. By this time, the Investigators should be armed with the artefacts they found during their investigations in the previous scenarios, and have the means to reverse the ritual that the Lords of the Silver Twilight want to perform, and so sink the island. It is a very short scenario, but a fitting one, as the Investigators race across the island to find a non-Euclidean vantage point from which to perform their reverse ritual. There is that moment of course, when they will have to witness Great Cthulhu easing himself out of his tomb and wading through the flotilla of boats carrying his worshippers, a moment worthy of legend that will tear at the Investigators’ sanity, after which the survivors must flee back across the island to their boat, and hopefully get away in safety. As momentous as this actually is, it does feel as if the Investigators are doing everything from the wings of the stage and so slightly anti-climactic. 

In addition, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth includes two extra scenarios. The first, ‘People of the Monolith’ is based on the short story, ‘The Black Stone’ by Robert E. Howard and reads more like a short story than a scenario. The Investigators are hired by a publisher to travel to Hungary to look into the circumstances behind a piece of poetry and the poet’s subsequent suicide. The scenario is short and very little actually happens, although it is not without its strangeness. Written as a beginning scenario, it is suited to less action-orientated Investigators, and it works with fewer Investigators rather than more. 

The second scenario is ‘The Warren’. This takes place in Boston and focuses upon the Boucher estate, long abandoned and now purchased for demolition and redevelopment. When the demolition expert goes missing the Investigators are hired to look into what has happened at the estate. What they discover inside the house is that the Boucher family never died out, but rather degenerated and became inbred, worshipping the Great Old Ones. Despite there being a decent bit of research to do beforehand, ‘The Warren’ all too soon descends into a location-based, dungeon style adventure. Nowhere near as bad as scenarios which would appear in the pages of the anthologies, The Asylum & Other Tales and Curse of the Chthonians: Four Odysseys Into Deadly Intrigue, but not something that would be done today or indeed since they were published. Despite the investigative efforts made before exploring the Boucher estate, the Investigators are unlikely to full prepared for the true threat at the heart of the scenario and the choice of the Great Old One feels ill-suited to the role here just as much as this type of scenario, whilst Lovecraftian, feels ill-suited to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. 

Physically, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is well presented and actually decently written for a campaign published in 1982. The organisation of the material leaves a lot to be desired and a lot for the potential Keeper to work through and prepare. The cover is a glorious depiction of R’lyeh and the pen and ink illustrations, all by Tom Sullivan, are all suitably dark and oppressive, and the maps have a certain charm. By the modern standards, the handouts are plain, but they are serviceable. 

—oOo— 

Following its publication in 1982, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was reviewed in Space Gamer Number 60 (February 1983) in the ‘Capsule Reviews’ section by William A. Barton, the designer of Cthulhu by Gaslight. He identified that several of the scenarios are “almost too deadly”, but concluded that, “Overall, though, SHADOWS OF YOG-SOTHOTH should provide some exciting CoC play for even the most experienced investigators (despite the odd fact that Yog-Sothoth never makes an appearance, title or not), and I recommend it to all Lovecraftians.” 

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was reviewed not once, but twice in Dragon magazine. First, in Dragon #81 (Vol. VIII, No. 7, January 1984) in ‘Gaming without heroes: Horror role-playing gets its vigor from victims’ by Ken Rolston. From the start he highlighted issues with the campaign: “In design, each of the seven linked scenarios is a mystery, complete with clues, NPCs, and settings. However, for smooth presentation, considerable study and preparation by the GM will be necessary. The scenarios lack strict linear narratives. Though this avoids arbitrary limits on player freedom, it forces the GM to structure the adventures in response to the actions of the players — a difficult job even for experienced gamemasters. The-tactics of the antagonists are not adequately detailed, and will need to be improvised or planned ahead.” Ultimately, he was far more positive in his conclusion, saying that, “Yog-Sothoth requires much labor and study on the part of the GM; it is not usable after a single reading. The GM will have to provide most of the narrative structure for the campaign, since the players have much freedom to choose their own approach to solving problems. The writing and editing are generally superior. Player materials are provided in ample quantity and the text is adequately organized for GM reference. The adventures are unusual and the atmosphere exotic and terrifying. Yog-Sothoth is a classic example of role-playing horror, with awesome monsters, desperate victims, and an atmosphere of mystery and menace. Since it provides enough material for a campaign of several months’ duration, it is an excellent value for the $10 purchase.” 

The campaign was then reviewed six years later in Dragon #81 (Vol. XV, No. 1, June 1990) in ‘Role-playing Reviews: A losing war against the forces of darkness’ by Jim Bambra. This was as part of the Cthulhu Classics anthology, which reprinted Shadows of Yog-Sothoth along with ‘The Warren’, but not ‘People of the Monolith’, alongside ‘The Pits of Bendal-Dolum’ and ‘The Temple of the Moon’ from Terror from the Stars; ‘Dark Carnival’ from Curse of the Chthonians; and ‘The Secret of Castrenegro’ from Cthulhu Companion. Bambra was positive in his summation, stating, “The horror elements are well presented, and the adventures span a wide variety of locations and investigative approaches. Opportunities for role-playing, investigation, and combat abound with nameless horrors and the depraved cultists who worship the creatures of darkness.”

Ian Bailey reviewed Shadows of Yog-Sothoth in ‘Open Box’ in White Dwarf #44 (August, 1983). Before awarding it ten out of ten, he said, “All in all the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is an excellent and masterly campaign that demands a high standard of play throughout. It is well presented (one feature is five pages of player-information which can be photocopied or pulled out to save the Keeper time) and carefully managed throughout, and it provides, I believe, the most exciting and satisfying adventure available on the market to date. It might seem expensive but it is worth every penny.” 

Anders Swenson reviewed the campaign in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds Issue 34 (May/June 1984). He highlighted the deadliness of the campaign saying that, “…[M]any  of the scenarios would seem to work better with relatively well-equipped adventurers who have gotten access to heavy military weapons…” as well its organisation, complaining that, “Then there is the organization. Each scenario does contain the material needed to run the adventure, but finding it and having it handy is another question. Many of the scenarios have a lot of nonplayer characters, situations, maps, etc., and the tendency of the layout people was to string them together without enough introductory, transitional, and connective next to make everything findable.” As with other reviewers, he ended on a positive note with, “Overall, though, this is an excellent collection of first-rate Call Of Cthulhu scenarios. All keepers (gamemasters) should get Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.” 

—oOo— 

When it was first published in 1982, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth was like nothing that had come before. It was a whole campaign, consisting of several linked parts, each integral to the whole and the flow of the campaign’s story. It was set in a modern age and it was a first horror campaign, and it pitted the Investigators against H.P. Lovecraft’s signature creature, the Great Old One, Cthulhu himself. That is one thing that no campaign has done since. It is this version that would be reprinted as part of the Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter campaign to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Call of Cthulhu. It is also this version which would be reprinted as part of Cthulhu Classics in 1989.

Yet for all its scope and grandeur, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth suffers, by modern standards, numerous flaws—and those flaws are well known. They include an underwhelming set-up which challenges the Keeper to involve her players and their Investigators in the campaign. The links between the chapters are flimsy, awkward, and repetitive, and the constant use of the letter as a plot device is wearisome. ‘The Worm that Walks’, the fifth scenario, has a well-deserved reputation as a killer, an intentional method of murdering one Investigator after another at a point in the campaign when their knowledge and experience are needed for the last two scenarios. The campaign also lacks advice for the Keeper and having been written by different hands, it has a rough, incohesive feel. 

It is possible that some or all of these issues could have been addressed by the planned development of a longer, more extensive, and greater world-spanning version of the campaign which would have been edited by Scott David Aniolowski. This would have included far more of locations visited in Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, the story which directly inspired Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, including Greenland, China, Germany, New Orleans, Kingsport, Saudi Arabia, Irem, San Francisco, and Xoth. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, this expanded version of the campaign was cancelled and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Second Edition was published instead. It should be noted that some of content of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ has been presented for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition in Cults of Cthulhu.

Some of these problems were addressed in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, Second Edition, published in 2004. They included reasons and motivations for the Investigators to join the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight in ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’, as well as NPCs beyond the Cultists which they could interact with. The links between the chapters were listed and made more obvious and some advice was provided for the Keeper, although all too often, not enough. Whether the version from 1982 or 2004, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth cannot fail to show its age and whilst as it should, it presents a huge challenge to the players and their Investigators, it also presents an enormous challenge to the Keeper who wants to run the campaign. There is so much to prepare in the campaign and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth never makes it easy. Certainly, within two years, there would be campaigns from Chaosium, Inc, beginning with The Fungi from Yuggoth and Masks of Nyarlathotep, the latter often regarded as the greatest roleplaying campaign ever published, which made incredible strides in campaign design and presentation. There is no denying that Shadows of Yog-Sothoth needs a rewrite and even a redesign and hopefully its third edition will be the rewrite and the redesign it needs and addresses its issues.

Shadows of Yog-Sothoth: A Global Campaign to Save Mankind broke new ground in so many ways, but it is no masterpiece. It is flawed and often incoherent, and it remains a daunting prospect for any Keeper who sets out to run it for her players. Yet it has many fine moments of horror and creepiness, and above all, it has ambition, and it has a grandeur and it does something no other campaign has done since, which is have the Investigators face Cthulhu himself.

Review 1500: Call of Cthulhu

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

Call of Cthulhu was first published in 1981. Written by Sandy Petersen, it is famously, the roleplaying game based upon the works and creations of American horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, drawing upon the adage, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” from his own essay, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’. Indeed, it is the first roleplaying game to do so as its sole focus—other roleplaying games and supplements included the creatures of Lovecraft’s Mythos within their pages, but not in the way that Call of Cthulhu does. The roleplaying game places the action—and by action, mostly investigation—in Lovecraft’s own period of the Jazz Age, the nineteen twenties, and has ordinary men and women investigate the machinations and conspiracies of creatures and entities best left unknown to man, the creatures and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as their all too human cultists and acolytes, and if not save the world in the long term, at least save the world for now. In doing so, their bravery in the face of Cosmic Horror, will remain unknown and go unrewarded save in the knowledge that mankind is safe—for now, for ultimately the stars will come right, and Cthulhu will rise from where lies dreaming deepest R’lyeh to reclaim what was once his, along with a host of other aliens and beings beyond our understanding who regard Humanity as nothing more than an infestation—if they do at all. In the process, their investigations will see them delve into secret places, peruse and study ancient tomes, learn blasphemous knowledge and incantations, and see things and beings best left unseen, all of which might drive them insane, such is the nature of the truth about the world and the cosmos which has long been forgotten.

An Investigator in Call of Cthulhu has nine attributes—Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Appearance, Education, and Sanity. Of these, Sanity is actually derived from the Investigator’s Power, and plays a major role in the roleplaying game, whilst Education determines the number of points a player has to assign to the skills granted by his Investigator’s Occupation. This Occupation can be Antiquarian/Historian, Author, Dilettante, Doctor, Journalist, Lawyer, Professor, Parapsychologist, and Private Eye (the choices available will greatly expand with subsequent editions and supplements), granting skills such as Anthropology, Archaeology, History, Library Use, Occult, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Read/Write Other Language, and Speak Other Language for the Parapsychologist occupation. In addition, an Investigator’s Intelligence determines the number of points a player has to assign to personal interest skills.

The skills themselves are very modern and geared towards the investigative playing style of the game. Thus Library Use for conducting research in libraries and newspaper morgues, Read/Write Latin or Ancient Greek for reading ancient or Mythos related tomes, Psychology for determining if a potential cultist is lying or even insane, Credit Rating for getting a loan or moving in the right social circles, and so on. There are combat skills too, such as Handgun or Fist, but these are not always reliable in play, since many of the Mythos creatures are immune to their effects. One notable skill is Cthulhu Mythos, which represents an Investigator’s knowledge of the cosmic horror which threatens mankind’s understanding of the universe, knowledge which will permanently damage an Investigator’s Sanity. Investigator creation is actually very simple, but the range of Occupations and skills lend themselves to a multitude of ideas and concepts for Investigators and their backgrounds all inspired by the historical setting of the roleplaying game.

Our sample investigator is Henry Brinded, a Bostonian from a wealthy family who studied Classics at Yale before serving as an artillery officer with the American Expeditionary Force in Northern France during the Great War. As a consequence he is slightly deaf and abhors loud noises. He owns and runs a small antiquarian shop which specialises in ancient and medieval manuscripts.

Henry Brinded
Occupation: Antiquarian
Strength 11 Constitution 11 Size 12 Intelligence 16
Power 14 Dexterity 13 Appearance 17 Education 17
Sanity 70 Hit Points 11

Archaeology 20%, Bargaining 30%, Boating 30%, Credit Rating 40, Cthulhu Mythos 00%, History 65%, Law 30%, Library Use 50%, Make Maps 20%, Psychology 25%, Read/Write English 85%, Read/Write Latin 50%, Speak French 25%, Swim 25%

Combat Skills
75 mm Field Gun 20%
Rifle 20%

Mechanically, Call of Cthulhu famously uses Basic Role-Playing for the basis of its mechanics, the percentile system derived from RuneQuest. In the earliest editions, it went further though than just using the Basic Role-Playing as the basis for its rules. It actually included a copy in the box and both player and Keeper would need to know these rules before going on to play Call of Cthulhu, which in a way made Call of Cthulhu a supplement for Basic Role-Playing rather than a roleplaying in its own right. In comparison to RuneQuest, the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu are much simpler and would remain virtually the same until their revision with Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. It is primarily a skills-based game, a player rolling under his Investigator’s skills or if against an object or NPC, on the Resistance Table, using percentile dice. Really, this is not very much more than Basic Role-Playing—a copy of which is included in the box as an introduction to the rules—with a plethora of different skills to account for the change in genre and time period.

The one notable addition to the rules is Sanity. An Investigator begins play with his Sanity equal to his Power attribute times five, and it is tested if he encounters something scary, be it the dead body of a fellow Investigator or a creature of the Mythos. Fail the test and the Investigator might lose a few points for seeing the corpse, eight or ten for encountering a Mythos creature, and even one hundred points for seeing a Great Old One such as Great Cthulhu himself! If an Investigator fails the Sanity roll (and sometimes even when he succeeds), then he can not only lose Sanity, he can go insane, temporarily if he loses five points in one go, but indefinitely if he loses a fifth within the space of an hour, such is the corrosive effect upon the fragility of the mortal mind. Such an Investigator might end catatonic or suffering from amnesia, but one of the probable outcomes is that he suffers from a phobia, and the rulebook includes a lovely list such as Ballistophobia or Teratophobia. Now there are only a few here, but again subsequent expansions to the game would add many more.

Sanity can also be lost for reading Mythos tomes such as the infamous Necronomicon or the dread Revelations of Glaaki, but sometimes they have to be read to learn the means or the spells necessary to thwart the Mythos—at least temporarily. However, doing so means gaining points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill, representing the fundamental understanding as to the true nature of the universe and mankind’s place in it. The more points in the Cthulhu Mythos skill an Investigator has, the lower his maximum Sanity. Now it is possible to regain points of Sanity, typically by defeating or thwarting the plans of a cult or a Mythos creature, but also by undergoing Psychoanalysis. The latter takes a while though, is not guaranteed to work, but is safer than the former option—depending upon the Alienist and the institution of course. In the long term, as an Investigator loses points of Sanity, the lower the chance he has of withstanding shocks and exposure to the Mythos, the greater the chance of losing more Sanity, and so on, until his Sanity is so low, he retires alive but unhinged or it drops below zero and he is insane. Permanently.

Much of the rest of the rest of the core rule book is dedicated to the Mythos itself. This begins with the gods and creatures, from Azathoth, Cthuga, and Great Cthulhu to Y’Golonac, Yig, and Yog-Sothoth, from Byakhee, Chthonians, and Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath to Shoggoths, Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, and Star Vampires. All are given full stats and extensive write-ups, much of which will be familiar from later editions of Call of Cthulhu. Here though, Petersen classifies them not once but twice. First into Outer Gods and Great Old Ones as well as Alien Races and Monsters, and second, into classes—Minor, Moderate, Major, Great Old Ones, and Outer Gods. Thus, Shub-Niggurath is an Outer God, Ithaqua a Great old One, Hounds of Tindalos are Major, Shoggoths Moderate (!), and Mi-Go Minor. It does feel oddly forced, but as a way of quantifying them it works well enough. The well-done chapter of the Mythos Monsters is followed by an explanation of how Mythos magic works and the dangers of reading the various Mythos tomes. Again, the explanations are well done, and again, the spells reinforce how this is not a roleplaying game in which the Investigators learn a spell and blast away at their enemies with eldritch power. Most of the spells consist of call, contact, summon, and/or bind the things of the Mythos, which means bringing them to the Investigators and exposing their minds to the unspeakable horrors to the detriment of their Sanity, and many spells cost Sanity to cast. Which is fine if you are an insane sorcerer with no Sanity! Lastly, the Mythos tomes are simply listed and do feel as if they warrant further development—which again, in subsequent editions, they would.

And then there is the ‘How to Play the Game’ chapter. This is a superb chapter—which like so much of the rest of Call of Cthulhu will be visited again and again—which explains, if it was not clear from the first six chapters, how Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game of a different stripe. With the first sentence it states that, “Call of Cthulhu differs in feel and motivation from other roleplaying games.”, warning that direct confrontation with the Mythos will not only fail, but probably end up with the death of the Investigators involved. The solution is to investigate, to visit libraries, conduct interviews, read arcane tomes, scout out locations, and more. It also advises that the Investigators avoid too much gunplay lest they arouse the suspicions of the authorities. It is a fantastic read and it is followed by good advice for the Keeper of Arcane Secrets—as the Game Master is known in Call of Cthulhu, in setting up and running a scenario and a campaign. As good as the chapter is, the two subject matters—one for the players and one for the Keeper—do not feel as if they should be together, in case of the advice for the player, this far into the book. Nevertheless, this is an excellent chapter, its contents pertinent today as it was in 1981. It is followed by an example play, which sadly does not involve Harvey Walters.

The core rulebook includes not one, but three scenarios. First up is ‘The Haunting’—more recently renamed ‘The Haunted House’, a scenario which inserts the Mythos into a classic haunted house set-up and delivers some great shocks and scares in what has since become almost everyone’s first encounter with Call of Cthulhu. It has been developed since, and appeared in almost every version of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook except for the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. (It is instead included in the Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition Quick-Start and returned to the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook for its fortieth anniversary edition.) It is a creepy little classic, here feeling a little barebones, but effective all the same for a single session.

The second is ‘The Madman’, which is set in the backwoods of Vermont and has one Old Harny Whitaker—renamed Harny Reginald in later editions—acting strangely, attacking a postman for no apparent reason and said to be performing mysterious rituals atop nearby hills. More of a detailed outline, this is something for the Keeper to develop herself, starting with a stronger hook for the involvement of the Investigators. The third scenario is ‘The Brockford House’, which has never been reprinted beyond the pages of the core rulebook, has the Investigators looking into another house and the strange noises coming from underneath. Located just off the coast of Maine, this is a more physical scenario than ‘The Haunted House’, involving little in the way of investigation or research, leaving the Investigators even more ill prepared for what they face than usual. Although it has its moments, ‘The Brockford House’ is unimpressive.

Lastly, the appendices provides a mix of content, some of which would be included in later editions, some of it not, and a fair bit of what would be later reprinted would be shifted to the second book in the Call of Cthulhu box set, ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’. The appendices open with ‘Notes on a Fragment of the Necronomicon’, penned by Phileus P. Sadowski. This is a delightful in-game examination of the dread tome, which adds detail and history to its listing earlier in the core rulebook. However, the fact that the given date for the article is 1979 and it references Lovecraft: A Biography by L. Sprague de Camp, it does feel out of step with the rest of the game! Otherwise this is an engaging piece with which to draw the rulebook to a close. ‘Rewards for Valor’ suggests the types of rewards the Investigators might gain as a result of their efforts, focusing on the types of loot that they might find in temples or cult headquarters. As odd as this may read to modern players of the roleplaying game, this has a stronger grounding than at first seems, for the Investigators do need a source of income if they are to go off around the world investigating the unknown rather than holding down proper jobs. For the Keeper there is advice on cultists and cults, including primitive cults, and the nature—both benefits and costs—of worshipping the unnamable, and a list of libraries known to contain occult material rules for Sages, from whom an Investigator can learn more of the nature of the world and perhaps gain other help too.

Besides ‘A Timeline for H.P. Lovecraft’ and some Nautical skills, the appendices also includes three further scenarios. Two of these are two scenario vignettes, which can be used to begin or add to a campaign. The first of these, ‘A Beginning Scenario for a Campaign’, involves a deadly encounter on a bus tour in Vermont, leading to the Investigators being hounded by allies of the Mythos, whilst the second, ‘The Cultists’ Lair: A Scenario’, is a detailed summoning site in the crater of an extinct volcano. The first is the better of the two and works better as the beginning of a campaign, something that the Keeper can take away and develop on her own. The second has plenty of detail, but not necessarily the scope as intended. Between the two is 

‘Shadows Over Hollywood: A Scenario’, which has never been reprinted and switches from typical East Coast setting of Call of Cthulhu to the West Coast. It has the Investigators connected to or working for The New Western Dawn, an occult magazine, sent out to investigate sightings of strange winged creatures dancing at an old mission in the San Bernardino mountains. There is not very much for the Investigators to really learn or do in the scenario and like a lot of early scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, it does over reward the Investigators. If they do insist on getting involved, things get very, very nasty.

If the rulebook for Call of Cthulhu focused on Investigators and the weirdness of the Mythos, the second book in the Call of Cthulhu box provides the context. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ is both an almanac for the Jazz Age and an expansion to the rules. Even the cover is put to good use with a set of deck plans for an airship, but inside there are maps of noted archaeological sites—from Ife in Nigeria, Scara Brae in the Orkney Islands, and Çatal Hüyük in Turkey to Moundville in the USA, Pan-P’o-Ts’un in China, and Luxor in Egypt. These in particular are eye opening, in many cases the reader’s first exposure to some of the amazing archaeological sites found around the world, ripe to be visited by the Investigators’ resident archaeologist or used as a site by dread cultists, their accompanying text spurring a Keeper to research more. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ also includes timelines ordinary and outré for the decade, thumbnail biographies for the notables of the period, a list of companies with goods and services to add flavour to a game, floorplans of the railway coaches (terrifying train journeys would go on to become a staple of Call of Cthulhu scenarios), travel speeds and times, and goods and prices.

In play, there is the addition of new weapon stats and notes for the war boomerang, the musket, Thompson submachine, and even a 75 mm field gun! The ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ also provides a short guide to crimes, arrests, and handling bribery too, including notes about the 18th Amendment and thus Prohibition (a subject which the roleplaying game would also revisit numerous times over the next four decades). The guide to handling arrests are really very good, highlighting what might happen if the Investigators’ actions arouse suspicion and the potential consequences are, because ultimately, although their actions may be morally right, legally they may be anything other than right. This enforces the sense of the ordinary world around them versus the Cosmic Horror they face. Organised crime is covered as well, as is the Ku Klux Klan.  ‘Beasts & Monsters’ expands on the list of entities and forces of the Mythos, but with more ‘mundane’ creatures. So crocodiles and pythons, but also the ghost, the mummy, the pixie, the vampire, the werewolf, the wraith, and the zombie. The latter, the more traditional monsters have their own Sanity losses, of course, and their inclusion opens up the realms of possibility and using Call of Cthulhu as a more traditional horror roleplaying game, and again, that possibility would be revisited again and again in the next forty years, most notably with the anthologies Blood Brothers and Blood Brothers II.

However, there is some variation between the content of the ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’. Later versions provide ‘Other Occupations’ such as Gangster, Missionary, Policeman, and Soldier, and include content which had previously been included in the rulebook. The most notable inclusion here though, is a section called ‘Previous Experience’. This offers a more random means of creating an Investigator, a player rolling to determine his Investigator’s attributes and then gender, starting age, birthplace (in the USA), Education (this can be lower in rural areas) and where he went to school. This will add some points to various academic skills, and then he selects one or more Occupations, and works out his prior experience. This is done in five-year terms (much like the roleplaying game Traveller does, but in four-year long terms), the Investigator receiving the given skill bonuses for the Occupation. For example, for the Gangster this is Climb (5), Jump (5), Fast Talk (10), Credit Rating (10), Drive Auto (10), Listen (10), Bargain (5), Spot Hidden (5), Law (5), Dynamite (5), Sub-Machine Gun (5), Revolver (5), Shotgun (5), and Pick Pocket (5) for each term. It even comes with a complete example, the prior experience of Eben Stone, whose fortunes remain unknown in comparison to those of the perennial Harvey Walters.

Whichever version of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ was present in the Call of Cthulhu box, there is no denying the wealth of detail it provides player and Keeper alike. There is so much information in its pages that the Keeper can use to bring her campaign to life and add verisimilitude, and so much of it has since been re-explored and developed—if not by Chaosium, Inc., then by other publishers. Certainly both The Keeper’s Companion vol. 1 and The Keeper’s Companion vol. 2 can be seen as developments of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ as well as various aspects of the core rulebook.

In addition to the core rulebook and ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’, Call of Cthulhu includes a sheet of Character Figures, which can be cut out and used as figures during play instead of miniatures. Both Investigators and Cthulhu entities are done as silhouettes, those for the monsters the same as their illustrations in the core book. The silhouettes of these Character Figures would also influence the sculpture of the miniatures manufactured Grenadier Models. Lastly, the box contains a poster map of the world, marked with sites of interest across the globe, both Mythos and mundane. It is nice and clear, but perhaps a little large to use easily.

Physically, Call of Cthulhu is well presented, it is easy to read, and is broken up by boxed text and the occasional illustration. Actually there is very little artwork in the core rulebook and whilst not all of it is of the highest quality it is in the main effective in evoking a certain dark and lonely mood. The use of a single Investigator, Harvey Walters, as an example throughout the rulebook, from creation to insanity really helps the reader understand the roleplaying game’s mechanics. ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’ feels a little cramped in comparison, but that is down to the amount of content within its pages.

It is difficult to pinpoint any real issues with Call of Cthulhu as it originally appeared. There are details which perhaps the reader might feel the designer got wrong about the Mythos, but there are perhaps two issues, one more serious than the other. The lesser issue is that the scenarios are variable in quality, but to be fair, these are the first scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, so cannot be expected to be amazing the first time out. The standout scenario, is of course, ‘The Haunting’, still brilliantly playable and as effective a piece of horror today as it was in 1981. The major issue is the lack of advice for the Keeper on the design and presentation of NPCs, especially cultists. There are some notes in the appendices, but the Keeper is very much left on her own to develop these herself with little real guidance. Of course, in subsequent editions of the roleplaying game, as well as innumerable scenarios and campaigns, the Keeper would be shown again and again what a cultist or other NPC might look like in terms of the rules, but here in the core rulebook, she is left a little wanting.

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Call of Cthulhu would go on to win the Origins Awards for Best Role-Playing Game in 1982 and receive the Game Designer’s Guild, Select Award in 1981, and ultimately, be conducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame in 1995. Within a year of its publication, it would be reviewed several times, some of them in quite lengthy write-ups.

William Barton, who would go on to write Cthulhu by Gaslight, reviewed Call of Cthulhu in Space Gamer Number 49 (March, 1982) and said, “Overall, CALL OF CTHULHU is an excellent piece of work.” He noted that there were several inconsistencies in the interpretation of the Mythos, but considered, “Petersen’s depth of research in the books and in the Mythos is next to remarkable.” and despite a number of failings overlooked in the simplification of Basic Role-Playing into Call of Cthulhu, concluded that, “The worlds of H. P. Lovecraft are truly open for the fantasy gamer.”

In ‘Call of Cthulhu is a challenge’ in Dragon #61 (May 1982), David Cook was critical of the rules, especially what he called, “[T]he incompleteness of the combat system.” with its small list of weapons, and a lack of rules for cover, movement, surprise, and the like. He was particularly critical of ‘A Sourcebook For the 1920’s’, complaining that, “It, like the appendices, appears to be notes and unfinished design work.” and suggested that it could have been better used to present the background to Lovecraft’s stories for those unfamiliar with them. His most serious complaint was that “The most serious flaw in the game is the lack of rules for NPC’s. The rules do say, and quite rightly, that Investigators should seldom meet any of the monsters listed. Doing so will often result in Investigator death or insanity, not a pleasant prospect for a player. Therefore, the Investigator will be dealing with and battling NPC’s. However, there is nothing given in the rulebook about creating interesting NPC’s. There is no quick system for generating NPC characteristics and skills. There are no suggestions for what NPC’s will know, how they will be armed, or what (or why!) they are doing. This lack of information puts an extremely large burden on the Keeper and makes it especially hard to create NPC’s that will keep the players’ interest. There should have been a section devoted to this in the rules.

Although Cook’s initial conclusion was initially less than positive, “It is difficult to either love or hate the game.”, but ultimately said, “It is a good game for experienced role-playing gamers and ambitious judges, especially if they like Lovecraft’s type of story. However, those players and judges just getting into roleplaying or who have never read a Lovecraft story are well advised to wait on this Game until they have more experience.”

Reviewing Call of Cthulhu in Open Box in White Dwarf No 32 (August 1982), Ian Bailey wrote, “Sandy Petersen has faithfully reproduced the tone of Lovecraft’s with the Call of Cthulhu game system and as a result, it is not about hacking and slaying, it is about investigation, which boils down to a rewarding battle of wits between the players and the Keeper.” He also noted that, “The game encourages good role-playing from the players. The rules embody a number of deterrents for the would be ‘fighter’.” His only criticism was that the sourcebook was too “U.S. orientated and consequently any Keeper ... who wants to set his game in the UK will have a lot of research to do.” Before concluding that, “Call of Cthulhu is an excellent game and a welcome addition to the world of role-playing.” and awarding it a score of nine out of ten.

Call of Cthulhu would be voted number one in ‘Arcane Presents the Top 50 Roleplaying Games 1996’ in Arcane #14 (December, 1996). The article summed it up as “Call of Cthulhu is fully deserved of the title as the most popular roleplaying system ever – it’s a game that doesn't age, is eminently playable, and which hangs together perfectly. The system, even though it’s over ten years old, it is still one of the very best you’ll find in any roleplaying game. Also, there’s not a referee in the land who could say they’ve read every Lovecraft inspired book or story going, so there’s a pretty-well endless supply of scenario ideas. It’s simply marvellous.”

—oOo—

It is surprising to note that when Call of Cthulhu was published, there was no other horror roleplaying game on the market. There were plenty of roleplaying games with horror elements in them—primarily classic monsters such as werewolves, vampires, and zombies—but none dedicated to the genre itself, so when Call of Cthulhu was published in 1981, it was not only ground-breaking, but it was also ground-breaking in its genre again and again. To begin with, it quantified the Mythos, its creatures and gods, spells and tomes, not as something to fight and defeat as was the case in their previous appearances in roleplaying games and supplements, but as something to be scared of and thus avoid, as a real threat to the Investigators and humanity, and in doing so elevated the Mythos in the hobby into something more than just fodder for sword and spell. The general lack of familiarity with the Mythos also meant that the creatures and gods presented in the pages of Call of Cthulhu were also all the more unknowable, so the scares and the horror that the Keeper could bring to her game were all the more effective. Arguably, this presentation would spur interest anew in Lovecraft’s fiction and ultimately lead to the popularity that his creations have today. It presented a whole new way of roleplaying and game—investigating, researching, interacting with NPCs to get information, and attempting to find a means to defeat the ghastly enemy using the mind and knowledge rather than brute force. It emphasised the skills and the knowledge of the Investigators, who are just ordinary men and women, rather than the might and powers of adventurers in other roleplaying games. When combined with the fact that the roleplaying game was set in the real and comparatively modern world, although one several decades before, it made the Investigators all the more human and relatable. 

It also inverted the way in which the roleplaying game was traditionally played. In most roleplaying games, the Player Characters gain in power and heroic stature, becoming better warriors, learning more powerful spells, and gaining more wondrous magical artefacts or other equipment. Not so in Call of Cthulhu. In Call of Cthulhu, the Investigators can improve their skills, but they do not gain amazing powers or even better equipment, or even increase their Hit Points. There is no ascending spiral of heroic power. Instead, the more the Investigators learn of the Mythos, whether through encounters or research, they may gain secret, arcane knowledge, but they suffer for it, becoming mentally unbalanced, even insane if they learn too much. Theirs is a descending spiral of insanity, theirs is at best a desperate and secret battle to save humanity, heroic but still unknown.

Lastly, of course, there is Insanity. Call of Cthulhu introduced a Sanity mechanic and it was simple and elegant. No more could a roleplaying game get by without addressing the mental fortitude, or lack of, of its Player Characters, and although there have been many ways to handle fear and being scared half to death in roleplaying games since, Call of Cthulhu did it first and did it simply and elegantly.

In the years since it was first published, Call of Cthulhu has been presented in multiple new editions, and its concepts explored again and again, in ways that the original designer probably never envisioned, in hundreds of scenarios and tens of campaigns, from the ancient past to the here and now (and even beyond). Call of Cthulhu is and has been incredibly well supported in its forty years of being in print. And the great thing is that the content from forty years ago can still be played using the rules presented in the original edition of the roleplaying or the latest. Which is a testament to the firm foundation that was laid by Sandy Petersen for Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying with the first edition of Call of Cthulhu.

There is a reason why Call of Cthulhu is regarded as one of the greatest roleplaying games ever published. It is a classic piece of design that successfully emulates the singular genre it is inspired by and in doing so, introduced new ways to roleplay and tell amazing stories as well as innovations to the roleplaying hobby that are still influential today. It is always going to be the greatest horror roleplaying game there is, not just because of the Mythos, but because of its influence, innovations, and the simple fact that it can still give you a great playing experience.