David Conyers Interview

Mythos Author

David Conyers has written extensively for Lovecraftian and Call of Cthulhu games magazines along with authoring several CoC scenarios and the Secrets of Kenya supplement from Chaosium. Here David talks about his life with the tentacled one, his co-authored Mythos fiction work (The Spiraling Worm with John Sunseri) and what the future may hold.

YSDC: How were you introduced to Call of Cthulhu?



DC: I'd been gaming since the early 1980s, trying games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. For me Dungeons & Dragons was too focused on rules, killing monsters and collecting magical items, and Traveller was all about the military in a rather sterile science fiction environment (compared to some of the science fiction novels I'd been reading at the time). It was not until the mid-1980s that I was first introduced to Call of Cthulhu at an impromptu session at a friends place in the Adelaide Hills where I grew up. I quickly generated a private eye and we played Mark Morrison's The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse when it was still a Multiverse scenario. My character lived, half the party died, but I was hooked. It was so different to any other role-playing game that I tried.



From there I went on to play The Madman, The Warren, The Auction, The Mauretania, Death in the Post and the beginnings of the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth campaign. What appealed to me was this game that focused on investigation and problem solving, not just upon killing and collecting magic items to define a character. I had a real sense of accomplishment if I reached the end of an adventure alive and sane, doubly so if we also defeated the threatening cosmic horror. 


A short time later still a teenager my family moved to Melbourne and a group where I could play Call of Cthulhu was lost to me. I eventually bought the rules book, The Fungi from Yuggoth and Cthulhu Now to run scenarios with my new Melbourne gaming friends, and was immediately hooked a second time when I'd read my purchases. After that I sought out the fiction, first reading Ramsey Campbell's excellent New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and then some of Lovecraft's works himself.

YSDC: Why do you think the game has been so successful? 


DC: I liked Call of Cthulhu because players' characters are real people without superpowers, and so by default the game encourages deduction, problem solving and a real courage to face horrors that are vastly more powerful than their mere human characters fighting them. Once players begin to obtain magical or technological items to defeat their foes, then the focus becomes a power game, changing to a Dungeons & Dragons style setting. Cthulhu doesn't do this. The Sanity system I think is one of the big appeals, especially when playing the game for the first time. It's a novelty, this massive statistic that you can't control but controls you.



Lovecraft himself had lots of great ideas, which became a strong foundation for the setting. Even though Lovecraft has been dead for 70 years the Cthulhu Mythos is alive and well today, mostly because of the many talented and inspiring writers, game designers and film makers contributing to the setting, growing it, evolving it, keeping it alive.

I also think the Basic Roleplaying System (BRP) is another key to the game's success. It's simple to understand but complex enough to be adaptable to any situation, ideal for any setting (fantasy, modern, horror, science fiction, superheroes) and you don't need to know the rules to play the game.



Lastly, I think the Call of Cthulhu has been successful because it is a more intelligent role-playing game, retaining older gamers, who normally give up on make-believe worlds in later life when the hack and slash approach has lost its appeal, or been replaced by a Xbox or a PlayStation.

YSDC: What is your favourite era (& why)?

DC: I like both the 1920s and the modern era. 1920s works well because the setting is familiar enough, yet the world is more exotic than it is today, and there remain unexplored regions of the world where horrors and cultists can lurk. For example, the heart of the Amazon, the Congo, the Himalayas and Antarctica are still mysterious places, while the modern era these locales have all been mapped and understood. Strange mythos-tainted villages like Dunwich or Goatswood are also believable in the 1920s, as are Cthulhu Mythos worshipping cults. Noir and pulp styles of gaming are also so easy to adapt.

The modern era is nice, but it's a different kind of horror and focus. I think the best setting to come out of the modern era is Pagan Publishing's Delta Green, as it better reflects the state of the modern world, as opposed to translating Lovecraft's old ideas into a new setting. Modern day villains are not cultists but unscrupulous corporations, corrupt governments, terrorists, serial killers, child pornographers and organised criminal syndicates, especially when they are tainted with the Mythos. The modern era better lends itself to the science fiction elements of Lovecraft's vision, but I don't think that angle been done well yet.

YSDC: Do you have any memorable moments from play?



DC: For me the game was most memorable when I first started playing it, as I had no idea how deep the Cthulhu Mythos extended, and here I was as a player, trying to understand more and more of this terrifying universe through my characters, of this rich and imaginative setting.



I remember playing The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight in Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. A friend and I were deep underground in the catacombs resurrecting victims from their component blue-grey powder, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the Silver Twilight. Then I went mad, dropped our only torch and everything went dark. The other guy I was playing with fell into a pit, and I was feeling around blindly for our only light. Then someone started to come down the stairs... It's just fun and scary, trying to think our way out of a hopeless situation.