By Sandy Petersen

First published in Different Worlds magazine, issue 19, February 1982, pp.8-13

FIRST COPIES OF CALL OF CTHULHU WERE DELIVERED TO OUR OFFICES AMID A THREE DAY STORM OFRAIN, LIGHTNING AND THUNDER ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13,1981. FREQUENT POWER OUTAGES AND OTHERSTRANGE HAPPENINGS WERE NUMEROUS.

Introduction

Ever since I found a tattered, World war II vintage copy of the works of H. P.Lovecraft in my father's library in 12th grade, I have been enthralled by Lovecraft'screations. The exotic monsters, black terrific atmosphere, and overall mood of horrorall combined in my mind to form many shuddersome moments. I greedily devoured all ofLovecraft's stories I could get my hands on, and now, fourteen years later, Lovecraftis firmly ensconced in my heart as my all-time author.

I have been engaged in fantasy role-playing for nearly eight years now - almost aslong as the 'genre' has been in existence. Two years ago, a friend of mine, SteveMarsh, suggested that I start a campaign based on what he called "American Gothic"; bythis he meant a fantasy campaign taking place in the modem era, with only a littlemagic, and most monsters stemming from '50s horror movies and modern horror literature.I actually started this campaign and went to the trouble of detailing all the possibletypes of scenarios that could exist, and made up some special rules for combat,experience and so forth. This campaign was short and abortive, but the things Ilearned from it planted some of the seeds for later work.

A year and a half ago, I wrote to Chaosium, offering my services in writing up aRuneQuest variant based on a fantasy world derivative of H. P. Lovecraft's dreamlandscycle, as best exemplified by the short novel The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. GregStafford replied that they were working on a variant game entitled Dark Worlds whichwas to cover H. P. Lovecraft's novels in a modern sense. My fancy was immediatelystruck by this, and I begged Greg for a chance to get in on the project. My cravenbegging bore fruit a few months later, when, beyond my expectations, Chaosium dumpedthe entire project in my lap. I was going to be allowed to do the whole thing myself.Chaosium sent me very little source material at first and I was very much on my own,not even knowing what the previous workers had done. The assignment seemed relativelyeasy to me, and after some slight toying with the project, I hit some mild snags anddecided to let the project sit a few months. When I was finally prodded back intoaction again, I looked more closely at the situation and was appalled.

The Problems

When I first approached the project, I thought that it would be ridiculously easy; allI would have to do is put the RuneQuest rules in a different time period, add some newmonsters, and have different cults than those in Cults of Prax. But it proved not tobe that easy. Working on the project I discovered that I would have to formulate anentirely different magical system consistent with the books, yet playable; I needed tomake a fairly complete listing of modern skills, such as Automobile Driving, MechanicalRepair, Psychoanalysis, Library Use (for which skill I am indebted to Steve Marsh onceagain), and so forth; I also had to make a list of, and rules for modern weaponsincluding guns - no small project in itself. It seemed to me that overnight theproject had multiplied in size and complexity by about a thousand times.

All the foregoing difficulties were actually minor compared to the one paramount designproblem which I faced: how can I make the mood of a fantasy role-playing game match themood of a modern horror story? I needed spooky happenings to get the players chilled, Ineeded black horrors that would chill the minds and blast the souls of the intrepidinvestigators, and I needed to make sure that the game did not degenerate into aslugfest or simple matching of power against power.

The Solutions

The monsters were relatively easy to develop. I already had experience in making upmonsters for gaming (having had a book of 99 new monsters for RuneQuest published byChaosium a few months previously [Gateway Bestiary, ed.]), making my task simple. Ipored through all the stories written by Lovecraft and a great number written by hisimitators and picked out all the hideous abnormalities that seemed to be at allconsistent from story to story. The total was surprisingly low, and I had to dredge upmonsters from quite obscure stories and collaborations in order to have a respectablenumber of creatures to smite the players. In most cases specifics were lacking on themonster, so I had to do a little bit of educated fudging, giving the monster in questionabilities that at best were only implied in the story. I was not completely arbitrary inthis and feel that the results make for a harmonious whole.

The 'cults' were much more difficult. They could obviously not be correlated with thenormal RuneQuest cult rules, both battle magic and Rune spells being conspicuouslyabsent in the normal world. At first, I tried to simply write up all the differentdeities as if they were normal monsters, listing SIZ, POW, and so forth for eachdifferent god, along with some brief notes about the cult, if any, of that particularbeing. I quickly discovered that this approach was unsuitable, since the scores I gavethe various monster gods was too completely arbitrary, and the possibility of harmingone in the course of play too remote for their statistics to really matter. For a monthor two, I let the matter of the gods slide and worked on other projects, hoping that abrainstorm would enlighten me to the point where I would be able to finish the project.

The aforesaid brainstorm did finally come, and I listed each god according to itseffects when summoned, its characteristics, its worshipers, and the gifts orrequirements that it demanded of those worshipers. This approach was eminently workable,and I was quite self-satisfied at its conclusion. Later on in the development of thebook, Steve Perrin wanted to re-include the statistics for the deities, and thus theSTR, INT, etc of Cthulhu and the rest are now included in the game again. Anyonedisagreeing with the particular score we gave any deity is certainly free to modify themto fit their own preconceptions or prejudices instead of ours.

The magical system used in the game was also a special difficulty. Lovecraft made noeffort to make any spells in his work seem consistent - his primary objective naturallybeing to produce horror rather than to give a coherent system for FRPing. In fact, inmost stories, spells are never cast in the story's course, although the grisly effectsof spells are often seen or implied. Another difficulty is that only the 'bad guys'usually have any spells. I needed to make the spells such that the players would usuallybe afraid to use such black arts. In order to create spells, I simply theorized as towhat spells would be needed in order to produce the effects seen in the books, andapplied my theories. It was easy enough after that, since most of the spells were beingused to contact or control the various monsters and/or deities in the Cthulhu Mythos,and a very few spells with different effects thrown in. The players are discouragedfrom using too many spells, since the process of using spells directly gains contactwith many grisly beings, most of which there is no protection against.

Next Page (2/3)