Sandy Petersen
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.The skill listing was not one of the major problems in the game. I took a few days toformulate lists of all the skills which I felt would be usable in the game, and thentook a few more days to write up the effects of these skills in game terms. GregStafford was of help here, in that he sent me a list of what he felt would be usefulskills. The skill list is prominent for the large number of esoteric knowledge skillson it, including such skills as Accounting, Archaeology, Law, Lingidstics, Geology,Zoology, and so forth. Many other skills presented themselves to my fevered mind, butlimitations of space and sanity precluded my putting them all in. Any good game refereeshould be able to determine the effects of skills not included in the game already. Onesuch skill, that I feel should have been included, is Photography. Maybe the secondedition will have it.
One shortcoming which may be made manifest to some readers is the preponderance ofacademic subjects in the skills list. Being a student myself, I have a natural tendencyto see the world in an academic light, and to list the skills I know best as the mostspecialized and subdivided, so that there are separate skills for Psychology andPsychoanalyze but only a single skill for Operate Heavy Machinery. I can partiallyjustify this bias by the fact that most players in the game will be more intellectuallythan physically oriented, and by the fact that the vast majority of Lovecraft's heroeswere also well-educated in the so-called 'higher sciences'.
Since I am no gun nut, I was incompletely prepared to deal with the problem of firearmsin the rules. Everyone I knew gave me a different story on how much damage guns woulddo, how many shots they would fire, etc. The first gun listings done were far too low ondamage given, and the second group were much too high. Finally I sat down with StevePerrin and Sean Summers after Origins '81 and thrashed it out until we all felt that theguns were properly represented. I personally feel that the gun section is one of themore accurate parts of the game, if rather less important in a player's context, sincethe game is set up to penalize those characters relying on firepower rather thanbrainpower.
In trying to make the game itself have the feel of a horror story, I first set up themonsters such that almost any single monster was more than a match for a singlecharacter, and some monsters were even beyond the capabilities of even a well-organizedparty. My motive was not to make the game unplayable or a killer but to cause thescenarios and actions of a single game session to revolve around plans and plots todispose of a single horrific event or being.
While I was working out this part of the game, I read an article in Sorcerer'sApprentice magazine, which explained how to adapt the Cthulhu mythos to the game ofTunnels and Trolls written by Glenn and Phillip Rahman. The article was well-written,but all of it was useless to me (having already progressed past most of the areascovered in the article) except for one part. The article suggested that a newcharacteristic be added in such a campaign which basically would represent Willpower,and that this score gradually decrease as the player progresses in a game until itreaches zero. The authors also said that the failure of a saving throw based on thischaracteristic should result in insanity or fainting. This idea struck me as the perfectway to incorporate a large portion of the Lovecraft feel into the rules.
Originally, I had the Sanity characteristic range from 1-100 at the start of acharacter's creation, and only go down, and that permanently, upon encountering amonster. When it reached zero, the character would go permanently insane. Thisoversimplistic solution proved poor in play. It was changed so that losing varyingamounts of Sanity caused different amounts of problems, and each monster, spell, andmagical book read caused a different amount of Sanity loss. This made for a veryfatalistic or depressing game, as the players watched for their precious Sanity go down,and down, and down... In many ways this matched the stories' mood perfectly, but itoften made for a feeling of hopelessness in a game. The entire crew at Chaosiumevidently bent their efforts to improve on the original system, and the system nowallows for increase of Sanity through various means .(though the tendency is stilldefinitely towards Sanity loss rather than gain). A reasonably complete chart forappropriate forms of insanity is included as well.
The current sanity rules are quite good, I feel, and still give a feeling ofhopelessness to the players at times, though in actual play it is usually possible toovercome the handicaps of having a poor Sanity. The whole concept of Sanity permeatesthe game and makes it what it is. It allows for such things as the case in my owncampaign, where six players stood inside a pentacle trying to summon One Who WalksBetween the Planes. When darkness lowered, and scraping noises were heard, several ofthe characters hid their eyes so that they would not have to see the hideous being. Itis hard to imagine such an event happening in RuneQuest or D&D.
Conclusions
An especially charming aspect of the game is that it is set up to be run in the roaringtwenties. This time era is close enough to our own to allow us to fully understand theculture, motivations, and activities, yet far enough away so that everything thathappened then is covered by a patina of glamor. It is hard for a player to lock hornswith Al Capone or meet a young Albert Einstein. The game can easily be run in a moremodern time period by a clever referee, and most of the information for a modern campaignis more readily available to the players and the referee. In a campaign set in the 1980sthe players will readily know how much a new car costs, or what inventions areavailable.
A Sourcebook for the 1920s is included in the game to provide supplementary informationabout the period including all sorts of interesting information (do you know whatcompany advertised its product as coming from contented cows?) and useful facts, such assteamship costs for passage and the internal layout of Pullman cars.
In the game's present form, it plays much like an adventure mystery, such as the movieRaiders of the Lost Ark. The players rush around frantically trying to find out whatexactly the problem is with which they are faced, trying to cope with it, and trying toget something out of it as well. The game is based on Basic Role-Playing, - a frameworkon which the rest of the rules are hung. The simple, yet elegant rules, of BRP make iteasier to get right into playing the game without having to learn about various pickyspecifics. In fact, it has been my experience that a campaign run in which the playersknow absolutely nothing about the rules except for what is in Basic Role-Playing and howthe skills work is one of the finest campaigns that can be run in Call of Cthulhu.
In writing up this game, I wanted to have a game which both had the overall mood andspecific details of the Cthulhu Mythos. Additionally, I wanted to make an enjoyable andeasily playable game. I think that I have succeeded (though not without help) in both ofthese requirements. Being a player (though not a referee) in a Call of Cthulhu gamerequires perhaps less rules knowledge than any other role-playing game that I know, yetstill gives the player an excellent return in fun, adventure, and chills. The verysubject of the game, along with the setting, encourages roleplaying rather than simplerules-following. If the goal of the campaign is to stop the evil Cthulhu and his minionsfrom destroying the world, a suitably heroic (though horrific) death for a player can betruly edifying for all. I think you'll like the game as much as I do. If (barbarousthought) a person should decide to use the game not as a game in itself, but as aLovecraftian source for monsters, magic, books, etc., for a different game, it workswell for that too. I would have to say it is probably better as a source for RuneQuestthan any other roleplaying game except Worlds of Wonder.Thoughts on Running a Campaign
If you want to run a campaign of Call of Cthulhu, a lot of background work will need tobe done (as in most RPGs). In particular, a network connecting one scenario to anotherwill need to be forged by the referee. In the rulesbook itself, I compare such a networkto a series of layers - as one discovers more, he is led to ever more deep dark secrets.For example, in my campaign, the characters, while investigating a haunted house, wereled to an old ruined church that the former inhabitant of the house (a Cthulhuworshipper) had gone to. At the church, they found out that the current owner of thechurch was trying to perform various unholy acts, and indeed was a powerful sorcerer. Intrying to deal with him, they were led into a nest of sinister foreigners plotting toinfiltrate the government and cause construction of a morbid device that would causeenormous destruction if completed. The players never did get back to exorcising thehaunted house, and it stands there still, waiting for unwary persons.
A series of scenarios will need to be devised by a beginning referee, designed like thescenarios given in Call of Cthulhu. The players can begin with these scenarios as a sortof episodic play, and as the campaign gets going, the players will make friends andenemies have places to go, and things going on. Interesting hints, letters from afar,and highly unusual newspaper accounts about the record-breaking monsters that themoonshine whiskey has conjured up in the obscure backwoods town of Dunwich can all gotowards keeping things happening.
Good horror movies are one great source of scenario ideas. Suitable changes should bemade both to match them up with the Cthulhu Mythos and to change the scenario so thatthe players won't recognize it. For example, the classic Frankenstein redone for thetwenties could give players some rough times. Change the names to protect the innocent:the well known Doctor Von Franken has had recent scientific success in the field oforganic revivification. He has recently written a nearly incoherent letter to aprofessional friend, who is either a player, or who requests the players to go and seewhat is wrong. Evidently something connected with one of his experiments has gone wrong.Not only that, his fiancee is missing...
Popular novels are another good source for scenario ideas. Many of these are also inmovie form, but the books usually give better detail. An advantage here is that someplayers will not have read the book where they may have seen the movie. In the smallvillage of Bethel, New Hampshire (note, Bethel = Salem's Lot) there has been sometrouble. Many villagers have moved out, and others have simply disappeared. Maybe themysterious foreigner, 'Stracker,' (who looks suspiciously like James Mason) knows whatis going on. Maybe he's even trying to stop it? Who bought the old mansion and whyhadn't they fixed it up better?
Probably the finest source of scenarios is Lovecraft himself, and his imitators. Unlessyour players are real Lovecraft fanatics like me, you should be able to find an obscurestory that they won't be familiar with and let them have it. For example, in the storyHorror in the Wax Museum, the neurotic sculptor Rogers and his Karloffian servantOrabona have a little museum in which the Adult's Alcove is a little bit too realistic.In fact, Rogers even claims that not all his sculptures are, strictly speaking,sculptures. Does an intrepid player take his bet that he will not be able to remain anight in the Museum? If he does stay, why do the more morbid monstrosities in theAdult's Alcove seem to move while he is not looking? And what is that noise in thebasement?
I hope this overview of the problems I had with the game, and suggestions on scenarioshelps you to enjoy it. If you like the game, have questions or comments, suggestions oradditions, please feel free to write me care of the Chaosium or this magazine. If youenclose a self addressed stamped envelope, I'll be sure to reply [no longer true, but try the forums here, ed.]. If you don't, I may anyway if your letter is especially flattering/interesting/useful/annoying.
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