A Call of Cthulhu Game Starring YOU

[FunGuyfromYuggoth]

Once upon a time, in the Paleozoic Period of role-playing games, there was a super-hero role-playing game by the name of Villains & Vigilantes. In this game, the players were encouraged to generate super-hero, alter-egos of themselves.

Villains & Vigilantes is no more. But we have Call of Cthulhu, a completely different kind of game which thrusts ordinary people into terrifying circumstances.

Have you ever played a character in the Modern setting that was you? Would you consider doing it as an one-off game? Would it feel strange to wear your own mask for a change?

[CAThompson]

Most of my charactors are how i'd like to be. As interesting as it would be to base a PC on myself, if the GM found out then the poor guy would end horribly.

What do you think the average Cthulhu Mythos of one of us is?

[Robbie]

Yeah, back in the dawn of CoC we did play a mini-campaign where we played, pretty much, ourselves. I say 'pretty much' because what we did was ... extend ourselves slightly. For example, one of the guys was an out of work artist; he became an 'in work' artist. Not all of us had transport; in the game we all did, etc.

I have to say that looking back on the episode it was all VERY weird and I wouldn't do it again. Not only were we playing ourselves, we based the game in our own town, around our own jobs, homes etc., and unless you can keep a very firm grip of what, where, when, it can be just too ... uncomfortable.

I should say that we were very much into the 'method acting' school of roleplaying at the time.

[Sacha]

This is not an idea I would encourage as a Keeper. RPGs give us a chance to leave our real world selves behind and take on personas of other characters. Now, every gamer invests a character with an element of their own personality, to a greater or lesser extent, however I would find it very uncomfortable to run myself through any game. This idea can lead to some heavy duty arguments and, in extreme cases, completely dissolve friendships where two characters come into conflict with each other. The veil which separates players from characters should not be swept aside. Personally I see any RPG as the ultimate form of escapism and the idea of playing a 31 year old, myopic civil servant just doesn't do it for me!

[Oilcan]

I couldn't go for this. As a player my chrs have a tendancy to pretty amoral acts such as assasination, arson and (in one instance) perverse graphic sex with prostitutes (although not in CoC I hasten to add). As an alter ego enabling a release of the week's frustrations this is fine. I think I'd feel uncomfortable if it was actually meant to be me personally doing these things though.

[ghostdog]

This AND playing female characters is a no no for me.

[Oilcan]

I only play female characters if I can dress up!!

[Bifforama]

I recall that Palladium's "Beyond the Supernatural" gave the stats for Freddie Kreuger in one of their newsletters and suggested playing a "Nightmare on Elm Street" game where the players wrote themselves up as characters and the GM sic'd Freddie on them.

Never played it, though. Seemed a bit creepy to be hunting down your friends, even if it was a game.

--Biffo

[Bill_Adcock]

My group tends to base their characters loosely off themselves. The investigative group generally consists of an occultist, an archaeologist, and a wigged-out gun nut (he uses the Soldier template, and then adds Craft (Gunsmith) and Demolitions and ballistics-related feats). We get some...interesting...moments (NOTE: This isn't an actual instance in a game, it's just an example of how they'd act):

Archaeologist: "Interesting. I've never seen a mummy in such good condition."
Occultist: "See the tattoo? He was a warrior of Atlantis...their mortuary science was so advanced that their mummies were fooled into believing they were still alive, they were so well preserved, and were notorious for rising from their graves."
Gun Nut: "Should I burn it?"
Archaeologist: "NO!"
Occultist: "YES!"
Gun Nut: "Eh, majority rules." *foom*

This would then lead to an argument about proper dealings with ancient artifacts, during which time the Greater Mummy of an Atlantean sorcerer-king would sneak up on them almost silently, unnoticable in the darkness save for a slight rasp of brittle linen on stone.

[Oilcan]

Sounds like our group. I think everybody invests something of themselves in their characters, otherwise they would be impossible to play - even actors have to find something within them similar to the character they are going to portray in order to bring some life to a role.

This is fine, but there is a difference between all your characters sharing some common traits, and playing yourself completely. Sad to say, the gun nut's lines would probably be mine!

[cj23]

Back in the 80's I ran a Cthulhu game I called 'Cthulhu Here and Now', in which the players got to play themselves. We assigned edu based on formal schooling (years in education), INT was set at a default 14, APP ignored and POW, DEX, CON, were based on points allocated by the players. SIZ led to some amusing comments!

The players were encouraged to create characters with skills mimicking their own supposed levels of competence.

It was a very odd game, but one which ten years on was remebered with great affection. Some players became genuinely disturbed, as the game was set in our reality and featured the deaths of 'real' people, and supernatural evil imposed on a setting which was in every way real. In these days where modern horror games like Vampire are much more common, it would probably feel much less disturbing, but at the time it certainly jarred the players - particularly as th eplot was constructed around real world newspaper aticles, folklore and events, so that after a while the player group casually looking things up found references to to things their character had read - and reality and fantasy started to blur...

It's not for everyone, but it may amuse some!

cj x

[delrio]

Have you ever played a character in the Modern setting that was you? Would you consider doing it as an one-off game? Would it feel strange to wear your own mask for a change?

Every gaming group should do this once, to let people get it out of their systems. My gaming group did it a couple of times, many years ago when we first started gaming, and nobody has called for a reprise. (Although you could argue that maybe that's because our stats have all gone down so much).

Del Rio

[Lord_Summerisle]

One of my players decided to create ME as a character - he seemed to lose interest though and just kept the name. That was a pity, cos if it had really been me he'd have got all the breaks, never failed a SAN roll, every shot he fired would've been a fatal hit and he'd have won the lottery and slept with Kim Basinger

[ossadagowah]

I often play V and V with my buddies, but we almost never play ourselves during that time. For starters, most of us have things like ulcers, bad backs, bad vision, etc. We're ordinary people and thus not really well-equipped for superheroing. Also, I'm a pacifist.

So we tend to play different characters.

[ThothAmon]

HPL and Bloch wrote each other into Mythos tales. A few Chaosium publications have thinly-disguised real-worl people appearing as NPCs.

Seems fitting that PCs could be based on real-world people. If it works for you then why not?