The Call of Cthulhu RPG
The Call of Cthulhu RPG is a venerable mainstay of the roleplaying game scene. The game has always been published by Chaosium, and the original rules were written by Sandy Petersen. If you're looking for a horror fiction roleplaying game based on the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, then Call of Cthulhu is the granddaddy of those games.
The world of Call of Cthulhu is similar to our Earth, but with a Lovecraftian horror spin that makes for more interesting role-playing. In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” HP Lovecraft suggests that "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." That is the founding principle of the weird world of HP Lovecraft and the world that the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game takes place in.
The
Call of Cthulhu RPG takes place across many different eras, but it's
usually set during the 1920s, which was also the setting of most of
Lovecraft's own stories. Other game eras include the 1890's, which are
the focus of the Gaslight supplements, and modern day, which is the
focus of Delta Green and Cthulhu Now. Using HP Lovecraft’s
writings as a foundation for your RPG also leads to players travelling to
places beyond our physical realm, such as the Dreamlands, which are
usually accessed during character’s dreams.
Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game
Players in Call of Cthulhu take on the identities of everyday characters, usually detectives, artists, soldiers, criminals, journalists, professors, and other regular people who get drawn into the mysteries of the unknown. These characters are similar to the investigators and characters in Arham Horror.
Since so much of Lovecraftian horror takes place in the minds of human characters, a big part of the game is the maintenance of Sanity Points. Lovecraft’s heroes are faced with horrors so great, their sanity is at stake. That’s why Call of Cthulhu includes a way of figuring out the state of a character's mental health. If you were to walk into a room and bump into Shub Niggurath, you might lose some sanity yourself. So do the regular Joes in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.
Like in Lovecraft’s fiction, humanity is doomed in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Player characters often die in the worst ways, absorbed into a primordial ooze or reduced to a blithering idiot by the impossibility of their circumstances. Unlike most other RPGs, it isn’t safe to assume that your human character will eventually be the hero and save the day.
Chaosium’s Basic Role-Playing system is the rules basis for Call of Cthulhu. The goal is to maintain your character’s health and sanity and perform skills that make you stronger and smarter. You won’t find any leveling system in Call of Cthulhu; instead, characters improve their skills by practicing them.
Call of Cthulhu RPG PDF
Like everything these days, Call of Cthulhu is often pirated through illegal torrent sites and other distributors. The fact is that illegal downloads are awful, and if you call yourself an RPG fan or a fan of HP Lovecraft’s work, you’re only really hurting yourself by not respecting the game’s copyright and shelling out the $15 or $20 for the basic game book and other materials.
Downloading or torrenting illegal PDF files and other versions of game materials takes money out of the pockets of game developers, which cuts into the interest for the creation of more Call of Cthulhu materials and could force Chaosium to abandon the project altogether. If you want to keep playing Call of Cthulhu, respect the artists whose work makes up the materials and pay for it.
Call of Cthulhu RPG Download
Where can I do that? Glad you asked. Check out this link to look into all the cool Chaosium Call of Cthulhu RPG gear you could ever need to get a game started. Drive Thru RPG provides legal downloads of gaming materials at a cost much lower than you’d pay to buy the book at your local book or gaming store.
Listed above at that link are the Call of Cthulhu are the 2nd Edition of the game rules (listed right now for less than $15), character creation software that makes building a new Cthulhu investigator really easy (for under $30), and countless adventure books and supplemental materials, most of which you can download for less than $8.
Chaosium makes these materials easy to find, easy to download, and easy to afford. Downloading an RPG illegally cuts you out of the consumer cycle, and takes away your right to complain about game rules or suggest changes to the game the next time around. Don’t be a jerk— get the materials from a legitimate source.
Call of Cthulhu Character Sheets
Check out this Call of Cthulhu character sheet available in PDF form for more information on the way a game of Call of Cthulhu RPG runs. This extensive character sheet makes all the necessary information available for a player in one easy to read location.
Call of Cthulhu RPG Review
What works about Call of Cthulhu is easy to see: the game faithfully recreates the universe of HP Lovecraft. It also has gone through 20 years of playtesting, and contains loads of unique monsters, spells, and gaming adventures. Chaosium provides enough support for the game to keep it up to date and fun, and the basic RPG mechanics make it easy to play and include people new to RPGing. The rules are easy to learn and the game is easy to run.
Call of Cthulhu Adventures
These three adventures are the most-famous and well-respected adventures for Call of Cthulhu: Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Realm of Shadows, and Beyond the Mountains of Madness.
Masks of Nyarlathotep
Masks of Nyarlathotep is a globe-trotting campaign composed of several different adventures that can be completed in any order. It's one of the most successful and popular campaigns ever published for the game. The supplement was originally released in 1994, but Masks of Nyarlathotep has been published in five different editions since then. The original boxed set version of Masks of Nyarlathotep is rare and expensive, and even if you can find a copy on eBay, it's going to cost a good bit of money--at least $100 in collectible condition.
The Realm of Shadows
Set in 1940, with Europe burning from world wars, Pagan Publishing's The Realm of Shadows finds Dr. Franklin Quigley dealing with an insane wife and the disappearance of his deformed young daughter. Players of The Realm of Shadows are charged with finding the daughter and wife before it’s too late. The Realm of Shadows is an engaging adventure for RPG fans who like to flex their intellect, involving lots of interaction with both player and non-player characters.
Beyond the Mountains of Madness
This is by far the largest single adventure created by Chaosium for Call of Cthulhu. This is an epic adventure based on the Starkweather-Moore Expedition to Antarctica in 1933-34. This is a long adventure sometimes requiring multiple gaming sessions that takes characters from New York to the City of the Elder Things. Lots of cool gameplay involving Antarctica, polar exploration, and intrigue. Even though the supplement is over 400 pages long, this is NOT a campaign, but a single adventure that will take several sessions to play.
Chaosium has created a humdinger of an RPG with Call of Cthulhu. Extensive player testing, a simple gaming mechanism that requires little or no tweaking from one adventure to the next, and a game based on such a rich collection of fiction was bound to be a hit. If you love the stories of HP Lovecraft, enjoy contemporary gaming, are a fan of horror fiction, or just want to try a new RPG, give Call of Cthulhu a shot.