Haloween Fright Night Post # 2

Friday Night Frights: Pt 2: Call of Cathulu.

Good evening Boils and ghouls and welcome to another Rocktober episode of Fright day, where we use the Halloween excuse to look at Horror in Role Playing-Or just Horrible Role playing!
HA, that never gets old!

Tonight we take a look at the enduring legacy of Call of Cathulu and the general fascination with the tentacle lord.

As I have said before, I am the rare Geek who is not a fan of Ol' Squid face, but the impact the Writings of Mr Lovecraft have had on Role Playing and media in general can not be overlooked. I often wonder as I stare at the Super cute Stuffed Cathulu if Mr Lovecraft had any idea the effect his writing would have on the World?

Not only has Cthulhu graced several games, movies, books, toys,television shows but he has influenced media in all it's forums. Hellboy?=Cthulhu. Japanese tentacle Anime? =Cathulu. The Davy Jones character from that Pirate movie?=Cthulhu. Green Ronin Games" Free Port"=Cathulu. That’s just a sampling of the things the dark elder god has graced over the years.'

Lets focus though on the actual game. The Plot of an average Call of Cthulhu game is something like this. Generate character, character investigates weird happenings,character goes insane.

The game has undergone several generations and changed ownership a few times and birthed several games such as Delta Green and something called Cathulutech, there is even a Cthulhu punk movement?

This is what the web has to say about the product as copied from Wikipedia.
 

For those grounded in the RPG tradition, the very first release of Call of Cthulhu created a brand new framework for table-top gaming. Rather than the traditional format established by Dungeons & Dragons, which often involved the characters wandering through caves or tunnels and fighting different types of monsters, Sandy Petersen introduced the concept of the Onion Skin: Interlocking layers of information and nested clues that lead the Player Characters from seemingly minor investigations into a missing person to discovering mind-numbingly awful, global conspiracies to destroy the world. Unlike its predecessor games, CoC assumed that most investigators would not survive, alive or sane, and that the only safe way to deal with the vast majority of nasty things described in the rule books was to run away. A well-run CoC campaign should engender a sense of foreboding and inevitable doom in its players. The style and setting of the game, in a relatively modern time period, created an emphasis on real-life settings, character research, and thinking one's way around trouble.
The first book of Call of Cthulhu adventures was Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. In this work, the characters come upon a secret society's foul plot to destroy mankind, and pursue it first near to home and then in a series of exotic locations. This template was to be followed in many subsequent campaigns, including Fungi from Yuggoth (later known as Curse of Cthulhu and Day of the Beast), Spawn of Azathoth, and possibly the most highly acclaimed, Masks of Nyarlathotep.[4] Many of these seem closer in tone to the pulp adventures of Indiana Jones than H. P. Lovecraft, but they are nonetheless beloved by many gamers.
Shadows of Yog-Sothoth is important not only because it represents the first published addition to the boxed first edition of Call of Cthulhu, but because its format defined a new way of approaching a campaign of linked RPG scenarios involving actual clues for the would-be detectives amongst the players to follow and link in order to uncover the dastardly plots afoot. Its format has been used by every other campaign-length Call of Cthulhu publication. The standard of CoC scenarios was well received by independent reviewers. The Asylum and Other Tales, a series of stand alone articles released in 1983, rated an overall 9/10 in Issue 47 of White Dwarf magazine.[5]

The standard of the included 'clue' material varies from scenario to scenario, but reached its zenith in the original boxed versions of the Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express campaigns. Inside these one could find matchbooks and business cards apparently defaced by non-player characters, newspaper cuttings and (in the case of Orient Express) period passports to which players could attach their photographs, bringing a Live Action Role Playing feel to a tabletop game. Indeed, during the period that these supplements were produced, third party campaign publishers strove to emulate the quality of the additional materials, often offering separately-priced 'deluxe' clue packages for their campaigns.

Additional milieu were provided by Chaosium with the release of Dreamlands, a boxed supplement containing additional rules needed for playing within the Lovecraft Dreamlands, a large map and a scenario booklet, and Cthulhu By Gaslight, another boxed set which moved the action from the 1920s to the 1890s.

Now while we can talk about the Horrible Horror of the unknown and how to run a successful game of this genera, what truly intrigues me is how Cthulhu public domain and why we are so fascinated by it that we make Stuffed Animals and Breakfast cereals with him on it? (ok I may have made that part up)

Again let us turn to the font of all wisdom, Wikipedia to explore the insidious way Squid boy has been licensed over the years.

1: Chaosium has licensed other publishers to create supplements using their rule system, notably including Delta Green by Pagan Publishing. Other licensees have included Miskatonic River Press, Theater of the Mind Enterprises, Triad Entertainment, Games Workshop,[7] Fantasy Flight Games, RAFM, Grenadier Models Inc. and Yog-Sothoth.com. These supplements may be set in different time frames or even different game universes from the original game

2:
Robert M. Price described, in his essay "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos," two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. The first stage, termed the "Cthulhu Mythos proper" by Price, was formulated during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance. The second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecraft's stories after his death,[4] attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos.[5]

And if you want a COMPLETE LIST ? of everything those Tentacle have Touched. Try this link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos_in_popular_culture

Now as the full moon of October drifts over the Ocean and the white owl that lives in my Attic begins his nightly hunt, I leave you with this perplexing question. Just how did Cathulu become public domain? Because I cant find a actual answer, and if that is not intriguing enough there is always this to think on tonight as well.

What if the best way to invade the world was to make a joke of yourself? I mean it's hard to take the threat of a elder god of chaos and destruction seriously if you are looking at a super cute Stuffed Animal in his image, right?

And maybe that’s exactly what Cthulhu wants?

Unpleasant Dreams