What is a Call of Cthulhu game? Like what is the structure or nature of it? Maybe a better question is what do people expect of it? It must be a few things because there is Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu by Gaslight, ACHTUNG! Cthulhu, Delta Green, Cthulhu Dark etc.
Its on my mind because I've become a player in a steady game of classic CoC, so it has started to occupy my mind about what the game is.
By my count, a CoC game could be a(n)...
1 | Investigation
2 | Procedural
3 | X-files / Fringe case
4 | Urban "crawl"
5 | 1920's D&D
6 | Eldritch story arc
By the CoC Player's Handbook, a CoC game structure is supported I think by two sections. The first is on page 148 which outlines investigative procedures:
1 | Gather information
2 | Talk to and/or watch those involved
3 | Determine a motive or purpose
4 | Make a plan
5 | Carry out the plan
Chapter 6 of the book also lists several organizations that investigators could be apart of: Warth's Circus of Wonders, employees of Strange but True! News, The South 13th, SKT Research, Novem Angelus. Each of these organizations has a slightly different setup (circus, police, a society of rich people) which could influence game structure.
A nice CoC magazine (from the one issue I have read), Bayt al Azif, has an article on what is involved in a CoC game:
The themes that are important to take away from these stories forCthulhu RPG play include:
- Discovering the secret “true” history of the world
- The horrific supernatural that is hidden around us
- Good preparation and research can help survive encounters with those supernatural things
- The confrontation of the mind with some awful truths can be too much for their sanity to take
- Sometimes people die or are driven insane by these truths
A third source, Stealing Cthulhu, which uses Cthulhu Dark as a rules-light system, has a few things to say about what an eldritch game is:
- So far, we have copied Lovecraft’s stories. But we’re not writing stories. We’re playing games: games in which Investigators uncover mysteries.
- In converting Lovecraft’s stories into investigative scenarios it’s easy to think of crime investigations. Avoid this.
- Specifically, avoid stealing elements from detective stories: for example, bodies, murders and evidence.
- In particular, avoid making humans responsible for the horror. These are tales of cosmic horror, not human plots. They concern hyperintelligent beings, not evil villains.
- Finally, you need not begin scenarios with explicit mysteries, as detective stories do.2 There need not be a crime, death or mysterious disappearance. Although something must draw the Investigators’ attention, it need not be an definite puzzle.
- You can simply begin with strangeness.
A couple of notes in Stealing Cthulhu by Hite and others provide counter-examples to some of the above, by noting, for example, in the stories Call of Cthulhu and Dreams in the Witchhouse- the protagonists put together clues that lead them to the end. Also, as to not using "evil villains", the notes remind the reader of several classic Lovecraft stories that do use such villians: The Case of Charlie Dexter Ward, The Thing on the Door Step, Cool Air, The Horror at Red Hook, & The Dunwich Horror.
So, am I just playing the wrong game if I am pushing for investigations?
Feel the answer is still "no" because CoC is a game, like D&D, that can range over a landscape of play styles or modes. No reason a very strict investigation might end up with a complex chase or race against time in the next session. But I think it still comes down, for me, to maximizing my choices when playing an RPG. I want my player-decisions, realized in-game via my character-avatar, to matter. And an investigation structure in CoC allows just that and provides an in-game justification of risking life and limb when "realistically" any person who stop while they were ahead (and not a head in a jar).
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