Call of Cthulu
 

I've heard about this from place to place in various corners of the internet. As per my tendency to look up every single unfamiliar thing I see on Wikipedia, I've known what Cthulhu is for some time. I have, however, never played the roleplaying game Call of Cthulu, nor do I know anything about it except what has been implied by forum members when it is mentioned.

Can anyone enlighten me on the subject? I'd like to know more about the game, and, if it sounds interested, where I can get started playing it.

Think X-Files. The monster or whatever is killing for XYZ reason and the humans have to figure out where it is and what's going on. They have few weapons, and the shadows hold a lot of secrets. Sometimes the monster attacks one of the people, scarring them for life. Sometimes, you can go a game without any contact with the monster but you have to deal with a person that breaks under pressure.

Basically, people have to deal with the fact that you don't see Cthulhu come up out of the ocean, eat your girlfriend and take a swipe at you, leaving you unconscious and bloodied in the middle of nowhere, and NOT lose what little sanity you have. As you lose sanity, things begin to happen. Hallucinations, mumbling, incoherency, even outright psychosis...

You can't fight it the insanity. You can't stop it. The only thing you can do is punch out Cthulhu or have your ticket punched for you.

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Seriously, I haven't really tried this game. The Lovecraftian type horror is really hard to do. You're set up as a normal human. With normal reactions taken to the extreme. You get scared from the monster enough or lose enough weapons or if you don't have enough INT (which I thought helped you rationalize what the hell was going on or something and helped with will saves) you were basically turning into a babbling pile of goo by mid adventure.

Sounds like fun. Where would one find information about how to play?

IIRC, usually Dungeon and Dragon magazines used to run a few campaigns in their magazine. Chaosium has legal rights to CoC.

Other than that, sell your soul for -5 sanity, and we'll all meet you in the mental ward with a straight jacket.

There's also a game called Trail of Cthulhu with a different ruleset, but the same basic premise.

I used to DM some CoC, and even though I was pretty terrible at it, it was still pretty rad.

Looking at it more, it sounds kind of interesting. Any GMs for this on NPF?

They have few weapons, and the shadows hold a lot of secrets.

Describes it well, but CoC and it's alternates are also very much about "No matter what secrets you know, or weapons you have." I used to play an alternate setting of CoC, known as Cthulthutech, of which now I can only find the forums of (here, btw http://cthulhutech.10.forumer.com/in...4b35b11cbd6ec9)

Basically the harbingers of the return of the old ones are real and publically known forces, with a four way war going on between Humanity, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, the Disciples of Nyarlathotep, and the Migou. Humanity's sci-fi technology is mostly based off of magic-like ultratech that at its core, basically draws from Azathoth, yet nobody quite fully understands that. Y'know, you might just find out that all those power generators running to keep the arcologies online and stave off the Migou orbital bombardment may actually be contributing to awakening a more horrible power.

It's not quite as scary or as covert or helpless as CoC as a setting, except when it is. There's quite a few ways you can play it, depending on which organization you're in if at all, or what front you're fighting on. Between the open wars of attrition, there are multiple shadow wars between factions that are almost wholly unknown to the masses.

It's kinda hard to describe, but I'll give you a gist of what a friend and I did when we tested out the mechanics. I forget a lot of the organization names since its been so long, but bear with me:

Basically my character's a mecha ace for the human navy, stationed on a floating carrier (All navy vessels fly, as the deep ones live in the ocean. A boat would be suicide.) somewhere near modern-day california. It's one of the cushier fronts, since my last tour of duty ended when our arcology in alaska was obliterated by the Migou, and I was horribly maimed. Thanks to medical advancement and some rather advanced psychological councilling, there's no permanent damage, but I've been off duty since then. We've an unscheduled guest from one of intelligence's black ops divisions, and the captain calls me to his ready-room for a briefing. Ops needs to 'borrow' me on one of their missions to bust a cultist hideout, in case they may have heavy support. Intel is sketchy, and I don't like the sound of the mission. Regardless, it'll be my first deployment since the incident, and I'm eager to prove I'm still cut out to be a pilot. Agent tells me I might see some things. Heh, I've seen a lot of things.

During the raid, the cultists have a number of armed vehicles and power armor, so I'm called in to assist the infantry strike team. There's a brief armored-core'esque battle between my urban combat unit and some undisciplined light vehicles and PA, but I've got no trouble taking them out easily. The strike team, the agent whom recruited me, and myself all enter the warehouse. There's an unmarked black obsidian cube with some standard non-elucidarian geometry on it, that the cultists appeared to be trying to activate. Curiously, I zoom in on it, and it locks a green beam of light onto my cockpit. A voice speaks in my head with an eriee tone, but I can't tell what its saying. Images shoot through my mind, and I only realise I've begun to lose my balance when my cockpit AI gives me a gyro stability warning. The agent who snagged me hits it with something I can't make out, and the beam dies. Everything goes back to normal, and my operator asks me if I'm alright, as they're monitoring my vitals throughout the mission. Dammit.

Debriefing time, and the mission was a success, but neither I or the captain truly know what we succeeded in doing. Medical has a fit about my little fritz and they take me back off of active duty. I get shipped home, but before I even have any chance to reflect on what the hell happened, I'm kidnapped by the same guy who 'borrowed' me from the navy.

I've seen too much.

They want me to pilot something for them. They call it an 'engel', but I call it a demon. It's an armored bio-construct designed to masquerade as a mech, based on... Something, and I'm not even sure the scientists know what it is either. The specs make it out to be a far more capable craft than anyone I know is used to, the only downside is they want to stick this thing in my head, and have me 'talk' to it.

All in all, it's not CoC, but it's pretty neat nonetheless. Sorry for pulling your thread in another direction, but I felt it was relevant.

You have an extra t in there, which may be why you didn't come up with their homepage: http://www.cthulhutech.com/

Haha, thanks much Argent. I keep mispelling the old ones, because they have such moonspeak names.

It's been months since I've last seriously messed with the mythos, though.