woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (09/29/83)
The following article is being posted by me, but I didn't write it. The person
who did write it can be reached easily by mail from my machine, but does
not have access to the net. Therefore, send any responses/flames to me
and I guarantee to pass them on to Bill uncensored. I have also been mailing
him a lot of the recent discussion about bad GM's and NPC's because I thought
he would be interested. This article is his response. Any responses to this
that are posted to the net will also be mailed to him.
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Enough talk about D&D. I am sick of D&D since it happens to be one of the
WORST FRP games around and only reason why most people play D&D is because
of name recognition. FRP's have become synomonous with D&D much like
tissue paper has been linked to Kleenex. There are much better systems
than D&D, but before I go too far in tearing apart D&D, let me introduce
my real subject. The real purpose of this is to ask for more articles
on different role-playing systems. Whether they be reviews, additions,
or whatever, I want people to know that there is more to role-playing
than D&D. To that effect, the rest of this article is about fairly new
FRP entitled Call of Cthulhu, published by the Chaosium.
Call of Cthulhu is based upon many of the works by H. P. Lovecraft, one
of the 20th century's best macabre/horror fiction writers. The game
is set on earth in the 1920's, although you could set it in virtually any
semi-modern time, but it supposes the Lovecraftian universe where eons
ago the earth was inhabited by extremely powerful, star-faring races.
Most of these alien creatures died off before man evolved, but some have
survived on earth, generally being trapped somewhere. In this universe
there are currently many cults that worship these aliens, with most of
the cults worshipping Cthulhu, one of the Great Old Ones.
The players run characters called investigators, who investigate
strange occult-like phenomena that are usually caused by these
alien creatures. The alien creatures are not very nice and are quite
powerful. Generaly the creatures are trying to either take over or
destroy at least the earth, if not the entire universe. And it is
generally up to the investigators to save the earth, or at least the
human race, from utter anhiliation. (No more of this random adventuring,
which is either robbery, or saving the princess from her kidnappers.)
The game has some tremendous advantages for everyone involved. First,
since the setting is in 20th Century earth, no world creation is needed,
and everybody knows the culture, assuming the investigators are American
or European. No more of the GM telling the characters that such and such
is against local custom. This fact also allows the GM to concentrate
on designing adventures not designing worlds. All that is needed for
excellent background of the gaming world is a decent library.
Secondly, the creatures that are encountered in Call of Cthulhu
are quite fantastic, and demented in origin, even more than the standard
D&D monsters. This coupled with a society that everyone knows, and currently
lives in, makes the monsters in Call of Cthulhu utterly horrible to
encounter. (I mean a knight fighting a dragon is so passe, whereas a
hardened private investigator battling a Shogoth, armed with his 38
caliber revolver is much more thrilling, at least to me.) Also, the
investigators are generally quite well armed, with such weapons as
pistols, rifles, shotguns, dynamite, machine guns, and even a 75
mm howitzer if they can find and afford one. A typical investigator
could easily survive a standard D&D adventure, In Call of Cthulhu, he
needs as much luck as he can get.
Another advantage to the game, or at least I think so, is that the
characters must do some real investigative work. It's not the
standard, well I wonder what's down in the dungeon this time, adventure.
To find out what's going on, the characters must do a significant amount
of research. Although some people have the attitude that this is boring,
I think it helps the players to get more involved in the adventure,
since they must piece the entire thing from many clues.
One of the most interesting features of the game is the concept of
Sanity. Since the investigators are just "normal" humans, seeing
and reading about these horrorific monstrosities, occasionally they
go insane. They may only be temporaily insane, insane until cured
by psycology, or uncurably insane, where the GM takes over the actions
of that character. The more the investigator knows about the
Cthulhu Mythos, the closer to insanity he slips.
A word of caution. A Call of Cthulhu campaign can be quite destructive.
Not only will the players have their characters dying quite often,
but if the investigators don't succeed in stopping various summonings,
and other rites, the world could be quite easily dominated by these
beings, rendering humans at best slaves, and at worst destroying
humanity.
That is enough for now. Any questions, comments, etc. should be sent to
hao!woods (Greg Woods, address below and in header of this article).
Please be sure they are clearly marked as intended for me, so he can forward
them.
Bill Faulkner
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P.S. From hao!woods: I occasionally play FRP games, but I am only a mild
case, not a hardcore like my friend Bill! :-)
--
GREG
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!brl-bmd | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!kpno}
!hao!woods