In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
And Off We Go Into Eldritch Horror!
The fact that I have been ‘volunteered’ into looking after a relative’s aging dog while they attend daily chemotherapy has meant that I have been forced to finally sit down and do some reading!
With all sort of other more hands on hobby activities going on over the years I have kinda got out of picking up a book and just quietly reading for relaxation. So my current ‘predicament’ of being locked into spending the morning and afternoon at my relatives house has provided an eccentric opportunity to both get back into reading and starting the first of my Lovecraft RPG games.
The Call of Cthulhu Choose Your Own Adventure
My plan is to work my way up the various levels of solo RPG game sophistication starting with the simplest - a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ (CYOA) style of book.
This is the most accessible way to get into solo play as - I would guess - that the many of us who grew up in the 1970s and early 80s probably tried out one of the incredibly popular Fighting Fantasy books which were a bit of a phenomenon among school kids of the time. So, in effect, I am not starting without at least some familiarity to how these books work…
Read a passage then choose from one of several options which lead you to another short part of the story on a different page.
Familiar Ground, In More Than One Way
Now while being acquainted with this game system is big plus when starting out on my adventure into solo role playing, and choosing a theme or genre of adventure - in my case Lovecraftian Mythos based - also helps me immerse myself, I do have one little niggle…
The first book in this series of CYOA books based on the universe created by H. P. Lovecraft is entitled ‘Call of Cthulhu’ and is - obviously - set on the tale of the same name penned by Lovecraft. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to get into Lovecraftian horror RPGs this *is* a good place to start, as it is a wonderful introduction and scene setter of the Mythos lore which made Lovecraft so famous (or infamous)…BUT…
If you have began your journey into the Mythos by first reading teh collected works of Lovecraft then you will be treading on familiar ground.
This *perhaps* take away a little from the sense of mystique about where this adventure is going as - at least at the beginning - the game mirrors cloaked the events in Lovecraft’s book of the same name.
But How Will The Game Unfold?
Now, I have *just* started the adventure book, and while the introductory passages are nothing new to me (having read ‘Call of Cthulhu’) I do wonder - and hope - that there may be some twists and turns ahead of me.
In particular, I am very interested to find out how the author of the game will be introducing a SANITY mechanism into this RPG…
Sanity is central to the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos because it represents humanity's fragile shield against an indifferent, hostile, and incomprehensible universe.
As an attribute, sanity as a measurable player characteristic is an often used gauge as to how your character is progressing, succeeding or failing in their adventure. You will see this mechanism appear again and again is numerous Lovecraft based role playing systems.
As this book is ‘RPG lite (very light in fact) I imagine that how a sanity mechanism is integrated into this book will be in a very simple form, we shall see when I get more into this book, which I will talk about in Part 2 of this post.
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