Call of Cthulhu entered the roleplaying world in 1981, during the golden age of dungeon crawling.  In the same year, TSR released the module entitled In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (A4), and The Keep of the Borderlands (B2) had already thrilled fledgling adventurers for two years. While Chaosium’s new creation unleashed the potent combination of investigation and horror, a few early adventures leaned on established conceits born in fantasy roleplaying, including the dungeon crawl. The 40th anniversary of the game brings us the reprinting of the second-edition core rulebook, as well as a collection of early game supplements, including The Asylum & Other Tales and the Shadows of Yog Sothoth campaign. Between the

Read on…Crawl of Cthulhu – Introduction

Whether deep in dungeons, running in dystopian mega-cities, or solving cult murders, every single roleplaying game employs a simple core procedure:  The GM provides a situation. The characters take an action (dice may be rolled or not) The GM describes the results This procedural cycle continues until the scene, session, or campaign concludes. In D&D, 5th edition, the game and this action cycle rest on the Three Pillars, which are defined by the designers as roleplaying, combat, and exploration. Through each cycle, a Dungeon Master and their players rely upon the three driving pillars to fuel their meaningful decisions. Since its inception, D&D has leaned heavily upon combat and roleplaying to direct gameplay, but many

Read on…The Terrible Triad (or Cthulhu’s Three Pillars)

Seasoned gamer looking to finally try out Call of Cthulhu? Played a couple scenarios and want to try running adventures yourself? Trying to decide on the highest yield products to bring this classic investigative-horror game to your table? Ready to jump feet first into Masks of Nyarlathotep as a first-time Keeper? The gaming community provides a wealth of answers to these questions, and we want to briefly weigh-in, in and offer our personal suggestions we provide to folks we run games for at conventions, who ask “what should I buy now?” First, you don’t have to buy anything to play some outstanding Call of Cthulhu modules. Our first two recommendations are the Quickstart Rules and

Read on…Want to Run Call of Cthulhu – What do I Buy?

While wasting time on social media recently, we came across a comment deriding gamemasters for complaining about how hard their job is. We certainly believe running a game requires a great deal of time, effort, and organization, which ultimately culminates at the table. Whether running a published campaign or just-in-time homebrew, you expect some payoff during the session. How does a gamemaster measure that return? We tend to look for player engagement. If a player shows up, plays, and wants to play again, then we feel satisfied at the end of the day. This relationship with engagement, though, remains complicated and requires examination so that gamemasters set reasonable expectations for themselves and their players.  Before

Read on…In Search of Player Engagement