Hello everyone!
After talked a little about magic concept in RPGs, I wanted to continue to game reviews/introductions. There are lots of them on the way, like 7th Sea, RuneQuest, Warhammer, Doctor Who, Legend of the Five Rings, Through the Breach etc. I guess I got more than 30 PDFs from publishers, and all of them are exciting!
By the way, I would like to ask you a question: Would you like to read reviews about source/supplement books as well? If you think it's a good idea, I'll try to focus on what I can do. Otherwise, I'll try to introduce as much as different games.
So... Let's get insane!
Lovecraft and Horror
First of all, I have to mention a little about Lovecraft, and his approach to the genre. If you don't know, he had a weird and a hard childhood, lost his father to madness, always interested in mythology and science, and tried to be a astronomer. But he found his way in literature, and after taking some inspiration from famous authors like Edgar Allan Poe, he created his own "inspired" mythology and buried it into his stories. He never tried to create a pantheon, but you could gather pieces from the stories and see the bigger picture.
His approach on horror genre is magnificent! If you're interested in, you can check his critic article called Supernatural Horror in Literature. He defends that the classical horror is more like an adventure which you can easily guess the storyline, and no twist, no surprises and no effects in the reader's mind.
His stories generally called as speculative fiction; which means he uses real life in his fiction, but, he adds some fictional places, and occasions which do not exist. That means, there is no such a thing as "Lovecraft Universe", or "Cthulhu Universe".
BRP in a Nutshell
After mentioning a little about Lovecraft, it's time to get into our intended topic: RPG.
Call of Cthulhu RPG is created by Chaosium Inc. in 1981. Since then, they created and still creating lots of Lovecraftian content to expand what we're given. They created a game mechanics, called Basic Roleplaying (BRP for short), and they made Call of Cthulhu RPG with it. So, I'll talk about the basic mechanics, and basically when you learn Cthulhu, you learn how to play every single game created by BRP.
First of all, there are characteristics (attributes), and we use a certain way to calculate them:
3d6x5: Do this for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Appearance, and Power
(2d6+6)x5: Like rolling 3d6 but taking one of them as 6. Do this for Intelligence, Size and Education
Characteristics names could be vary depending on a game, but this is the basic approach.
You pick yourself a class, an occupation, a culture, or something like that. In Call of Cthulhu RPG, there are occupations depending on era you'll play. There is a book called Investigator Handbook, which can help you to pick from lots of options.
Before choosing your occupation, you better decide on your character's age, because there are characteristics modification depending on your character's age range.
The game refers gamemaster as Keeper of the Arcane Lore, or Keeper for short. And it refers player characters as investigators. Not like a P. I., more like people who wants to investigate weirdness and anomaly they're facing and have passion to learn the truth. That means, your character is not like a random person.
Of course, your character could be a Private Investigator. And actually, it's a popular occupation for a Cthulhu game. When you pick your occupation, you see a calculation which helps you to determine your skill points. For example, if you're an academics, it could be like EDUx4, or if you're an actor, it could be like APPx2 + EDUx2. This is your occupation points. An occupation has 8 skills listed on its description, and you can spend this skill points between them, plus Credit Rating. Credit Rating determines your character's income, and it has a range also given in the occupation's description.
After you spend your points, you are ready to spend your Personal Interest points, which is INTx2. You can spend this to everything except Credit Rating and Cthulhu Mythos skills.
Your HP is (CON+SIZ)/10, MP is 1/5 of your POW, and your Sanity is equal to POW.
There is a LUCK stat, which is another 3d6x5.
Everything else in the game is basically a skill test.
How to Use a Skill
Your characteristics and skills have percentage rate. They're like 15, 60, 27 or something. That shows your character's potential. And when you roll your d100, you determine how complicated a thing you're trying to achieve. Your dice should meet or below the score of your characteristics or skill. That's a regular success. If you hit half of that score, it's hard success. If you roll 001, it's critical success. Higher value of success mostly wins, but it depends on situation.
Here's the most beautiful part: Combat is also a skill test.
And that's all.
My Opinion About The Game
I really love how simple Call of Cthulhu is. All the complications are about the story unfolding, and sanity losing. Call of Cthulhu games are mostly for ones who aren't after high-fantasy-power-playing hypers. It's for people who want to explore and lose themselves in the weirdness and a bigger design beyond mankind's comprehension. But still, if you want to try out a more action version, you can always check Pulp Cthulhu rules. It's also Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, but more action-based.
There are still lots of stuff I haven't mentioned, like magic, cults, Lovecraftian creatures, invoking higher powers, and all of them happens in our real world. Isn't it fantastic?!