Setting and Game Overview - LunarNeil/Call-of-Cthulhu-Campaign GitHub Wiki

Call of Cthulhu is a game of dark mysteries, corruptive temptations, and unspeakable horror. Players enter this world unwillingly, pulled by forces beyond their control or sought by monsters unimaginable, and take command of an Investigator seeking to end the madness... one way or another. You will encounter sanity-blasting entities, monsters, and insane cultists. Within strange and forgotten tomes of lore you discover secrets that man was not meant to know. You and your companions may well decide the fate of the world, if you can keep your grip on reality long enough.

##The Setting Call of Cthulhu is based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft and the writers he was inspired by, and inspired through his own writings. His literature dwelled upon man's inability to grapple with the true terrible nature of reality, and what happened when real monsters crossed the path of mere mortals, often with disastrous consequences. Much of this work is referred to as "The Cthulhu Mythos," and the term "Mythos" often refers to the kinds of horrible creatures and terrible situations in these books.

Since Lovecraft's work has since entered public domain, feel free to make yourself a nice cup of coco and read yourself some spine-tingling examples of his work in the dark, quiet hours of the morning. You can find all of his works online for free, and it can help you understand what you're getting into!

##Players and Game Masters The players play the role of Investigators, those too brave and foolish to run and hide when confronted with terrors from beyond human understanding. The game master is the Keeper, who holds tight the secrets of the arcane and eldritch. Together they unravel a story, working as a team to advance the plot towards an exciting conclusion and opposed by the Mythos creatures and cultists that seek to end the world as we know it.

Investigators can come from any walk of life, but it helps if they have a strong reason not to turn and run at the first sight of paranormal horror. The stronger their motivation the more sensible it is that they continue working with their allies, continue fighting against the horror, and don't just kill themselves to end it now.

The Investigators are usually normal people with a dark secret, an unfortunate relative, or astoundingly bad luck. They can be a Pinkerton Special Agent sent to investigate some trouble, a local townie who has kept their head down until things got just too weird to ignore, a wealthy heir to a strange estate... it is up to the player to decide what kind of Investigator they want to play.

Doctor Frankenstein and Doctor Faustus, two scholars who sought knowledge not meant for men, are good examples of the kind of Investigators who get swept up in Mythos affairs through their own hubris. Indiana Jones is a good example of an accidental Investigator, never expecting the legends to be real.

The character sheets you use to make your characters will help guide you towards a developed Investigator with some good reasons to stick around. Remember, normal people don't go looking for unspeakable horrors. Why do you? Why aren't you normal?

Keepers are the Game Master in Call of Cthulhu, the Keeper of Arcane Lore. Keepers design the campaign and manage the hard work of keeping the narrative exciting, often with the use of a scenario document that provides them with volumes of characters, environments, and possible plots for the players to uncover. They also fulfill the role of referee, fairly arbitrating a contest of wills when the Investigators want to challenge the environment or the dark creatures of this dark world.

The operative phrase here is "fairly arbitrate," since it is not the goal of the Keeper to destroy the Investigators on behalf of the eldritch abominations, nor is it their responsibility to save the players from their own failures. The world of the Cthulhu mythos is horrific and deadly, and sometimes the most a simple man can hope for is to live just long enough to die a hero instead of a victim, and for the Keeper to push too hard for either side would be to rob the Investigators of the nobility of that sacrifice, or to rob the players of challenge they sought.

Keepers will do their best to help players get the most out of their game, but they can't pull punches or fudge the dice to help them. Death isn't the worst thing in Call of Cthulhu, since it is only through death that anyone can escape the chaos that lurks in forgotten corners of the world. What they can do is try to help you keep having fun. If you're not having fun just playing the game, without the chance of killing Cthulhu himself, talk to the Keeper and see what can be done to make the game itself worth the price of your sanity.

##Skill Based Gameplay Skill based Gameplay is gameplay that requires players to use their own intelligence to gather information about the game world and make decisions to survive and succeed at both planned and random encounters. This is a game for the players, not for the Investigators!

You don't roll a die to determine if your Investigator finds and open a secret door, you gather information by asking questions and using your personal smarts to make choices to test the situation to discover the door. Then you make choices about how your Investigator can open the door. Investigators don't have talents to remove interesting experiences from the game, the talents of the Investigator are designed to help you as a player invest in your first and foremost tool (your character) so that it becomes a better tool when you know how to use it.

When the Investigators encounter a character they need to convince to let them into a Library, Keepers don't just judge the players on arbitrary and capricious standards. The character is a puzzle like any other. He has needs, traits, and desires that investigation (i.e. talking, to him, other people, or context clues) can discover. Then the players make choices about how to handle the situation - choices that if the investigation is done properly they will have a good idea about the results. Keepers present these choices explicitly to the players.

When you encounter a monster, players use their own skill to try to avoid being surprised by making choices about how you travel through the ruin, how you use your light sources, and your marching order. If you discover the monster before it discovers you, you make an effort to avoid it safely. All of these things are choices that the players are making, and making good choices is representative of their skill.

##Conflicts and Consequences Call of Cthulhu is a game that pits average people against incomprehensibly ancient cosmic horrors with the power of ancient pagan gods, so it is entirely reasonable to assume that you are doomed from the outset. In all likelihood, you are. The goal is not to conquer the kingdom, slay the shoggoth and marry the princess... the goal is often to insure the survival of the human species, and maybe to survive yourself. Ending up a madman in the asylum is a small price to pay for the continued existence of life on Planet Earth.

If you suddenly feel the urge to run in terror at every bump or gurgle you hear in the darkness, you're right! Running away is always the smartest thing to do. Always! But sometimes you can't get away, or getting away means sacrificing an ally. Sometimes you'll have to do just that, and not even just to save your own hide. What is the life of one Investigator when the stakes are the survival of everyone, everywhere?

##Sanity The last thing to consider is your own sanity. Sanity is a major problem in Call of Cthulhu, as madness resulting from exposure to Mythos threats and situations are a major theme in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and a hallmark of the horror genre. It isn't a question of if your character will suffer Sanity loss, but a matter of how much and how often. This will be an important element of roleplay, and situations to avoid Sanity loss through smart roleplaying are much more common than situations that force you to fight monsters or avoid physical injury.

You also need to contend with the very human reactions to violence, death, injury and loss. Humans are emotionally fragile creatures unsuited to the oppressive atmosphere of danger and helplessness that Mythos threats inspire, so the longer you fight the harder you'll have to struggle to keep your grip on sanity.

Sanity loss isn't just "going bonkers" and hearing voices. When trying to roleplay Sanity loss, remember that a deterioration of mental health has many features. Sanity loss is also loss of empathy, loss of hope, increasing distance from friends and family, an inability to cope with problems, and a trend towards violence and self harm. This isn't to make you less excited about roleplaying the effects of encountering horrible creatures, just some ideas to help you think about when trying to visualize the kind of effect this would have on your Investigator when the time comes.

One of the best examples of sanity loss can be seen in beginning of Terminator 2. In the previous movie, Sarah Connor was a normal young woman. She worked as a waitress, she liked to wear pink, had terrible 1980's hair and no real mission in life. But after the traumatic events of the first movie, the extended period of travel between Terminator 1 and 2, and the incarceration at the mental facility at the beginning of Terminator 2, Sarah had become a bitter, withdrawn, terrified, panic-prone killer that seemed both emotionally dead and incapable of feeling hope. All she had to fight was an unstoppable killing machine wrapped in human flesh that had come from the future to murder her before she can give birth to the savior of the apocalypse... you may not be so lucky.