Sandy Petersen's Call of Cthulhu RPG was released in 1981. My friend and I attended GenCon that year at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside and I recall Call of Cthulhu (CoC) being my big purchase that year. I have acquired many games in my 40 years in the hobby, only a few stand out as "major" purchases - those that have had a profound affect on my experience with the hobby. CoC is one such game. The fantasy genre was my preference for role-playing with an emphasis on dungeon delving. I had experimented with a few games outside the fantasy genre, including Boot Hill and Gama World, Traveler and a Star Trek game all come to mind, but nothing seemed to satisfy my desire for adventure like White Box had. CoC was a totally new experience for me and would forever change my way of playing an RPG.
Player Characters in CoC are called "Investigators", because that's what they do. They aren't "Fighting Men" or "Magic Users". They ask questions, explore and discover. They sometimes fight, but often that is a fatal choice, ordinary people having little chance against the horrific monstrosities which can be encountered in a CoC game. Contact with such other-worldly beings can result in sanity loss even if the PCs physically survive. So playing at this weird 1920s investigator game I started to ask questions I thought my character should ask (rather than hitting everything with my sword). The referee (Keeper in CoC terms) probably talked in different voices for the NPCs and so somehow I got the idea that my character might have a different voice than the one I usually conversed with. The gun in my pocket tended to stay there and I talked my way through most encounters, all the while collecting information and uncovering plots. A camera often came in more handy than a weapon as it could provide proof to authorities that something unusual was afoot.
Interest in the game led to my exploring its source inspiration, the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and eventually others in the horror genre. Comics focused on weird tales had always been a favorite and horror movies I found thrilling, but converting those interests into gaming had not really occurred to me until Mr. Petersen showed us the way. CoC began to influence my other RPG play through incorporation of more role-playing elements and some horror themes. Our games got weirder in general after CoC.
Eventually I discovered that CoC could be taken outside the 1920s and I began running a game set in Outremer during the crusades for my friends. The dark ages seemed to add to the sense of mystery and wonder as the players explored exotic locales and uncovered ancient secrets. The mythos can really be used in any era from past, present and into the future depending on the preferred setting and lends itself well to alternative explanations for all sorts of events through the ages. Anything from the Fall of Rome to the Fukushima reactor disaster can be connected to mythos activity by an imaginative Keeper. And because the threat is always there, it can be fun to play out some scenarios lacking in anything really weird and unusual. Such sessions can lend verisimilitude to the game in general.
The game is now enjoying renewed popularity with the publication last year of the 7th Edition rules. The game design, originally based on the Basic Role Playing engine, has proven very robust and the 7th Edition remains essentially the same game it has always been, although I think there are some nice additions (and the books themselves are simply gorgeous). The d100 system is intuitive and I find it easy to run (provided previously created characters are available) even without the rule book present. The game can be rail-roady if the Keeper doesn't make an effort to avoid this and it can bog down if the Investigators fail to acquire an essential piece of information, therefore it is essential that the Keeper not allow a failed roll, or ignored lead, to stymie the game. Creativity and improvisation on the part of the Keeper can remedy these potential pitfalls. Some of the best CoC advice I ever got was to give the clue even though a roll is failed, just add a complication due to the failed roll. That way the game can progress and may even become more interesting.
White Box began as a game extension of fantasy literature. Mr. Petersen and Chaosium took the idea beyond fantasy and into the weirdness of the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. In doing so, they expanded the scope of the hobby and gave me a game that took my experience way beyond the way I played White Box. It wasn't long before I took those experiences and new gaming concepts back to White Box and fantasy gaming. One part of the hobby enriches another.
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