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Ia Ia Cthulhu phtagn

I imagine life as a Mormon is tough for him...

I'm going to strongly recommend nosing around the Internet for these different games. I've found that only the most progressive and free-thinking of game stores stocks anything outside of the old standbys of D20 and White Wolf.

Have a look at http://www.chaosium.com/ and http://www.anvilwerks.com/ for some excellent examples.

Chaosium, Call of Cthulhu.

Love that game. Good for beginners too. Simple system, and it teaches you something that I consider to be very important to a good gaming group: Never become too attached to your characters.

And it's lots of fun. You already know you're doomed, so why not have a little fun with it? You know you gotta love a game where bragging sounds like this: "I had an investigator survive three whole games!

Disclaimer: I don't work for Chaosium, YMMV, etc.

Really, there's only a small chance that Cthulu will actually be summoned.

If you're summoning Cthulhu in your D&D game, not only are you running with a REALLY old version of the monster manual, but you are probably using the wrong players handbook.

Sounds a lot like the sanity system of the paper RPG Call of Cthulhu, which has been around since 1981. A computer version of the similar play rules seems pretty obvious to me. In fact, I don't see many claims not covered in part by Call of Cthulhu.

Anm

Sueing anyone who even mentions your games name in a sentence? Check!

Sooo.... how long before Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast buys the miserable company and puts them out of our misery. Do they have to go bankrupt first?

Did Lorraine Williams, aka "the bitch," take them over?

If anyone is looking for an alternative, the founders of Gothic Horror Rolplaying are still kicking! Chaosium, Inc.

According to Dragon magazine, Chaosium obtained the rights to the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythos shortly after the first printing of the Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia, which explains their absence in later editions. I suspect they obtained gaming rights. Arkham House still publishes Lovecraft's fiction.

It's truly a shame that RuneQuest didn't survive.

Well, it's not actually that dead. Glorantha itself has contined in the form of Hero Wars and then Heroquest (no relation to the old board game), with a lot of new background material and one of the most innovative set of mechanics in modern RPGs. The publishers, Issaries, are actively supporting the line and there are also a large number of fan publications of extremely high quality (especially those from The Unspoken Word).

For those who like the crunch of the old Runequest rules, Chaosium has recently published their Basic Roleplaying system, as used in RQ, as a standalone game. This can be combined with the Runequest supplement reprints from Gloranthan Classics for that old-school feel.

And why yes, I am a Glorantha geek!

Then the Christians must have gone apeshit crazy about Call of Cthuhu!

Yes, but I think we all remember what happened last time the Japanes messed around with power plants. That's right: Godzilla. With Mothra defeated and major military forces otherwise occupied, the situation looks grim! Beware the denizens of the deep!

It would be nice if we also had something like free literary universes. I mean, you could write fiction which would add to an existing universe and its storylines.

Aside from fanfic with its dubious legal status and contention with "canon", there is one example of this very idea which Slashdot readers may be familiar with: the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Mythos was begun by H. P. Lovecraft, who encouraged his fans to write stories in his settings. (There was little audience for the horror-SF genre at the time, and every good story was a boon to its popularity.) After Lovecraft's death, and to the present day, followers have continued to write and publish stories featuring Lovecraft's strange gods and cosmic horrors.

Like more commercially produced shared settings such as Star Trek, the Mythos and associated tales have spawned movies, magazines, and even a roleplaying game.

Sad to say, Lovecraft died in obscurity and poverty, which does not say much for starting a freely expandable universe as a means of employment. Nonetheless, it has certainly been a success in terms of storytelling.

(Lovecraft was by no means the only author who has invited fans to write in his universe. Another, rather more recently, told his readers to go ahead and write stories in his universe -- and then rescinded the offer after a fan wrote a story that offended him! The author in question was Larry Niven; the universe was Known Space; the fan was Elf Sternberg; the story was "The Only Fair Game".)

The case of HP Lovecraft's fiction seems to confirm that current copyright laws do defeat the aim of promoting new works.

Lovecraft wrote wierd ficton up to his death in 1937. In his fiction, he develops what has become known as the "Cthulhu Mythos", an outlook and setting for cosmic horror. During his lifetime, he actively sought collaboration with others to work with this "mythos", and extend it.

Because of when he wrote much of his fiction, and due to details concerning how his estate handled the copyright of his body of work, much, if not all, of his fiction is today in public domain.

Partly because of how he actively sought other authors of wierd fiction to participate and extend his mythos, and partly because of the fact that his work is still in public domain, there have been very tangible results:

• Authors are still contributing to and developing his mythos,
• A pnp game company has based an RPG on his works (Call of Cthulhu), which has inducted so many new people to HPL's works (including me),
• Movies are made (though poorly), based on his works,
• and most importanly, people are still reading Lovecraft's fiction -- and it's available online, and in print.

Many years ago, I loaned out all my Lovecraft books, and inevitably, no longer have them. When I recently underwent a hankering to re-read these great stories, I downloaded them into my visor using Plucker. I've also gone out and restocked my library with printed versions of Lovecraft's works.

From this small sampling, I think it's very clear that Lovecraft's openess and the copyright status of his works have truly encouraged people to keep creating and building on his foundation.

There is a staggering number of books which are under copyright, but have long since gone out of print. How much knowledge is unavailable because of this, and how many new works which could have been built or inspired by them were never created?

I shudder to think that it would be quite possible that Lovecraft could today be out of print because of copyright. Had others not built on his work, I doubt as many people who are fans of his work would have had the chance to be exposed to him, and thus preclude demand for his fiction.

Delta Green (and Call of Cthulhu in general) deals with how fighting evil can be bad for your mental health.

[A]D&D is a study in the rewarding career of breaking into people's homes and stealing their stuff.

And, lest we forget, the Sailor Moon RPG (as well as various other anime games) deals with the horrible psychological trauma that comes with having eyes that are WAY larger than the human average.

--john