Do HPL's works exist in CoC?

[haiiro]

When you run a Call of Cthulhu game, do Lovecraft's works exist in your game world?

If so, how do you approach them?

I've played CoC for years, and I've never come up with answers to these questions that I'm completely happy with. As a player and GM, I've run into a variety of options -- they don't exist; they do but aren't completely accurate; they do but the game is set up so they're not really a factor; HPL is still alive, and relatively unknown; etc.

(Edit: typo.)

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

It depends on the game I'm running, and where I envision the campaign going. If I'm running in the 1920s I usually just say that it doesn't exist- although I might have some Lovercraft-like pulp writer scribbling out similar tales. There was one campaign where I used an adventure based on "The Haunter of the Dark", and did use the publication of the actual story as a clue (though I'm pretty sure the story was published in the thirties, so I might have changed the date).

I'd be most likely to use Lovecraft as-is for a modern day game, since it keeps the players from just rolling up and chatting with him. There's several possibilities that come into play when they're looking back through the stories- he could have been making it all up, or he could have been in communion with Outer Gods, or he could have been totally nuts. Maybe he was familiar with the mythos and only published the more "acceptable" tales- there could be a secret stash of "true" Lovecraft stories around somewhere. Hmm, now that I think about it, this would be a good premise for my modern-day Lovecraft country game, with the PCs going to out-of-the-way places to track down the manuscripts Friday the 13th style.

At any rate to sum up- I generally ignore his work for 1920s games and would probably use it as a plot point for modern games. I wonder what the stats would be on some of those Arkham house books? Some of the early reprints are every bit as rare & apocryphal as Lovecraft's imaginary tomes....

 

[WayneLigon]

If I'm running a modern day CoC campaign, then yes. Everything that's readibly available about the Mythos (even the game books!) is available. The main reason for this is that in some of the modern-day stories, HPL's work itself is mentioned and some even have him in the story

I'd say that reading the HPL stories would be a 1 SAN loss, 1d4 if Mythos creatures have been encountered previous to reading the stories. Other variant works would be 1 SAN for the total body of each authors work. If I remember right, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward has the formula and words for the Ressurection spell, which should give a bonus to learning it. (The words are not given phonetically, though, so it's only a bonus; the only spell I've ever seen that can be learned from just reading about it is the Endurance Chant (I think that's the correct name) from At Your Door.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Oi! Now I know I'm old!

About a year after CoC came out Chaosiums magazine Different Worlds had an article on HPL's stories and using them in game. It also had game stats for HPL himself. The odd thing was that if you added the Cthulhu Mythos bonus from all the stories together they ended up giving the reader more than twice the amount that they had assigned HPL.

I think that was about 1982 or so, but Different Worlds has been defunct for more than ten years no if I remember properly....

The Auld Grump