You never forget the first time you run a game of Call of Cthulhu.
If I close my eyes, I can still picture the room:
Candles burning, all else in darkness. My friends sitting around the table, leaning in to hear properly as I quietly describe the body. As the description ends I become the corpse, crossing my arms across my shoulders and bowing my head, eyes closed.
I wait.
Soon enough, one of the players says “I reach out and touch him. Is he dead?”
I snap my eyes open and SCREAM, clawing my hands out at full length.
I hoped that would jump scare my players, but it went even better than I planned: when I thrust my hands out I inadvertently smashed them into the Keeper’s screen. It flew the length of the table, like a bat, right in front of all the players. They flinched back, yelling in surprise and laughter, absolute bedlam. It couldn’t have gone better.
-- Keeper screens were a lot more aerodynamic in the 80s... --
That was back in the 1980s. The players were my original high school D&D crew. Everything I love today about running Call of Cthulhu was born then: it’s not about the rules or the character classes or the hit points, it’s all about story and scares.
The scenario I ran was the Sandy Petersen classic “The Haunting”*, and it remains a near-perfect introductory scenario: an escalating mystery with a series of clues, ending at a creepy location. It’s quite direct and has no complex events to track, leaving you plenty of space to add atmosphere and frights.
That first-time Keeper was once me, but next time it could be you!
I mean it. There’s something about playing Call of Cthulhu that brings back that amazing feeling of telling ghost stories around the campfire. Everyone gets the thrill and chill of going into a haunted house, and the fun of solving a mystery, so your session is already well on the way to success before you start playing.
“The Haunting” has been fully revised for the 40th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu and is included in the Call of Cthulhu Quick Start, which is free to download. Mike Mason has brilliantly edited the scenario with more locations and suggestions for where players can use skills to uncover clues. The PDF has the game rules you’ll need and no more, so you can focus on the story instead. There are four pre-generated investigators, and a page of handouts; print all those, grab dice and pencils, candles optional (but cool), and you’re ready to get spooky.
-- Ready to Haunt! Just add players! --
If you prefer a paper copy of the Call of Cthulhu Quick Start it is available as an inexpensive Print on Demand copy. “The Haunting” was also included in the Call of Cthulhu 40th Anniversary Limited Edition Keeper Rulebook. Now if that thing had flown across the table, I would have given my players concussion.
-- "The Haunting" in print --
If that goes well (and I honestly think it will), there’s more horror ahead in the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, and the scenario collections Gateways to Terror, Doors to Darkness, No Time to Scream, and Dead Light and Other Dark Turns. They’re all perfect for new Keepers and new players, and most of them designed for a single game night.
You can do this! Halloween is just around the corner. Who you gonna scare?
*In the original Call of Cthulhu box set the scenario was called “The Haunted House”, but Lynn Willis retitled it when he edited and expanded it for the 5th edition rulebook.
Read Mark's first four posts in his Table Tales series
Mark Morrison's Table Tales
We've started a new series of posts on the Chaosium blog called 'Table Tales', by Chaosium's Mark Morrison. Table Tales is all about the fun of playing Chaosium games, and Mark has pretty much played them all.
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