After H.P. Lovecraft – of course – the person most associated with the Cthulhu Mythos is Sandy Petersen. When the rest of the still-new role-playing game industry was making variants of Dungeons & Dragons and related types of epic fantasy, Petersen created Call of Cthulhu, his first game inspired by Lovecraft's work, for Chaosium.
Whereas other RPGs focused on combat and assumed, to varying degrees, that the players would triumph, Call of Cthulhu was investigative and skill based. More importantly, it conveyed a genuine sense of terror as the characters gradually realized they were facing horrors that they not only couldn't beat, but couldn't comprehend. It's not an overstatement to say it changed the game industry.
If that was all Petersen did, it would justify his induction to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design's Gaming Hall of Fame, but his work on RuneQuest and West End Game's Ghostbusters RPG cemented his reputation. Then he segued to the electronic game industry where he worked on Civilization, DOOM, Quake, Age of Empires, Halo Wars and many others.
More recently, Petersen returned to tabletop games with a successful Kickstarter for the boardgame Cthulhu Wars, which he then followed with Castle Dicenstein, Orcs Must Die!, Theomachy, Evil High Priest, and The Gods War. In addition to running Sandy Petersen Games, Petersen rejoined Chaosium as vice-president of the board of directors and chief creative consultant. After such an illustrious career in video games, why return to tabletop?
“I played and enjoyed tabletop games the entire time I designed video games,” said Petersen. “The best part about doing tabletop games is that I can design a game with a much smaller team. Instead of 40 people who must be satisfied, there are only four to five. And I can design my own games now, too. In the digital gaming world, games are big business. So much so that mere creative types don't usually get much of a say. In my 25 years designing digital games, I got to pick the topic of precisely one game that I was assigned to. Now I get to pick ALL my designs.
But Petersen began with tabletop RPGs so after all of these successful boardgames, it seemed inevitable that he'd do something for RPGs – and involve Cthulhu. Earlier this year, Petersen released Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder and now has an active Kickstarter for Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E.
Petersen's current Kickstarter funded in just 27 minutes, and is far more than just a rule adaptation from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons.
“A lot of new material has been added for D&D, so it's not just a 'port' to a different system,” Petersen said. “There are over 100 new monsters, new character options, 70 new spells, new encounters etc., etc. But everything that was in the Pathfinder version is also included.”
The Pathfinder version had a striking set of miniatures and the 5th Edition D&D version does as well. “Unlike the Pathfinder funding campaign,” said Petersen, “you will be able to pick and choose individual figures. The figures overlap with the previous campaign, but some new ones are available, too.”
Bringing Lovecraftian horror to heroic fantasy like D&D and Pathfinder is about far more than just switching monsters. “In Call of Cthulhu, combat is basically a sideline,” said Petersen. “It's often something that happens because you've failed in your main goals. But, of course, heroic fantasy games revolve around combat, so the Cthulhu Mythos [books] had to reflect this. There's several entire sections in the book that explain how to pull this off. The quick answer is that the monsters need to be horrifying even while you're fighting them.”
Cthulhu is extremely popular – so much so that it's practically a given that anything nominated for an ENnie involving Cthulhu will win. To Petersen, that's perfectly understandable.
“Lovecraft invented an entirely new type of horror,” said Petersen. “In the old style of horror, the sequence is as follows: first the characters are in the normal, sane world. Then, Something Bad shows up, possibly supernatural. The characters face off against the Bad and thwart it or are destroyed by it. Then, in the last part of the story, you return either clearly or implicitly to the normal sane world. Everything is as it was before.”
“Lovecraft's stories are subtly different,” he continued. “First, as in normal horror, you start in the normal, sane world. Then Something Bad shows up – but the Something Bad turns out to be the actual truth of the world. After the Bad confronts the characters, they learn that there IS no normal, sane world – that that was illusory. At the story’s end, you can’t return to 'normal' – you know too much and realize that there IS no 'normal.' Forever you are blighted by your knowledge that humanity was created by the Old Ones as a joke, or that Cthulhu waits and will emerge at any moment, or that beneath the earth lurk horrors beyond imagination, or that you, yourself, are not truly human, but are of Deep One stock, or whatever. It’s revolutionary.”
While the concept of such unfathomable evil might deter some people, it's been a constant inspiration for Petersen and his career.
“[It] probably goes back to when I was a scruffy 12-year-old kid reading weird books that no one else knew about or liked,” Petersen said. “I felt I had a secret knowledge that I wanted to share, but it wasn't clear how to do it. I knew other folks would love Lovecraft, if I could only get the word out. I guess I'm a Lovecraft evangelist.”
Call of Cthulhu was the first role-playing to incorporate sanity as a game mechanic. Other RPGs have since included mental health with varying degrees of success (or insensitivity). Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder (and the forthcoming Cthulhu Mythos for 5E) includes a clear disclaimer distinguishing game insanity with real-life mental illness.
Petersen felt it was important to maintain a clear separation between clinical psychoses and adventures. “Also, because I use literary and cinematic sources of madness, not real-world ones,” he said. “In the 'It's Alive!' scene of James Whale’s Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein cackles madly when he realizes his experiment is a success. He has clearly gone mad. Is his portrayal accurate according to modern psychological ideas? I have no idea, nor do I care. If my character in an RPG goes mad, I want him to go mad like Colin Clive’s Dr. Frankenstein!”
In Cthulhu Mythos, Petersen explains that Lovecraft's monsters have personalities. His favorite is understandable.
“Great Cthulhu! The unstoppable force – Earth's poison pill. The whole basis of Cthulhu, the reason that he is scary, is that he is the thing that can’t be beaten. The heat death of the universe,” said Petersen. “To get an idea of what he was like, in the 1950's to 1970's, a lot of people were convinced the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust. Cthulhu is the equivalent to that, but is far more inevitable than a nuclear war.”
Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E is live on Kickstarter now.
This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
Whereas other RPGs focused on combat and assumed, to varying degrees, that the players would triumph, Call of Cthulhu was investigative and skill based. More importantly, it conveyed a genuine sense of terror as the characters gradually realized they were facing horrors that they not only couldn't beat, but couldn't comprehend. It's not an overstatement to say it changed the game industry.
If that was all Petersen did, it would justify his induction to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design's Gaming Hall of Fame, but his work on RuneQuest and West End Game's Ghostbusters RPG cemented his reputation. Then he segued to the electronic game industry where he worked on Civilization, DOOM, Quake, Age of Empires, Halo Wars and many others.
More recently, Petersen returned to tabletop games with a successful Kickstarter for the boardgame Cthulhu Wars, which he then followed with Castle Dicenstein, Orcs Must Die!, Theomachy, Evil High Priest, and The Gods War. In addition to running Sandy Petersen Games, Petersen rejoined Chaosium as vice-president of the board of directors and chief creative consultant. After such an illustrious career in video games, why return to tabletop?
“I played and enjoyed tabletop games the entire time I designed video games,” said Petersen. “The best part about doing tabletop games is that I can design a game with a much smaller team. Instead of 40 people who must be satisfied, there are only four to five. And I can design my own games now, too. In the digital gaming world, games are big business. So much so that mere creative types don't usually get much of a say. In my 25 years designing digital games, I got to pick the topic of precisely one game that I was assigned to. Now I get to pick ALL my designs.
But Petersen began with tabletop RPGs so after all of these successful boardgames, it seemed inevitable that he'd do something for RPGs – and involve Cthulhu. Earlier this year, Petersen released Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder and now has an active Kickstarter for Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E.
Petersen's current Kickstarter funded in just 27 minutes, and is far more than just a rule adaptation from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons.
“A lot of new material has been added for D&D, so it's not just a 'port' to a different system,” Petersen said. “There are over 100 new monsters, new character options, 70 new spells, new encounters etc., etc. But everything that was in the Pathfinder version is also included.”
The Pathfinder version had a striking set of miniatures and the 5th Edition D&D version does as well. “Unlike the Pathfinder funding campaign,” said Petersen, “you will be able to pick and choose individual figures. The figures overlap with the previous campaign, but some new ones are available, too.”
Bringing Lovecraftian horror to heroic fantasy like D&D and Pathfinder is about far more than just switching monsters. “In Call of Cthulhu, combat is basically a sideline,” said Petersen. “It's often something that happens because you've failed in your main goals. But, of course, heroic fantasy games revolve around combat, so the Cthulhu Mythos [books] had to reflect this. There's several entire sections in the book that explain how to pull this off. The quick answer is that the monsters need to be horrifying even while you're fighting them.”
Cthulhu is extremely popular – so much so that it's practically a given that anything nominated for an ENnie involving Cthulhu will win. To Petersen, that's perfectly understandable.
“Lovecraft invented an entirely new type of horror,” said Petersen. “In the old style of horror, the sequence is as follows: first the characters are in the normal, sane world. Then, Something Bad shows up, possibly supernatural. The characters face off against the Bad and thwart it or are destroyed by it. Then, in the last part of the story, you return either clearly or implicitly to the normal sane world. Everything is as it was before.”
“Lovecraft's stories are subtly different,” he continued. “First, as in normal horror, you start in the normal, sane world. Then Something Bad shows up – but the Something Bad turns out to be the actual truth of the world. After the Bad confronts the characters, they learn that there IS no normal, sane world – that that was illusory. At the story’s end, you can’t return to 'normal' – you know too much and realize that there IS no 'normal.' Forever you are blighted by your knowledge that humanity was created by the Old Ones as a joke, or that Cthulhu waits and will emerge at any moment, or that beneath the earth lurk horrors beyond imagination, or that you, yourself, are not truly human, but are of Deep One stock, or whatever. It’s revolutionary.”
While the concept of such unfathomable evil might deter some people, it's been a constant inspiration for Petersen and his career.
“[It] probably goes back to when I was a scruffy 12-year-old kid reading weird books that no one else knew about or liked,” Petersen said. “I felt I had a secret knowledge that I wanted to share, but it wasn't clear how to do it. I knew other folks would love Lovecraft, if I could only get the word out. I guess I'm a Lovecraft evangelist.”
Call of Cthulhu was the first role-playing to incorporate sanity as a game mechanic. Other RPGs have since included mental health with varying degrees of success (or insensitivity). Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder (and the forthcoming Cthulhu Mythos for 5E) includes a clear disclaimer distinguishing game insanity with real-life mental illness.
Petersen felt it was important to maintain a clear separation between clinical psychoses and adventures. “Also, because I use literary and cinematic sources of madness, not real-world ones,” he said. “In the 'It's Alive!' scene of James Whale’s Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein cackles madly when he realizes his experiment is a success. He has clearly gone mad. Is his portrayal accurate according to modern psychological ideas? I have no idea, nor do I care. If my character in an RPG goes mad, I want him to go mad like Colin Clive’s Dr. Frankenstein!”
In Cthulhu Mythos, Petersen explains that Lovecraft's monsters have personalities. His favorite is understandable.
“Great Cthulhu! The unstoppable force – Earth's poison pill. The whole basis of Cthulhu, the reason that he is scary, is that he is the thing that can’t be beaten. The heat death of the universe,” said Petersen. “To get an idea of what he was like, in the 1950's to 1970's, a lot of people were convinced the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust. Cthulhu is the equivalent to that, but is far more inevitable than a nuclear war.”
Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5E is live on Kickstarter now.
This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
One of my high school English term papers in fact was about Lovecraft, using as my primary sources both S.T. Joshi's Lovecraft biography and some tidbits of information from the Call of Cthulhu RPG written by Sandy.
