Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Call of Cthulhu Classic

Looks like we didn't have to wait long to find out the answer to the question I posed the other day. Chaosium is indeed reprinting multiple Call of Cthulhu products from its early days in order to celebrate the game's 40th anniversary. These include:

  • The first edition rules in a deep 2" boxed set
  • Shadows of Yog-Sothoth
  • The Asylum & Other Tales
  • The Cthulhu Companion
  • Trail of Tsothoggua
  • Fragments of Fear
I used to own most of these, but, over the years, they've fallen apart or disappeared. Consequently, I'm gladdened to hear that Chaosium is reproducing them in physical form. I wish more publishers follow their lead, because I suspect there's a market, albeit a small one, for these kinds of things. Good knows I'd love to see the Classic Traveller three little black book boxed set reproduced, for example. I don't hold out much hope that we'll ever see reproductions like this become widespread, but I plan to cheer on any publisher that does so. 

Well done, Chaosium.

13 comments:

  1. Based on the linked posting it seems they have learned their lesson on fulfillment. I wish them well, and hope backers are ecstatic.

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  2. The Runequest kickstarter certainly took a long time to fulfill all their product shipments - but to be fair they kept adding and achieving stretch goals. I think the lesson they learned was 'don't add stretch goals'. If all they're doing is shipping what they have prepared is it really a Kickstarter or just a sales announcement?

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  3. Perhaps not widespread, but there have been a few. Off the top of my head, there have been reprints of RuneQuest, Star Wars, and AD&D1, although the latter had new covers so maybe don't count.

    I'm pretty sure there was a reprint of the OD&D "little white books" too, but I may be misremembering.

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    1. There was, but it was years ago. Before 5th edition came out.

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    2. Oh, and I think they've done reprints of some of the World of Darkness games too, although I believe those had some updates so aren't true facsimiles of the originals.

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  4. No real interest here. I have the originals of all of these things, albeit somewhat the worse for wear.

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  5. Arduin fans, The Asylum & Other Tales contains "Black Devil Mountain" by David Hargrave. Per RPGNet "... essentially a dungeon (containing no less than 28 monsters, among them three ghouls, two chthonians, and a full dozen zombies) that Stafford thought 'really contrary to the game.' It probably was, but Stafford opted to publish it anyway."

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    1. Great to know! Sounds like a location-based adventure, rather that the usual plot-driven railroads done for CoC.

      Fwiw, to me, investigators following clues to successfully thwart the madness and horror of unspeakable things from beyond our imagining is what's 'really contrary' to Lovecraft's source material.

      Whereas a strange, terrifying location to be cautiously explored is not unlike the plot of The Nameless City, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At The Mountains of Madness, The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath and more. :)

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  6. Now that the kickstarter is live, I see that what they're reprinting is the second edition.

    I probably would have gone for the first, but I don't thing I will for the second.

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    1. The differences between 1st and 2nd are minimal, as I recall. I think the main difference is that 2nd incorporates Basic Role-Playing into the rulebook rather than having it as a separate pamphlet.

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    2. The first edition had one supplement published for it. It was also considered a bit rough and in need of a bit of balancing and refining. Thus, errata came out very quickly, followed by the 2nd edition in about a year. We decided the 2nd edition is superior, and more playable. Any background or scenario related info that was cut from the 1st edition has been included as bonus material in this remastered 2nd edition. We did a comparison of the 1st and 2nd edition rulebooks and the leap was small enough, and clear enough that the 2nd edition was the way to go, plus it had more and better art than the first edition. In some ways, we did what we did with RuneQuest Classic. We mainly focused on the getting the 2nd edition available again, for much of the same reasons.

      Due to the remastered formatting (remaining very true to the original look), we have room to add additional bonus content by the early authors from various other sources. These supplements often contain more than the originals!

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