Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Retrospective: Cthulhu Now

Since its original release in 1981, Call of Cthulhu's default setting has been the 1920s. As a result, the venerable horror roleplaying game is inextricably linked to the Jazz Age in the minds of most gamers. This linkage is, however, a mere accident of history, a consequence of the fact that most of H.P. Lovecraft's tales, including the eponymous "The Call of Cthulhu," were written and published during that decade. 

Of course, to Lovecraft and his readers, his stories of cosmic horror were set, not in the past, but in the present. Indeed, much of their power comes from the juxtaposition of ancient terrors and the perceived progress of the "modern world." On some level, it's thus always been a bit odd that Sandy Petersen Call of Cthulhu chose to retain the 1920s setting for the game rather than the here and now. Had he lived longer, I have little doubt that Lovecraft would have set his stories in whatever was the current date at the time, since that had (mostly) been his practice since he first took up writing.

At least some players of Call of Cthulhu agreed with this perspective, since, almost from the very beginning, I knew of those who'd set their campaigns in the then-present rather than the '20s. Indeed, within only a couple of years of the game's initial publication, White Dwarf magazine presented a two-part article by Marcus L. Rowland entitled "Cthulhu Now!". As I noted in my discussions of the issues in which it appeared, I adored Rowland's too-brief stab at the topic of updating Call of Cthulhu for the 1980s and readily made use of its rules expansions and additions. At the time, I thought a more contemporary setting made much more sense than the 1920s, which, in my gaming circle at least, we tended to associate with RPGs like Gangbusters.

So, when Chaosium published a new softcover rules supplement for Call of Cthulhu in 1987 with the title Cthulhu Now, I assumed that it was simply a further expansion of Rowland's original article and happily snapped it up from my local hobby shop without ever bothering to look inside its covers. When I did, I discovered that it was a similar but not entirely identical beast to that two-part White Dwarf offering of a few years prior. The name of Marcus Rowland was nowhere to be found. Instead, like so many Chaosium products of old, the book bore the bylines of no fewer than seven different authors, including Sandy Petersen himself. Over the years, I have long wondered why a book bearing an identical title (sans the exclamation point) and focusing on similar subjects doesn't even acknowledge Rowland's original. This is a gaming mystery that remains unsolved.

What's immediately noticeable about Chaosium's version of Cthulhu Now is that, of its 128 pages, less than a third are devoted to rules additions, alterations, or expansions – and more than a third of that is devoted to new equipment, particularly firearms. None this material is bad, let alone useless, but it feels rather beside the point. Of course the 1980s has lots of technology that didn't exist in the 1920s and it's important to provide game stats for the most significant examples of that technology. In my opinion, though, what really separates the present – whether the 1980s or the 2020s – from the 1920s, at least from the perspective of a Call of Cthulhu campaign, are social/cultural/political differences that would have an impact on how investigators might go about their business. We get a few nods in this direction, most notably in the form of a solid section on forensic pathology, but it's still not enough to aid the Keeper in setting his campaign in the modern era.

I suspect that Chaosium felt that the four scenarios Cthulhu Now includes would do a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard, providing practical examples of what a modern day CoC adventure might be like. As presented, the adventures contain a lot of good ideas and concepts, but they're often poorly implemented and verge on railroads at times – a common problem in Call of Cthulhu scenarios – so their utility as guides is limited. That said, they do show off the possibilities of contemporary gaming, ranging from an underwater investigation to dream research to space exploration and more. Admittedly, all four scenarios feel a bit dated now, largely because nearly four decades have passed since the book's publication and technology and society have continue to change.

Ultimately, though, I think my dissatisfaction with Cthulhu Now has more to do with my own ambivalence about setting Call of Cthulhu in the present day. As I stated earlier, this is something I've always felt made sense and that I instinctively wanted to do with the game. Yet, conversely, there's no denying that the Cthulhu Mythos, at least as its popularly conceived, has become almost quaint in its vision of cosmic horror, so quaint that it only really works well as a period piece. That's not to say that a contemporary approach to Lovecraftian horror is impossible, only that doing so effectively requires a lot more work and imagination than most people realize and Cthulhu Now is largely lacking in both.

21 comments:

  1. Sandy: "Chaosium’s genius was that they said, “The stories mostly take place in the 1920s. The 1920s are cool. Let’s set the game then!” and thus the 1920s era for Call of Cthulhu was born. They did a whole great big sourcebook for the 1920s and put it in the box. Folks loved it. Not just horror, but the 1920s."

    https://petersengames.com/why-doesnt-sandy-play-call-of-cthulhu-in-the-1920s-setting/

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  2. According to Sandy Peterson himself, on his YouTube channel, he originally planned to set the CoC roleplaying game in the present, but since Lovecraft was (at the time) still rather obscure, the people at Chaosium wanted to keep it in period so it could also be used for pulp-era crime busting and adventure, and thus appeal to a wider audience.
    As to the lack of social details, I assume the designers figured people would know a fair amount about the world and decade they already live in. (And were unable or unwilling to do the massive research that went into Delta Green's profile of Federal agencies and methods.)

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  3. I suspect you’ve hit on one of the reasons Peterson chose to set Call of Cthulhu in the twenties. While it’s true that Lovecraft set his stories in his then-present, it’s just as true that that is when he set them. Had he lived into the twenty-first century his new stories would have had to change so much that they would no longer resemble his old ones. The increase in destructive power available, the increase in knowledge about the past and about the universe, the increase in forensic technology, and the increase in documentary ability both at the personal level and the background level all make his twenties-era stories practically impossible.

    For example, take what happens in his stories, and then add one thing: we have mapped out the entire world from space, down to the meter. Our governments all know exactly where this stuff is, and that it exists. Cthulhu stories start to look a lot more like HackNoia than about independent investigator(s) discovering something previously unknown about the uncaring universe.

    Saying that Lovecraft would have set his stories in the modern world had he lived into the modern world is a lot like saying that a director would have made color movies had they lived into the color movie era. It’s true, but the choices made for black and white were for black and white. The choices Lovecraft made were for the era he lived in.

    Updating Cthulhu for the modern era requires completely different choices. It might still be fun, but it’s no longer Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

    For Cthulhu Now to be effective in the way you want it would have required pretty much an entirely new rulebook with entirely new background.

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  4. Yet, conversely, there's no denying that the Cthulhu Mythos, at least as its popularly conceived, has become almost quaint in its vision of cosmic horror, so quaint that it only really works well as a period piece.

    The "empty, inhospitable, irrational universe" that was a new and terrifying idea when Lovecraft was writing is now part of the very air that contemporary man breathes, so much so that it takes a deliberate effort not to take it for granted.

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  5. The only Call of Cthulhu game that I have run, I moved up "The Edge of Darkness" from the core rulebook to be set "now", in our own city. I think it was a fantastic decision, as the player characters had apartments and houses on streets we were all familiar with, and they went to the local university library to do research, etc. Then they drove out to a rural farmhouse in an area that we all understood to be deep in the middle of nowhere. It even worked to bring the backstory elements forward from 1881 to 1968 by coloring the reckless dabbling in occultism with a '60s counterculture tint.

    Bringing CoC (or any horror game) into the modern day does introduce the "cell phone" problem that modern writers often struggle with. (Think of how often Mulder and Scully had to drop their phones off moving trains, etc.) In the specific case of my game, though, it was plausible to say that the farmhouse was so remote that there was no signal. And actually, that just added to the uneasy sense of being isolated and vulnerable.

    After the adventure concluded in a typically disastrous way, I emailed my players a mocked up "police blotter" article from our local newspaper reporting on the events as the police and coroner interpreted it. :-)

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  6. The problem with setting CoC in the here and now is twofold. First, as stated above "cosmic horror" of the type common to Lovecraft's day is kiddie stuff to modern thought. "Oh no, humanity isn't the center of the universe, God is a myth, there are utterly ancient things that dwarf the existence of our species or even life on Earth."

    Meh. That's the reality of the day.

    Second, everything has become so commodified, the first thing anyone would do upon encountering a Deep One is seek exclusive rights to their story. If someone saw Cthulhu they'd not recoil in horror, they'd hope they could get their phone out in time to record the encounter. And don't ask what most folks today would do, or joke about doing, if they found a tentacled horror...

    The 20s was the perfect time for CoC. At the time humanity still was incredibly full of itself and assured of it's primary if not exclusive place in the universe. Cracks began to break down the whole facade with the Great War and scientific advancement. But cosmic horror then was still horror... Not a plushy, bumper sticker, or polyhedral dice color...

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    1. Unfortunately, Cthulhu is hardly Lovecraft’s most creative or horrifying creation but that is about all most people who have heard of Lovecraft are aware of. And it’s generally portrayed as just a kaiju; heck, it even comes out of the ocean like Godzilla. My impression is that most people aren’t aware of what cosmic horror really entails.

      It’s also sad what a cliche the tentacled horror has become. Lovecraft was more imaginative than this with floating bubbles (Yog Sothoth) and protoplasmic blobs (shoggoths), not to mention the pentagonally symmetric Old Ones or the Great Race of Yith’s body forms in “The Shadow out of Time”.

      And modern scientific eschatology makes Lovecraft’s scenario look optimistic. Rather than the universe run by alien, inhuman entities that care not a whit about humanity, between Fermi’s paradox and dark energy we might be it, with a mere, brief presence, and in the end the evaporation of all matter into an unending void.

      I need to read more of Ramsey Campbell’s modern Lovecraftian work, in particular “The Last Revelation of Glaaki” (in “Visions from Brichester”). And I think Thomas Ligotti works in this thematic area as well, though not really Lovecraftian.

      But I agree that the form of cosmic horror Lovecraft expressed is not so horrifying nowadays, but the content still could be.

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    2. Humanity is just as full of itself now as then, if not more. Otherwise we wouldn't procreate with such wee abandon like lice, and perhaps would give some thought to things other than consumerism, shiny new toys and petty power games. I don't see much evidence of that.

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  7. Lovecraft's thesis is often summed up as cosmic horror -- that history as we know it and the very notion of progress is fiction -- but just a little deeper is the very personal feeling of alienation and loss of identity. Remember that more than a few stories hinged on the horror that the protagonist discovered that he himself was not what he thought he was, that his personal history, his very identity was a shallow delusion. There's still plenty of stories to mine in that space. (As fodder for a game where people shoot at fishmen, not so much.)

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  8. "For example, take what happens in his stories, and then add one thing: we have mapped out the entire world from space, down to the meter. Our governments all know exactly where this stuff is, and that it exists."

    This is absolutely not true. In the last decade we've uncovered dozens of cities formerly hidden by jungle or otherwise obscured in Central America alone. We have no idea what the vast majority of the oceans are like and we've barely scratched the surface of our atmosphere. It seems to me the eldritch horror genre would thrive in a current setting.

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    1. “In the last decade we’ve uncovered dozens of cities formerly hidden…”. Yes, that’s my point. We did this using satellite technology, and all it took was someone looking because they wanted to look. In the real world, governments don’t care a whole lot about archaeology because ancient cities don’t give them power. In a Lovecraftian world, that is not true. Given the raw power in Lovecraft’s mythos combined with the rise in immediately-available documentary technology, governments would definitely be looking.

      It’s true that we could, temporarily, move all of the horrors under the sea for a great slumber party with Cthulhu, but this is getting less and less true every year. It’s a lot like, well, our sword-and-planet stories make no sense on Venus or Mars, so let’s move them out to Titan. That solution doesn’t last very long.

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    2. This just leads us to something like Delta Green, no?

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  9. Yep, there's still plenty of The Unknown in our modern world, so some of Lovecraft's fears are still relevant. And as Charles suggests, our internal anxieties and fears haven't gone away with the rise of technology. They may have changed and evolved, but they still exist.

    There's plenty of Lovecraftian horror to be found in the modern era, but the issue with Cthulhu Now is that it doesn't develop that properly; it goes as far as (for example) "Cthulhu+computers", and presents that as the whole idea, instead of engaging with it and drawing out the horror.

    Delta Green did a better job, by exploiting angles of distrust in the US government, pre-millennium anxiety, and good old UFOs, but even that's a narrow focus and leaves much about the modern world -- and its horrors -- to be explored.

    One of the joys of Call of Cthulhu is that you can stick it in any era, change the skill list to match, and it works, but you often have to come up with the adventures yourself, because Chaosium has -- with a few exceptions -- not been very good at supporting that aspect.

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  10. IMO, I think that "Call of Cthulhu" setting is far more relevant now in our present day and age.
    One just has to look out the window (or watch the TV) to see that "Chaos" is just looming above our heads.

    Conspiracy theories, shady and ultra corrupt governments, economic crisis, misinformation, fake news, social unrest, etc etc...
    Never have people had so much access to technology, yet never have they been so badly informed. Regardless of on'es political views, it's clear that the world is in a very bad state right now. And things promise to get worse.
    A Game Master would easily create a scenario where Cosmic Horrors could be corrupting human society for their own ends. Plenty of material to work from.

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    1. “The King in Yellow” seems like a decent model for this. Unlike Lovecraft’s grimoires, governments had to actually censor that book to avoid its noxious spread. “In the Mouth of Madness” provides another example.

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  11. I suspect that a lot of the reason Cthulhu Now focused on gear and tech is because they figured players wouldn't need to be told about how things worked in 1980's society. We were all saturated with CNN, USA Today, cop and detective shows, and all manner of then contemporary horror films. We had Magnum P.I. and Miami Vice to tell us how investigations worked.

    I kinda wish they'd make a new 80's CoC book that does go into the social and political landscape and name it Cthulhu Then.

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  12. With looming environmental apocalypse, rampant wars and pandemics, and humanity's utter nihilism, stupidity and neglect of its own approaching doom, the modern age lends itself perfectly to cosmic horror, even better than the quaint 1920s. So what if the Amazon basin is mapped? The horrors creep in from the angles between spheres, if I'm not mistaken. The whole concept of the genre (misshapen horrors as embodiments of an uncaring universe) stems from a single man's loathing of his own existence and the world in general, but the fact that it continues to enthrall millions of people a century later, speaks volumes about how deep that loathing and fear of an empty, pointless universe is embedded in all of us.

    Another cool collection is The stars are right, with 7 1990s adventures. I ran only one, Love's lonely children (about run-down punks and an adult bookstore owner molesting his offspring as an avatar of Y'golonac) a long time ago, but it turned out pretty well.

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  13. Honestly, to me it seems that the more the world is mapped out and the physics of the cosmos "understood", the more horrifying it would be to discover that all of that knowledge is fundamentally wrong, that the foundations are themselves unsound.

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    1. Yes. I would argue that this is fundamentally anti-Lovecraftian; his stories relied on logic working, even though it led to illogical conclusions. All it takes is access to the right pieces of disparate knowledge, making a logical connection no one else has made mostly because they don’t have that information, and realizing the logical conclusion: the world has no logic.

      For this to work today, logic cannot even be the starting point. I think Grant Morrison has done some amazing work using this premise, especially in The Invisibles.

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  14. Maybe I'm late to the thread, but have recognised Marcus Rowland contribution to the gaming world? The quality of his writing is incredible.

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  15. GURPS Cthulhupunk presents another set of essays about how to run a cyberpunk-CoC crossover. It may not be apparent at first glance, but the times unfit for cosmic horror, I think, are the pre-modern ages. The existential dread of a godless, uncaring universe is essentially a modern thing, and you need that mindset for cosmic horror to work. Tentacled monsters conceived as hellspawn have their place in the order of things, no matter how terrible. Chaosium had some medieval adventures in Strange Aeons, but they are played by contemporary people acting like inquisitors or nobles.

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