Retrospective: Call of Cthulhu

"Didn't James already do a Retrospective on Call of Cthulhu?" After four hundred posts in this series – this one is, in fact, the four hundredth – you would understandably think that, but it's not true. As I've discovered in the process of choosing the contents of my Grognardia anthologies, I didn't start writing Retrospective posts until September 17, 2008 and, even then, those posts didn't become consistent, weekly features of the blog for a while longer. 

Now, I did write a post – my first one on the subject – about Call of Cthulhu on October 31, 2008 that definitely has something of a Retrospective vibe about it. Indeed, I regularly link to that post as a kind of substitute for the fact that, even after all these years, I'd still never written a Retrospective on CoC, despite my immense affection for the game, which I consider among the greatest and most influential games and game designs in the history of the hobby.

Since I'm now nearly halfway through my The Shadow over August series honoring the memory of H.P. Lovecraft, I thought now might be the perfect time to rectify this very old oversight on my part. However, since my original post from 2008, "A Game for Grown-Ups," already covers much of the ground I'd usually cover in a Retrospective post, I've decided that this one will instead focus on a different aspect of Call of Cthulhu, namely, its place in the history of the hobby.

When the game first appeared in 1981, it was unlike anything that had come before it. Published by Chaosium and designed by Sandy Petersen and Lynn Willis, it was the first fully realized horror role-playing game. There had, of course, been fantasy games with horrific elements before it. Dungeons & Dragons, for instance, had more than its share of shambling undead and sanity-blasting monsters, but Call of Cthulhu was the first to make horror not merely an atmospheric seasoning but the whole meal. In doing so, it did more than simply introduce a new genre to the RPG marketplace; it reframed what a role-playing game could be.

The significance of being first is hard to overstate. By 1981, science fiction, post-apocalypse, superheroes, and espionage each had their own dedicated RPGs, often more than one. Horror, however, remained conspicuously absent, perhaps because many assumed its central emotion, fear, couldn’t be easily conjured at the table. Petersen’s ingenious solution was not to frighten the players directly, but to have them role-play fear. Dread emerged from the slow unravelling of an investigator’s mind, the accumulation of forbidden knowledge, and the grim realization that the forces at work could never be overcome in the usual, heroic way.

This approach has since become the template for almost all horror games, even when they are self-consciously attempting to distance themselves from it. Just Alfred North Whitehead famously called Western philosophy a series of footnotes to Plato, the same can be said of Call of Cthulhu's place in the realm of horror RPGs. The sanity mechanic, the emphasis on investigation over combat, and the focus on player knowledge versus character fragility all flowed from Petersen’s design choices in Call of Cthulhu. Nearly every horror RPG since has grappled with or responded to this foundation.

For Chaosium, Call of Cthulhu was similarly transformative. Before 1981, the company was best known for RuneQuest and its Glorantha setting, along with Basic Role-Playing, the streamlined system that powered it. These were critical successes but niche compared to the behemoth that was TSR. Call of Cthulhu changed the equation, thanks to its much wider appeal. By the mid-1980s, Call of Cthulhu was outselling everything else Chaosium produced and it became the company’s flagship line for decades. In many respects, Call of Cthulhu was Chaosium in the public mind and arguably is still the game most closely associated with the company.

It’s telling that Chaosium survived rough patches in its history largely because Call of Cthulhu never went out of print. Where other RPGs waxed and waned in popularity, CoC had a steady, international audience. Indeed, its scenarios and campaigns became not just supplements but cultural touchstones in RPG history. Many are considered landmarks whose influence extends far beyond their original audience, much like Call of Cthulhu itself. Looking back, the game’s influence is visible everywhere. Here are just a few that occur to me:

Dungeons & Dragons modules before 1981 were largely site-based adventures. By contrast, CoC’s scenarios pioneered investigation-driven play, where clues, interviews, and research were central. This structure seeped back into other genres, shaping how adventures were written.

Though frequently imitated, few mechanics have been as thematically perfect as CoC’s sanity rules, which track not just the erosion of mental stability but the cost of knowing too much. It’s become almost impossible to design a horror RPG without addressing the question: what’s your version of this mechanic?

Translations of CoC played a huge role in spreading RPGs worldwide, especially in countries where Lovecraft’s stories already had a foothold. In France, Japan, and elsewhere, it rather than, say, Dungeons & Dragons was often the gateway RPG.

More than four decades later, Call of Cthulhu is not merely Chaosium’s flagship; it is "the Dungeons & Dragons of horror gaming." It has become the lingua franca of the genre, the common framework through which players, Keepers, and designers alike approach tales of the uncanny and the unknown. It remains the benchmark for how to adapt a literary source faithfully without becoming a prisoner to it, preserving the essence of Lovecraft’s cosmic dread while evolving into a style of play all its own.

Like D&D, it has been endlessly imitated, parodied, expanded upon, and reimagined, yet the original endures – still recognizably itself and still drawing new players into its orbit. For many, it is not simply a horror RPG; it is the horror RPG, the game against which all others are measured. As long as players gather to face ancient secrets and watch their fragile investigators descend into madness, Call of Cthulhu will remain the universal tongue of tabletop terror.