Friday, August 19, 2011

Sandy Peterson talks Call Of Cthulhu

(yes, I've been horribly negligent on my posting - not certain when work will calm down enough that I can post in a more timely fashion, to be honest)

Just passing on a link where Sandy Peterson, the creator of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, talks about the genesis and creation of the game.  There's some interesting stuff there for both COC fans and RPG historians:

"However, the good folks at Chaosium did not respect Lovecraft. Greg’s exact words were 'HPL is a terrible writer.' That was mild, compared to some other Chaosium opinions."

"In the very first game I ever ran of Call of Cthulhu (long before the rules were finished), my players found a book which enabled them to summon up a Foul Thing From Otherwhere (a dimensional shambler) and decided to do so. At the moment they completed the spell, the players suddenly chimed in with comments like 'I’m covering my eyes.' 'Turning my back.' 'Shielding my view so I don’t see the monster.' I had never seen this kind of activity in an RPG before - trying NOT to see the monster? What a concept. You may not credit it, but I had actually not realized that the Sanity stat, as I had written it, would lead to such behavior. To me it was serendipitous; emergent play. But I loved it. The players were actually acting like Lovecraft heroes instead of the mighty-thewed barbarian lunks of D&D.

Well worth a read.

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