When was Call of Cthulhu the role-playing game first published?
Call of Cthulhu was first published in 1981 by Chaosium as a boxed set. The original edition included a 16-page Basic Role-Playing booklet alongside the main rulebook.
Questions about Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who created Call of Cthulhu and what inspired the game?
Sandy Petersen wrote Call of Cthulhu after taking over a shelved Chaosium project called Dark Worlds. The game is based on H. P. Lovecraft's fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos, with its setting grounded in Lovecraft's observation that the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
How does the Sanity system work in Call of Cthulhu?
Sanity is tracked as Sanity Points, abbreviated SAN. Encountering monsters and horrific events causes characters to lose SAN points. Acquiring the mystic knowledge needed to fight back also costs sanity, creating a steady attrition that often ends with characters in mental institutions rather than victorious.
How many editions of Call of Cthulhu have been published?
Call of Cthulhu reached its 7th edition, released in 2014, with the print version available in September 2016. The 7th edition, developed by Mike Mason and Paul Fricker, introduced the most significant rules revisions in the game's history and split the core rules into a Player's Guide and a Keeper's Guide.
How successful was the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition Kickstarter campaign?
The Kickstarter launched on the 28th of May 2013 with a goal of $40,000 and closed on the 29th of June 2013 having raised $561,836, more than fourteen times the original target.
What awards has Call of Cthulhu won over the years?
Call of Cthulhu won the Origins Award for Best Role Playing Game in 1982, entered the Origins Hall of Fame in 1995, and was voted the most popular roleplaying game of all time in a 1996 reader poll by the British magazine Arcane. More recently it won the UK Games Expo Award for Best Roleplaying Game in 2016 and the ENNIE Award Gold for Best Writing in 2024 for Call of Cthulhu: Alone Against the Static.