One thing to consider regarding the surging popularity of Lovecraft's work in the 80's and on: little to no IP protection. Now, I bet Sandy could go into more detail on the TSR vs Chaosium talks over the Cthulhu Mythos (and Elric, another Chaoisum RPG) in Deities and Demigods, but I'm pretty sure Yuzna and Sony weren't needing Chaosium's approval for the movies or Ghostbusters episodes that referred to the Mythos. And once Lovecraft's work hit a critical amount of pop culture influence, it became a self-perpetuating cycle, with new Mythos-themed board games hitting market every other week it seems. And not only that, but we have the "Lovecraftian" style of horror, which doesn't cite Lovecraft's creations but instead focuses on his themes. Things like "In the Mouth of Madness", "The Void", or Lumley's "Necroscope" series, or the World of Darkness RPGs, or countless other horror examples. All of it only made possible due to weak/non-existent IP protections. Put another way: if Derleth had somehow sold the rights to Disney, we likely wouldn't be playing Call of Cthulhu, or Cthulhu Wars, or Arkham Horror, or watching the movies, but instead dealing with a relative trickle of stuff Disney released, if any. Which isn't to say the horror genre would've died if Lovecraft's IP were tightly held (stories of vampires and werewolves and likely Romero-zombies/ghouls would still exist). Just that the modern horror genre would likely look very different.
actually, while Lovecraft's actual text was probably still copyrighted in the 1980s, his monsters and creations weren't. He actively worked to make them public domain for others to use, so nothing prevented this in the 1960s or 1970s. Plus as I say in the video, he was vanishingly obscure before Call of Cthulhu the RPG came out, followed a few years later by the new Joshi-edited versions of his books and Stuart Gordon's movies.
I've always wanted to run a modern/futuristic setting. Something about corporate cults and modern tech just screams potential. Thanks for supporting this claim.
I like the X-men animated series fight with Apocolypse in which the X-men think they have almost defeated him and he shirks off their plans and says they got no closer than the Egyptians with their primitive weapons and firesticks. Reminds me of the Cthulhu battle.
Even so, at least those movies fit the themes of batman way more than that stupid Clooney film. “Hi Freeze, I’m Batman” has got to be one of the worst lines ever in the world of cinema.
This RPG was the transition for me/my players from high school to college. From monte-hall campaigns, to IF your character survived a CoC mission - you never wanted to play them again. PURE GREATNESS.
I put off reading any of his stuff for years, despite knowing how incredibly influential his works are to many of my favourite films and games. Re-animator is awesome cause anything with Jeffrey Combs is fun
Delta Green came out of Pagan as a modernization attempt. In their foreword they write about three things they wanted to fix up with their new game developed out of the classic 1992 adventure Convergence in Unspeakable Oath. There was no strong modern 90's material at the time. There was one Cthulhu 90's module with rules for modern gear, notes on organisations and a handful of adventures. A few adventures like Grace Under Pressure. Compared to the massive amount of 20's material coming out like Orient Express and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. Delta Green was going to be a distinct 90's setting. Players made up organisations to facilitate group cohesion and purpouse. In campaigns, players made up detective agencies, mob squads, antiquarian societies, historical departments etc rather than form a loose Mystery Gang who piled out of a T-ford every month to solve crime. An organisation provides a continuity, as Call of Cthulhu investigators would often need temporary or permanent replacement. They grew tired of constantly dealing with mundane problems. Breaking into the morgue got old, duping the coroner for a report and making up excuses for why a professor and a native savage and a dilettante ask around town wasn't fun in the long run. In Delta Green the badge and federal authority gives players ready access to mundane information and cooperation with most local authority.
Ken St Andre (who also worked with Chaosium of course) maybe also have claim on an early Lovecraft reference in gaming - his 1979 Tunnels and Trolls gamebook Arena of Khazan had Shoggoth as the toughest fight.
really that extra work is part of the reason I stay away from it. I can spend more time crafting the horror and less time on trying to find out if there was a Lebanese ghetto in New York in the 1920s.
@@SandyofCthulhu It's in the final story of the *Trail* series, *The Black Island*. The super-team that has been assembled over the years, burning cultist sanctuaries, dynamiting shrines, and so on finally get an Armageddon scenario, with a risen island and a portal. They drop a nuke right as Cthulhu is basically winking a big eye through the portal. Afterward, it is mused that as serious as that was, it definitely didn't kill him, and he'll be back. The short stories are actually a whole lot like a Cthulhu campaign run way off the rails, I've always thought. But in a fun way.
I got drawn to CoC back in the mid 90s because a friend had introduced me to Lovecraft a year earlier ( He didn't became popular over here until pretty much the last decade), and I had kinda been wanting to try RPGs for a while since I took a peek at some online D6 Star Wars games in some forums. Gotta say I lean towards running games in the 1920s setting because my group and me really enjoy the aesthetics of the period, and the general "exotic" nature of the world at that time compared to our own, with still unexplored places, more diverse methods of transportation (Airships, trains, horses, cars, planes, steamers, etc), countries in extremely different levels of development, and more. But I totally agree about Lovecraft, and cosmic horror in general, being most effective when used in the current times, tho I haven't really enjoyed some of the most well-known published material, such as Delta Green, since I'm not fond of the government/alien conspiracies driven focus they gave to it.
I too do not care for government conspiracies in my scenarios, at least not large-scale ones. If the local sheriff is in on the Mi-Go plan I am ok with that.
Sandy of Cthulhu I understand why most people don‘t like conspiracies in their games because institutionalizing the mythos is not really a thing that happens in the source material. However i find it an effective way to instill horror if players see that they literally have the power of a government body backing them up, yet they are still powerless against the malign things lurking beyond the veil of reality
I remember in the mid-90s getting into Lovecraft because of CoC and other media, and my dad whipping out this record and showing me the band H.P Lovecraft, which is how he found out about him back in the early 70's during the psychedelic era
I got into him off some online suggestions in the later 90s. I read the voice of an outsider in it and felt a connection to the writer and had to learn more.
I read the Dragon magazine review of CoC and was so entranced by the idea of the Lovecraft world that I begged my mother for the boxed set. I think it was a Christmas or birthday present and that set it all off. I think I got a copy of The Tomb and other stories first as that was a cheaper alternative to placate a 12-13 year old. Yeah, if not your fault but David Cook for writing a review in issue 61 of Dragon magazine.
And I totally agree. The best horror is usually contemporary to the author/creator, as it represents the anxieties of the time. When you go with a historical setting, it's easy to turn into a historical period re-enactment piece, and more distant from present day anxieties.
Honestly I think it is easier to scare people in the 1920s than it is in the modern setting because people are seriously desensitized today and they tend to laugh at the descriptions of the monsters, it is like when people used to think the Exorcist was scary but when my mother went to see it in high school she laughed her ass off because it was not scary it was ridiculous. To my players the horror feels more real in the 1920s because that is when the stories were written and they can see people being scared back then as opposed to today.
I'm a BIG FAN of yours, I really like your work, you are in a league of your own, E.T, Raiders of the lost ark, The Empire strikes back, are my favourite soundtracks, Thank you Mr Williams
To be totally honest, I prefer Mythos tales set in the 1920s. I love the setting. Distances increase, technology advances by leaps and bounds but there are still many mysteries awaiting (both on Earth and in the infinite cosmos)... and World War II? Just a nightmare that no ones thinks that can become a reality. It's a perfect middle point between Poe and Stephen King. There are one million Lovecraft movies out there, and most of them are bad because they never get the atmosphere right. And honestly, I think one of the reasons these movies seem so pedestrian to me is because NONE OF THEM is set in the 1920s.
Very cool perspective and it's great to hear your stories! :D I really like playing in the 1920's because I don't know anything about that era and it forces me to do a TON of research! Probably a con for most people but I really enjoy learning about history if I have something like Call of Cthulhu to give me the drive to keep learning! :D Thanks for the great vid! :D
I think it's a combination of me, Stuart Gordon, and to a lesser extent S. T. Joshi. I did games, Gordon did movies, and Joshi went into academia, making it defensible intellectually to enjoy Lovecraft.
Best prize idea ever: The four winners get to play a session of Call of Cthulhu over zoom ran by Sandy. Haha can you imagine? The contest: Best character backstories.
@Sandy of Cthulhu Great video! I like to run "modern" adventures, but I often like to place them in the 80s or something like that. So much is the same but also not. Like computers and mobilephones and the like. Its easier to isolate the players without those. And the feel of isolation = scary. =) How do you tackle the easy access to communication and smartphones/computers "-problem" in your modern games?
I should probably do a video about it, but the short answer is make the easy access to EVERYTHING a vulnerability instead of a strength. Think of it as opening multiple channels to the Void. You better believe Nyarlathotep has his own Pinterest.
In the original Delta Green, agents have cellphones and early internet. Internet consists of a macbook with a modem they plug into the motel room phone socket. Cell phone coverage is spotty outside towns and large roads and many citizens don't even have them. There's grainy VHS tapes of mi-go circulating. Most people get their news through papers, tv and the radio. The internet is growing but still a place for large agencies, companies and enthusiasts.
Don't forget Metallica. Their song "Call of Ktulu", even though it was an instrumental song, was on their album in 1984, before the Reanimator. Master of Puppets had another song "The Thing that Should Not Be" which referenced Lovecraft. I guarantee Metallica reached a much larger audience than your game, ST Joshi's writing or The Reanimator, combined. Although, rumor has it Cliff Burton did play your game (along with D&D) and was a big fan.
of course they did, but "Ktulu" didn't necessarily tell that many of their fans what it was about. I wonder how many people started reading Lovecraft because of Metallica or Master of Puppets. Maybe a few. But let's also remember that 1984 was after Call of Cthulhu (but before Stuart Gordon), and also after Arkham House was able to do the big nice reprint of the books.
@@SandyofCthulhu So, goofy thing, I remember seeing the title of CoC and going, "Hey what the fuck, that's a Metallica song." when I was about thirteen and going through books at a comic shop next to the bar my mom worked at. I don't even remember the name of that shop but it was where I first learned about D&D and all that. It wasn't so much that Metallica "got me into it", but it primed my brain to stop on your book for sure. I think it was the 5th edition? I picked it up, but in all honesty I don't think I ever actually played the game "Call of Cthulhu" as written. Instead, I've been steadily hacking up your material and tossing it into D&D games for the last twenty years, so imagine my surprise when I saw your 5E book and realized you endorsed this behavior. Really made me feel good about a lot of my decisions as a GM.
Gonna admit? I generally have a dim view of Lovecraft because of his racist xenophobia and all the things he got wrong even for the time (color out of space makes me cringe.) But you, via your works and all that has been inspired by, has made me respect the mythos in general if the details can seem silly andvejevehole thing is sntithical to my prspectiv.
