 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and today I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite RPGs of all time, The Call of Cthulhu. The ultimate atmospheric horror RPG that is so well known for its mortality rates that with strange aeons, even death may die. I'm gonna give an overview of the game as a whole, teach you how to make a character, and give you an idea of what type of story you can expect to see when the shadows are pulled over your table. As always, keep in mind that a lot of this is just my opinion, and as far as mechanics go, I'll be focusing on Call of Cthulhu's 7th edition. Since it's the most recent one at the time of this video, and if I talked about every book, we'd be here all day. And really quick, I'd like to give a brief shout out to my new patrons this month, but since my roommate is asleep, these are gonna be quiet outs. Mudkip Wave, Zachary Holtzclon, with your support I might be able to afford a place of my own. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So Call of Cthulhu is a semi-modern day suspenseful horror RPG set in a chilling tentacle world of HP Lovecraft's novels, originally released in 1981, and having gone through seven editions since then, the core of the game has always been to tell the story of a ragtag motley crew of normal, everyday people, and have them peel back the veil on reality, so that they see the damp shadows that slither in the dark. The catch is that, unlike in other RPGs, you often aren't prepared for the shadows to see you. In Call of Cthulhu, you aren't a superhero, you aren't a warrior of any kind, you're just a dude. You might be a schoolteacher, a policeman, or a stoner kid behind the denies, but the fact of the matter is, you're nobody. Your only goal is to uncover what strange happenings are plaguing your world, and then beat out all the odds to put a stop to it. Hopelessness and futility follow you through the whole game, and there comes a point in every campaign where things click on just how in over your head you've become. But by that time, it's too late, you've walked too far into the darkness, and the only way out is through. Now, if you're not used to this type of RPG, you might be wondering how that's supposed to be any fun for you. You may not have ever read an HP Lovecraft book, and I don't blame you. Reading is for nerds, and when the Lovecraft fandom is vocal, it's either about concepts that you will have no reference for, like Amigo Brain Cylinder, or it's about what his cat's name is. But I contend that it's actually better to play Call of Cthulhu with the least information about the world or how you're supposed to survive in it. A story set in Call of Cthulhu is meant to be a mystery, and that mystery is cheapened if you already know what the outcome is going to be. Likewise, much like Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Gang, being a normal person with normal everyday skills helps you prioritize investigation, as you'll be trying to figure out how to work your character's knowledge and skills into each scene that you're in, rather than waiting around until a fight breaks out so that you can start swinging. If you want a modern comparison, Call of Cthulhu is actually very similar to the way that Stranger Things presents itself, and it would be a very good game for roleplaying that sort of extra-dimensional thriller story. Yes, I know, kids on bikes exists. And if you're worried about how being a normal person means that you can just get killed at a moment's notice, and that would be lame, talk to your GM about it. Any GM worth their salt isn't gonna kill you randomly, because you're right, that would be lame. But the squishiness of your character means that when a monster does show up, you have to be willing to cut losses, because those things are not gonna die. Power or friendship are not. This means that the anxiety factor is played way up, since monsters never die. You can theoretically get killed at a moment's notice, and the only thing that you distinctly know you can kill are other people. But when would you need to do that? Right? Right? Of course, hopeless stories about the futility of finding the answers to ancient questions is what Lovecraft is all about, but that doesn't have to be all that Lovecraft is about. The classic Call of Cthulhu is set in the Roaring 20s, but you can set it in whatever time period you want with very little homebrew needed. And if you wanted to, you can trade out the Everything Is Terrible and You're Gonna Die for a more familiar Everything Is Bad, but we'll push it back together. By giving your characters access to more powerful weaponry, or letting them in on the tactics for not how to die, and even providing them with magical powers that feeds off of COC's iconic sanity system to grant reality-altering powers to those who wield it. 7th Edition even has rules for the pulp action stories that I was just describing. But in order to play out that scenario, you have to start by making an investigator, which means getting your hands on one of these sheets and following along with me. If you have the book, by the way, it does a pretty good job of speedrunning you through the character creation process, but it also slips its cheat sheet for how to build a character into the middle of the character creation section, where you'll never need it when you find it, and you'll never find it when you need it. So make sure you keep track of what page it's on, or check the table of contents to... Wait, the table of contents doesn't have page numbers on it? Bro, this PDF sucks. Anyway, the first thing you gotta do when making your character is to roll for your main attributes. Now, this is like half of your character right here, so this step's gonna be a little long. But if you're a D&D nerd, then most of this will be familiar to you. Strength, Con, and Dex are the exact same thing that they are in D&D. Appearance is just charisma renamed, and intelligence and education take the place of wisdom and intelligence from D&D. It's a little tricky to think of intelligence as being wisdom and not, well, intelligence, but intelligence is easy to remember when paired with education, because what the hell else is education going to represent? There's also size, which is how big you are, luck, which describes how likely you are to start a successful YouTube channel, and power, which should really be called willpower because it manages your inner strength, and it decides both your magic ability and your sanity. Depending on what age you are, these stats will be increased or decreased, such as how children lose points in strength or size, as well as education, but get two rolls on their luck stat instead of one, since children are lucky. Once you have your stats by rolling these dice formulas on the screen, you should end up with pretty large numbers, because Call of Cthulhu uses a D100 system, similar to a D20 system, except with way less modifiers to boost your rolls, and also, obviously, you're trading an X out of 20 chance for an X out of 100. You'll split most of these chunky ability scores into one-half and one-fifth for the smaller adjacent boxes, so that they represent tasks that are hard and extremely difficult, respectively, and then you're halfway done with your character. After that, you decide your movement, which, unlike in D&D, does not give almost everybody the exact same speed of 30 feet. Instead, you compare your decks and your strength to your size. If they're both lower than your size, then your weaksauce and your movement is a 7. If one of them is equal or higher, then you're okay, so your movement is an 8. And if they're both equal or higher, then you're a healthy person and your movement is 9. Like with most things, your age modifies that, but ask your DM, because I am not listening the entire book here. The next step is to pick your job, and this is where you start to make your own character. There are no classes or races in Call of Cthulhu, but your occupation is sort of the closest thing that you're going to get. Your occupation tells you three things. How much money you make, how many skill points you have, and which skills you're allowed to put those points into. This is the major decision that defines who you are. Outside of role-playing, your character is just made up of what it can do and what it can't do. And so your profession dictates almost everything in that regard. If you want to be a stunt driver, then you put all your points in drive. If you're a geologist, you put your points in science, and then you specify geology. And if the idea of not finding the right occupation intimidates you, then don't freak out. The professions listed in the book are just examples. So you can either pick one of those, or if there's a skill you want, but it isn't in your profession's umbrella, you can ask your GM if it's alright to take it anyway. In addition, you get an extra number of skill points equal to twice your intelligence modifier that you're just allowed to put anywhere, whether it's part of your job or not. So you'll have plenty of chances to take whatever skill your character's heart desires and craft the investigator for you. Every skill starts at a certain percentage based on how easy it is for your typical Joe Shmo to do it, so keep your favorite skills in mind as you allocate your points so that you don't accidentally play as Marvin, the US Marine who can only shoot his gun 20% of the time. Remember that Call of Cthulhu is a D100 system, meaning that when you want to use any of these skills, you'll roll a D100, and if it's equal to or lower than your skill's level, then you've succeeded. Anyway, the last few things that you have to do on your character sheet are create a backstory for your character, figure out your finances by going to the cash and assets table in the rule book, write down any gear and equipment you want your character to have, and then jot down all your fellow investigators so that you don't forget their names. The fun thing about Call of Cthulhu is that since it isn't your typical raid dungeon for loot and then spend it to increase your character's power, money and items don't super matter. Keeping track of your money on hand is simple enough, and nobody should really be keeping track of it unless it's under special circumstances. Likewise, the items that you write down in your inventory aren't actually going to be 27 short swords, four glazed turkeys, and a set of common clothes. You don't want to write down anything unless it's of vital importance, like a clue that you found while investigating, or a gun that you want to keep track of just so that you can remember the stats. Things like pencils, keys, a lighter are all superfluous because this game just doesn't prioritize being a goblin. In any case, once that's done, your character is finished and you're ready to play the game. And what a game it is. Your typical session will consist of the team either going to a place with usually the vaguest idea of what's waiting for them, in the process breaking as many trespassing laws as possible, and in fact the danger of getting caught is usually one of the main obstacles, or fleeing from a location because they found whatever was awaiting them, and it had too many teeth for a diplomatic solution to be reached. Oftentimes you'll leave with either a piece of information that you can use to decide what it is you need to do next, or if you're particularly unlucky, you might come out of it with an actual item that may have mystical powers for you to unlock. I won't spoil all of the crazy things that Magic can do in this game because I fervently believe that you get more enjoyment out of Call of Cthulhu the less you know, but I will say that each spell is both very simple to understand conceptually and also super dangerous to use, which makes sense given that you are literally rearranging the fabric of reality. Sorry, Wizard, stealing shit from a bad isn't enough to cast Fireball here. In addition to terms and clues, most large encounters will end with the DM awarding skill points to the group for surviving, investigating, and of course, role-playing. These skill points go into whatever skills you've used so far as a way of showing you're still a progression towards being better at not sucking. And the skill-centric XP system makes it much harder to recognize an inherent power gap because you've got so many skills to choose from, and just because I get 50 points and you get 30, that doesn't mean that I'll be using my skills as often as you will be using yours. And more importantly, even if I'm really good at some skills, I'm just as bad at other skills as anybody else who hasn't trained in them. This means that you don't have to be so bummed out about rolling poorly for your stats during character creation because every investigator is important in their own way. And if you really want, you can have every player use the standard array that can give you a completely phased random chance out of the most impactful part of the game. With investigation being such a big important part of the game and you having an actively dwindling sanity score so that you always feel like you're taking down a clock that wants to eat you, it only makes sense that those things be combined. So a lot of things involved with the Cthulhu mythos have rules to harm you if you ever get your hands on them. Best exemplified by the on-the-nose Cthulhu mythos score, a skill that represents your knowledge within the world of the wet and fleshy, and also lowers your sanity score the more you gain in it. And you will gain it involuntarily. That's basically the gist of what Call of Cthulhu is. You fight back against the badness while the badness negatively affects you over a period of time so that you have to either finish the campaign before you lose your marbles or simply take what marbles you have left and go home if you can't find a solution. If this gameplay sounds like your jam, then Call of Cthulhu will be the game for you. Like I said, it's one of my favorite games. So hopefully after watching this video, you'll be ready to halt the awakening of the dead dreamer. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like to subscribe, check out all my social media in the description below, and let me know how you like this new format. I'm not used to breaking down an entire system in one video, so if there's something you really liked or something you wanted me to talk more about, chuck a comment down below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can keep talking about RPGs and convince the rest of the world to try out new things. But yeah, Dabby out.