Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter

[stevemitchell]

I just received this eldritch epistle from Chaosium:

To help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Call of Cthulhu, this Friday (July 2nd) we're launching the Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter, featuring a remastered version of this iconic boxed set and five of its first supplements:

Shadows of Yog Sothoth (80 pages), a global campaign to save mankind. The first of its kind.

The Asylum & Other Tales (72 pages), seven shorter sinister scenarios set around the world and at sea.

The Cthulhu Companion (64 pages), four scenarios as well as added rules and source material.

Trail of the Tsathogghua (64 pages), a mini campaign of two scenarios, plus a third adventure. It's world spanning, and thus all over the place.

Fragments of Fear (72 pages), additional gods, background, and other material, as well as a bonus scenario.

Due to the remastered formatting (remaining very true to the original look), we have room to add additional bonus content by the early authors from various other sources. These supplements often contain more than the originals!

[Falconer]

Oh, this is great! I have been hoping they would do this for some time.

[stevemitchell]

Well, this blew through its $20K funding goal in the first hour or so--currently at $60K and still climbing.

[Deleted]

I've got a good feeling about this one.

[stevemitchell]

Well, it's up to about $225K now, so it's definitely going to happen, along with some stretch goals. The original files (rules and modules) have been reworked slightly, with all the errata included and some additional material added. But it's basically, dare I say it, OCoC. Like so many other RPGs, CoC has had many elaborations piled on in subsequent editions, but the original version was quite playable right out of the box (I know, I played it), so I'm looking forward to this.

[asaki]

Hmm, I guess I assumed this would be 1st edition, but looks like it's 2nd?

Still cool though, I'm tempted to grab it.

Why does it come with so many dice? The edition that I played, it was just percentiles.

Is it just a "neat to have" thing?

[stevemitchell]

The 1st edition included the generic "Basic Roleplaying System" booklet, which you were then supposed to marry up with the specific 1920s skills and character classes in the CoC rules. A bit awkward. I think the 2nd edition rules combined everything into one book.

Percentiles for skills, but various dice types for damage from attacks.

[Deleted]

Jul 4, 2021 10:54:23 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

The 1st edition included the generic "Basic Roleplaying System" booklet, which you were then supposed to marry up with the specific 1920s skills and character classes in the CoC rules. A bit awkward. I think the 2nd edition rules combined everything into one book.

Percentiles for skills, but various dice types for damage from attacks.

Now that's something I didn't know until right now. That's interesting. So I guess it's one of those situations like OD&D with or without Chainmail or Greyhawk. That type of situation. "Here, you need this game to play this game." 

[stevemitchell]

No, you had to use the "Basic Roleplaying System" as a starting point in CoC 1E, but it was included in the 1E boxed set. It wasn't a long booklet, 16 pages or so--it let you set up a fairly generic character for a presumably medieval setting, then you could have your new guy go out and fight a bear or something. It served as a quick intro to the skills system and the combat system. Then you were supposed to go over to the main CoC rules and do the same thing, except you were now creating 1920s characters with a greatly expanded set of skills and weapons, and oh yes, Sanity and Magic. It was workable, but like I said, kind of awkward.

[geoffrey]

Jul 3, 2021 13:28:24 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

But it's basically, dare I say it, OCoC.

[Vile Traveller]

Jul 5, 2021 10:52:16 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

No, you had to use the "Basic Roleplaying System" as a starting point in CoC 1E, but it was included in the 1E boxed set. It wasn't a long booklet, 16 pages or so--it let you set up a fairly generic character for a presumably medieval setting, then you could have your new guy go out and fight a bear or something. It served as a quick intro to the skills system and the combat system. Then you were supposed to go over to the main CoC rules and do the same thing, except you were now creating 1920s characters with a greatly expanded set of skills and weapons, and oh yes, Sanity and Magic. It was workable, but like I said, kind of awkward.

Yeah, they tried it in several of their boxed sets, though usually the main rulebook was stand-alone so it was a bit hard to see what the BRP booklet was for. It must have been one of the least-used supplements in gaming ... though if they'd played their cards right they it could have been BRP rather than GURPS at the top of the genre-book market.

[asaki]

Jul 4, 2021 10:54:23 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

Percentiles for skills, but various dice types for damage from attacks.

Ah. I don't remember that, but I guess it's been a while, and we didn't get a lot of opportunities to use our weapons.

[stevemitchell]

The Kickstarter is up to $310K in pledges now--not bad for 5 days. I guess a lot of folks were looking forward to something like this.

[thomden]

Alright, fine you got me. I'm all in. This is a fantastic deal, and it's great to see such an old school classic get so much support.

[Deleted]

Jul 5, 2021 10:52:16 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

No, you had to use the "Basic Roleplaying System" as a starting point in CoC 1E, but it was included in the 1E boxed set. It wasn't a long booklet, 16 pages or so--it let you set up a fairly generic character for a presumably medieval setting, then you could have your new guy go out and fight a bear or something. It served as a quick intro to the skills system and the combat system. Then you were supposed to go over to the main CoC rules and do the same thing, except you were now creating 1920s characters with a greatly expanded set of skills and weapons, and oh yes, Sanity and Magic. It was workable, but like I said, kind of awkward.

That's the same Basic Roleplaying they still sell, right? I have a pdf of that one from Free RPG day a few years back. (The cover art is some version of The Vitruvian Man on the edition I've got.)

[stevemitchell]

No, the "Vitruvian Man" edition is a later and more expanded intro to the concepts of Basic Roleplaying. 48 pages with covers. (Although you could still use this with the CoC 1E rules if you wanted, I suppose.)

The version in CoC 1E is called Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium System and is just 16 pages plus covers. Starting on page 6 of the CoC 1E main rules, you are told how to take the concepts from Basic Roleplaying and change and expand them to create 20th Century characters for a Lovecraftian horror campaign.

[Deleted]

Jul 7, 2021 10:40:31 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

No, the "Vitruvian Man" edition is a later and more expanded intro to the concepts of Basic Roleplaying. 48 pages with covers. (Although you could still use this with the CoC 1E rules if you wanted, I suppose.)

The version in CoC 1E is called Basic Roleplaying: The Chaosium System and is just 16 pages plus covers. Starting on page 6 of the CoC 1E main rules, you are told how to take the concepts from Basic Roleplaying and change and expand them to create 20th Century characters for a Lovecraftian horror campaign.

Got it. That's a neat concept, having a core system you can "plug into" different settings. I can see why they dropped this concept later, though. Like I said, I don't know if it's intentionally aping what early D&D did with Chainmail but it seems to have a similar vibe. 

[Vile Traveller]

I think the problem was really the execution of the core rules, rather than the idea. The 16-page BRP booklet was totally inadequate as a stand-alone game. It mixed messages by devoting a huge proportion of text to explanation aimed at complete novices, while at the same time expecting those novices to improvise and create their own rules to make the game playable. In other words, it had the same problem many of the poorer examples of quickstarts have these days - it didn't really explain how to play the game, and it didn't give a good idea of how awesome the full game could be. GURPS pretty much nailed it, and dominated that core + supplements market for years, and I think they still would if SJG didn't simply find other areas more profitable.

If you look at the Big Gold Book 4th edition BRP, you can also see another problem, which is that all of the games really had a lot more differences than they had in common. From the get-go Chaosium diverged their systems widely, from pre-BRP RuneQuest to Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, Ringworld, Superworld, etc. There was a brief window of opportunity with the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, but again that was squandered because it was too bare-bones to stand alone, and it received no support other than an expanded edition of Superworld (which only happened because it was Steve Perrin's baby and he loves supers gaming).

To bring this post vaguely back on topic, I would say that CoC 2E was really the only game that actually hewed closely to the BRP booklet. I remember first reading the rules and thinking, "Where the hell are the rules?" - but one soon learned to appreciate that, with the completely different approach to gaming that CoC brought to the table.

[Falconer]

When I was first teaching myself RQ2, I tried starting with that 16-page BRP booklet (which came in the RQ2 box). It was worse than useless because it was not really a subset of the RQ2 rules, it was different in many confusing ways. The best part about it was the bear hunt scenario, which is useful for fleshing out the “Hunting” scenario in Griffin Mountain.

To bring it back to this KS, I do kind of wish they would have done 1e or 3e. But either way, with the book and the posters and all that, not to mention the modules, this is uNsPeAkAbLy cool.

[stevemitchell]

Just $47.00 short of $400K. Ripping through stretch goals like the Hounds of Tindalos ripping through time!

[Falconer]

All the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu 2e products, and whether they are included in this Kickstarter:

Y       2301-X The Call of Cthulhu, 2nd Edition
Y       2302 Shadows of Yog-Sothoth
Y       2303 The Asylum and Other Tales
Y       2304 Cthulhu Companion
N       2305 The Fungi from Yuggoth
N       2306 Curse of the Chthonians
N       2307-X Masks of Nyarlathotep
Y       2308 The Trail of Tsathoggua
Y       2309 Keeper’s Screen
Y       2310 Fragments of Fear
N       2311 Alone Against the Wendigo
N       2312 Alone Against the Dark

[stevemitchell]

The Kickstarter has had a real surge in the last hours, breaking $500K (and another stretch goal) last night. Still 32 hours to go.

[Falconer]

Breaking records!! This is great.

[Zenopus]

~2 hours left.

I was on the fence about it since I already have a nice copy of the hardcover 3rd edition, which includes the rulebook, 20s sourcebook and Companion all together. I mostly wanted the adventures, but wasn't sure about pdf or print. Then I read that the 2" size was chosen to replicate the size of the original 1981 box. Holmes reviewed the 1st edition back in 1983 for Gameplay magazine*, so the connection there was enough to put me over into the print column.

* This review was reprinted in a zine in 2019, along with artwork by Chris Holmes:
zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2019/09/holmes-1983-review-of-call-of-cthulhu.html

[stevemitchell]

And--the Kickstarter closes with a final total of $591K. Almost double what Chaosium initially felt it would bring in. The only downside for me is having this fund in the same week as the DCC Dying Earth Kickstarter--a double tap on Gold Pieces.

[stevemitchell]

And then, a long period of waiting. Chaosium did get the PDFs to the backers some time ago, but the preparation of the print copies has been affected by the increasingly tiresome supply chain issues. There had been a hope that the print copes would be in the backers' tentacles by Halloween, but based on the latest message from Chaosium, Christmas is now a more realistic target.

[Falconer]

I ended up getting 3 of the deep boxes. Figure I’ll sell off the supplements from two of the sets. Then I can gift one of the sets sans supplements to my niece, and keep the other two sets. Because I want two.

[stevemitchell]

Latest update from Chaosium--no print copies by Christmas, delivery is slipping into January.

[stevemitchell]

Based on the latest news from Chaosium, it looks like this will go to print this month, but delivery will likely move to February. Still, pretty soon now.

I've mentioned, here or elsewhere, my appreciation for the Sentinel Hill line of publications, with some very deep dives into the lore of Lovecraft country. You may think you've seen it all before from Chaosium's Arkham, Dunwich, Kingsport, etc., books, but no, you really haven't. Their latest offering, just out in PDF and print at DriveThruRPG, is the Arkham Gazette #4, with a focus on Kingsport this time. 120 pages of eldritch esoterica! Well worth taking a look at.

And kind of related--another new game on DriveThru is called CURSED. It's written by Kobayashi, the mad Frenchman responsible for an earlier Lovecraftian RPG, Rats in the Walls. With CURSED, he offers another approach to Mythos-type gaming, based on Ben Milton's Knave.

[stevemitchell]

And then again--not pretty soon now. The games are printed, but they've been sitting on the dock for about 6 weeks. They are supposed to load onto the ships and start shipping to the various distribution centers within the week, and so, allowing transit and assembly time, they might--heavy emphasis on the might--begin shipping to customers sometime in May.