Goodman Games

What are some of your favorite Cthulhu memories? I enjoyed playing Cthulhu but, I was only able to play the game twice. I can still remember rolling a double zero for insanity points. This was the only time I ever rolled a 100% for anything during character creation in any system I ever played. The only other thing I can clearly remember was finding an evil looking book covered in human skin. As soon as I was alone in a bedroom my character decided to give into his overwhelming curiosity and opened the book. The next thing I knew someone or something had come up behind me and shoved my character out of the window I was using for light to try and read the book. I was told to deduct some sanity points for looking at what man was not meant to know. Then I was told that I had a gap in my memory for the time I spent in the room alone with the now missing book. Even after all these years I still want to know what was in that darn book and who pushed me.

Spoilers forthcoming, specifically from the suppliment Cthulhu Casebook, so consider yourself forewarned.


Last chance to stay spoiler-free.....


The guy who introduced me to CoC (this was, oh, about 1995 when I was 25 years old) was a pretty fantastic DM and Keeper. He had an excellent memory and superb improv skills, so he just memorized the basics of the plot & let us run wild through his adventures. In this case, he was running myself and another friend through the adventure The Mauretania, after which--assuming we survived--we were to participate in The Auction. (We were traveling from NYC to Austria via steamship to bid on items per our benefactor.)

First: I want to mention that this was several years before the movie Titanic came out. Our investigators had to interact with many NPCs on the ship, going from upper to middle to lower class and interacting with society both high and low. It was with a weird sense of deja vu when I did see Titanic how Jack interacted with the migrants and lower-class, then eventually to the upper-class and strode from the lower decks to the upper decks--I felt as if I'd seen the scenes somewhere before. With a shudder, I realized our Keeper had described scenes during the Mauretania adventure years prior to the movie that were alarmingly similar to the scenes that DiCaprio was acting in!

Second: One of the primary plots on the Mauretania is to track down and apprehend either Jack the Ripper or a copycat killer (Keeper's choice) as he slaughters his way through NPC passengers on the boat. I recall we were strolling the A Deck promenade when we heard faint screams. The "upper crust" Deck A society certainly wasn't going to sully themselves by investigating the lower-class, lower deck situation. It was up to us, and as intrepid investigators we dashed down a few flights of stairs and evetually ended up on C or D deck. We found a horribly murdered woman's corpse, along with a chilling message writ in blood on the wall above her (one that had an authentic "Ripper" tone).

We rolled Listen checks and detected movement in the stairwell aft of the one we came down, and we gave chase. I recall that we also saw a blood trail along the floor. My memory is hazy, as the action picked up (and it was nearly 15 years ago), but we ran up and down the decks and pursued the shadowy killer through a maze of halls and walkways through the boat, simultaneously rolling Listen and Hide checks (against The Ripper). He managed to stay several yards ahead of us through the entire chase.

Suddenly, we realized that we'd lost the trail....and then we heard a subtle metallic blade sound behind us.

We were no longer the hunters--we were the hunted.

Jack the Ripper was chasing us.

Now, until that time I'd enjoyed role playing games and frequently, especially with that particular DM, been excited and pumped-up during games. But this was a first. I was sitting on the edge of the sofa. The hairs on the back of my neck were bristling. I remember thinking, "Holy sh_t....we're being chased by Jack the god-damned Ripper, and if he catches us we are going to die."

It was the single most intense and frightening moment I ever had (or have had since) during an RPG, and it was the moment that I knew I was in love with Call of Cthulhu.

Back when I played Call of Cthulhu on a semi-regular basis, some of my favorite memories was playing a reporter for the Arkham Express named Silas Marlowe. Being an astute reporter, he noticed that whenever an ancient book was discovered ... Bad Things Happened.

So he took to carrying a can of gasoline with him. Everywhere. And a cigarette lighter.

Everytime the group found books, Silas burned them, unless somebody physically stopped him.

It was a great plan until one of the group's investigations took them to a graveyard. There was a ghoul there, who happened to have discovered a cache of WWI potato masher grenades ... yeah. Suffice to say it's not a good idea to carry a can of gasoline when the undead throw grenades at you.

Alas, poor Silas. I knew ye well.

More recently ... I ran a Cthulhu adventure for the first time in awhile. Good times.

(Then again, when you've got Ken Hart, Rick Maffei, and Adrian Pommier at the table ... it's always good times.)

I'd spill more on that particular adventure, except I'm thinking of running it at GenCon this coming year, assuming I can get time off to go ... and I'd love to see Ogrepuppy at the table.

I'll warn you - just don't look too closely at the paintings on the walls ...

Now that's a memorable character death! It's almost like the DM said. Hmm... Ghouls with WWI grenades what else do I need to have for a memorable encounter in a graveyard? Wait! Doesn't Mike's reporter carry gasoline at all times? Perrrrfect.

Oh yes. Good times. Good adventure. Good Keeper running the show.
If someone would have died, it would have been perfect.

We were playing in a campaign that ran for about 8 months. We traveled all over the globe and battled all kinds of cultists and horrible entities. Our mental health wasn't too bad and we were pretty scrappy in a fight. The campaign events reached their climax on R'lyeh (I'll skip the details). The Stars Were Right. We were in the island when Cthulhu himself emerged from his slumber. My good friend running the game gave a terrific description, we wet our pants, and made our SAN rolls. I made the roll and took about some SAN loss. My friend Dan next to me fails the roll. The GM grins and says "go ahead, roll your own SAN loss for this one." The d100 hits the table...he rolls a 1. Dan looks at the GM and says "I thought he'd be bigger."

That! Is! Classic!