The Growing Cyclopean Pile of Cthulhu Games

This article at NPR—“H.P. Lovecraft's Monster Is Wrapping Family GameNight Up In Tentacles”—discusses the ever-growing number of board games based upon Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu Mythos.’

I must confess that I’m not a ‘board game’ person. I rarely play them—and when I do, it’s invariably because others want to, and they teach me the rules. Now I have nothing ‘against’ board games; I just don’t really have anything ‘for’ them either. (There was a time in the distant past when this was not the case. Much of my final year of high-school was spent Axis and Allies. But that was a long time ago! And I had a lot more time back then…)

I’ve owned Arkham Horror for a decade now, and yet have never played it. Every time I’ve tried to read the rules in the past my eyes glaze over after a few minutes. Strangely, the AH rules seem more involved than those of Call of Cthulhu—and it’s not clear to me what AH does better than CoC (aside from being prettier and eliminating the need for a Keeper). Now I’d be happy to try AH with someone who was already quite familiar with the rules and could show me the ropes. But I just don’t have the patience or interest to sort them out myself.

In addition to board games, there also seems to be a growth in the number of Lovecraftian role-playing games being produced in recent years. Yet, aside from playing in a couple of one-shots with other systems (including one game of Trail of Cthulhu), I’ve stuck with The Call of Cthulhu for decades—indeed, CoC is one of the games that I’ve played the most in recent years. CoC does what I need to do, really well, and I simply don’t have much interest or patience (or time) to learn new RPG systems these days. I’m happy to read about new settings or adventures, but reading new game systems generally bores me (in fact, I have yet to properly read through CoC 7e; when I’ve run that system over the past two years I’ve primarily relied upon the ‘quick start’ rules and my general knowledge of BRP).

So while I’m happy to learn that more people are enjoying Lovecraftian games (both board games and RPGs) these days, I’m also pretty content to stick to the Lovecraftian game—CoC (5e/6e/7e)—that I’ve been using since eldritch times.

[Image of the Cthulhu Wars game from the NPR article.]