My Complete and Utter Cthulhu Bibliography

I had been playing AD&D for about four years when the first edition of Call of Cthulhu was published in 1981. Although I wasn’t terribly familiar with Lovecraft’s work at the time, I liked the fact that it was a horror game set in the real world of the 20th century. Initially I thought it could be used to play Hammer-horror style games, but as I read more Lovecraft I quickly came to realize how perfectly Call of Cthulhu was designed for Lovecraft’s more cerebral style of horror – and most importantly, I think, how first edition Call of Cthulhu forced players to think beyond combat as a first response.

Although my college gaming group continued to focus mainly on AD&D, I started to run an occasional Call of Cthulhu campaign. Another member of the group picked up Bushido. This was right around the time that the Shogun mini-series and the theatrical release of Kurosawa’s Kagemusha propelled feudal Japan to 80s geek prominence, and – though you young’uns might not credit it – it was about the first that most folks in the West had ever heard of ninjas. My friend’s Bushido campaign focused as much on etiquette and social interaction as it did on combat.

As I’ve already said in various places (including the previous post), Call of Cthulhu went on to become a major influence on my own writing for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Arguably, Bushido was an equally strong influence on my later writing for Vampire: The Masquerade, where players had to negotiate the minefield of vampire society and politics – but that’s a subject for another time.

Although Games Workshop published various titles for Call of Cthulhu during my time there (the best, in my opinion, was the hardback rulebook with bestiary art by Tony Ackland), I only got to work on one GW CoC product, and that was before I joined the staff. At work my time was fully taken up, at first by WFRP and later by other games, so everything I wrote for Call of Cthulhu, I wrote on my own time. I did send an adventure to Chaosium around 1986-87, and I got a very nice letter back from Sandy Petersen saying he wanted to use it in the Cthulhu Companion, but it was cut at the last minute and it’s languished ever since in a to-be-developed pile. Only last month I looked at it again, and I think I have a plan for what to do with it. Watch this space.

Strangely, 2015 has been a very Cthulhu-ful year so far. I finally finished the Colonial Gothic Lovecraft supplement (once again illustrated by Tony Ackland, which makes me very happy indeed): it’s due for release in September. I submitted a story for a Lovecraftian anthology by Stone Skin Press: it didn’t make the cut (although the editors were kind enough to say it came very close), so it’s on the pile for a gentle reworking before I start trying to find it a home elsewhere. I wrote my first ever adventure for Achtung! Cthulhu: it’s still under NDA so all I’ll say is that while there may be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, there’s something underneath that’s altogether stranger.

UPDATE: Titled “Under the Gun,” this adventure has just been made available for free to backers of an Achtung! Cthulhu Kickstarter campaign. Click here for more details.

But I digress. What I started out to say is that although my bibliography for Call of Cthulhu is shorter than for most other games, I still regard it as one of my favorites. Although opportunities to write for it didn’t come my way very often, it’s still a great game and, as I’ve said before, a milestone in the history of tabletop RPG design. I think of it as the first game of the second generation, when RPG design crawled out of the dungeon, stood upright, and began to do more than just hit things with swords.

Fiction
The Dirge of Reason, Fantasy Flight Games, 2018 – author Buy it here
The Investigators of Arkham Horror, Fantasy Flight Games, 2016 – contributor Buy it here

Products
Cthulhu Confidential, Pelgrane Press, 2016 – editor Buy it here
Colonial Gothic: Lovecraft, Rogue Games, 2015 – co-author Buy it here
Green & Pleasant Land, Games Workshop 1987 – contributing author

Articles
“Converting Between Call of Cthulhu and Colonial Gothic,” blog, March 2016 Download free here
“A Green, Unpleasant Land,” blog, January 2016 Download free here
“Out of the Ordinary,” Shadis #41, Oct 1996
“Mind Over Matter,” Shadis #38, Jul 1996 Download free here
“Spirit of the Mountain,” White Dwarf #99, Apr 1988
“Trilogy of Terror,” White Dwarf #97, Feb 1988
“The Worm Stones,” Fantasy Chronicles #5, November 1986 – co-author
“Ghost Jackal Kill,” White Dwarf #79, Aug 1986
“Crawling Chaos,” White Dwarf #68, Sep 1985 – contributor
“Haunters of the Dark,” White Dwarf #67, Aug 1985

Video Games
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Bethesda Softworks 2005 – pickup writer (in-game documents)

Other Bibliography Posts

My Complete and Utter Warhammer Bibliography (Warhammer, WFRP, HeroQuest, AHQ)

My Complete and Utter Warhammer 40,000 Bibliography (WH40K, Adeptus Titanicus/Epic Scale)

My Complete and Utter D&D/AD&D/d20 Bibliography

My Complete and Utter GURPS Bibliography

My Complete and Utter Vampire: the Masquerade and World of Darkness Bibliography

My Complete and Utter Fighting Fantasy and Gamebook Bibliography

My Complete and Utter Colonial Gothic Bibliography

My Complete and Utter Dark Future Bibliography

My Complete and Utter Video Gameography

My Complete and Utter Bibliography: The Rest of the RPGs

My Complete and Utter Bibliography: Odds and Ends