Words by Alex Meehan
Unlike other RPGs, players’ characters in Call of Cthulhu were fragile and would only improve their skills as they used them
When it first emerged from the darkness in 1981, Call of Cthulhu was unlike any RPG adaption seen before it. Whilst fans of systems like Dungeons & Dragons or Tunnels & Trolls had created their own horror scenarios within those systems, Call of Cthulhu was the first to take a fairly unknown property – the works of H.P. Lovecraft – and turn it into an original survival horror pen-and-paper RPG.