A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Cthulhu Now

Cthulhu Now is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror game based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. This supplement is designed to allow play in the modern era (of the 1990s when it was published) rather than the more typical 1920s.

The supplement was originally available as a perfect bound softcover book, which can still be found from sites such as Amazon. It is also available as a PDF from RPGNow. The original printed book is the version reviewed. There are 128 numbered pages of which 4 pages are front matter, 1 page Contents and 1 page Introduction. These are followed by 16 pages of player handouts, some of which are double sided with newspaper advertisements on the reverse to make them more realistic and 3 double sided Cthulhu Now investigator sheets. At the back of the book are two foldout sections, the first two pages in size, the second four. These have line drawings, to relative scale, and descriptions of a selection of contemporary (for the 1990s) firearms.

A scan of the cover of the perfect bound Cthulhu Now

The first chapter is Contemporary Investigators. This has new skills, new character classes and modifications to existing character classes as well as money, savings and the cost of living in various countries. There is also a brief section as to whether or not the government would now about the Mythos; after all, in Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow over Innsmouth, the U.S. government did take action against a Deep One city.

New Equipment has, as the name suggests, new equipment for the era. This is such things as night vision goggles, scopes, non-lethal equipment and bulletproof vests, but there is a section on nuclear weapons – which boils down to the players are not likely to get their hands on them (and the statement that if you use a nuke on Great Cthulhu, the Great Old One reforms 15 minutes later, as usual, but he’s now radioactive).

Firearms covers a selection of modern era firearms, with examples of different types, including some military weapons. There are charts and stats for the weapons, a comparison of different bullets drawn to scale and some new skills. There are also details on how easy obtaining automatic weapons is, or rather isn’t, silencers and the law as well as some new combat rules.

Forensic Pathology has details on this science. This chapter is not, however, aimed purely at the modern era (of the 1990s); instead, it covers the three main, at that point, eras of Call of Cthulhu, the Gaslight setting of the late 19th century, the 1920s-30s of the majority of the supplements and the 1980s-90s of the Cthulhu Now setting.

Hit Locations are some optional rules with parts of the body that can be aimed at, how many hit points those locations have, and what are the consequences of damage to them. There are also hit location charts for a variety of monsters from the normal rules.

The perfect bound Cthulhu Now book

The City in the Sea is the first of the adventures. This sees a character receive an inheritance which results in the players have to travel to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in a minisub to deal with the consequences.

Dreams Dark and Deadly is based in Colorado, where a relative of one of the players has gone into a coma after supposedly taking drugs. The players investigate a dream research facility which has tapped into something unpleasant.

The Killer out of Space is set in Kansas, where the Space Shuttle Atlantis has crashed after the crew were affected by a Colour Out Of Space. The players have to deal with an ignorant military and NASA and a quarantined area whilst they deal with one of the harder to injure beings around.

The Evil Stars sees a rock group whose lead singer intends to bring Hastur to Earth. They have to stop him whilst hopefully not getting arrested for murder.

Cthulhu Now in Review

The book has full colour front and rear covers. Internally, the illustrations are in black and white and are up to a full page in size, as well as being relevant to the associated text. There are also the relevant monster illustrations from the core rulebook in the chapter on hit locations. The maps are also in black and white and have a hand drawn appearance. The text is in two columns throughout and there are few errors in it.

Cthulhu Now is essentially divided into two sections, the first being rules and the second being adventures set in the late 1980s to 1990s. Although it does contain rules, this is not a pure rulebook and it will not stand alone. It has some supplementary rules and details for running modern campaigns, but it needs a Call of Cthulhu rulebook to use, as it instead focuses on adapting the system to a modern campaign. The supplement was originally written for the third edition of the system, but it should be comparatively easy to adapt it to other versions although, even though the original book can still be purchased as a PDF, many of the rules from this book can now be found in some of the core rulebooks.

Inside the perfect bound Cthulhu Now book

Certain elements on contemporary firearms are probably now a bit out of date, at least those pertaining to popular military weapons, and forensic pathology has also improved since the chapter on it was written, but many elements are still viable and used. DNA testing is the main improvement which is not mentioned in this chapter. These are therefore not as relevant as they once were, although overall the book isn’t badly out of date.

One problem with the adventures, not just in this book, is a tendency to railroad players in to them using acquaintances and family members who have never been heard of prior to the particular scenario (and who will probably never be mentioned again). The first three adventures all have pre-existing, but never mentioned, relationships of this type. A Keeper could perhaps plan around this to make it less obvious, but the tendency for Call of Cthulhu adventures to kill or otherwise incapacitate characters does make long range planning of this type trickier.

One of the adventures, Dreams Dark and Deadly, is mentioned in passing in the campaign At Your Door. Regarding all of them, if they were set in the now-current era, they would need some tweaking, to remove now obsolete technology (with entertainment and music technologies probably having undergone the largest change). The Killer Out of Space is the adventure that probably requires the most tweaking, given that it involves a Space Shuttle, but a space capsule could be used instead. Overall, all four adventures could be run in the present century without too much difficulty. There are also the usual new monsters, new spells and new minor Mythos works in the adventures, and they also have some new skills, as well as there being some in the rules section.

Cthulhu Now does still stand up to usage in the present day; if it has one major problem it is, like many Call of Cthulhu supplements of this type, a bit of a jumble of rules and adventures, rather than being one or the other.