Which is the One True Cthulhu for DnD + EMO zine 13 release

Patreon EMO DIgest zine no 13 Auldwood special 120 pages of spooky faerie forests and knights and cults and dodgy fearsome faeries. Go sign up now for the new style magazine compiling and expanding on stuff seen in the blog. Link on the left bar.

Once I used to chuckle at "Cthulhu is bacon of RPG games", less so now. I can see why its a cliche and formulaic and oer fanserviced. I did use Cthulhu to sneak people into playing historical RQ games for years it was a great switcheroo in all my BRP games even my murder highway setting. Now I'm increasingly finding it a bit to successful and common and even kawaii and I'm slowing down on a lifetime of collecting partly from archaeology and HPL's role in shaping UFO faux scholars which I increasingly have conflicts with. Its nice to meet actual scholars who can enjoy fantasy fandom critically. But I still do enjoy a good squidface still and there have been several major attempts to bring him to D&D. My club magazine printed on Gestetner machine started up mythos in 84 and had complete magic and cult system. Club members used mythos in RQ and superheroes and stormbringer. I read all his Moorcock and HPL as a teen from these early introductions. Call of Cthulhu probably got me more into history gaming and the cheap game resources that history provides. Plus real world knowledge is kinda handier than Dragonlance fandom sorry.

Pathfinder has some good stat blocks already and I will mix and match whatever I can.

Deities & Demigods
The Classic AD&D textbook, the original version was for many their first exposure to the mythos as well as Elric and the Grey Mouser and some various world religions. It was a pretty definitive high level monster book and I don't think any version since was as fun since. I do like the Castles & Crusades mythology codex series. I think it is interesting that the interpretation of Hastur the Unspeakable picked up the idea that saying his name is dangerous. I have had too many new Call of Cthulhu players think its funny on their first game say this for a laff. I did like the art and got into reading HPL and then into BRP games that dominated my taste for historical grit and peril. I did use the mythos here to end a campaign world and players were tricked into raising Ralyeh and drove people for miles mad.

So guite playable and you can see yourself in high level DnD players wanting to take them on and sizing themselves up. Then came idea in later products these rather puny gods were just forms they made for the material world which is interesting too. Lots of mythos monsters and Cthuhu has some interesting D&D character classes and a nice AC.

Then the mythos and other content were gone in later versions. This and MM2 not including robots and androids but including terrible one-use trick tree stumps were among the game's greatest lost opportunities. There was a Dragon article where Ed Greenwood shows how to plunder the mythology of the world and fiction from this book to build a setting cosmology (52 or 54)? Anyway if you don't have a copy of this and a hard copy of the later removed content on hand you're missing out. Check out the Petty god's book also with free PDF I think is in print again - maybe it has some Mythos content still. D&D did get around to sanity systems and other popular mechanics around but I'm not sold on any.

Adventures Dark & Deep - Swords of Cthulhu
A new book made to look like late AD&D with orange spine era which is where it will sit in my collection. It has races and classes made to fit in with AD&D. Im not too interested in this bit but I liked the tables for some of the skills. This book does do good tables. It has stats of monsters again which is ok for different versions and suitably impressive, There are some fun spells some which use other features of this book like a sanity type system with a d1000 phobias table. I will use some of these spells in cultist spellbook. The system in here is nice and detailed so points for that. Some good art and a few clunkers but it also has a sort of late 70s AD&D vibe even when not great. Some good d100 tables in back including Dungeon Dressing, NPC Quirks, Strange Happenings - all good. It is all well trod territory but also quite complete with bits to pick and choose from 128 pages of stuff.

Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos
The DND5 version is genius the pathfinder one has more photos of painted minis not awesome art. Maybe they fixed it now but get the DND5 version. Very dense, great detail and very usable for those 20th level BECMI characters. Lots of interesting details, deformities and cults. Once again the races are a bit sillyand dreamlands is a bit to victorian opium fantasy for me. The first four adventure books were a bit soso and repetitive. I might try and look at later adventures. The best thing about these monsters is some come in various power levels which could be varied for the party or when they break too many wards all at once. Lots of stunning art. Has been bedside reading on off for months even though I wont use it much. Different takes to the Call of Cthulhu RPG too. You might disagree with some of these stats.

Crawling Chaos
By Daniel Proctor for Labyrinth Lord a slim but dense book with some monster stats, some spells, races I might not use for players but I found a bit more potential with. The single greatest thing in this book is a magic item table which Is one of my fave DnDish things ever. You can leave items around that elritch dungeon and all are so dangerous to use they are not unbalancing. Players are scared of items they don't understand and even smash them rather than let anyone have them.