This article originally appeared in d20 Weekly

Call of Cthulhu d20

Published by Wizards of the Coast

Written by Monte Cook and John Tynes (with other contributors)

Price $39.95; 320 pages

Chaosium first published the Call of Cthulhu RPG over 20 years ago. The game was based largely on the works of H.P. Lovecraft (and his contemporaries) and used Chaosium's Basic Role Playing (BRP) system. Lovecraft postulated a universe dominated by powerful supernatural creatures that would eventually spell the doom of mankind. The game has persisted over the years with few changes, and remains a popular choice for horror roleplaying. Wizards of the Coast has now published a new version of the game under license with Chaosium, using the d20 system and promising to bring Call of Cthulhu to a broader audience. For this task, Wizards of the Coast called on Monte Cook, author of the Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition DMG, and John Tynes, an author of many licensed Call of Cthulhu products. Several other authors of such products were called in to help.

Call of Cthulhu d20 is a thick hardbound book. The cover depicts a stony surface with skeletal and tentacled parts of hideous creatures sticking out. The book is organized into 12 chapters of rules and background, two adventures, and four appendices. The chapters cover the Call of Cthulhu d20 game proper, while the appendices provide advice for adapting the material to Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, statistics for godlike beings in the Cthulhu Mythos, and conversion notes for adapting BRP Call of Cthulh . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.




Article publication date: July 17, 2002


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