| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Call_of_Cthulhu_2.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:"[[Blog/ThingsMrWelchIsNoLongerAllowedToDoInAnRPG 840: Even if it would have immediately solved the last six adventures, I will not throw dynamite into every well we come across]]."[[note]][[https://www.deviantart.com/henning/art/Call-of-Cthulhu-Arkham-horror-28934472 Cover art by henning]][[/note]]]] |
| 3 | %% |
| 4 | ->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far..."'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Creator/HPLovecraft''', ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | One of the most famous TabletopGames of all time, Creator/{{Chaosium}}'s ''Call of Cthulhu'' combines the adventurism and teamwork of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' with the [[CosmicHorrorStory Lovecraftian Fiction]] setting of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos. Your adventurers, or rather investigators, are dropped into scenarios right out of a Lovecraft story, and must keep their wits about them; the goal of every ''C.O.C.'' campaign is not so much to ''defeat'' the Enemy, but to ''survive'' Its horrendous onslaught while following the mystery out to its bitter -- [[KillerGameMaster and usually grim]] -- end. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ''Call of Cthulhu'' has a number of similarities to that [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons other popular TTRPG system]], but is lighter on rules and easier to play. There are no classes and [[HalfHumanHybrid except in very exceptional cases]], every character is human. Each character has an array of ''D&D''-style attributes ([=STRength=], [=DEXterity=], [=CONstitution=], [=INTelligence=], [=POWer=], [=EDUcation=], [=APPearance=] and [=SIZe=]) as percentile scores. There are also a dizzying number of skills that each investigator might have a percentile score in. To perform an action, players simply roll a d100 and try to get under their score to succeed; depending on the difficulty of the action, modifiers and bonus or penalty die may be applied, or a hard or critical success (rolling under half or one-fifth of the appropriate skill, respectively) may be called for. Character progression is organic and gradual as skill points are accumulated gradually for successful rolls - if you want to learn lockpicking in ''D&D'', you'd need to take a level in rogue or have the lockpick proficiency, but here you simply get practicing, just like real life. Starting skills are determined by a vast number of occupations to choose from; from petty criminals to law enforcement (police and private detective), military types to academics, elected officials and blue-collar working men. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | While ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' is a game of monster-slaying and high adventure, ''Call of Cthulhu'' is a game of investigation, exploration and gathering clues to unravel a mystery. Combat is rare and [[HopelessBossFight very often a suicidal endeavour]] for the investigators[[note]]Your average Fighter character from ''D&D'' might have upwards of 40 HP and be able to take several hits from a 1D6 axe before being knocked unconscious; whereas your average Call of Cthulhu investigator will rarely ever have more than 15 HP, but a shot from a .303 Lee Enfield deals 2D6+4 damage and an M1911 pistol deals 1D10+2 damage per shot (and pistols can possibly fire three times in a round). That means if someone shoots you at close range, unless your character is wearing a BulletproofVest and gets quite lucky then statistically speaking they are probably going to be either instantly killed or at least in for a very lengthy recovery in hospital[[/note]] - while shotguns and dynamite can be quite effective against human cultists and other "low level" horrors, you are hopelessly outmatched by nearly everything else in the game. In ''Call of Cthulhu'', the three most important skills in the game are Spot Hidden, Library Use and Hide, ''nobody'' wants to be saddled with the [[ArtifactOfDoom magic item]], and any player character who tries to be an ActionHero will [[DrivenToSuicide probably wind up using their precious gun on themselves to end the nightmare]]. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Notable for introducing [[SanityMeter Sanity as a character stat]] -- your characters actually risk having their minds blown apart, partially or completely (and sometimes even ''literally''), by the events they encounter. As a result, the term "SAN check" has drifted out of the ''Cthulhu'' following and become a generally recognized metaphor among gaming circles. As characters learn more lore about the Cthulhu Mythos, their maximum Sanity shrinks -- [[SadisticChoice forcing players to choose]] between their characters being ignorant or crazy. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | The underlying premise of Lovecraft's senseless and horrifying universe is that unlike previous authors who posited that [[HumansAreSpecial humans are important and matter hugely in the grand cosmic scheme]], '''[[DefiedTrope here the opposite is true]]'''; we as a species are a cosmic joke, constantly under threat by aliens at the fringes of our reality who are [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien so ridiculously advanced and powerful]] that we would worship them, and [[ReligionOfEvil many people in dark, forgotten corners of the world do]]; their technology looks like magic to us and their motives and intelligences are far beyond our ability to comprehend (so much that simply trying to would drive us mad). Our religion is a joke and our science does not adequately explain the ''real'' workings of the universe. To them, our civilisation is a dirty nuisance and they would wipe us out with the same contemptuous ease we would a mite infestation. The best we can manage is fleeting victories that push their ambitions back a few decades or even a century or two... but what is that setback next to millions or even billions of years of calculating patience? |
| 16 | |
| 17 | The default setting is TheRoaringTwenties, true to Lovecraft's time period and coming with a lot of advantages for investigative horror - lack of available communication (Investigators can't just whip out their phone and call the cops if they encounter something shady like a cult gathering[[note]]And of course if the Keeper is smart they will absolutely ensure that the police are [[DirtyCop totally compromised by the same cult]], so by making that call, ''they will know'' that you know about them and [[OhCrap they can trace your phone to your exact location]][[/note]]), there are still parts of the world that are relatively exotic and unexplored, and justifiably any adult male in their twenties and thirties will have combat experience since UsefulNotes/WorldWarI wasn't that long ago). However there are also variations for other settings and time periods including: |
| 18 | |
| 19 | * ''TabletopGame/AchtungCthulhu'' - UsefulNotes/WW2 setting from Creator/ModiphiusEntertainment. |
| 20 | * ''Convicts and Cthulhu'' - 18th and 19th Century Australia from Cthulhu Reborn. |
| 21 | * ''Cthulhu Britannica'' - Victorian Britain from Creator/Cubicle7. |
| 22 | * ''Cthulhu by Gaslight'' - TheGayNineties. |
| 23 | * ''Cthulhu Dark Ages'' - DarkAgeEurope. |
| 24 | * ''Cthulhu Invictus'' - AncientRome. |
| 25 | * ''Cthulhu Now'' - Modern Day, would later be included in the core rule books. |
| 26 | * ''Cthulhu Rising'' - The 23rd Century. |
| 27 | * ''Cthulhu Sverige'' - Set in 1920s Sweden and the Nordic countries. Currently [[NoExportForYou only available in Swedish]]. |
| 28 | * ''TabletopGame/DeltaGreen'' - Present-day ConspiracyThriller developed by Pagan Publishing. Would later become a standalone game published by Arc Dream Publishing. |
| 29 | * ''Down Darker Trails'' - TheWildWest |
| 30 | * ''TabletopGame/TheLaundry'' - An officially licensed RPG based on ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'' from Creator/Cubicle7. |
| 31 | * ''Pulp Cthulhu'' - The [[TheGreatDepression 1930s]], with a sharp bent towards WeirdScience and TwoFistedTales. |
| 32 | * ''Reign of Terror'' - UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution |
| 33 | * ''TabletopGame/TrailOfCthulhu'' - A sort of remake made by Pelgrane Press, using TabletopGame/{{GUMSHOE}}, a more narrativist and rules-lite system made for investigative games, instead of Call's traditional D100 system. Set in TheThirties rather then TheRoaringTwenties. |
| 34 | * ''TabletopGame/WorldWarCthulhu'' - UsefulNotes/WW2 and UsefulNotes/ColdWar setting from Creator/Cubicle7. |
| 35 | * ''Regency Cthulhu'' - Set in RegencyEngland. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | There are also a number of video games bearing the ''Call of Cthulhu'' name, all licensed by Chaosium, though their connection to the RPG varies. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | * ''[[VideoGame/ShadowOfTheComet Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet]]'' (1993), an adventure game developed by Infogrames and taking inspiration from ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' and ''Literature/TheDunwichHorror''. |
| 40 | * ''[[VideoGame/PrisonerOfIce Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice]]'' (1995), another adventure game released by Infogrames that is an indirect sequel to ''Shadow of the Comet'', utilizing elements from ''Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness''. |
| 41 | * ''VideoGame/CallOfCthulhuDarkCornersOfTheEarth'' (2005), a survival horror first-person shooter developed by Headfirst and published by Bethesda Softworks. Based on the Franchise/CthulhuMythos (specifically ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' and ''Literature/TheShadowOutOfTime'') while also taking elements from the "Raid On [[TownWithADarkSecret Innsmouth]]" campaign module of the RPG. Was intended to be the first in Headfirst's series of ''Call of Cthulhu'' games, but all of its sequels were cancelled due to the company going bankrupt. |
| 42 | * ''Call of Cthulhu: Darkness Within, Book 1'' (2007), an adventure game developed by Mayhem Games and published by Digital Jokers for Java-based mobile phones. ''Book 2'' has not been released. |
| 43 | * ''Videogame/CallOfCthulhuTheWastedLand'' (2012), an [[IndieGame indie]] TurnBasedTactics video game developed by Red Wasp Design. Features a setting that is a mix between the Cthulhu Mythos (particularly ''Literature/HerbertWestReanimator'') and UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. |
| 44 | * ''VideoGame/CallOfCthulhuTheOfficialVideoGame'' (2018), a first-person survival horror game developed by Cyanide. It features RPG elements based directly on the tabletop rules. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | Do not confuse with [[https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=59067 a crossover with Mario of the same name]], a CollectibleCardGame of the same name loosely based on (and licensed by) Chaosium's aforementioned RPG, a movie done in the black-and-white style of the 1920s about Cthulhu, the Youtube series WebVideo/CallsForCthulhu, or [[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu the original short story]] by Creator/HPLovecraft that they are all named after. The most famous campaign for the setting was ''[[TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhuMasksOfNyarlathotep Masks of Nyarlathotep]]'' which has been adapted into a radio play. A co-op boardgame called ''Call of Cthulhu Terror Paths'' was released for the 40th anniversary. See also ''TabletopGame/ArkhamHorror'', Cthulhu Mythos TheBoardGame; and ''VideoGame/TheSinkingCity'', a investigation ActionAdventure horror game released in 2019 that takes many cues from Lovecraft's works. |
| 47 | |
| 48 | Interested in seeing some gameplay? Check out WebVideo/CriticalRole's one-shot, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhqZdJ8swQ "Shadow of the Crystal Palace"]] or Chaosiums' own ''WebVideo/BookshopsOfArkham''. |
| 49 | |
| 50 | It uses the "Basic Role-Playing" Chaosium HouseSystem. |
| 51 | ---- |
| 52 | !!Provides examples of: |
| 53 | |
| 54 | * AbuseMistake |
| 55 | ** Supplement ''Dreamlands'', adventure "Pickman's Student". When the investigators go to the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, they find a man tied to a chair with a bathrobe thrown over him. If they rescue him, they discover that he's playing bondage games with his wife. |
| 56 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine #18 scenario "Dog Will Hunt". If the Investigators investigate the Owl's Brotherhood Lodge, they may happen upon a ceremony which appears to be the HumanSacrifice of a nude woman using a scimitar. It's actually just a harmless ritual the members carry out - the woman isn't actually killed. |
| 57 | * AdaptationExpansion: A ''lot'' of the lore that many now take for granted about the Mythos, such as pictures of what the various gribbly horrors look like, was actually invented whole-cloth by the game in order to make it ''possible'' to run roleplaying games in a universe that had always relied on ambiguity and the unknown to convey a sense of dread. |
| 58 | * AdjectiveAnimalAlehouse |
| 59 | ** Campaign ''At Your Door'', adventure "Where A God Shall Tread". The Black Dragon restaurant can be found in Toronto's Chinatown district. |
| 60 | ** ''Dark Designs'', adventure "Eyes for the Blind". The Black Lion Hotel can be found in in Truro. |
| 61 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' |
| 62 | *** Chapter 2 "London". The Laughing Horse pub can be found in the village of Lesser-Edale in Derbyshire. |
| 63 | *** Chapter 5 "Shanghai". The Stumbling Tiger bar in Shanghai where the {{PC}}s can contact Jack Brady. |
| 64 | ** ''Cthulhu By Gaslight'', adventure "The Yorkshire Horrors". In the town of Northallerton, the Investigators can obtain useful information by talking with a madman at the Red Rooster Inn. |
| 65 | ** ''Cthulhu Britannica''. The village of Middle Harling has the Red Lion pub. |
| 66 | ** Supplement ''Green and Pleasant Land'', adventure "The Shadow Over Darkbank". The adventure starts in a small hotel called the Golden Lion. |
| 67 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' #5, adventure "The Lambton Worm". The Black Bull is the best pub in the town of Burton Green. |
| 68 | ** ''Blood Brothers'' adventure "The Swarming". The [[PlayerCharacter Investigators]] will spend part of the adventure at the Red Fox Inn. |
| 69 | ** Theatre of the Mind Enterpises (T.O.M.E.) supplement ''Pursuit to Kadath''. The Velvet Dragon speakeasy (bar illegal under Prohibition) can be found in the off-Broadway theatrical district in New York City. |
| 70 | * AfterlifeExpress: ''Fearful Passages'' adventure "Iron Ghost". "The Train That Ever Was" carries its victims to a terrible fate: to be devoured by Azathoth. |
| 71 | * AfterTheEnd: The Reaping setting described in "Cthulhu Through The Ages" is a future world where perhaps some party of investigators in the 1920s failed to prevent the rising of R'lyeh or the opening of Nyarlathotep's Great Gate. Whatever the case, the Old Ones woke up and the world screamed in pain when they did. The lucky ones died first and the surviving humans who didn't fall to the cults and the madness clung to the ashes of a broken world, hiding and waiting. The players might perhaps seek a means to cast the Old Ones back to the void they came from, or a fabled place of sanctuary and salvation away from the wickedness of the world's new masters, or maybe [[DefiantToTheEnd just take the fight to the cults in humanity's twilight]]. |
| 72 | * AlluringFlowers: The Death-Vines of Xiclotl are gigantic carnivorous flowers that produce hypnotic pollen that compels those who inhale it to hurl themselves into the pits where they live. |
| 73 | %%* AllWebbedUp: What happens to you if you mess with Atlach-Nacha or Leng Spiders. |
| 74 | * ApocalypseCult: Franchise/CthulhuMythos cults try to do this in the campaigns ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' and ''The Fungi from Yuggoth''. |
| 75 | * ApocalypticLog: ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Warren", ''Horror on the Orient Express'' campaign, ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Mystery of Loch Feinn", and the ''Fearful Passages'' supplement adventure "Armored Angels". |
| 76 | * ApothecaryAlligator: In the campaign ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', adventure "The Thing in the Well", Dr. Cornwallis has a stuffed alligator hanging by wires from the ceiling of his alchemical laboratory. |
| 77 | * ArrestedForHeroism: In ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'', investigators who attack or kill Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists can easily get in trouble with the law. It's even common advice for Keepers to remind players that [[KillItWithFire if they try and solve every problem by burning the building down]] they ''will'' [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome eventually get arrested for arson, be unpaid or even sued by their employer, or otherwise face realistic consequences.]] |
| 78 | ** In the supplement ''Terror from the Stars'', the "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society" explains how killing Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists can cause the investigators to have problems with the authorities. |
| 79 | --->Another problem with human cultists is that the law frowns particularly harshly at open murder of them. Unlike Cthulhuoid monstrosities, deceased humans don't melt away, leaving no tell-tale evidence behind. |
| 80 | ** The ''Cthulhu Companion'' has a section about how dealing with Franchise/CthulhuMythos worshippers can cause investigators to end up in prison. |
| 81 | --->Intrepid investigators often run afoul of the law, for the law is built to adjudicate routine human conduct, not extraordinary inhuman activity. Investigators handle problems by blowing up the mine, burning down the house or beheading the sorcerer: solutions frequently considered despicable in a grand jury report. Society can act like a perverse parent, punishing the investigator for doing good. |
| 82 | ** ''The Fungi from Yuggoth''. On the Day of the Beast, Edward Chandler will summon the Beast (an avatar of Nyarlathotep) in Egypt. If the investigators kill him to prevent this and the Egyptian authorities capture them, the investigators will have to either prove Chandler's guilt or be arrested for murder. |
| 83 | ** ''Adventures in Arkham Country'' adventure "With Malice Aforethought". The investigators discover an insane asylum which has had all of its staff murdered by a Myth/CthulhuMythos creature. When the investigators manage to stop the creature's rampage, they are arrested by the police and tried for the killings. |
| 84 | * AttackOfTheMonsterAppendage: ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Yellow Sails". When Mironim-Mer activates the Oracle Mirror, the wendigo demon possessing it sends out a tentacle to grab him. |
| 85 | * AwkwardSilenceEntrance: Supplement ''Adventures in Arkham County'', adventure "The Whore of Baharna". When the PlayerCharacters enter the Scarlet Witch pub in the city of Baharna, the crowd falls silent. Once the crowd members have checked the [=PCs=] out, they start talking again. |
| 86 | * BackAlleyDoctor: Supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "The Auction". Dr. Verhamme claims to be a doctor but can't provide a diploma or any other proof. He spends most of his time performing illegal abortions. When he was called in to treat Klaus Hunderprest's wife, he diagnosed her as having incurable end-stage cancer and could do nothing for her. |
| 87 | %%* BadassNormal: Any Investigator who manages to maintain their sanity and survive an encounter with a Mythos creature is this by default. Bonus points if they somehow managed to ''kill'' it. |
| 88 | * BadHabits: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Mauretania". A Bolshevik agent pretends to be a priest to get close to a Russian count for an assassination attempt. |
| 89 | * BanishingRitual: Certain deities that can be summoned by a Call spell can also by sent back to their place of origin by a Dismiss spell. These include Arwassa, Azathoth, Cthugha, Ithaqua, Nyogtha, Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth. |
| 90 | * BedlamHouse: Creepy insane asylums are a recurring setting. It's even possible to visit (or more likely be locked up in) the ''original'' Arkham Asylum. |
| 91 | * BedouinRescueService: ''Curse of the Chthonians'', adventure "The City Without A Name". After the investigators leave Irem, if they run out of camels and water in the desert they can be rescued by a small band of Bedouins. |
| 92 | * BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga, it turns out, was an avatar of Nyarlathotep. |
| 93 | * BeingHumanSucks: ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "Paper Chase". A book lover named Douglas Kimball hates dealing with people. He meets some ghouls, goes to live with them and eventually becomes one himself. |
| 94 | * BigCreepyCrawlies: Leng Spiders, Insects from Shaggai, and others. This is no game for the entomophobic. |
| 95 | * BizarreAlienBiology: Intelligent flying fungoids, semi-vegetable tentacled elder things, and more. |
| 96 | * BlessedWithSuck. One old issue of Wizard Magazine stated that ''Call of Cthulhu'' is the only game in which the player with the fastest speed lives the longest, and the only game in which ''no one'' wants the magic item. It doesn't help the original game was a ticking countdown from sanity to insanity: your character ''will'' go insane. It's just a matter of how fast. Of course, your character might not go insane. They have a good chance of dying before they hit that point. Needless to say, ending a Call of Cthulhu game with a living and sane character is unlikely at best. |
| 97 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: Even the most superficially benevolent races in the game have utterly inscrutable or bizarre motives. |
| 98 | * BlueMeansCold: "The Madman" features a whitish-blue flame that generates cold air during a ceremony. |
| 99 | * BodyHorror: Mostly for non-player characters, but [=PC=]s aren't safe either. |
| 100 | * BoringButPractical: |
| 101 | ** Players have a dizzying array of skills to invest their points in, ranging from weapon proficiencies, schools of scientific knowledge, live or dead languages... but in the vast majority of cases, the two skills a given Investigator is most likely to use are Spot Hidden and Library Use. |
| 102 | ** Molotov cocktails are cheap to make from largely legal components, relatively easy to conceal and do a considerable amount of fire damage over a wide area. As well as doing direct damage, the lingering flames can zone off a corridor and allow an easy escape, or even shed light in a dark cavern or underground bunker. Many chthonic monsters are ImmuneToBullets but ''not'' impervious to burning, to say nothing of their effectiveness against human cultists and human-shaped creatures. Flare guns are similarly completely legal to own and carry without a permit, and deal a surprising amount of damage (1d10 plus 1d3 burning) if it hits. |
| 103 | ** In addition, the Throw skill which determines your accuracy with Molotovs is versatile enough that you can also use [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks shuriken, knives]] or even stones and other [[ImprovisedWeapon improvised]] projectiles if you run out of mollies, and Throw also has a variety of noncombat uses too - distraction, tossing vital objects to teammates, etc. |
| 104 | ** The humble SawedOffShotgun is also easy to acquire (at least in the traditional USA setting of ''Call of Cthulhu'') and easily concealed under a coat or other piece of clothing. Its killing power greatly diminishes with range, but up close... Bam. 4D6 damage, which goes up to 8D6 if you use both barrels at once. Reduce cultists to red mist, and knock Deep Ones flat on their fishy asses. And if you need to reach out and touch further than the paltry 10yd range, there's slug rounds which increase the base range up to 50yds. |
| 105 | ** Dynamite is extremely powerful and fairly easy to acquire since many scenarios deal with archaeological digs and mining operations that DugTooDeep. And if not, somebody who can forge convincing order documents can get hold of it legally through a dummy company. |
| 106 | * BrainInAJar: A possible fate for characters who get on the wrong side of the Mi-Go. This does not mean you've pissed them off. Then they just kill you. They stuff your brain in a jar if they ''like'' you. Unfortunately, the Mi-Go are just not all that good at emulating human senses (which, given they are sentient fungus-things, makes sense). One supplement posits that the use of speech software, high quality cameras, microphones, and a lot of lucky rolls would allow a brain in a jar to have a lot closer to human abilities. |
| 107 | * BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu: If you destroy Cthulhu with a nuke, he'll regenerate around 15 minutes later - [[FromBadToWorse but now he's radioactive]]. |
| 108 | * BrotherhoodOfEvil: The Brotherhood of the Beast in ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' (and its remake ''Day of the Beast''). |
| 109 | * BrownNoteBeing: |
| 110 | ** The sourcebook for [[TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhuSecretsOfSanFrancisco "Secrets of San Francisco"]], a [[TheRoaringTwenties 1920s]] setting, the scenario "The Colour of His Eyes" is about some scholar who went mad looking through an alien looking telescope which allowed his to see ''Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace''. The telescope left the alien "colour", a malevolent sentient light, within his eyeballs. Now he kills or harms people just by looking at them. |
| 111 | ** It is harmful to sanity to encounter Cthulhu, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, or any another EldritchAbomination, regardless of whether they are in a good mood. |
| 112 | * BungledHypnotism: Adventure ''Pursuit to Kadath''. During a party, a man is hypnotized as part of a game. This leaves his mind wide open to DemonicPossession. Later on, the participants decide to hold a seance. This summons a powerful spirit residing in a nearby artifact, who takes the opportunity to possess the hapless man. |
| 113 | * ButtMonkey: Harvey Walters, the sample character used for gameplay examples (i.e. being maimed/driven mad). |
| 114 | * CannibalLarder: In the supplement ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', adventure "The Worm That Walks". When the {{PC}}s explore the Woodie house they discover a kitchen which is the butcher shop of a den of cannibals. It has the gruesome remnants of an earlier meal spread around - hands, feet, and even more grisly bits of human debris. |
| 115 | * CanonCharacterAllAlong: In ''Beyond the Mountains of Madness'', Kyle Williams, the pilot for the Lexington expedition, is actually [[spoiler:Paul Danforth]] from [[Literature/AtTheMountainsOfMadness the original story]]. |
| 116 | * CanonDiscontinuity: {{Invoked|Trope}} by the rulebook writers, who felt that some of Creator/AugustDerleth's additions to the canon seemed out of place, or took the edge off some of the horror. Given that this is an officially licensed product made by people who [[RunningTheAsylum were originally mythos fans]], it is debatable how much of this discontinuity is {{Ascended|Fanon}} [[FanonDiscontinuity fanon]]. |
| 117 | * CanonImmigrant: There are also several entities that originate from this game, such as ''Arwassa'', ''Baoht Z'uqqa-Mogg'', ''Ghadamon'' and handful of lesser Outer Gods. |
| 118 | * CanonWelding: The ''Malleus Monstrorum'' sourcebook. Not only mentioning every major Mythos entity, the book also throws in ''Film/TheThing1982'', The Martians of ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'', and ''Film/TheWickerMan1973'' and several of Creator/StephenKing's characters are Nyarlathotep's avatars. |
| 119 | * CargoCult: ''Glozel Est Authentique!''. When Phoenician traders stopped coming, the people in the area that would become Glozel created tablets with Phoenician characters on them to try to bring them back. |
| 120 | * CastFromSanity: The TropeMaker. Every spell cast takes a toll on your mind. And increasing your Mythos knowledge (used to cast spells) ''permanently'' lowers your Sanity stat. |
| 121 | * CatGirl: Bast, the Egyptian goddess of cats. She shows up to exact vengeance if someone hurts a cat. |
| 122 | * CatsAreMagic: A staple of Lovecraftian fiction in his "Dreamlands" works, naturally replicated here and with the inclusion of the goddess Bast as an Elder God. |
| 123 | * CaveMouth: ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". The entrance to the cave that leads to the Valley has been carved in the likeness of Cthulhu's head. |
| 124 | * CelestialBody: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', "Day of the Beast". When the Sphinx turns into the Beast (an avatar of Nyarlathotep) its face falls off, revealing a black oval void filled with whirling suns and galaxies. |
| 125 | * CigarFuseLighting: ''Terror from the Stars'', "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". Theron Marks always had a lit cigar in his mouth during adventures in order to light sticks of dynamite. |
| 126 | * CoincidentalBroadcast: ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine #10 adventure "In Media Res". Four men find themselves inside a farmhouse with the dead body of a murdered prison guard lying on a table. Each man has complete amnesia about their past. In a nearby room, a television set is showing a local newscast about the crash of a bus owned by the "Liberty Center for the Criminally Insane" and the escape of several dangerous inmates being carried by the bus. Guess what the men are? |
| 127 | * CombatTentacles: Many Franchise/CthulhuMythos monsters and deities have tentacles that can grab and/or damage opponents. See the CombatTentacles page for the full list. |
| 128 | * ConcealingCanvas |
| 129 | ** ''Utatti Asfet'' has two wall safes behind paintings: one behind a lithograph of the Mississippi paddle wheeler "The Bayou Queen", and one behind a portrait of Father Michael Thibidoux, a Cthulhuoid cultist. |
| 130 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". In Doctor Freygan's bedroom there's a painting that's slightly askew. Behind the painting is a wall safe with $5,000 worth of antique gold coins. |
| 131 | ** ''The Vanishing Conjurer and The Statue of the Sorcerer''. At the El Profondo estate, Worlsman's apartments include a study. One important feature of the study is a portrait of Worlsman himself. If the portrait is moved it pulls away from the wall on hinges and reveals a concealed safe. |
| 132 | ** Supplement ''The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island''. One of the bedrooms of the Martinson home has a landscape painting on the wall. If the painting is removed, a door to a secret compartment in the wall is revealed. In the compartment is an unnamed Franchise/CthulhuMythos TomeOfEldritchLore. |
| 133 | ** ''Magazine/{{Adventurer}}'' magazine #5, adventure "A Wee Dram of Danger". In the Kilbride house, a portrait of James Kilbride conceals the family wall safe. Inside the safe is a magical artifact that the PlayerParty needs to defeat the villain of the adventure without killing an innocent victim. |
| 134 | * CoolUncle: In ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Mountains of the Moon", an NPC named Victor recognizes one PlayerCharacter. He was an old friend of the PC's father, and the PC remembers him as "Uncle Victor", a warm, good-hearted man (even though Mom didn't seem to like him). |
| 135 | * CosmicHorrorStory: The game at its core. |
| 136 | * {{Cult}}s: Usually worship one or more EldritchAbomination; [[ReligionOfEvil NOT nice people]]. Investigator Organisations are a more benign example. |
| 137 | * CuriosityKilledTheCast: Because the game requires investigation, this is the inevitable fate of any group of Investigators, unless they go permanently insane first. |
| 138 | * {{Cyclops}}: ''Pursuit to Kadath'' adventure "The All Seeing Eye of the Alskali". The title Alskali monsters, whose single eye can hypnotize their victims. |
| 139 | * TheDayOfReckoning: Can occur in multiple published campaigns, including ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' and ''The Fungi from Yuggoth''. |
| 140 | * DeadlyBook: The Franchise/CthulhuMythos books: |
| 141 | ** Reading most of these books causes the reader to lose points from his Sanity score proportional to the power and usefulness of the book. This can cause insanity (temporary, indefinite or permanent), depending on how many points are lost. |
| 142 | ** Some of the contents of the books are dangerous in other ways. For example, reading even a page of ''The Revelations of Glaaki'' can cause the reader to become aware of the deity Y'golonac, which allows it to possess and destroy them. |
| 143 | * DeadlyHug: ''Masks of Nyarlathotep''. M'Weru likes to embrace her victim, cast the Hands of Colubra spell (which changes her hands into the heads of poisonous snakes) and use them to bite her victim and poison them. |
| 144 | * DeadManWriting: ''Dark Designs'' adventure "Eyes for the Blind". Elias Cartwright's note starts "By the time you read this I fear that I shall be dead". |
| 145 | * DealWithTheDevil: The spell Unspeakable Oath. By devoting yourself to the power Hastur, he grants you a wish or boon. However, you begin to lose charisma at a gradual rate. When your charisma score is 0, or when Hastur wills it, you become his slavering thrall. |
| 146 | * DeathByDeaging: "The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn". The Time/Space Machine is able to de-age an object or creature, moving it back in time and making it younger. If a creature is moved back to before it was born, it will cease to exist. |
| 147 | * {{Dedication}}: Most of the gamebooks have a portrait of Lovecraft [[InMemoriam along with his years of birth and death]] (1890-1937) near the front. |
| 148 | * DepartureMeansDeath: Spectral Hunters must stay within 1 mile of the doll that was used in their creation. |
| 149 | * DespairEventHorizon: What often happens when characters are exposed to too much of the Mythos. Even if characters survive their experiences, their view on the world and humanity's place in it is forever changed. |
| 150 | * DeviousDolphins: Supplement ''Cthulhu Now'', adventure "The City in the Sea". While searching for an underwater temple, the {{Player Character}}s are attacked by a group of killer dolphins under the control of a deity named Gloon. |
| 151 | * DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Although, this happens very, very rarely, since meeting the aforementioned {{eldritch abomination}}s usually ends badly. |
| 152 | -->"Each round 1D3 investigators are scooped up in Cthulhu's flabby claws to die hideously."[[note]]With its MemeticMutation: "Cthulhu eats 1d6 investigators per round. No save."[[/note]] |
| 153 | * DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu: Yog-Sothoth, ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'', ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "The Thing in the Well" and the ''Cthulhu Now'' adventure "Love's Lonely Children". |
| 154 | * DisposableSexWorker: Campaign ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'', Chapter 4 "Kenya". The Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultist Tandoor Singh occasionally lures in a [[DisposableVagrant street child]] or prostitute to sacrifice to the Small Crawler, an aspect of the deity Nyarlathotep. |
| 155 | * DisposableVagrant: This procedure is followed by Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists and monsters in multiple supplements. |
| 156 | ** ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Rescue". A group of werewolves deliberately targets derelicts; by victimizing those without friends or money, they ensure that the police are not unduly concerned. |
| 157 | ** ''Glozel Est Authentique!'' by T.O.M.E. The Shub-Niggurath cultists in Glozel perform {{Human Sacrifice}}s using drifters and other strangers not likely to be missed. |
| 158 | ** ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight". Carl Stanford has an enchanted cane that drains the Power from those it touches and stores them as Magic Points in the cane. He has his minions bring derelicts to him so he can drain them until they die. |
| 159 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". The worship of the Great Old One called Arwassa requires a human sacrifice each month. The cultist worshippers sometimes send out kidnappers into neighboring counties to capture derelicts and vagrants for this purpose. |
| 160 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' |
| 161 | *** Chapter 3 "Egypt". After Nitocris is resurrected, she creates an international organization to infiltrate countries around the world. Its task is to create a racial, religious, or economic underclass in each country that can provide HumanSacrifice victims for Franchise/CthulhuMythos cult activities. |
| 162 | *** Chapter 4 "Kenya". The Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultist Tandoor Singh occasionally lures in a street child or [[DisposableSexWorker prostitute]] to sacrifice to the Small Crawler, an aspect of the deity Nyarlathotep. |
| 163 | *** Chapter 5 "Shanghai". The Order of the Bloated Woman chooses its victims from among those who are poor and have no friends. |
| 164 | ** Supplement ''The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island''. The Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists on Monhegan Island lure outcasts and loners from the mainland and use them as {{Human Sacrifice}}s because they're less likely to be missed. |
| 165 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine #18 scenario "Dog Will Hunt". A serial killer named Eben Murrow (who is also an insane Franchise/CthulhuMythos sorcerer) normally targets strangers passing through town and ne’er-do-wells who will never be missed by the locals. |
| 166 | ** ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine |
| 167 | *** #63 adventure "Draw the Blinds on Yesterday". The Cthulhu Mythos cultists who live on Southwell Farm perform {{Human Sacrifice}}s each month using hitchhikers from roads around the farm. |
| 168 | *** #97 adventure "A Capital Offense". In the BackStory, a Shub-Niggurath worshiping cult sacrificed tramps to consecrate an altar to their deity. |
| 169 | * DownInTheDumps: ''Cthulhu Now'' adventure "The Killer Out of Space". A auto junkyard's giant electromagnets can be used to trap a Colour Out of Space. |
| 170 | * DramaticSpineInjury: From the campaign ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', adventure "Castle Dark": When the investigators travel to Castle Dark, they will meet the Gypsy FortuneTeller Sarena and her son Vech. While Sarena does a Tarot card reading for the investigators, Vech is attacked by a Star Vampire that brutally snaps his spine and drains his blood, killing him. |
| 171 | * DreamLand: The Dreamlands are one of the possible settings of the game. The Dreamlands is an alternate dimension that lies beyond the wall of sleep, it resembles Earth's past and is home to many bizarre alien beings and civilisations. It is possible for an experienced Dreamer to exert change over the world and even choose to permanently reside in the dimension when they die, but dying as a spiritual visitor causes the corporeal body in the waking world to suffer a "shock" that induces "dream death", making revisiting the Dreamlands impossible. |
| 172 | * DumbwaiterRide: In the supplement ''The Asylum And Other Tales'', adventure "The Auction". The House of Ausperg has several dumbwaiters that go from the second floor preparation rooms down to the basement vaults in which auction items are stored. After a pack of ghouls breaks into the vaults to steal an item, courageous investigators can choose to use one of the dumbwaiters to go down to the basement instead of using the stairs. |
| 173 | * EldritchAbomination: Entire bestiaries of 'em. |
| 174 | * EmotionSuppression: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". Doctor Freygan has developed a drug called Mood Flattener. It temporarily suppresses all emotion in the recipient. |
| 175 | * EndangeringNewsBroadcast: T.O.M.E. supplement ''Pursuit to Kadath''. After the BigBad steals money from a bank, a newspaper story reveals that some of the money is new currency with consecutive serial numbers, and thus easily identified and traced. The villain reads the newspaper and discards the bills. |
| 176 | * EvilDetectingDog: Supplement ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "The Rescue". |
| 177 | ** The first time the {{PC}}s meet Jael and Deborah Pelton is when they see them being threatened by a pack of dogs. The dogs are barking at them because they can detect that the Pelton girls are actually werewolves in human form. |
| 178 | ** Later on the adventure states that all animals react nervously or angrily whenever the Peltons come near. |
| 179 | * EvilMask: ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". A metal mask with Cthulhu's face grants the wearer several powers, but each time it's put on the wearer must make a SAN roll or lose sanity. |
| 180 | * ExplosiveLeash: The Sons of Terror's cranial bombs in ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "By the Bay Part II". |
| 181 | * ExpositionOfImmortality: Various campaigns and scenarios hinge on the uncovering of the Mythos and its dabblers' alien natures. Key example of this trope in use occurs in the Cthulhu 1990s campaign ''Utati Asfet: The Eye Of Wicked Sight.'' The BigBad, Labib, is actually an immortal from the time of the Pharaohs. Examination of artifacts and documents in his sanctum during the latter stages of the campaign can lead to this conclusion being made by the players. |
| 182 | * ExtraDimensionalShortcut: The setting ''Dreamlands''. The Dreamlands have a number of locations which touch the waking world and allow physical entry from and exit to that world. Some examples are the Enchanted Wood (connects to the Black Forest in Germany, the California redwoods, Transylvania and Roanoke Island), ghoul burrows (Earthly graveyards), the icy lands of Lomar (Alaska, Siberia and Greenland) and certain forbidden ways into the waking world beyond the Tanarian Hills. A daring character could enter the Dreamlands from one of these places in the waking world, travel the Dreamlands to an exit and use it to return to the waking world. |
| 183 | * EyesDoNotBelongThere: Shoggoths in the main rules and proto-shoggoths in the supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales''. |
| 184 | * TheFace: ''Terror from the Stars'' section "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". One {{PC}} should be a Communication Specialist - a charismatic character who is a good talker. |
| 185 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption. Though it is almost certain that humanity will one day be erased from existence by ancient and indescribable horrors and all of its accomplishments rendered into dust, investigators can often pull a BittersweetEnding. ''Call of Cthulhu'' presents stories of ordinary people knowingly subjecting themselves to tragedy and doom, breaking themselves in mind and body to buy the human race a couple more decades or maybe even a century if they're lucky; in that sense they are ''far'' more heroic than TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons adventurers. |
| 186 | * FamilyEyeResemblance: ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Secret of Castronegro". The de Diaz and Vilheila-Pereira families have vivid green eyes. |
| 187 | * FictionalColor |
| 188 | ** The Colour Out Of Space (based on the Creator/HPLovecraft story) is an EnergyBeing made up of colors outside the known spectrum. |
| 189 | ** ''Curse of the Chthonians'', adventure "The City Without A Name". The Scepter of Iram has a gem of a color not of our spectrum. |
| 190 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'', Shanghai section. Sir Aubrey's rocket is made of an alien metal that gleams with sickening alien colors. |
| 191 | ** ''H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham: Unveiling the Legend-Haunted City'', adventure "Uncle Silas's Books". If the PlayerCharacters decide to burn the title magical books, the books will explode in flames that have colors unknown on Earth. |
| 192 | * FictionalPainting: |
| 193 | ** Campaign ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth''. Several rooms in the lodge hall of the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight have a number of murals with horrible images that can cause any viewer to lose SAN (sanity) points. |
| 194 | ** ''The Asylum And Other Tales'', adventure "Westchester House". The MacGuffin of the adventure is a $15,000 painting called "The Hunter". It depicts a man on horseback with two dogs at the horse's feet. The dogs are looking back over their shoulders at a primal forest. Some viewers say they can make out something in the forest looking out at the unsuspecting horseman. |
| 195 | * FieryRedhead: Supplement ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "The Rescue". The NonPlayerCharacter Dr. Dare has red hair and "... his temper gets the best of him sometimes." |
| 196 | * FiveManBand: Encouraged by the Investigator's Handbook and by the game mechanics. ''Call of Cthulhu'' is a skill-based game as opposed to a class-based game and investigators come from all walks of life and should bring a lot of different skills to the table. Generally a party of investigators will want: |
| 197 | ** A '''Face''', a charismatic team member who can interview people, gain crucial information and assess their motives. Persuade, Charm, Intimidate, Fast Talk and Psychology are all domains of the Face. |
| 198 | ** An '''Investigator''' who can explore an area and gather vital clues from the environment. Skills like Track, Listen, Spot Hidden and Stealth are their wheelhouse. |
| 199 | ** A '''Fighter''', someone who is basically there to ensure the brainiacs stay off the menu... or the sacrificial altar. Fighters are good with the Fighting and Firearms skills, but may also have Jump, Swim and Throw. |
| 200 | ** A '''Scholar''', someone with in-depth knowledge on key subjects. History, archaeology, languages and/or the occult are the big ones, but other fields like astronomy, zoology, medical science, anthropology, geology and law can be very helpful too. A good doctor will also quickly prove their worth in gold. |
| 201 | ** A '''Handyman''' who can drive and repair vehicles, fix generators, pick locks, devise gadgets, hack computers, maintain crumbling books and otherwise save the day when things go wrong. |
| 202 | ** [[TheSixthRanger A party might also find the assistance of]] an archivist, a photographer or a general understudy or assistant handy. |
| 203 | * FlyingBooks: ''Dreamlands'' adventure "The Land of Lost Dreams". While in the title place a {{PC}} can encounter some of these. |
| 204 | * ForensicAccounting: Many early adventures have situations where {{PC}}s can use the Accounting skill to gain information. |
| 205 | ** ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "Devil's Canyon". While examining the papers in von Varnstein's office, if one of the {{PC}}s makes an Accounting roll he can discover an order for special camera lenses. This is a clue that tells the {{PC}}s that the camera lenses they discover later are important. |
| 206 | ** ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' |
| 207 | *** Adventure "The Dreamer". While searching Herbert Whitefield's office, the {{PC}}s can find bills and receipts. If one of them makes an Accounting roll, he can determine that Whitefield is deeply in debt and late on all his payments - a clue that gives him a motive in the disappearance of his client Paul [=LeMond=]. |
| 208 | *** Adventure "Mountains of the Moon". If the {{PC}}s break into the NWI mining office's administration building and Johnathan Harris' office, they can find the site's business records. A successful Accounting roll will discover that even though the operation is performing at peak efficiency, it's still losing a phenomenal amount of money. This is an important clue that the purpose of the site is not to make money and that there's something unusual going on. |
| 209 | ** ''Cthulhu Now'' adventure "The Killer Out Of Space". If a PC makes an Accounting roll while examining the books (accounting records) at Buddy's Best Wrex, he realizes that they aren't correct. The books are actually false: Buddy keeps the real books at home. |
| 210 | ** ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Pickman's Student". While going through Blakely's papers, a {{PC}} can make an Accounting Roll. If he succeeds he finds receipts for four of Blakely's paintings, with the addresses of the people who bought them. Since the {{PC}}s must find the paintings in order to succeed, this is a vitally important clue. |
| 211 | ** ''Horror on the Orient Express''. Successful Accounting rolls are useful twice: while examining Makryat's account books, they reveal that he bought and later sold a special train set, and while studying the Gremanchi Doll Work's records, they show how the Conte ordered the purchase of the Left Leg and later used it. |
| 212 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". In Dr. Freygan's bedroom, there's a wall safe behind a ConcealingCanvas. It holds an account book listing the asylum's income and expenses. If a {{PC}} makes an Accounting roll, he will realize that there's no way the asylum's income could cover its expenses. This is a clue that Dr. Freygan is making money another way: by helping bootleggers smuggle alcohol. |
| 213 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 4 "Kenya". If the {{PC}}s make an Accounting roll while reading Ahja Singh's ledger, they discover listings of shipments to addresses in Hong Kong, London and Egypt. These are important clues that will allow them to investigate a world wide (and world-threatening) Franchise/CthulhuMythos conspiracy. |
| 214 | ** Supplement ''At Your Door'', adventure "Full Wilderness". When a PlayerCharacter with Accounting skill is investigating Peter Tait's financial records, a successful Accounting roll tells them that Tait took money out of four different accounts to make a down payment on a farm. The farm is a site for further investigation. |
| 215 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine #18 article "The Chapel of Contemplation". If an Investigator makes an Accounting roll while searching the file system in the office, they discover a list of the title organization's income and expenses. These include many unspecifed "donations" (money received from blackmail), payments for a safe deposit box (where a valuable Mythos book is kept) and a large butcher's bill (from purchasing animals for sacrifice). |
| 216 | * ForgedLetter: ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', adventure "The Coven of Cannich". After the witches (Cthulhu Mythos cultists) in Scotland kill Henry Hancock, they send a fake letter supposedly written by him to his nephew Jacob to cover up his death. |
| 217 | * AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Nyarlathotep, Nodens and Hypnos all exhibit this trope, though for different reasons. |
| 218 | * FortuneTeller: A [[UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} Gypsy]] woman in ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Castle Dark" and Angela Broadmoor in ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 3 "Egypt". |
| 219 | * FossilRevival: ''Spawn of Azathoth''. The spell Call Children of Atlach-Nacha can be used to return spider fossils to life. |
| 220 | * FreakyFridaySabotage: In the supplement ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn". Just before Professor Staunton changes bodies with the investigator for the last time, he sedates the body he's in. After he changes, he locks his old body in a room so that it will take longer for the other investigators to find the body and figure out what's going on. |
| 221 | * FreshClue: ''Terror Australis'' adventure "Old Fella that Bunyip". The Investigators may stumble upon the scene of one of the Bunyip's attacks. They find a picnic site with signs of a struggle and a tea kettle of water heating over a fire. The kettle is still whistling, which means they arrived minutes after the attack. |
| 222 | * FungusHumongous: The ''Terror from the Stars'' adventure "The Temple of the Moon" and the ''Dreamlands'' supplement. |
| 223 | * GameplayAndStorySegregation: It is widely accepted that combat is something to generally be avoided in this game, and that most Mythos entities are unbeatable anyway. However, after about two or three sessions, players will quickly conclude that the best [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu Mythos repellent]] is about six to eight [[MoreDakka Tommy gun]] or [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter 12 gauge shotgun]] wielding JerkAss GeniusBruiser. |
| 224 | ** For the most part, it's still quite [[{{GameplayAndStoryIntegration}} integrated]] with some amounts of [[{{ZigZaggedTrope}} zig-zagging]], and it depends at what a Keeper is willing to throw at his players. As far as deity-level Mythos entities (Great Old Ones, Elder Gods, not even to mention the Outer Gods) are concerned, they ''are'' by definition immortal, being able to reform and come back some time (minutes to years) after being banished, and functionally invulnerable. The latter also goes for the higher-level Mythos entities (dholes, Cthonians, Star-spawn, the iconic shoggoths, Flying Polyps, hunting horrors, star vampires, Terrors from Beyond...), any of which will generally kill the entire party two times over before they manage to put more than a scratch on it, unless the party is exceptionally lucky ''and'' marvelously well-equipped. However, the lower-level entities that could pass for "Mythos footsoldiers" (ghouls, zombies, Deep Ones, the occasional dimensional shambler or two) can indeed be kept at bay and killed with [[MoreDakka sufficient firepower]] or the right kind of weapons, although it's still not exactly trivial. Human cultists, being mostly equal in stats to player characters, can be slaughtered in numbers if the investigators have the tactical advantage. Unless the cultists have one or several Mythos sorcerers with them, then the party is screwed once again. (And of course, another problem with human cultist enemies is that, while substantially weaker than almost any Mythos entity, they have the ability to use human technology just as well as the investigators - so the wondrous properties of shotguns detailed below can also work ''against'' the party...) |
| 225 | * GeneticMemory: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Sands of Time". Both the archvillain and the player characters experience an awakening of ancient genetic memories stored in their DNA. |
| 226 | * GiantSpider: In the ''Dreamlands'', Leng Spiders can grow to huge size and weigh hundreds of tons. |
| 227 | * GloriousLeader: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' campaign. The Brotherhood of the Beast plans to cause worldwide disaster so its leader can step in, save the world and be made President of the U.S. (and eventually ruler of the world). |
| 228 | * GlowingGem: A few examples, like the ones involved in Elder Thing technology. |
| 229 | ** ''Dreamlands'' campaign setting, adventure "Pickman's Student". While exploring the dream version of Elder Yuggoth, the {{PC}}s can encounter 4 dully glowing green gems that some Mi-go are using to restrain a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Later on, the {{PC}}s see one of the Mi-go sacrifice the Dark Young with a knife that has a blade made of the glowing gemstone. |
| 230 | ** Campaign ''Spawn of Azathoth''. The Investigators can acquire two stones that are necessary to deal with the Seed of Azathoth. At the climax of the adventure, the stones become strange fist-sized, glowing ovoid gems that increase greatly in weight. |
| 231 | ** Supplement ''Fragments of Fear'', adventure "The Secret of Castronegro". The sorcerer Bernardo Diaz has a magical ruby ring which glows brightly whenever it heals damage he's taken. The ring will also glow the first time it is put on someone else's finger. |
| 232 | * GoMadFromTheRevelation: TropeNamer (the phrase is taken from the same paragraph quoted above). When the characters realise just what is going on, their Sanity often snaps. As they learn more about how the world ''really'' works (the "Cthulhu mythos" stat), their maximum Sanity permanently drops by an equal amount. Thus, someone with a perfect Mythos score, having learned everything there is to know about the universe, would have no Sanity at all. These people usually wind up gibbering in the corner of a padded cell for the rest of their lives... or they run off to join a Mythos cult. |
| 233 | * GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: Delta Green in the U.S. and PISCES in Britain. |
| 234 | * TheGreys: Featured in TabletopGame/DeltaGreen. [[spoiler:They're actually artificial life forms created by the Mi-go as part of their experiments on humanity.]] |
| 235 | * GrimUpNorth: Some campaigns take the [=PC=]s to the Arctic. For example the adventure "The Derelict" takes place on a seemingly abandoned freighter in the icy north Atlantic. |
| 236 | * GruesomeGoat: In the ''Dreamlands'' supplement, in the adventure "Season of the Witch", the witch Hester Payne has a familiar named Specter who's the size of a human being and looks like a satyr (goat/human hybrid). Specter assists Hester in her evil plot to perform a HumanSacrifice of Eric Watson and Susan Mason in order to bring Hester back from the Dreamlands. |
| 237 | * GunAccessories: ''Terror from the Stars'', "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". The title Investigator group taped flashlights on top of firearms so they could shoot in the dark. |
| 238 | * GunsAreUseless: Nothing you can lift is high caliber enough to even scratch Cthulhu. Even heavy artillery won't stop him for long. In comparison, Cthugha is a sentient ball of intense heat. Firing soon-to-be blobs of molten metal at him kinda tickles. However, they do a bang-up job on human cultists and low-level Mythos minions, though, so if you find a group planning to call forth either of the above, break out something high caliber. |
| 239 | -->"So what happens if you nuke Cthulhu? He reforms ten minutes later, but now he's radioactive!" |
| 240 | ** Heavily averted in the ''Pulp Cthulhu'' variant play, where just about every [=PC=] is likely to have high skill with at least one firearm and gunfights are much more common. |
| 241 | * HalfHumanHybrid: The Deep Ones and the various half-human offspring of the Outer Gods. |
| 242 | * HandcuffedBriefcase: Supplement ''Horror on the Orient Express''. Franklin Myers carries the Franchise/CthulhuMythos TomeOfEldritchLore ''Unausprechlichen Kulten'' in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. |
| 243 | * HealingFactor: Chthonians, Cthulhu, Hounds of Tindalos, Shoggoths, Shudde M'ell, Star Spawn of Cthulhu and Tsathoggua can all regenerate injuries. |
| 244 | * HighVoltageDeath: Supplement The Asylum and Other Tales, adventure "The Asylum". Doctor Freygan's laboratory has a tub into which victims are placed in order to turn them into proto-shoggoths. If a living person is in the tub when the apparatus is activated, electrical bolts slam into their body and instantly (and horribly) kill them by electrocution. |
| 245 | * HollywoodTorches: ''Worlds of Cthulhu'' magazine #3, adventure "The Golden Scorpion". |
| 246 | * {{Hologram}}: The Yithian Communicator in ''The Fungi from Yuggoth''. |
| 247 | * HornAttack: |
| 248 | ** Animals and monsters with butt/gore attacks included the cape buffalo, gnoph-keh and rhino. |
| 249 | ** The T.O.M.E. (Theatre Of the Mind Enterprises) supplement ''Pursuit to Kadath'' has the Dragon Warriors, a set of monsters created by the Cthulhu Mythos deity Yig. The Dragon Warrior named Boresk is a winged bull with elemental flame covering its horns. The horns do 4-24 HitPoints of damage and set the target on fire. |
| 250 | * HostileWeather: ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Yellow Sails". The weather report for Sarrub is freezing winds blowing off the sea, bringing blizzards and sleet. |
| 251 | * HotBlade: ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". The East shrine is dedicated to Cthugha, a fire deity. A sword found in a secret room can be made to glow yellow-hot. |
| 252 | * HumanAliens: The secretive inhabitants of the subterranean city of K'n-Yan are almost completely indistinguishable from humans. |
| 253 | * HumanoidAbomination: Less prevalent than {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, but still numerous. Sometimes overlaps with AFormYouAreComfortableWith. |
| 254 | * HumanSacrifice: If you call a God, you'd best have one handy... |
| 255 | * HydePlaysJekyll: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Madman". Adam Smythe has a split personality. His evil side pretends to be his normal personality whenever it's in control. |
| 256 | * HypnoFool: Adventure ''Pursuit to Kadath''. During a party, Nils Lindstrom is hypnotized as part of a game. He is subjected to all of the normal pranks that hypnotized people are subjected to, such as being ordered to act like an animal, demonstrate alternate personality traits and undergo age regression. |
| 257 | * IllnessBlanket: In the "Shadows of Yog-Sogoth" adventure "The Worm That Walks", Mr. Edwin has a mysterious disease that gives him chills and leaves him wheelchair-bound. He wears a blanket to protect himself from said chills. |
| 258 | * ImmortalityInducer: Lang Fu's Coat of Life in the ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', adventure "By the Bay Part I" and Bernardo Diaz's ruby ring in the ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Secret of Castronegro". |
| 259 | * InheritanceBacklash. This is a staple of ''Call of Cthulhu'' published adventures, to the point that savvy players, if they inherit an old house, will not go there until they've stocked up on the blowtorch fuel. |
| 260 | ** Supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "Black Devil Mountain". A PC receives some property as a bequest from their recently deceased brother. It turns out to be near the site of some extremely nasty Franchise/CthulhuMythos activity. |
| 261 | ** ''H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham: Unveiling the Legend-Haunted City'', adventure "The Books of Uncle Silas". When one of the PlayerCharacters inherits his Uncle Silas's estate, he also receives the attention of a psychotic murderer who wants to obtain Uncle Silas's collection of Franchise/CthulhuMythos books. |
| 262 | * InstantDeathRadius: Yig's poison kills you instantly if you don't dodge and he hits bare skin. Dholes squash you flat if you don't dodge, regardless of defenses, and any surviving investigators get a roll to see if they find enough of you to bury. Cthulhu doesn't give you a chance to dodge (you're ''really'' not intended to go into combat with any of the above). For obvious reasons, Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth both take this trope up to eleven. The former, if not properly contained, can and will lay waste to ''entire planets''; the latter has a nasty habit of vaporizing everything in a five-mile radius with ''freaking '''energy bolts'''''. |
| 263 | * IntrinsicVow: |
| 264 | ** When the Dominate spell is used, orders given by the caster must not violate the basic nature of the target, such as killing a friend. |
| 265 | ** ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine #68 article "Crawling Chaos - Free the Spirit". When a person is hypnotized, they may be given simple commands. However, they can try to resist following any command that is strongly out of character (such as requiring them to kill or be reckless). |
| 266 | * JustBeforeTheEnd: Supplement ''Fearful Passages'', adventure "Slow Boat". The far future setting where the [=PCs=] end up, complete with a large orange dying sun and a population of necromancers and zombies. |
| 267 | * KillerGameMaster: A necessity in a game where the dead [=PC=]s are the ''lucky'' ones. However, this does not appear to be the written intent of the game. At least the 5th and 6th edition core rulebooks actually encourage the [[GameMaster Keeper]] to come up with alternatives to simply killing off Investigators, such as having monsters choose to target [[NonPlayerCharacter Non-Player Characters]] instead, having intelligent monsters avoid stupid direct confrontation, and finding alternative bizarre fates to characters dying outright. On the other hand, despite these recommendations, the fragility of the player characters and the game's attractiveness to a KillerGameMaster are quite real, as is the tendency for protagonists in the material on which the game is based to meet unpleasant endings. |
| 268 | ** 7th edition seems to have taken steps to make things ''less'' lethal, especially with the inclusion of the ''Pulp Cthulhu'' rule variants, which massively increase survivability. |
| 269 | * KillItWithFire: ''Terror from the Stars'', "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". An "Indian Water Pump" filled with gasoline can be used as an improvised flamethrower. Spray the monster with gasoline, then set it on fire. |
| 270 | * KidnappedByAnAlly: ''Pursuit to Kadath''. The investigators are kidnapped by a group of armed men and taken to meet U.S. Senator Harold Lindstrom, who wants to hire them to find his son Nils. |
| 271 | * KindRestraints: ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' adventure "The Derbyshire Murders". Eloise Vane becomes a werewolf on nights with a full moon, so her father and brother lock her away in the castle dungeons then. |
| 272 | * LetterboxArson: A variant occurs in the supplement ''Terror from the Stars'', insert "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". One of the tactics described in the manual was pouring oil so that it flowed under a door, then lighting it so it burned the animated mummies on the other side of the door. |
| 273 | * LightningGun: The Mi-go in ''Terror from the Stars'' and ''The Stars Are Right!'' and a Yithian (Great Race) in the ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". |
| 274 | * LostInTransmission: The Roman legion scribe's account in the ''Cthulhu By Gaslight'' adventure "The Yorkshire Horrors" |
| 275 | * LouisCypher: Nyarlathotep is fond of this. In the ''At Your Door'' campaign, he appears as realtor Atley P. North and a saxophonist called 'the Royal Pant'. |
| 276 | * LuredIntoATrap: ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Worm That Walks". Mr. Edwin sends the {{PC}}s into several situations where they're guaranteed to be attacked. |
| 277 | * MacGuffinDeliveryService: Supplement ''Horror on the Orient Express''. The two main villains of the adventure, Mehmet Makryat and the vampire Fenalik, cannot acquire the pieces of the Sedefkar Simulacrum themselves. They trick the Investigators into gathering the pieces for them and try to steal the pieces from the Investigators. |
| 278 | * TheMafia: Encountering the local organized crime is very common in period modules, with mobsters often trafficking in mythos objects. One such example is Zeke "The Geek" Crater from "Mansion of Madness." |
| 279 | * MagicIsAMonsterMagnet: ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Mystery of Loch Feinn". While in the underground area of Castle [=MacLaireag=], any spell casting doubles the chance of a lloigor detecting and attacking the investigators. |
| 280 | * ManEatingPlant: Death-Vines of Xiclotl are gigantic carnivorous flowers with CombatTentacles and hypnotic pollen that compels those who inhale it to hurl themselves into the pits where they live. If you get caught, you may as well write off the [=PC=], since the chance of them surviving getting ensnared or eaten by one of those things is virtually nil. |
| 281 | * MeaningfulName: The ''Icarus'', the starship that lends its name to the setting in "Cthulhu Through The Ages". The starship represents humanity's first manned mission to go beyond Pluto and leave the Solar System. Like the man who flew too close to the Sun, the ''Icarus'' mission is destined to fail and to reveal the uncomfortable truth of humanity's true place in the cosmos. |
| 282 | * MegaCorp: New World Incorporated in the supplement ''The Fungi from Yuggoth". ''The Two Headed Serpent'' has the secretive Caduceus. |
| 283 | * MembershipToken: 'The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". Freygan's cultists have recognition symbols: small stones with thongs for wearing around the neck. |
| 284 | * MentalPictureProjector: ''Cthulhu Now'' adventure "Dreams Dark and Deadly". A dream research institute has technology that can read the dreams of sleepers and project them onto TV screens so others can watch them. |
| 285 | * MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: ''Masks of Nyarlathotep''. The murder of author Jackson Elias by cultists leads to a worldwide conspiracy to open a Gate and let the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos conquer the Earth. Generally this is a great narrative tool for Keepers as well. |
| 286 | * MirrorMonster: ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Lemon Sails". The Temple of the Oracle on Sarrub has a mirror which has been taken over by a wendigo-demon that attacks anyone who tries to use it. |
| 287 | * MistakenForQuake: |
| 288 | ** ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "The Underground Menace". The inhabitants of Winnemuck, Michigan were terrified by a series of earthquakes. Little did they know that the earth tremors were actually caused by a ghoul priest trying to release a Franchise/CthulhuMythos monster related to the Great Old One Shudde M'ell! |
| 289 | ** ''Terror from the Stars'' adventure "The Temple of the Moon". The earthquakes at the archeological dig site are not natural: they're caused when the bottom of the pool inside the Temple slides back to reveal a long shaft downward. |
| 290 | ** ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Mountains of the Moon". The earthquakes near the NWI facility in Peru are actually caused by the nearby mining activity of the Mi-go. |
| 291 | * MonsterCompendium: A few books of adversaries have been published for the game over the years, but more correct examples would be the assorted in-setting TomesOfEldritchLore which heroes must sometimes consult, at risk to their SAN, in order to understand what they are fighting. |
| 292 | * MoralityChip: Inverted in "The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "By the Bay". A MadScientist uses electrical brain implants that can control human beings, to create terrorist criminals and convert a U.S. Treasury agent into TheMole. |
| 293 | * MultiarmedAndDangerous: Many monsters and deities have multiple arms/tentacles, such as Azathoth, Cthugha and Shub-Niggurath. |
| 294 | * MultiplePersuasionModes: Bargain (to determine prices), Credit Rating (for purposes of finances and trust), Fast Talk (to obtain temporary agreement) and Persuade (general convincing). |
| 295 | * MushroomMan: The Fungi from Yuggoth. |
| 296 | * MysteriousAntarctica: ''Beyond the Mountains of Madness'' sends the player characters on an expedition to Antarctica. |
| 297 | * NativeGuide: |
| 298 | ** Supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "Black Devil Mountain". The Investigators ({{PC}}s) can hire an Indian guide named Black Tom. He claims to know the area (and especially the mountain) quite well, but has a sinister manner. He once guided five hunters to the mountain: two were killed, one went mad and two were never seen again. |
| 299 | ** Supplement ''Curse of the Chthonians'', adventure "Thoth's Dagger". When the Investigators arrive in Cairo they are approached by a person who offers his services as a dragoman (guide) to show them around the city. |
| 300 | ** Supplement ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', section "Mountains of the Moon". When the Investigators arrive in the village of Huancucho they can hire a native guide named Sancho who can guide them to the New World Incorporated mine. |
| 301 | * NaughtyBirdwatching: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Auction". An astronomer has a telescope in his apartment which he uses for his secret hobby, voyeurism. |
| 302 | * NeckSnap: Supplement ''Fearful Passages'', adventure "Sleigh Ride". A giganteus does it to Professor Chance. |
| 303 | * NeverSmileAtACrocodile: The game had all sizes of crocodiles. In the "Valley of the Four Shrines" adventure in "Fragments of Fear" they could be encountered as wandering monsters. |
| 304 | * NoImmortalInertia: Bernardo Diaz in the ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Secret of Castronegro", Lang Fu in the ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "By the Bay Part I" and Omar Shakti in ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 3 "Egypt". |
| 305 | * NoSneakAttacks: Encouraged as protocol for the [[GameMaster Keeper]] in the core rulebook. As the [[PlayerCharacter Investigators]] tend to be mere PunyEarthlings, devouring them in their sleep or when they otherwise can't fight back tends to be boring and anticlimactic. Individual pre-written adventure modules may play this straight or avert it, however. |
| 306 | ** Can happen in the ''Mr. Corbitt'' module if they players break into the greenhouse and fail to notice a certain plant lifting up and aiming at them. If they don't dodge its spray, it's a OneHitKill. Kinder game masters may choose to give a warning by having the the plant hit something else first to demonstrate the danger. |
| 307 | * {{Notzilla}}: One of the monsters added in the "Secrets of Japan" supplement is a colossal irradiated dinosaur-like creature called Gazira, who breathes radioactive flames, has dorsal spines that glow as it charges its BreathWeapon, and is known to pick fights against other giant monsters. |
| 308 | * NowDoItAgainBackwards: The Resurrection spell and the spell used to raise R'lyeh in the ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Rise of R'lyeh". |
| 309 | * OminouslyCutTether: In "The Pits of Bendal Dolum" there's a building with a deep hole in it that leads to an underground chamber. Any investigator who gets the idea to climb down on a rope [[SchmuckBait gets eaten by a monster]], leaving only the slime-covered end of the rope for his companions to reel back up. |
| 310 | * OneWingedAngel: Destroying any given one form taken by Nyarlathotep results in his manifesting in his horrifyingly monstrous default shape. |
| 311 | * OnlyGoodPeopleMayPass: |
| 312 | ** The Elder Sign can block the passage of any creature of the Myth/CthulhuMythos (who are almost all evil). |
| 313 | ** Campaign setting ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', adventure "The Watchers of Easter Island". The Crystal of Noa is placed inside an Elder Sign to protect it from being stolen by the evil Deep Ones. |
| 314 | * OnlyShopInTown: |
| 315 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "Black Devil Mountain". The town of Indian River only has one general store. When the owner found that the recently arrived NonPlayerCharacter Albert Goddard was living on Black Devil Mountain, he refused to sell anything to him and Goddard had to travel seven miles away to the town of Addison for supplies. |
| 316 | ** ''Mansions of Madness'', adventure "The Plantation". The Gist general store is the only one in the area. If the {{PC}}s want to buy supplies, they'll have to go there. |
| 317 | ** ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Mountains of the Moon". The village of Huancucho in the Andes mountains of Peru has only one place to buy things: a small trading post which carries tools, canned food and other items. |
| 318 | ** ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Coven of Cannich". The only store in the small Scottish town of Cannich is owned by Jamie [=MacNab=]. |
| 319 | ** Supplement ''Terror Australis'', adventure "Pride of Yirrimburra". The small Australian town of Yirrimburra has only one general store, the source of manufactured goods and luxuries. |
| 320 | ** ''Adventures in Arkham Country'', adventure "The Dark Woods". The small village of Dunwich, Massachusetts has only one shop: Osborn's General Store, which is housed in an old church. |
| 321 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine |
| 322 | *** Issue #8/9, adventure "Dark Harvest". The only store in the town of Oak Valley, Iowa is Harv's General Store. Unfortunately for the investigators, the owner of the store is a member of the cult that infests the town. |
| 323 | *** Issue #19, adventure "The Brick Kiln". The village of Trevor Major only has one shop, a general store run by Mrs. Alderson. |
| 324 | * OperatorIncompatibility: ''Terror from the Stars''. Mi-Go fire their LightningGun by grasping it and altering its electrical resistance. Humans have to clip one of its wires. |
| 325 | * OracularHead: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "The Auction". A magical Brass Head could animate and answer questions if it were covered with burning blood. |
| 326 | * OrientExpress: ''Horror on the Orient Express'' is one of the biggest modules published for any roleplaying system. |
| 327 | * OurCentaursAreDifferent: The T.O.M.E. (Theatre Of the Mind Enterprises) supplement ''Pursuit to Kadath'' has the Dragon Warriors, a set of monsters created by the Cthulhu Mythos deity Yig. One of them is Choara, a giant black scorpion with the torso, arms and head of a human. |
| 328 | * OurGhoulsAreCreepier: Ghouls and ghasts, in both the real world and the Dreamlands. |
| 329 | * PartialTransformation: Proto-shoggoths in ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum" and the werewolf Eloise Vane in ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 2 "London" adventure "The Derbyshire Monster". |
| 330 | * PhlebotinumOverdose: ''Terror Australis'' adventure "Old Fellow That Bunyip". The investigators must drive a bunyip upriver by calling "Eleanba Wunda", the name of a terrifying spirit which will appear if the name is said too often. |
| 331 | * PitTrap: ''Worlds of Cthulhu'' magazine #3, adventure "The Golden Scorpion". |
| 332 | * PlaceOfProtection: ''Fragments of Fear'', adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". A path surrounding a lake prevents zombies from passing over it, protecting a human fishing village from them. |
| 333 | * PlanetaryParasite: The boxed set ''Spawn of Azathoth''. If a Seed of Azathoth strikes a planet, it can penetrate it and grow into a Spawn of Azathoth the size of a star. All that's left of the planet is shattered ruins. The former fifth planet of the solar system suffered this fate: its remains are the Asteroid Belt. |
| 334 | * PlayfulPursuit: In the supplement ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "Dark Carnival", Lucy Pringle and her boyfriend Kent Howard are strolling along a riverbank. Kent tries to kiss Lucy and she runs away laughing, calling out "If you can catch me, you can kiss me!" Kent races after her, trying to catch her and earn the kiss. |
| 335 | * PlayingWithFire: The Great Old One Cthugha and his Fire Vampire servants can perform fire-based attacks. |
| 336 | * PocketProtector: Jack "Brass" Brady's metal plate in the ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' campaign. |
| 337 | * PolarMadness: In the supplement ''Fearful Passages,'' the adventure "Sleigh Ride" features this: while sledging along the Vitim river in Siberia, the Player Characters will experience the purga, a fierce Siberian blizzard. They have to spend three days in a shack and start suffering from cabin fever. During that time they hallucinate that they hear music, impassioned sighs, nursery rhymes and screams. When they go outside, they see apparitions of ancient memories, old friends, fields of dandelions and shrouded skeletons. |
| 338 | * PortalPicture: Appeared in the ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Pickman's Student" and the ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' adventure "A Serpent in Soho". |
| 339 | * PossessingADeadBody: ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine #87 article "With a Pinch of Salt". One method of creating a zombie is to summon and bond a Franchise/CthulhuMythos monster to enter and possess a corpse. Normally only a monster that isn't tied to a physical body can be used, such as a gaseous Fire Vampire or a ghost. |
| 340 | * PretenderDiss: ''Cthulhu Companion'', adventure "The Rescue". The werewolf Rafe Pelton despises and maliciously mistreats two insane men who want to be werewolves like him. |
| 341 | * QuicksandSucks: Can be encountered in the jungle in the ''Fragments of Fear'' supplement adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". |
| 342 | * RapidAging: |
| 343 | ** The Steal Life spell causes the target to quickly age and die over a period of 1-3 minutes. |
| 344 | ** ''Cthulhu Companion'' adventure "The Secret of Castronegro". Bernardo Diaz has lived for 300 years due to the ruby ring he wears. If it's removed from his finger, he will instantly die and his body will shrivel. |
| 345 | ** ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "By the Bay Part I". Lang Fu's Coat of Life has allowed him to live for centuries. If it is ever removed for more than a few minutes, his body will begin an irreversible aging process that will cause his rapid death. |
| 346 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' campaign, chapter 3 "Egypt". Omar Shakti, the high priest of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, is several thousand years old. If the investigators kill him, his body will immediately crumble to dust. |
| 347 | ** ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine issue #67 article "Haunters of the Dark". One of the possible powers of ghosts is to age a victim by ten to thirty years, which can drain points of Strength, Dexterity or Constitution. Each point drained gives the ghost 1-3 points of Power. |
| 348 | * RealEventFictionalCause: TheTunguskaEvent was caused by Azathoth (one of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos deities) being summoned to Earth. |
| 349 | * RealityWarper: Hounds of Tindalos, Tindalosian Hybrids, and Lords of Tindalos all have limited localized space-warping abilities. |
| 350 | ** In the d20 version the great old one Tsathoggua has the ability to reshape reality. It uses it to swallow things larger than itself or to kill and resurrect those who don't approach him respectfully enough until they learn their lesson. |
| 351 | * RedEyesTakeWarning |
| 352 | ** Evil deities with red eyes: Atlach-Nacha (Great Old One), the Haunter of the Dark (avatar of Nyarlathotep), Ithaqua. |
| 353 | ** Evil monsters with red eyes: Black Unicorn of Averoigne (''Worlds of Cthulhu'' #3, "Dark Ages Averoigne"), Bunyip (''Terror Australis''), ghouls (glowing red, ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Warren"), Necromantic Skeleton (''The Asylum and Other Tales'' - "Black Devil Mountain"), Proto-Shoggoth (''The Asylum and Other Tales'', "The Asylum"), rats (''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' - Kenya section), Spectral Hunters, The Thing from Between the Planes (''The Fungi from Yuggoth''), Undead Sorceress (''Dreamlands'' adventure "Pickman's Student"), Werewolves (''Worlds of Cthulhu'' magazine #3, adventure "Malevolence"). |
| 354 | ** Supplement ''Dark Designs'', adventure "The Menace from Sumatra". The evil Vibur (AKA The Thing from Beyond) has three triple lobed burning red eyes. |
| 355 | * RegeneratingMana: Characters have a number of magic points equal to their POW score. Casting Franchise/CthulhuMythos spells uses up the character's magic points. A character regains 1 magic point each (24/POW) hours. |
| 356 | * {{Retcon}}: As of the the fifth edition, the game discards the entire Good vs Evil aspect Derleth tried to jam into the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, returning to Lovecraft's original vision. |
| 357 | ** An in-universe ability in the ''Pulp Cthulhu'' variant, where if a character is killed they can spend Luck Points to come up with a suitably ridiculous story as to how they "really" survived whatever would have killed them. However, if you start running too low on luck this ability won't apply anymore. |
| 358 | * RiddleMeThis: ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "The City Without A Name". In order to enter, pass through and escape from a special chamber, the investigators must calculate the five numbers of Cthulhu using the occult science of Gematria. |
| 359 | * RightHandAttackDog: ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'', Chapter 5 "Shanghai". Lin Tang-yu's trained pet white gorillas [=TunTun=] and Ping. |
| 360 | * RockOfLimitlessWater: The supplement ''Terror Australis'', adventure "City Beneath The Sands". Power Boy can cause a spring to come out of a rock just by sticking his rangga (ceremonial staff) into it. |
| 361 | * UsefulNotes/{{Romani}}: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Castle Dark" and the ''Dark Designs'' adventure "Eyes for the Blind". |
| 362 | * [[SandWorm Really Freaking Huge Sandworm]]: Dholes. As mentioned above, anyone getting in their way is automatically squashed and killed, and the survivors get a roll to try and find enough remains to bury. |
| 363 | * SanityMeter: The TropeMaker. |
| 364 | ** Lots of things can cause sanity loss in the game. Increasing Mythos does this, but so do things like killing someone or burning bodies. The game actually has an "Idea" stat, which is a measure of how good your character is at coming up with good ideas. A high idea score is a ''[[DumbIsGood very bad thing]]'', because when you lose too much sanity in one check, your character goes temporarily insane; you can save against that by [[FearlessFool failing an Idea roll]], with a success meaning your character has understood the full implications of what he is seeing. |
| 365 | ** Also, increasing your knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos can not only cost you sanity points during the learning process, but permanently lowers your ''maximum'' Sanity. At Cthulhu Mythos 100, your Sanity is 0 by default - in other words, it is impossible to truly understand what the universe is without going stark-raving mad. |
| 366 | * ScoobyDooHoax: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "Westchester House". The Investigators (PlayerCharacters) will hear stories of several unnatural events that indicate that the house is haunted, but they're all fake, mostly done by people trying to make it appear that way to cover up their own schemes. |
| 367 | * ScorpionPeople: The T.O.M.E. (Theatre of the Mind Enterprises) supplement ''Pursuit to Kadath'' has the Dragon Warriors, a set of monsters created by the Franchise/CthulhuMythos deity Yig. One of them is Choara, a giant black scorpion with the torso, arms and head of a human. |
| 368 | * SealedEvilInACan: The status of a great many (if not most) of the Great Old Ones, including Cthulhu himself. |
| 369 | * SecretWar: ''Glozel Est Authentique'' adventure "Secrets of the Kremlin''. The Nodens Brotherhood has long opposed a cult that worships Shub-Niggurath. |
| 370 | * SeeingThroughAnothersEyes: Supplement ''Cthulhu Britannica'', adventure "Bad Company". The monstrous Madame Onlenia Byragan can see through the eyes of her magical creations, the Straw Men. |
| 371 | * SeeTheInvisible |
| 372 | ** Campaign ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "The Thing in the Well". Wearing a pair of magical spectacles allows the wearer to see other planes of existence and the creatures that live there, which are invisible to normal sight. |
| 373 | ** Campaign "Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', adventure "Devil's Canyon". The invisible monsters known as spectral hunters can only be seen if someone looks through one of the special camera lenses created by Erich von Varnstein using Franchise/CthulhuMythos knowledge. The lenses do not conform with the established principles of optics. |
| 374 | ** When the Powder of Ibn Ghazi is sprinkled on invisible monsters, it makes them visible. |
| 375 | * SeeThruSpecs: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' campaign, adventure "The Thing in the Well". A pair of spectacles allows the wearer to see into another dimension. Each time you use them, you could see a monster that could attack and kill you if you don't take them off in time. |
| 376 | * SelfConstructedBeing: ''Dreamlands'' adventure "Pickman's Student". A Great Old One named Ghadamon takes over the body of a human being so he can enter the waking world. |
| 377 | * SelfDestructMechanism: ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'' campaign ''The Fungi from Yuggoth''. Dr. Dieter's laboratory has one that will destroy the entire installation. |
| 378 | * SingleBiomePlanet: ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "The City Without A Name". If the investigators are very unlucky they can go through a Gate to the home planet of the Chthonians, which is a Volcano Planet. |
| 379 | * ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Also ShortRangeShotgun. Close up, they can deal about 4D6 worth of damage, enough to kill almost anything that isn't ImmuneToBullets. Oh, and short range shotgun can be averted if you load them with slug rounds. |
| 380 | ** Shotguns are one of the most powerful and easily accessible guns on the entire planet. The most practical model listed in the core rule book, the 12 gauge Benelli, has a 7 shot capacity, fires twice per round, and does 4D6/2D6/1D6 (10/20/50 yards). That's a potential of 24 damage, minimal of 4, at point blank range (it's surprisingly rare to fight a battle beyond 20 yards). To put this into perspective; most games will have three to eight players, each potentially equipped with a boom stick of their own plus side arms and other weapons, concentrating long range fire power into melee monsters with health barely able to sustain a single two-person shotgun volley. Incredibly massive army of deep ones? More like incredibly massive pile of Chunky Salsa! |
| 381 | * ShoutOut: |
| 382 | ** Supplement ''Dark Designs'', adventure "The Menace from Sumatra". One of the books in Dr. Granger's library is ''The Dynamics of an Asteroid''. In Sir Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' novel ''The Valley of Fear'', this work was said to have been written by Professor James Moriarty. |
| 383 | ** The weapons table in the core rulebook includes a listing for "Col. Moran's Air Rifle", another Sherlock Holmes reference. |
| 384 | ** The ''Malleus Monstrorum'' sourcebook derives its name from the German title for the game's ''Creature Companion''. Scott David Aniolowski thought it was such a cool name that he used it for the English sourcebook. |
| 385 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' #7, adventure "Convergence". The adventure takes place in Groverville, Tennessee. One of the stores in town in town is called the Stuffer Shack. This is a reference to the TabletopGame ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'', which has the company Stuffer Shack as an InUniverse version of 7-11. |
| 386 | * SickbedSlaying: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventures "The Dreamer" and "The Worm that Walks". |
| 387 | * SickeningCrunch: Occurs in the ''Fearful Passages'' adventure "Sleigh Ride" and ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' adventure "Castle Black". |
| 388 | * SmolderingShoes: ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "Dark Carnival". A man is pulled through the iron bars of a gate by ghouls: when his feet get stuck, they're ripped off, leaving them (still inside his shoes) on the ground. |
| 389 | * SoulJar: ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "Devil's Canyon". The spectral hunters cannot move more than 1 mile away from their kachina dolls, which hold their souls. If a specific chant is conducted over a spectral hunter's doll, it is destroyed. |
| 390 | * SpaceIsolationHorror: The Cthulhu Icarus setting in "Cthulhu Through The Ages". The investigators are a science team on a manned mission to leave the Solar System and explore the void beyond, a mission that inevitably reveals the uncomfortable truth about humanity's true place in the cosmos. Maybe the crew are wracked with doubt and distrust as they are influenced by alien consciousnesses, maybe the crew become trapped in their cramped metal capsule with a haunter from the blackness, or maybe time, perception and the physical laws begin to literally fall apart as the ''Icarus'' continues to hurtle away from the light of the Sun and into the no-man's-land beyond. |
| 391 | * SpeakOfTheDevil: ''Terror Australis'' adventure "Old Fella That Bunyip". To drive Bunyip upstream the investigators must say "Eleanba Wunda", the name of a evil spirit which will appear if its name is chanted too often. |
| 392 | * SplitPersonality: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Madman". An investigator is driven insane by exposure to the Cthulhu Mythos and develops an evil alternate personality. |
| 393 | * SpeedDemon: The ''Fearful Passages'' supplement, adventure "Furious Driving" has Rupert Putney, the main NonPlayerCharacter. He [[DrivesLikeCrazy drives like a maniac]] at incredibly high speeds (for the 1920's, anyway). |
| 394 | * SpookySeance: Can occur in both ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' and ''Pursuit to Kadath''. |
| 395 | * StarfishAliens: The Elder Things actually ''have'' starfish-shaped heads. Then there are the Mi-Go, the Great Race, Cthulhu, etc... |
| 396 | * StealthHiBye: Supplement ''At Your Door'', adventure "After the Big One". The PlayerCharacters may meet and talk to a musician named The Royal Pant (actually the Franchise/CthulhuMythos deity Nyarlathotep). When Nyarlathotep gets tired of talking to them, they will be momentarily distracted. When their attention turns back to him, he will have mysteriously disappeared. |
| 397 | * SuccessThroughInsanity: There's a rule concerning "Insane Insight" that allows a PC going mad to obtain some hint from the GM as to what they're dealing with or the true natures of the cosmos. |
| 398 | * SufficientlyAdvancedAlien: Most Great Old Ones (and a few species) are described thus, possibly overlapping with outright godhood. Despite common belief, Cthulhu is ''not'' a god; terrifyingly he is actually the alien high priest of a god far, ''far'' more horrible than he is - Azothoth, the slumbering nuclear chaos. |
| 399 | * SummonBiggerFish: ''Terror From The Stars'', "Field Manual of the Theron Marks Society". When facing powerful monsters, summon another deity or monster that hates whatever's attacking you. |
| 400 | * SummonBinding: The game has a number of spells for summoning servitor monsters. A smart conjurer will also use a spell to bind the summoned monster so that it is under their control when it arrives. Unfortunately, there are no spells to bind Franchise/CthulhuMythos deities when ''they'' are summoned... |
| 401 | * SundialWaypoint: ''Terror from the Stars'' adventure "The Temple of the Moon". In the temple there is a light shaft that allows moonlight to enter, and a pool with a map on the bottom. If the Tablet of the Moon is placed atop the light shaft at midnight under the light of the full moon, the moonlight will be refracted into a bright point of light on the map, showing the location of the main temple of Shub-Niggurath. |
| 402 | * SupernaturalFearInducer: The King in Yellow has an attack that literally causes those who look into his eyes to be paralyzed with fear... and generally, causes the character to lose Sanity in the process. |
| 403 | * SuperSpit: ''Magazine/{{Polyhedron}}'' magazine #124 article "Modern Minions of Cthulhu". The Jersey Devil can spit its acidic spittle up to 5 yards. It does 2-12 HitPoints of damage to any creature it hits. |
| 404 | * SwordCane: One of the new Victorian Age weapons in ''Cthulhu By Gaslight'' was the sword cane. |
| 405 | * TakenFromADream: In the ''Dreamlands'' boxed set, the Crystallizer of Dreams is a device that allows a dreamer to bring a Dreamlands object into reality. Within 1-20 hours, the object will begin to fade and return to the Dreamlands. A person can expend magic points to delay the object's return: 1 point per 1-20 hours delay. |
| 406 | * TakingTheBullet: "The Asylum and Other Tales" adventure "The Mauritania". Bodyguards have the skill Block, which allows them to hurl their body in between an attacker and the person they're protecting. |
| 407 | ** In ''Pulp Cthulhu'' the skill is instead had by various BigBad characters and is called "lookout master!" To avoid the BigBad dying to a good hit too soon, a mook will lunge in and take the hit for them. |
| 408 | * TapOnTheHead: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "The Asylum". Dr. Freygan's neck pinch. Also, typical of a "Knockout" attack. |
| 409 | * TarotMotifs: A [[UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} Gypsy]] FortuneTeller uses Tarot cards in ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' campaign, section "Castle Dark" |
| 410 | * TaughtByExperience: The basis of character progression. There is no exp, skill points, or any other currency. Characters simply need to use a specific skill and ''pass'' the test, and then, if they live through the scenario, stand a chance to increase their marked skill by a random, dice-decided value (usually d10, but details depend on edition). This, combined with predominately randomly generated characters to begin with, is used to enhance the horror vibe, as for the most part, the characters will fail, but they ''have to'' try, even with a meager chance of success, if they plan to ever get better at something. |
| 411 | * TearOffYourFace: In ''Terror Australis'', the Mimi are creatures from Myth/AboriginalAustralianMyths. When angry at a human they may eat all the flesh from his face, leaving the victim alive but horrendously disfigured. |
| 412 | * ThankYourPrey: ''Terror Australis'' adventure "City Beneath The Sands''. Power Boy could call animals and ask that they allow themselves to be eaten. If they agreed, he praised their beauty and courage. |
| 413 | * ThatWasTheLastEntry |
| 414 | ** ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'', adventure "The Warren". The {{PC}}s take almost an hour to remove enough rubble to enter one room. When they do, they find the skeleton of a man sitting at a table and a piece of paper which is an ApocalypticLog of what happened to him - he was trapped inside the room when a disaster occurred. It ends "I am sitting now waiting for rescue. It has been eight hours." |
| 415 | ** ''Mansions of Madness'', adventure "The Crack'd and Crook'd Manse''. Arthur Cornthwaite was trying to stop a monster that had infested his house. He was writing a note to explain the monster's vulnerability: it ends in mid sentence when the monster used its coils to snatch him into the fireplace and eat him. |
| 416 | ** ''Terror from the Stars'', adventure "The Temple of the Moon". Professor Dermot's day books end with an entry saying that he plans to enter the Temple at night after the strange phenomena end. The {{PC}}s can find his body later: he was captured and sacrificed by the Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists who worship at the Temple. |
| 417 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "Black Devil Mountain". A {{PC}} receives an unfinished letter that was found among the effects of his deceased brother. The last part of the letter talks about the horrible discovery the brother had made. His body was found a few days later, dismembered and with the brain and heart missing. |
| 418 | ** ''Dreamlands'' adventure "The Land of Lost Dreams". The {{PC}}s find the diary of Neil Bruford in his room. It tells the story of how he planned to journey to the land of Xura to find his heart's desire. The last entry says that he would reach Xura in his dreams that night. The next morning his landlady found him in a coma. |
| 419 | ** ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine issue #56 adventure "The Last Log". An interstellar expedition to the planet Pozalt 7 is wiped out by a Star Vampire. The mission commander Captain Spalding kept his personal log in a notebook. The last few entries say that the group has been under attack for three hours, that he assumes that the rest of the crew is dead and that he has no weapons. The final entry is an unreadable scrawl. When the PlayerCharacters find his body, his head has been ripped off and can't be found. |
| 420 | * TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: Disregard this warning at your own risk. |
| 421 | * ThisIsAsFarAsIGo: ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "Valley of the Four Shrines". When the party reaches the cave that leads to the Valley, any native porters hired from nearby areas refuse to enter. |
| 422 | * ThisWasHisTrueForm: Philip Boucher in the ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Warren" and Eloise Vane in the ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 2 "London" adventure "The Derbyshire Monster". |
| 423 | * ThoseWackyNazis: The Church of a Thousand Tomorrows from the Monograph "The Big Book of Cults". |
| 424 | ** Many ''Pulp Cthulhu'' and other scenarios set in the 1930's and 1940's will have Nazis acting as antagonists. Often overlaps with {{Ghostapo}} and sometimes with StupidJetpackHitler. |
| 425 | * ThrillerOnTheExpress: Both ''Horror on the Orient Express'' and the "The Iron Ghost" adventure in ''Fearful Passages'' have train-based adventures. |
| 426 | * TickleTorture: A nightgaunt can grab people and tickle them, rendering them helpless so it can carry them away. |
| 427 | * TimeTravelersDinosaur: The supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "Gate From the Past". A group of Old Ones use a Time Gate spell to travel from the Upper Jurassic to modern-day Arkham. A Ceratosaurus (carnivorous dinosaur) can be encountered if the PlayerCharacters investigating the problem use the Time Gate to travel to the past. |
| 428 | * TomeOfEldritchLore: Characters may be given the opportunity to read the Necronomicon and other cursed books, at high cost to their Sanity. They can serve as {{Monster Compendi|um}}a, though, which is why heroes take the risk. |
| 429 | * TooManyMouths: ''Dreamlands'' supplement. The Maws of Pandemonium spell caused the victim's body to sprout a red-lipped mouth that gibbered and moaned as it drained the victim's magic points. |
| 430 | * TheTopicOfCancer: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Asylum". One of Dr. Freygan's drugs is Cellular Accelerator, which can cause cancer throughout the recipient's body. |
| 431 | * TorchesAndPitchforks: ''Worlds of Cthulhu'' #3, adventure "Malevolence". |
| 432 | * TotalPartyKill: A definite possibility in case of failure. Even when things don't go disastrously wrong, a high character attrition rate is to be expected. Some players believe that the TotalPartyKill is what happens if you're ''lucky.'' If you're ''un''lucky? AFateWorseThanDeath. |
| 433 | ** That said, the idea that ''all'' Investigators die or go insane or suffer a FateWorseThanDeath by the end of every game is a misconception. After all, Investigators can accrue skill points at the end of each session which pass over to the next one. |
| 434 | * TownWithADarkSecret: The small Vermont town of Bensamin in the ''Dreamlands'' adventure "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream". |
| 435 | * TrashcanBonfire: ''Fearful Passages'' adventure "The Iron Ghost". There's one in the 1934 Southern Pacific car. |
| 436 | * TheTunguskaEvent: The main rules hint that Azathoth was involved. ''Spawn of Azathoth'' says that it was caused by a Seed of Azathoth entering the Earth's atmosphere. |
| 437 | * TurnToReligion: In the supplement ''The Asylum and Other Tales'', adventure "The Asylum". God-Bespoke Johnson was originally a normal man who trapped animals for a living and wasn't particularly religious. One night he came upon a proto-shoggoth ripping apart his partner Dave Bowen. The sight drove him insane, and he became a religious fanatic who constantly preaches to anyone who will listen to him. |
| 438 | * TropeCodifier: For a fair number of CosmicHorror tropes, sometimes literally just by virtue of wrapping concrete game rules around things that the literary source material only obliquely hints at. |
| 439 | * TwoHalvesMakeAPlot: In the supplement ''Terror from the Stars'', adventure "The Temple of the Moon". The [[PlayerCharacter Player Characters]] and two independent villains each receive 1/3 of the Tablet of the Moon, a piece of gold jewelry that allows the user to find the location of a treasure on a map. The players must either defeat one or both villains and take their pieces or team up with them. |
| 440 | * UndeadTaxExemption: ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', adventure "Castle Dark". Baron Hauptmann transfers his mind into a new body every few decades and assumes the victim's identity. |
| 441 | * UnexpectedInheritance: ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "Black Devil Mountain". A {{PC}}'s brother dies and leaves them some property which has Franchise/CthulhuMythos activity going on nearby. |
| 442 | * UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay: |
| 443 | ** Combat in purist ''Call of Cthulhu'' is a messy, nerve-wracking affair that should be avoided if at all possible. Being stabbed or shot at close range has a very good chance of killing the average Investigator almost outright, and surviving still means a long recovery in a hospital ward, weeks lying in a bed before the Investigator is fit to be going anywhere. |
| 444 | ** The rules state that your TomeOfEldritchLore will take many weeks, maybe months, to study. The books are written in obscure occult jargon and bizarre ciphers (as black magic and forbidden knowledge is something you would want to keep a SECRET), the standards of literacy were much lower in ancient times so don't expect good grammar or spelling, and the guy who wrote it was probably a lunatic so do expect repetitive ranting and badly communicated instructions. Also, even if you can glean a spell out of it, it may not work (or even backfire) because a page is missing or some line was blurred. |
| 445 | * UsingYouAllAlong: ''Curse of the Chthonians'' adventure "The Curse of Chaugnar Faugn". The investigators are manipulated into helping a mad professor awaken the title Franchise/CthulhuMythos deity from its statue form. |
| 446 | * VampiricDraining: Byakhee, chthonians, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, Shub-Niggurath and star vampires can all drain bodily fluids and/or blood. In early editions regular vampires could as well. Tsathoggua can drain points of Characteristics (Strength, Dexterity, etc.). |
| 447 | * ViolenceIsNotAnOption: Franchise/CthulhuMythos deities (and some monsters) are so difficult to destroy with physical force that it's utterly futile to even try. The Investigators' best bet is to do as much research as possible to find out the deity or monster's hidden weakness (such as a specific spell or action) and try to use it against them. |
| 448 | ** Firmly averted by the variant ''Pulp Cthulhu'' rules in 7th edition, which place greater emphasis on combat and survivability in order to make adventures feel more like a pulp adventure flick than a slow revelation of horror. Can still lose your mind, though, and greater survivability only goes so far. |
| 449 | * WeakenedByTheLight: Fog-Spawn, Hunting Horrors, Vampires, Nyarlathotep in his "Haunter of the Dark" form, Servants of Glaaki, Dreamland shades and others. |
| 450 | * WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve |
| 451 | ** 3rd Edition Main rules, adventure "The Madman". The Mi-Go have been performing midnight ceremonies in an attempt to summon the Great Old One Ithaqua. |
| 452 | ** ''Fragments of Fear'' adventure "The Underground Menace". If the {{PC}} Investigators flee from the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, a week later it will summon a Hunting Horror of Nyarlathotep that will attack the {{PC}}s at midnight. |
| 453 | ** ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' |
| 454 | *** Adventure "The Worm That Walks''. While the {{PC}} investigator is in the hospital, the title monster will attempt to establish a psychic link to him (by putting its hand over the {{PC}}'s face) each night at midnight. When it succeeds it will immediately take its true form and attempt to rend the {{PC}} to bits with its huge claws. |
| 455 | *** Adventure "The Watchers of Easter Island". The Crawling One (a TheWormThatWalks) performs a human sacrifice once every three days at midnight to power the moai (statues) so they can call the Messenger of the Old Ones. |
| 456 | ** ''The Fungi From Yuggoth''. The BigBad opponent of the {{PC}}s is Edward Chandler, head of the New World Incorporated MegaCorp. He was born at midnight on Candlemas, thus fulfilling an ancient prophecy that he would bring about the Day of the Beast and allow the forces of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos to take over the Earth. |
| 457 | ** ''The Asylum and Other Tales'' adventure "The Madman". Every four days at midnight, Adam the Bad will go out to the concrete slabs and perform a ceremony to consecrate one of them so they can be used to cast the Call Hastur spell. |
| 458 | ** Supplement ''Dreamlands'', booklet "Dream Journeys" |
| 459 | *** Adventure "Season of the Witch". Ghouls are used to dig up three graves in the Aylesbury Hill Graveyard at midnight and steal the bodies for nefarious necromantic purposes. |
| 460 | *** Adventure "The Land of Lost Dreams". If the Investigators fail to stop the Spirit of Xura, at midnight on February 14th it will rip open Neil Bruford's body end enter our universe. This will bring despair and madness to the entire city. |
| 461 | ** ''Masks of Nyarlathotep'' chapter 2 "London". |
| 462 | *** "The Derbyshire Monster". The werewolf Eloise Vane changes to monster form at midnight on nights with a full moon. |
| 463 | *** "Slaughter in Soho". Yalesha, a dancer at the Blue Pyramid club, will tell any investigators she encounters to meet her at midnight down the street. She tells them that once a month a truck appears around midnight and takes some Franchise/CthulhuMythos cultists to an unknown location (in fact, they participate in an evil cult ceremony at midnight). |
| 464 | ** ''Terror from the Stars'' adventure "The Temple of the Moon". If the Tablet of the Moon is fitted together and placed on top of the light shaft in the Chamber of Worship at midnight under a full moon, the quartz lenses in the Tablet will bend the light to form a pattern of dots on the map below. The water in the pool will then refract the light dots into a single dot on the map: the location of the Temple of Shub-Niggurath. |
| 465 | ** Supplement ''The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island''. Whether the Franchise/CthulhuMythos ceremony takes place or not, the Deep Ones will emerge from the ocean at the ceremony site at 12:00 midnight to accept the {{Human Sacrifice}}s. |
| 466 | ** ''Magazine/DifferentWorlds'' magazine #38 adventure "The Eye of Sitar". Azathoth cultists are planning to perform a HumanSacrifice ritual at midnight on the fall equinox. If they succeed it will result in the [[ZombieApocalypse dead rising from the grave all over the world and consuming the flesh of the living]]. |
| 467 | ** ''Magazine/TheUnspeakableOath'' magazine |
| 468 | *** Issue #5 article "A Tale of Terror". In one scenario, the Franchise/CthulhuMythos deity Nyarlathotep proposes marriage to captive women. If they refuse, at midnight on each night of the full moon thereafter he proposes again. If any of them accepts his offer, she is taken to the daemonic court of Azathoth until Nyarlathotep becomes bored with her. |
| 469 | *** Issue #19 adventure "Suited and Booted". At midnight on August 14th, the artist Patrice [=LeFevre=] will surrender himself to the Franchise/CthulhuMythos deity Nyarlathotep. The Create Wraith spell must be cast at midnight for it to work. |
| 470 | *** Issue #20 adventure "She Just Couldn't Stay Away (No No)". Dorothy Stotz performs a HumanSacrifice of herself at midnight in a ritual to bring her dead cat Penny back to life. |
| 471 | ** ''Magazine/WhiteDwarf'' magazine #63 adventure "Draw the Blinds on Yesterday". The Cthulhu Mythos cultists who live on Southwell Farm perform {{Human Sacrifice}}s each month. At midnight, they kill the victims by stabbing them to death. |
| 472 | * WhyAmITicking: Campaign supplement ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'', section "By the Bay: Part II''. Cthulhu Mythos cultists detect Philip Jurgens as a spy and implant a small radio-activated bomb in his head. At a later time, the cultists detonate the bomb and his head explodes, killing him. |
| 473 | * WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: For those who mess with magic. Dragon Magazine once said that ''Call of Cthulhu'' is the only RPG where ''no one'' wants the magic item loot. |
| 474 | * TheWormThatWalks: The name first appeared in the Shadows of Yog-Sothoth adventure "The Worm That Walks" as the name of a monster that was '''not''' made out of worms. An example called "the Crawling One" appeared in the ''Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'' adventure "The Watchers of Easter Island". |
| 475 | * WretchedHive: Dylath-Leen in the ''Dreamlands'' supplement. |
| 476 | * YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: In their vanishingly rare moments of kindness, Outer Gods may manifest in forms not conducive to Sanity-blasting shock. Or, in the case of Nyarlathotep, it's just another way for them to mess with human minds. |
| 477 | * YowiesAndBunyipsAndDropBearsOhMy: ''Terror Australis'' has statistics for quite a few mythological Australian monsters, including the yowie and bunyip. |
| 478 | * ZombieApocalypse: ''Different Worlds'' magazine #38 adventure "The Eye of Sitar". Azathoth cultists are planning to perform a HumanSacrifice ritual [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve at midnight]] on the fall equinox. If they succeed it will result in the dead rising from the grave all over the world and consuming the flesh of the living. |
| 479 | ** Keepers can very easily adapt the ''Call of Cthulhu'' system to run zombie survival horror campaigns completely removed from the Cthulhu Mythos. It's quite effective because ''Call of Cthulhu'' combat is naturally quick, bloody and risky with an acute chance of somebody being wounded. |
| 480 | |
| 481 | ---- |
| 482 |
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