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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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It seems like over the last ten years, there has been an incredible proliferation of games themed around the works of Howard P. Lovecraft. I mean, Lovecraft has always been with us. Call of Cthulhu is one of the hoary old RPGs of yore and the original version of Arkham Horror came out long before the current trend of cooperative games.
However, it now seems like Fantasy Flight has their own Lovecraft division and Steve Jackson Games and Twilight Creations aren’t far behind. There are new Lovecraft-themed role playing games for them that want a change of pace from Call of Cthulhu, like Cthulhu Tech or Trail of Chthulhu. You could play nothing but games that harken back to good old Lovecraft and still play a wide variety of different games.
So, what is it about Lovecraft?
Personally, I have bordered on being a lifelong Lovecraft fan. I read The Doom that Came to Sarnath when I was still in the single digits and I have read a hefty chunk of his work since then. (I hesitate to say all since I keep finding new bits and I have never actually read the volumes of his correspondence that is out there) Call of Cthulhu was one of my first role playing games after Dungeons and Dragons. I have plenty of novels and short stories that were influenced or inspired by Lovecraft’s writings.
So, I definitely approach the man as a fan and as someone who can see his appeal.
While Lovecraft pretty much codified eldritch abominations as we know them today (No offense to Robert Chambers or Ambrose Bierce), that is not the only thing that he did that makes his work still potent to this day.
Lovecraft had a real knack for projecting his own fears into his works. Lovecraft was known to have real issues with cold and body horror and that certainly comes across in several of his works. You also get the impression that he might have had serious problems with jello as well. The world of Lovecraft is not one of macho he-men who come equipped with fewer weaknesses than John Wayne. It is a world where your fears and weaknesses are going to catch up with you.
Which is probably the key to Lovecraft’s strength. Not that he could describe slimy tentacles well but that he created stories that didn’t have heroes. Instead, they had victims. Long before anti-hero meant a super-hero who was a jerk but still fought bad guys, Lovecraft showed us characters who lacked traditional heroic virtues and, to be brutally honest, tended not to rise above their failings.
Is that why there are so many different games that use Lovecraft as their theme and inspiration? Because he showed us a vision of a cold, uncaring universe where we were helpless to prevent forces we couldn’t understand from breaking and crushing us?
Eh, who I am kidding? The real reason is all his stuff is public domain so anyone can use it for free. (Which doesn't explain the absense of dozens of Jane Austen games)
That said, thank goodness Lovecraft (like bowties and fezzes) is cool.
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