I ponied up for the pdf GM manual a couple of weeks ago, but only after much debate and telling myself I didn’t need it. It’s the rules that basically stay the same. The cosmetic differences are fun, though, and the presentation has gotten slicker and more polished over the years. And the 7th Edition Kickstarter offered a $1,000 pledge level that included a hand-bound Temple Edition copy of the rulebooks. The last time I saw one of the convention editions for sale, it went for $600. CoC flipped those on their heads by encouraging players to embrace the frailty of their characters and have fun descending into madness and death, fighting against impossible foes, rather than cunningly evading the grim reaper at every turn. As a kid, I mostly played D&D and similar games. I need to spend some more time with these books. A heady brew, long overdue, and, unexpectedly, I’m less confident that Call of Cthulhu is my go-to game for Lovecraftian horror than I was when I backed it three years ago. I spent some time last night documenting damage and contacting Chaosium about it ( not a problem unique to my shipment, unfortunately, but they seem to be on top of it), and I’ve got an - unrelated - splitting headache as I type this, so that’s where I’m going to stop for now. The amount of pure, unfiltered joy I get out of, say, Psi-Run, which is a whopping 60 digest-size pages, sets a pretty high bar in terms of reading/work/rules:fun ratios. At 736 total pages, that’s a 544-page increase over 4th, and 416 pages more than the 30th Anniversary rules.Ģ016 Martin isn’t nearly as excited about huge rulebooks as 2013 Martin was, and even 2013 Martin was cooling on them. The most recent edition I have on my shelf, the 30th Anniversary Edition, is 320 pages.ħth Edition is two books, rather than one: a 448-page Keeper Rulebook and a 288-page Investigator Handbook. My favorite edition, 4th, comes in at 192 pages. I went in for the leatherbound edition (as well as the softcovers - I was still collecting editions when I pledged for this), and man are they gorgeous.Īs pretty as the books are, though, I’m not sure I love the quantity as much as I love the quality. I like this mi-go, and I like many of the others, too. That extends to the non-core books, too - here’s one of my favorite creatures, and illustrations, from the new Field Guide.Ī lot of the creatures are like that: more artistic, interpretive takes on classic Lovecraftian entities. Production values are top-notch across the board. Here are two of my favorite full-color pieces.Īs is the layout. I can see where a lot of the budget went: into the artwork. You can play any 1st through 6th edition scenario with any edition.ħth Edition is the first one that promised more of an overhaul - maybe not as dramatic as the shifts between major editions of D&D, but more dramatic than any non-cosmetic edition changes Chaosium has made in the past three decades. Part of what I enjoy about collecting copies of CoC is the irony: For six editions spanning 30 years, CoC has been a game that really doesn’t change much from edition to edition. I stopped collecting them then - or at least made peace with the fact that my collection would never be complete. That’s also when I learned that I was missing more editions than I thought, and just how out of reach the missing ones really were. ( Right to left, top to bottom: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, UK 3rd 4th, 5th, 5.1 5.5, 5.6, 20th anniversary, 6th softcover 6th hardcover, 25th anniversary, 30th anniversary.) Back in 2014, I rounded them all up for a photo: I started collecting US editions of Call of Cthulhu ( paid link) in high school. That was back in 1992 or so, and I’ve been playing Call of Cthulhu (and reading Lovecraft) ever since. So there’s that, too.īut there’s also this: It’s the 7th edition of one of my most-loved RPGs of all time - the one that gave me my first horizon-expanding “Whoa, what?!” realization about RPGs in general. One of two straws which apparently nearly bankrupted Chaosium, one of the oldest and most storied companies in the RPG industry. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s tremulus retrospective, in which I said “ All of that combines to facilitate Lovecraftian horror so well that as much as I love Call of Cthulhu, I’m pretty sure I’d reach for tremulus first,” my Kickstarted copy of Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition arrived last night.Įstimated Kickstarter delivery: November 2013.
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