Do you hate Call of Cthulhu?

If so, you may have assumed our new game Lovecraftesque, currently playtesting, isn’t for you. I’d like to persuade you that it is.

Lovecraftesque is about collaboratively creating a slow-building, brooding horror, piece by piece. It is not a traditional investigative game. It does not focus on cracking the plot or saving the world. Instead, the focus is on building atmosphere and tension, creating a slow-burn horror.

Lovecraftesque lets you create your own horrific monsters and dark revelations of bleak, cosmic doom. You won’t be chucking around copies of the Necronomicon, fighting Migo or having dreams of Cthulhu. I mean, you can do that if you’re all absolutely committed to that, but that’s not what the game is for. The game is designed to let you put together your own horrific vision.

If you’ve played and enjoyed Microscope, you may get something out of Lovecraftesque. The players each create strange clues that hint at the nature of the horror to come, but without discussion or debate, and without needing to cleave to some pre-decided plot, so that the Final Horror is built up from disparate ideas, and beyond any one person’s control.

Because the game is all about creating horror, not about investigation, you only get one Protagonist to play with, and you take turns playing them. Everyone else gets to have fun intriguing, tormenting and terrifying the Protagonist until, ultimately, they come face to face with the Final Horror. And because the game isn’t about saving the world, it assumes that the Protagonist won’t do that – and instead of seeing how the Protagonist heroically wins the day, at the end we focus on showing how inscrutable and ultimately unassailable the horror really is.

If you’ve played Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, or similar games, we think you’ll find Lovecraftesque is a fresh and interesting take on the subject matter. But if you like horror and hate cthulhu, we think this game will give you something very different to the traditional Lovecraftian roleplaying experience.

Find out more about the playtest here.

Josh Fox

Rabalias grew up wanting to be a pirate. But a band of evil bureaucrats kidnapped him and forced him to work for The Man. Even so, Rabalias was patient and cunning. He escaped by gnawing his way through the walls of his prison and concealing the hole behind a picture of cthulhu. He fled to the coast, and stowed away on the Black Armada, where he worked his way up to the rank of Admiral.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.