With Strange Aeons Even Dice May Die

This article has been entirely replaced by Brawl of Cthulhu, a more extensive Cthulhu gamopedia. Though this article is being kept for historical purposes, I suggest you read the newer listing. —SA, 4/29/15


It's Santa Cthulhu!Once more Halloween is upon us. It’s a time of year that always gets me thinking about ghosts, goblins, and other things that go bump in the night. However, as I wrote last year in The Problem with Horror Games, the horror genre hasn’t transferred very well to board games.

Despite that, there’s one horror subgenre where publishers — mostly American publishers — have been very active in for many years. That’s the subgenre of Cthulhu games (or Lovecraft Games or Mythos Games, as you prefer). This Halloween I’m going to spotlight them by taking a creepy tour through about twenty-five years’ worth of Cthulhoid ludographics.

As will probably become obvious by the breadth of this article, I’m a big fan of the Old Gentleman from Providence. It’s not necessarily because of his writing, but rather because of the huge mythology that’s sprung out of it, with hundreds of authors all adding their own element — each of which might be picked up by other authors, creating a massive web of interrelated stories. I’ve even offered my own contribution, a comic book called Return to Arkham that you can find over at Skotos. It ties in to our own Lovecraftian computer game.

But even introduction, let’s get those blasphemous games.

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