Knock, knock...who's there... Cthul...

Waaay back in time when I were a lad, Role Playing Games were the strange new thing, not even on the block but somewhere down the road on a different block altogether.  I first came across them some time in the late 70's  in an advert in a short-lived UK scifi magazine, Ad Astra. 

Having nagged my parents for some cash I duly sent away and received my first set of Dungeons and Dragons.  I have to confess at this point that I get very confused about which edition is which.  Mine looked like this...

My mate David and I then spent the best of our teenage years shut away in a fetid teenage boys bedroom exploring dungeons and caves.  We progressed to the heady heights of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and more complex adventures.  The one big limitation was that we were the only people who were either aware of RPGs or showed any interest.  There's a certain art to running a 1 player campaign! 

Our university years introduced us to a whole new range of games and even other people who wanted to play them [and most scarily of all...girls!!] ... luckily we both went to the same uni [Strathclyde].  There followed several years of good, bad and downright bizarre gaming with a whole host of games... Space Opera, Bushido, Traveller, Chivalry and Sorcery, Call of Cthulhu and lots that I can't remember [alcohol may have been involved at this point!]

I'd also been going to the Glasgow and District Wargames Club for my fix of 'proper' wargaming... mainly WRG 6th and after uni I dropped out of the whole RPG thing apart from a brief flirtation again in the 90s.  My gaming life continued with more historical games and boardgames.

What has spawned all this rambling???

My son discovered my copies of D&D and GURPS lurking in the loft  and decided that this sounded like a good thing.  I tried to dissuade him but, no luck.  We played our way through a rather 'on the hoof' scenario or 2 with me largely winging it and trying to avoid too many rules pitfalls.  At this point I realised that I'd never really got to grips with 2nd edition.  A bit of hunting on Ebay produced a couple of other games that we've since tried...

First to arrive was Middle Earth Role Playing [MERP]... seemed like a good idea at the time but I'd forgotten who complicated it could be!   Has to be one of the most confusing rule books as well.  Generating a character took ages and neither of us could really face rolling up another one!

Next to arrive [and the point of this whole post... finally!!] was Call of Cthulhu.  Again I've no real idea what version of the rules I have but it looks like this...

I'd forgotten what a really enjoyable game this was.  Of all the games we played at Uni or back home as a teen, this was the one with real atmosphere and a great background.  At the time none of us had actually read any Lovecraft [which may have been a blessing!] but that didn't really matter.

So far we've planned a bit of the background setting and my son has created a central character who we can base the scenarios around.  As he's the only player it'll be yet another 1 player campaign with one main 'hero' and a host of supporting bit parts who may expand as the story goes on [or as the hero dies/gets maimed/goes mad etc].  The setting seems to have gripped him as well and we'll see how things develop.  I'll add some postings on the storyline as it all unfolds....