First time being a DM or Keeper. Photo taken by Me.

I started playing the Call of Cthulhu role playing game approximately two years ago. I became enamored with the setting, the dice rolling and the challenge of the game. This rulebook doesn’t favor the players and it’s common for a character to die in a campaign. One of my friends messaged me asking if I would be the DM or in Call of Cthulhu’s terminology the keeper in a session. I was elated to accept the challenge and I successfully led our group through a campaign and spoiler alert: all of their characters survived.

Ooohhh spooky. Photo taken by Me. 

Call of Cthulhu is created by Chaosium Inc. They’re pretty well known as I have seen them tabeling at C2E2 and Gen Con this year. Chaosium Inc. is widely well known for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, but have also created an RPG to Heroscape which is a game I played in middle school. In order to become the keeper, I bought the Call of Cthulhu starter set. It includes three booklets: the first book is an adventure with one player, the second book is the rules and the third book is other pre-made stories built to be played with a group of players. This set also includes the Call of Cthulhu dice, empty character sheets and five pre-generated characters.

Inside the Starter Kit. Photo taken by Me. 

Before the game started, I was nervous. What if my players got stuck? What if they don’t understand the rules? What if they get bored??? Thankfully, none of these occurrences happened. I did use one of the pre-made stories, but I tweaked it in my own way. This allowed me to be creative, but have a reference in case I got stuck being the keeper.

Rulebooks! Photo taken by Me. 

I underestimated how intelligent my friends are. My friends discovered there was an entity trapped in a farm house and how it’s main power is to reanimate dead corpses. As my friends stumbled on the farm house, they discovered various animal corpses and a dead body of a young woman. My fiance decided he wanted to cut up the body parts and throw them down a well. My other friends agreed and they spent time cutting up these body parts. They took sanity damage for it, but in the end this was a smart decision. When it came time for my final boss battle, I couldn’t reanimate the dead creatures or the corpse woman. This made the battle easier on the characters, but my life more difficult. My friends were able to conquer the entity in the end. 

Nevada Jones, archaeologist. Photo taken by Me. 

Ultimately, I’m going to play through the other two pre-created scenarios, so I feel 100% comfortable leading a campaign. After this happens, I will purchase the full seventh edition rulebook and investigator handbook. This will allow me to create my own story in the Call of Cthulhu mythos. If you have ever played the Call of Cthulhu RPG, feel free to leave a comment about how the story went. I would love to hear it.