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I need to know which systems use the Cthulhu Mythos. Could you give me a list?

Please give only systems that specifically reference the Cthulhu Mythos. For example, don't bother listing Escape From Tentacle City: tentacles don't make it Mythos. Similarly, don't give me minor references: don't list, say, Paranoia, just because a Paranoia scenario once mentioned Cthulhu.

Also, don't list all the different Call of Cthulhu settings: don't, for example, list Cthulhu Invictus.

Everything else - CthulhuTech, UnSpeakable, Trail of Cthulhu - is fair game. I'm particularly interested in little systems I haven't heard about.

(And this is Community Wiki, of course.)

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10 Answers

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In the 1980 edition of Deities and Demigods, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons compiled a set of statistics for the Old Ones of Lovecraft's Mythos, including Cthulhu. This material was later removed at the request of Chaosium Publishing, who had already acquired the RPG rights from Arkham House.

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Interesting, but could we stick to systems only, please? If we widen it to Cthulhu references, there'll be too much stuff. – Graham Dec 6 '10 at 14:36
My thought was that this was an example of system: that is, the D&D mechanics used to stat up Lovecraftian horrors, as opposed to "Cthulhu shows up in Ghostbusters, so he's suitable for the RPG version." Is there a border you're drawing? – Jadasc Dec 6 '10 at 18:15
The border I'm trying to draw is: if the system doesn't focus on the Mythos, it's out. D&D doesn't focus on the Mythos. (Of course, this gets harder with thing like GURPS.) – Graham Dec 6 '10 at 18:41
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The Cthulhu Mythos was actually pretty significant to D&D then. It's only not obvious now because the official use of Mythos stuff was verboten for so long. The inclusion of the Far Realms in 4e is a hat-tip to this aspect of old-school D&D. – SevenSidedDie Dec 6 '10 at 21:31
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Unless I'm mistaken all over the place, Nemesis is pretty well front-loaded for Cthulhoid shenanigans.

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Nemesis is pretty cool. My only major concern about it is the way the skill curves work as you add more dice - there's not much graduation in the "normal" human range, IMO. But the UA Madness Meters have a lot going for them. – Dave Hallett Dec 8 '10 at 22:51
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Wildfire's Cthulhutech using a proprietary engine. Formerly released through Mongoose Publications.

Wildfire's Cthonian Stars, released through Mongoose.

9th Level Games' Cthulhu for President is a tongue in cheek game using their BEER Engine (used also for Kobolds Ate My Baby 3E & SDE and Ninja Burger 1E).

Ken Hite and Robin Laws' Trail of Cthulhu which is a standalone version of Gumshoe.

Cthulhu Dice: The RPG is someone's homebrew using Steve Jackson Games' Cthulhu Dice for task resolution.

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up vote 4 down vote

I'm going to be cheeky and list Cthulhu Dark, just in case you've somehow forgotten about it! ;-)

Also Unspeakable, a supplemental ruleset for Inspectres.

And Chthonian, although this has been "currently being rewritten" for some time.

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up vote 4 down vote

The best known of them all is of course Call of Cthulhu, which has been around since 1981, and is based on Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system.

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up vote 2 down vote

Delta Green

One notable offshoot of the Call of Cthulhu RPG was the Delta Green setting (1997), which merged the Cthulhu Mythos with the pre-millennial conspiracy genre popular at the time.

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up vote 2 down vote

GURPS Cthulhu Punk, and the D20 version of Call of Cthulhu, are two other systems using the Cthulhu Mythos.

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The Laundry (2010, ISBN 1-907204-93-8, Gareth Hanrahan, published by Cubicle 7 is set in the Charles Stross's "Bob Howard — Laundry" series of books. It uses CoC rules, if you are bothered by those. Note that two novellas are available for free Down On The Farm and Overtime if you wanted to check the background material. There is an adventure module Black Back Jobs as well.

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up vote 0 down vote

It pains me to even mention this game, given that most reviewers have described it as adolescent at best and infantile at worst (I cannot claim to have read it, nor am I likely to).

However, it would appear that Empire of Satanis (and I'm linking to one of those reviews here so that people get the picture) would appear to qualify under the conditions that you have given. That is, it is an RPG (even a playable one, apparently) and the author believes it to be Lovecraftian, even though many Lovecraft fans would vehemently disagree. It's the Cthulhu Mythos, Jim, but definitely not as we know it.

I am off to stick pins in my eyes by way of light relief.

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up vote 0 down vote

Realms of Cthulhu is a highly flexible system designed to allow you to play a range of games in the Lovecraftian mythos - from CoC investigation to high-tech monster-hunters etc. The underlying crunch is Savage Worlds.

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