Hazarding Exposure To Call Of Cthulhu

I made mention earlier of the inspiration behind my blog title, gullar sahir. Part of the inspiration is from the classic Sutherland illustration, entitled A Paladin In Hell, from the original AD&D Players Handbook. The "Citadel" part of that blog title is now, hopefully, also clear.

What about the other part of the blog title, namely, being a Paladin? It surely does not stem from Paladin being my favorite character class, as I never played a Paladin, nor had interest in doing so. I always felt that the Paladin, and other specialist classes, paved the way for stat inflation and character-building systems, which both, in my mind, are anathema to the point of the original "old-school" character creation system -- the challenge of playing a character, based on what the dice present you, rather than what you wanted to play.

No, the reference to being a Paladin comes partly from what we played and how we played it. While there were lots of games we played back in the day, including several boardgames and microgames, you would never have described our gameplay as incorporating either "weird" or "horror" elements. As far as RPGs went, we played Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller, straight up. I was in a pretty white-bread gaming group.

Oh, sure, I was acquainted with Call Of Cthulhu, Arduin Grimoires, Tunnels & Trolls and the other alternative rpgs that sprang up in the late 70's and early 80's. But two things prevented a thorough introduction to any of them: one was cash (or lack thereof, I was in my tweens during the late 70's and early 80's and had neither a job nor regular allowance); the other was arrogance (thinking that first-to-market or biggest-in-market meant best). Until the mid-eighties, scraping enough money together to buy even the core D&D books or the occasional microgame was a challenge. Living in (rpg) poverty and being arrogant about your beliefs = Paladin.

Luckily, my brother did have a job, which meant there were boardgames and rpg books in the house, even if I was technically barred from accessing them (good luck with that).

So I did get exposed to a wide variety of games. But one of the few that I did not have the opportunity to experience was Call Of Cthulhu. Trey, the author of the blog From The Sorcerer's Skull, posted an entry recently, mentioning a Call Of Cthulhu monster encyclopedia, entitled Malleus Monstrorum. He, in addition to several other bloggers, are in the habit of posting interesting tidbits about games weird and horrible, of which many reference Call Of Cthulhu and Basic Role Playing.

While my recent trip to The Sentry Box failed to yield a copy of Malleus Monstrorum, I have come into possession of several other BRP and Call Of Cthulhu resources, which I will bravely hazard exposure to, in the name of all that is good, light and true. They are:

• Basic Role Playing: The Chaosium Roleplaying System -- this 400 page tome is (as I understand it) the underpinning for the Call Of Cthulhu game.
• Cthuhlu: Dark Ages -- 175 pages of supplementary material, to allow you to set your Call Of Cthulhu game in the period around 1000 A.D.
• Cthuhlu Invictus -- a 165 page Cthulhu Sourcebook, suitable for use in running an Ancient Roman Empire based campaign.
• Masks Of Nyarlathotep: -- Chevski was sufficiently enthusiastic about this particular 160 page 1920's-setting Call Of Cthulhu adventure that I could not pass on the opportunity, when I discovered it on the used-game bookshelves at The Sentry Box.

Do I need to buy the Call Of Cthulhu rulebook, or is possession of the BRP book and the above supplements and adventure a suitably broad introduction to this game system?