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What cosmic horror brings to the table (top): Call of Cthulhu - Mike Mason Comicon Napoli Interview
Chaosium's Mike Mason, Call of Cthulhu's creative director, was a guest of honour at the 25th Comicon in Naples and here we literally sat down among the masses to discuss all things role-playing games and cosmic horror.
Audio transcription
"Hi friends, we are at the Comicon 25th in Naples and this is a crazy setup that we just built because, yeah, I want you to feel how crowded and how noisy this gets.
This is all about passion and people and it's really nice and interesting."
"And other than comics, it's also about video games and it's also about role-playing games.
So that's why we are here with you. Thank you so much for joining us, Mike.
I attended a little bit of your panel where I learned a little bit of tips and secrets behind designing role-playing games, tabletop, of course.
Before that, how do you think the world of Cthulhu in terms of tabletop RPG is perceived nowadays by the playing community?
It varies from country to country. For instance, in Japan, Call of Cthulhu is the most popular tabletop role-playing game."
"In England, there was a magazine some years ago that had a survey to ask people what was their favorite game.
Number one was Call of Cthulhu, but obviously games like Dungeons & Dragons that were the first ones are still very popular.
We're not quite as big as Dungeons & Dragons in places like America and Europe and Italy, but we are often the next game down from Dungeons & Dragons."
"Call of Cthulhu is very popular. It's the second most played game online on Roll20, so it's pretty well known.
What do you think the horror component added to tabletop role-playing games?
I think two things. One, it adds mystery, and people like mysteries and investigations, because, hey, mystery fiction books and mystery and crime investigation TV series are very, very popular."
"Call of Cthulhu has that element of mystery and investigation, and with the horror as well.
It means that your characters aren't safe, because they are in a horror story.
So there is more risk, there is more challenge, and because of that, it can be more fun, because you get very close to losing your characters, and then you save the day, and you survive."
"It feels so good. All your characters die horribly. Oh, no! But you have a really good time, your character getting eaten by a massive monster. It's good fun.
So either way, it introduces new styles of play, and it goes beyond just that kind of treasure-seeking that we find in horror.
So it goes beyond that, and it's much more story-focused, telling a really interesting, cool story."
"Speaking about story, if I'm correct, during your panel, you said that it is your responsibility to guide the players without them realizing that they are being guided. How, in the world of Cthulhu, do you do that?
You can, you can.
You present the situation to the players, and most of the time, players are going to do the usual thing."
"So you're not really guiding them, you're just accepting that you know where they're going to go, and play along with that.
However, sometimes you want to try and steer them into the story rather than away from the story.
And so, it's just providing little tricks to keep them focused.
So, for instance, you want them to go to the old barn in the woods, where the monster is living, let's say."
"And they're trying to avoid going there.
But maybe someone they know is last seen heading towards that barn, and then they've gone missing.
Now, you're not forcing the players to go there, but you are suggesting in the story that, hey, your best friend was last seen heading towards that barn."
"They've not come back. What do you want to do?
And people are going, oh, well, we'd better go to the barn.
I'm not forcing them, but I'm giving them reasons to go.
Alright, alright. You mentioned Dungeons & Dragons before."
"So, other than the horror component that we just talked about, what would you say is the main aspect that gives you more freedom in terms of creating stories within this universe?
Because it could be any style of story you want to tell.
Call of Cthulhu, you can play almost any type of story."
"So, if you play with younger people, you could tell a story that's much more like a cartoon, like a Scooby-Doo, a haunted house, but not really, really scary.
Just spooky fun.
Or, you're playing with older people, and they're more experienced, and they want to play a real scary story."
"And so, it will go all the way on that scale from fun to very scary.
But most groups like a bit of both.
And they find their characters get into unusual situations that you kind of have to laugh at because it's so crazy.
And then one minute you're laughing, and the next minute you go, oh, no, no, no, we run away, we run away."
"We're all scared.
So, it can be a lot of fun because, as I say, you could be playing like a mystery story, which is like a slow burn with lots of clues.
Or you could not do that at all, and you play something like The Walking Dead, like a night of horror, where the monsters are there, and there's no mystery."
"You've just got to survive the night.
And so, all these different styles of horror play, you can play in Call of Cthulhu, from Attack of the Giant Space Spiders, from the kind of films of the 1950s, through to setting your game not on Earth."
"You could set it in the future and play a game like Alien, or you could play a historical game like Cthulhu Dark Ages, where you're playing before there really are books.
So, you're not dealing with books and information.
You're dealing with communicating and talking to people, and there's no guns."
"You've got to rely on maybe one of you has a sword.
Nobody else does.
Or you could be playing in the kind of late Victorian era, the kind of gaslight streets.
Yes."
"And you could be in Napoli, you could be in London, or you could be in New York, on the East Coast of the US.
And each of those places will reflect different stories.
All right.
Now that you've sort of talked about the expanded lore, let me ask you about Lovecraft."
"So, double question.
Which were your sources of inspiration beyond Lovecraft when creating more into this universe?
And speaking of the so-called Lovecraftian works, it is as trendy as ever.
We see a lot of things."
"Some of them seem more loyal to what was the original source material.
So, which would you say is different, that it's not your work, nice use of Lovecraft's sort of original source material?
Yeah, it's...
I recently read a graphic novel of Lovecraft's."
"It was The Shadow Over Innsmouth, done by a Japanese artist and author, whose name escapes me.
We'll write it down here. [Gou Tanabe] He's also done The Corner Cthulhu Story and some other ones.
And they're really good adaptations of the original story, but visualized through cartoon artwork."
"Fantastic.
Which looks really nice.
So, I think that's really good.
There's a BBC radio podcast, which is called Lovecraft Investigations."
"And they tell some of the Lovecraft stories, but set in the modern day.
Okay.
With a guy who does a podcast.
And he's like an investigator."
"And he's going around trying to find out about these strange things.
And again, they've adapted Lovecraft and modernized it.
And got rid of anything that wasn't very good.
And they're very good adaptations."
"And in terms of the game, we...
While Lovecraft created the idea of Cthulhu, and the cosmology of the Cthulhu mythos, these stories aren't very good for role-playing games.
Because they're normally about one person."
"And role-playing games are a group of people.
However, other writers who came after Lovecraft, like August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, and many others, have written stories that are much more in line with the style of role-playing.
So August Derleth has groups of people that are trying to fight Cthulhu."
"Yes.
And so that helps to inspire us beyond Lovecraft.
All right.
And there are still people today, new authors coming in, who are telling new stories set in the Lovecraft world, who are really interesting and new voices and diverse."
"And so they're again helping to influence the stories we tell going forward as well.
All right.
And also, coming back to your panel, which would be the one tip or trick you would give soon-to-be tabletop game designers?
Okay."
"I think it's just to do something.
I've seen a lot of people like to think about it for a long time, and maybe never actually end up writing or running the game.
And to say, you have to just have a go and give it a go and try."
"And the first time you do it won't be the best, but you will learn from the experience and you will get better.
The first things I wrote were terrible.
Yeah, but I've now spent quite a long time doing it.
And I write better now than I did when I started."
"I also run games better now than when I started.
But we all have to learn.
Okay.
And we all have to try.
So just have a go and you will enjoy it."
"Just enjoy it.
That's the main thing.
If you don't enjoy it, why do it?
Enjoy it.
Have a go."
"All right.
That's nice.
Also, we've been talking all the time about this specific universe.
Let me ask you about Warhammer."
"How do you feel about it?
The different products that have been coming out in the past few years.
And the whole thing, how do you see it being used nowadays?
I think Warhammer is like an inevitability."
"Like the Space Marines.
They will continue to march onwards and get bigger and better.
And so Warhammer is like that.
It continues to march on."
"It's unstoppable.
And so the new additions of the games have been great.
But what's really cool, it's always been the miniatures that look fantastic.
And the miniature designers at Games Workshop just continue to get better and better."
"And so the miniatures are wonderful.
And we've seen friends of mine who run the company, the role-playing game company called Cubicle 7.
They have the license to do the role-playing games for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and so on.
And again, they're doing new things with that and broadening the appeal."
"And so it's really cool.
It's nice to see.
Having worked there and been involved in the very first Warhammer 40,000 role-playing game, Dark Heresy, it's nice to see that that continues in new ways and develops and grows."
"So yeah, this is very cool.
Okay, final one.
The elephant in the room.
I'm asking both artists and writers here about AI."
"So how do you see it?
How do you perceive it as a threat or as a potential tool you can use?
In the case of artists, it's different.
But in the case of writers, it's also something that might be helpful in terms of arranging ideas, for example."
"So how do you feel about it?
Yeah, I don't really find any value in it myself.
And something as a company, Chaosium as a company, we've taken a stand to say we won't use AI in our artwork and in our writing.
At the moment, it certainly seems that AI is a very reductive thing."
"It's not creative.
It's just reusing ideas that have been fed into its brain.
And a lot of those ideas have been stuff I've written that I wasn't asked permission for, that people have just ignored my writing, and then we go and check it out."
"And that doesn't seem right to me.
So I think there's a long way to go with AI.
And maybe in the future, it will be a much more useful tool.
But at the moment, I find no value in it."
"It doesn't help me.
And in fact, it just seems to eat my words.
Yes.
Like a monster.
Yes."
"Okay, I think that's a nice way to wrap this up.
So thank you so much for your time, Mike.
Thank you.
Enjoy the rest of the show."
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