Lurking Horror -> CoC


Sun, 12 Feb 1995 03:48:13 GMT

I ran a Call of Cthulhu game based on The Lurking Horror by Infocom
(which was based on the Cthulhu Mythos), and it worked great.

One character was a computer programmer working on a multimedia hypertext
system for a professor at Miskatonic University. She didn't realize it,
but she was helping him develop a hypertext Necronomicon. Game quote:

To learn how to summon Ubbo-Sathla, click on this box.
<click>
Summon Ubbo-Sathla: Run autoscript? <yes/no>

Another player was her boyfriend, and the third was investigating the
disappearance and the insanity of the two previous students who had
worked for the professor.

I cut out the elevator, hacker, and maintenance man, but used the urchin,
the professor, the vat, the hand (which a player promptly shot), and
especially the rats.

There were a few hitches. Halfway through the game, the players all
wanted to go back to their homes and forget all about what was down there.
I had to threaten them with insanity or disappearing to get them to come back.

Unfortunately, the players didn't drive off the Horror (which I made into
an intelligent Shoggoth-like creature which was a spawn of Ubbo-Sathla).
At the end of the game, the police came to arrest them, and I was about
to hand out prison sentences instead of experience points when the computer
programmer told the officers, "Just let me logout" and ran the
"summon formless spawn of Ubbo-Sathla" script. They drew a pentagram which
two of them got into, the third and a cop were devoured by the thing
summoned, and the characters ended up on the run from the law and bound
as servants to the Lurking Horror. 8{

Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu