Cartoon Graveyard

I hope everyone enjoyed this year’s International Tabletop Day and spent some time connecting with friends and family around the game table. Here’s the final image I contributed to the London (ON) Game Crawl map:

I was first introduced to the works of H. P. Lovecraft by my dad when I was in high school. I’m not sure what discussion led to it, but he lent me two volumes of Lovecraft’s short stories. I have memories of reading selected works from these books while visiting my grandparents in the summer following Grade 11 (I think). In the twelfth grade, I wrote an essay comparing “The Cats of Ulthar,” “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” and (I believe) “Memory” (ironic that “Memory” is the one about which I am unsure). Most of the stories I read were not connected directly to the Cthulhu mythos, so I don’t have very much knowledge of how all the stuff with the Great Old Ones fits together.

There certainly are a whole pile of games with a Lovecraftian theme – off the top of my head, I can think of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, Call of the Cthulhu: The Card Game, Mythos CCG, Mansions of Madness, Arkham Horror, Elder Sign, Cthulhu Dice, The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, Cthulhu Gloom, and the Cthulhu expansion for Smash Up. I also remembered, but had to look up the names of, Unspeakable Words and Eldritch Horror. I own the base set for the Call of Cthulhu card game but have yet to delve very far into it. I’ve enjoyed playing the digital version of Elder Sign as a solitaire game on Android.

My true recommendation for Lovecraft spin-off material for today, however, is not a game. Instead, I strongly suggest Metallica’s suitably ominous instrumental, “The Call of Ktulu,” from 1984’s Ride the Lightning.

Thanks again to Chris McInnis of Uber Cool Stuff and Carol Vandenberg of L. A. Mood Comics and Games for involving me in this project.