question about call of cthulhu.

[Mystic Muse]

I've been thinking about playing call of cthulhu if I get the chance. however first I need to know two things.
1. what do people like about it?
2. is it allowed to end well?

[mikeejimbo]

I've been thinking about playing call of cthulhu if I get the chance. however first I need to know two things.
1. what do people like about it?

Mostly the atmosphere and the gradually (or quickly!) going insane part, not to mention facing all the creepy things beyond man's ken.

2. is it allowed to end well?

Define well.

But in all honesty, while that would be up to the Keeper, I don't see why you would want it to. That's actually part of what people like!

[Gnaeus]

There are plenty of mythos stories that end well. These mostly fall into 2 categories:

1. Stories set in the dreamlands have a high fantasy feel about them. The protagonist (few stories had parties, although most games do) is usually on some mythical quest through strange lands, meeting unusual allies and enemies.

2. Cthulhu mythos stories written by other writers than Lovecraft sometimes have a kind of war in heaven theme, where outer gods (especially Nodens, but sometimes Bast or others) are actively confronting the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu and kin). These stories often end well for protagonists, but they really lack an authentic Lovecraftian feel.

What you or your DM does is entirely up to you.

[chiasaur11]

There are plenty of mythos stories that end well. These mostly fall into 2 categories:

1. Stories set in the dreamlands have a high fantasy feel about them. The protagonist (few stories had parties, although most games do) is usually on some mythical quest through strange lands, meeting unusual allies and enemies.

2. Cthulhu mythos stories written by other writers than Lovecraft sometimes have a kind of war in heaven theme, where outer gods (especially Nodens, but sometimes Bast or others) are actively confronting the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu and kin). These stories often end well for protagonists, but they really lack an authentic Lovecraftian feel.

What you or your DM does is entirely up to you.

3. Sometimes Lovecraft stories had the protagonists temporarily avert the problem. Sure, all of reality is inevitably doomed, but it's someone else's problem, as the protagonist will have the good luck to be long dead before R'lyeh rises.

[Myshlaevsky]

I play CoC for the boats.

[Tamburlaine]

I play CoC for the aforementioned atmoshphere and the thrill of investigating and resolving the mystery. Oh, and the amusement of going insane when I do work it out.

[Darrin]

I've been thinking about playing call of cthulhu if I get the chance. however first I need to know two things.
1. what do people like about it?

It evokes a theme that many people love - horror stories. And it does it really, really well. The PCs are very fragile, die very easily, and even if you manage to keep your $#!% together, you've got this small pool of Sanity points and no idea if it will last long enough for you to figure out what's going on and do what needs to be done.

The game tends to punish players for doing the smart and heroic thing, mostly by making combat extremely deadly, and by sucking away Sanity points (essentially, a metric of how much control you have over your character) as you learn more about the Mythos and how to defeat them. This sets up an interesting "Press Your Luck" or "Faustian Bargain" kind of feeling. Do you risk your limited resources to find out what's going on? If you do find out, will you be sane enough to do anything about it? Is 9 HP or a 40% Dodge skill really going to be enough to save the world from certain destruction?

Cthulhu is a game where the players have to invest a lot more effort to keep their PCs alive. It's also a game where the GM has to invest a lot more effort to make sure they get a chance to win... or at the very least, earn an interesting death.

2. is it allowed to end well?

Yes. But part of the beauty of the game is even when it ends badly, it's still *fun*. So maybe the party walked into a TPK... your odds were never that good to begin with. Did you at least manage to get an important or memorable death? If not... a lot of Cthulhu scenarios can be replayed, with another team sent in to clean up after the first, or the great evil settles down for 10 to 20 years, rearing up again in another time period. The heroes may know a little bit more, be a little bit wiser... even when they know what's coming, it can still be a visceral, dramatic experience.

[ZeroNumerous]

1. what do people like about it?
2. is it allowed to end well?

1) I don't terribly like it, so I'll explain the second.

2) In the long run? No. A running theme in H.P. Lovecraft's works were that humanity was an inconsequential speck of dirt compared to these evil eldritch abominations. Nothing ever ends well for humans. In the short run? You might get a reprieve for your life time. But that's an ultimately irrelevant consequence of your actions.

[Curmudgeon]

Camaraderie. Call of Cthulhu, more than any other game, encourages players to work together. Because it's so easy to die or go insane, you've really got to watch each others' backs. Thus there's very little inter-party strife. Nobody worries about somebody stealing from another party member, or getting into a bar fight. When the fate of the world is literally at stake, you don't bother with that cruft.

[Project_Mayhem]

I should add, of course, what any veteran CoC player can tell you - that if you play a one shot, you are going to die horribly. At best.

However, in a campaign, I always feel that its nice to give the players a shot at sorting things out. Otherwise, why did they bother