Happy birthday Call of Cthulhu

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Call of Cthulhu 1st edition

Happy birthday Call of Cthulhu

On the 13th of November, Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu celebrated its 30th birthday. 30 years of sanity reducing adventures in a world based on the stories of HP Lovecraft.

It all started with this box right here, Call of Cthulhu’s 1st edition Boxed Set

Call of Cthulhu 1st edition

The above is my copy which is still in its original shrinkwrap.

For its 30th anniversary, Chaosium decided to release a limited edition version of the current ruleset. Below some pictures of the book. Seeing some numbers on the forums, I would estimate about 3000 copies were printed of this book.

Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary

Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary

 

Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary

Basically the book looks exactly the same as the 20th anniversary edition. The only differences are the cover, the paper thickness, and a greyscale print instead of the sepiastyle print of the 20th anniversary edition.

Now we’ll take a look at the French version.

Call of Cthulhu French edition

Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition
Call of Cthulhu French edition

This is just an incredibly beautiful book and you might think : “Well, the French went all-out for this limited edition”. Wrong. This is the regular version of the book. I repeat. This is not a limited edition. This is what new Call of Cthulhu players and dungeon masters get in their hands in France. Even the English speaking Call of Cthulhu community is going wild over this book, even to the point where they’d prefer to buy this book instead of a new rules incarnation of Chaosium.

I really hope Chaosium draws a valuable lesson from this. Books can be made attractive and they will sell. The Call of Cthulhu community have always envied the German books, now they can envy the French edition as well and soon a gorgeous Spanish edition will be added to that list.

Author Ralph

Ralph is a gamer, dungeon master, Youtuber, and RPG collector who's incredibly passionate about roleplaying games. Coming from a computer roleplaying game background, he discovered tabletop roleplaying games at GenCon Benelux and a whole new world opened up. When he was properly introduced to them in a local gaming store, he knew he had found the best game ever!

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