Cthulhu in the Classroom

I've used many roleplaying games over the years in my classroom. D&D, Savage Worlds, Pendragon, Usagi Yojimbo, Prince Valiant, Qin, Agon, and a few others I can't remember at the moment. But after building classes around gaming for the last four years, I think I've come to a firm decision:

There is no better classroom rpg than Call of Cthulhu. Except for maybe Pendragon. And since Pendragon, being a game of Arthurian literature and medieval culture, is kind of obvious in its 'educator-friendly' uses, I'm going to spend the rest of this post talking up CoC.

Some may question how a game of nihilistic horror and spooky pulp adventure could possibly be suitable for classroom usage. Surely in an era when the words 'roleplaying game' still have the power to conjure up images of satanism, suicide, and a crazed young Tom Hanks in certain minds, we don't need to bring in a game that spends a fair portion of the core rulebook exploring the actual history of human occultism. Right? Well, actually maybe we do. Consider the following:

1. The BRP rules system is extremely easy for newcomers to roleplaying to learn. I've taught a lot of kids how to play a lot of games and I can say with absolute certainty that the BRP rules get picked up the quickest and fade into the background of discussion and roleplaying just as fast. They don't take over class time with long discussions of game mechanics, and that's a major plus. If you understand percentages and have a character sheet in front of you, bam: you know 90% of the system.

2. Call of Cthulhu has printed more material for historical roleplaying than any other game on the market. And it's not just lightweight windowdressing for more or less bog-standard dungeon crawls. CoC books delve into social structures, legal codes, religious beliefs, scientific methods, timelines, in-depth regional geography and city maps, and other topics of actual educational substance. Get a kid to read a few essays from the 1920s Investigator's Companion and you've put a stunning amount of period information at their fingertips. Play a Cthulhu Invictus campaign and you're going to need to learn a lot about the social structures and daily life of people in ancient Rome. While CoC books aren't flawless in their historical credentials, they're done to a much higher standard of research than you are likely to find elsewhere in games publishing.

3. CoC provides strong drama without relying constantly on combat. Most roleplaying games have a tendency to wrap their mechanics closely around the assumption that combat will make up a major portion of game play. That can be a hard sell in a classroom environment. There are certainly games that have come up with innovative mechanics for social conflict, but these sorts of drama can prove boring, risky or awkward when trying to hold the focus of a classroom. Throw them a murder mystery and students will bite every time. Gathering clues, questioning witnesses, coming up with a hypothesis to explain What Really Happened: this kind of thing draws a class in and keeps them heavily engaged without having to use the easiest of dramatic crutches: violence.

4. CoC is an extremely moral game. Many traditional adventure games can easily slip into random murder and looting, or at least a great deal of killing and looting. When the goal of the game is in large measure to gain wealth and power it becomes very easy for players to slip into all sorts of ruthless behavior they would never consider in real life. Call it the Grand Theft Auto effect. If I give you a sandbox world to explore, and that sandbox contains both weapons and rewards for using them, it is very likely that Bad Things will happen. CoC takes an actively opposite approach. Your goal is not power and wealth. Indeed, it is usually made quite clear that whatever power and position you possess at character creation will likely be expended with little return over the course of your adventures. Violence is to be avoided whenever possible in CoC. The game makes no bones about the fact that violence is a last resort, and one which is Very Likely to Get You Killed. Many scenarios provide perfectly peaceful solutions for those willing to think things through, show some cleverness, and perhaps put their sanity in greater peril. The goal in a CoC adventure, the reason you risk both life and sanity, is almost always The Greater Good. You are not expecting to benefit personally from your actions. You are simply trying to protect the innocent, find a missing person, stop a villain from preying on the powerless, or gain knowledge that will help humanity better understand the universe in which it lives (however terrifying that understanding may prove to be). In short, the heroes in a CoC adventure are common folks who have decided to stand against the darkness, facing unimaginable danger for little thanks simply because they know it is right to do so. These are heroes deserving of the title.

5. Horror does not mean gore. Nor does it mean maddening despair. These elements can certainly be found in many tales of the Cthulhu Mythos but they need not be used at all. Many of the tales that originally shaped the mythos were told in a much more old-fashioned suspense tale format, leaving the grisly details tastefully out-of-scene. When designing adventures for younger players there is plenty of precedent for trimming down the more graphically horrifying elements while still retaining a very sleek and strong spooky story to enjoy. And make no mistake, kids and teenagers like scary stories. Whether it's Scooby Doo cartoons or young adult books like Harry Potter, Coraline, Twilight, or even Goosebumps; this is stuff they truly enjoy. Our popular culture is thick with spooky stories for younger audiences, and CoC provides a perfect framework for telling this sort of tale.