Seems like there has been an explosion of interest in Call of Cthulhu. Why?

[cailano]

I keep reading about how popular Call of Cthulhu is getting. I think Roll20 lists it as their second most popular game. 

I have read a fair amount of Lovecraft and I played my first game of CoC back in the 1980s but I'm curious what is driving this sudden resurgence. Is it the Arkham Horror card game? TV Shows like Lovecraft Country? That XBox CoC game that came out a few years ago? Some combination? 

Or are horror games making a comeback? Help me out, here. 

[Suzuki Stumpy]

It's a very good question.  I think it's just a cyclic thing - Cosmic horror seems to be popular across the board at the moment (just look at the explosion of horror video games over the last 3-5 years or the number of horror movies and TV shows coming out over the same period), so it goes to follow that CoC and other horror-based games will also show an uptick.

... and let's face it, WotC/Hasbro haven't done themselves any favours with the recent OGL debacle so I suspect many gamers are also using that as an opportunity to explore other systems, and with everything above in mind, it's a bit of a perfect storm.

All good in my opinion as I love me a little bit of CoC.

[Neopopulas]

Honestly i think that a few years ago there was an explosion of interest in TTRPGs. Lets be honest it was probably at least a larger part because of Critical Role and everything that spawned from that. That really created a boom in the TTRPG space. Fast forward a few years and those people have had some time with DnD (or pathfinder) and gotten to the point where they are expanding their interests.

Not ALL of them are going to CoC, but a bunch of them probably are, so you basically just had a big influx of players, they were just mostly in DnD, but now that they are branching out you see an expansion in previously more niche games.

[cailano]

CoC always struck me as a much harder type of game to run than D&D. Maybe I'll have to circle back on it sometime.

[Butchern]

I'm running a CoC game here on Baldr. I was inspired to run it by reading some spooky stories on a very very long plane ride.

[Vladim]

Horrorbabble is pretty good too, it has tons of audiobooks/narrations of books on the mythos (Lovecraft and beyond). Not sure it's related to any perceived increase in popularity, though.

[Actana]

It's worth noting that Call of Cthulhu has been, and still is, immensely popular in Japan for example. In fact, so popular that Japanese copies of the game outsell all other languages combined. Even English. So when thinking about statistics and popularity, it's worth considering more globally.

[cailano]

On 2/11/2023 at 5:16 AM, Vladim said:

Horrorbabble is pretty good too, it has tons of audiobooks/narrations of books on the mythos (Lovecraft and beyond). Not sure it's related to any perceived increase in popularity, though.

I had never heard of these guys. Nice!

[cailano]

On 2/11/2023 at 7:49 AM, Actana said:

It's worth noting that Call of Cthulhu has been, and still is, immensely popular in Japan for example. In fact, so popular that Japanese copies of the game outsell all other languages combined. Even English. So when thinking about statistics and popularity, it's worth considering more globally.

I've been reading about that. It reminds me of how South Korea went crazy for Starcraft back in the day.

[iantruesilver]

The time is right and the stars are aligned?