Call of Cthulhu Gets 40th Anniversary Keeper Rulebook

Chaosium Inc. has announced a new premium version of Call of Cthulhu‘s Keeper Rulebook, with early copies available at Gen Con. The 40th Anniversary Keeper Rulebook is a new leatherette-bound edition of the Keeper Rulebook, one of core rulebooks used to play the horror-driven tabletop roleplaying game. In addition to containing the core rules of Call of Cthulhu, the limited edition book also contains personal accounts by some of the early creators and contributors to the game, new endpapers, and the re-inclusion of “The Haunting,” a classic Call of Cthulhu scenario that had been included in all editions of the game up to 7th Edition and has been played by thousands of Call of Cthulhu players as their first introduction to the game. No price was announced for the limited edition book.

The 40th Anniversary Keeper Rulebook will officially be released in October 2021, but a small number of advance copies are being sold at Chaosium’s booth at Gen Con, which takes place this weekend. Keep an eye out on Chaosium’s website for more details about when this book will go on sale. 

Call of Cthulhu was one of the first horror RPGs and focuses more on survival and mystery rather than combat against monsters. The game is set in the world of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and typically features investigators stumbling upon a horrifying plot or scheme with disastrous consequences. As players encounter the true terror of the world, they struggle to maintain their sanity. The game uses a modified version of the Basic Role-Playing rules developed by Chaosium for its RuneQuest game, which focuses mainly on using percentile dice to determine the success or failure of various actions. Call of Cthulhu remains a popular tabletop roleplaying game even after 40 years, with the game’s current Seventh Edition considered one of the more popular game systems after Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire: The Masquerade.

Earlier this year, Chaosium successfully funded a special boxed set for Call of Cthulhu containing reprints of the game’s original rules and adventures. That Kickstarter raised nearly $600,000 with fulfillment expected to occur later this year.