Though worldbuilderslore.com has a definitive fantasy aesthetic, I’ve enjoyed running some Call of Cthulhu (CoC) as a “Keeper”. It’s a very different flavor of game- aside from the obvious genre difference, the rules strike me as being much more complete, consistent, and conducive to the gameplay itself. The most alien experiences in running CoC include getting used to not having a fight in every session, working hard to create a horror experience, and having the possible endings of the adventure well-defined before character sheets are drawn up.
Needless to say, the worldbuilding is a different experience as well. I could liken it to anticipating the release of the Third Episode of Star Wars: the beginning is known, the ending is known- so how can you have a compelling story in the middle? At this point, I have only run games in the original 1920’s setting, though I have come to regret that somewhat. Having a known future detracts from the horror and contradicts Lovecraft’s own style of using modern scientific discovery to enchant and dishearten his audience. Taking place in the real world, your audience also vaguely knows what happened before the campaign- unless you tell them otherwise, which is an immediate “Chekhov’s Gun”.
To give my attempts at immersing and enchanting my audience, one, I had to explain that the future from the character’s point is NOT known, despite having a century of known “content”. I may very well try to subvert my players’ knowledge of history from the 1920’s on- I will tell you how that puzzle unfolds. I also found myself clinging onto the term “Weird Science”. Though science has developed in certain ways from the 1920’s, there is no guarantee it would always develop in such a way- steampunk and dieselpunk are genres dedicated to this assumption, after all.
The next challenge was trying to invent or discover weird science that hasn’t actually been invented or discovered. I found great inspiration in Paradox Studio’s Stellaris, a sci-fi grand-strategy game. Stellaris uses a technology tree system with many interesting techs to advance your civilization. These technologies stem from multiple different fields with somewhat predictable characteristics. A couple of these fields were “Computing” which produced techs like scientific advancement, sensors, computers that modified your combat ships, and espionage, or the field of “Biology” which procured techs related to food production, species modification, army types, and biological ship upgrades.
I combined this with one of my oldest randomizer tools that I may discuss in more depth at a later date- a Magic: The Gathering (MTG) Ravnica themed dice. This special dice produces symbols that stem from two of MTG’s five color system. MTG’s five original colors have very distinct personalities, characteristics, aesthetics, and even magic spells. Various combinations of colors can produce very interesting results as various traits are amplified, muffled, or silenced when combined with others. I highly recommend the Youtube channel DiceTry for some deep dives and good advice for character development and writing based on these colors.
With notecards designed to replicate Stellaris‘s science, and the Ravnica dice to give personality and direction, I felt ready to develop my weird science. I’ll share some of my creations with you another day, but those two tools dramatically boosted my confidence in the worldbuilding of my 1920’s CoC campaign. For every weird tech I developed, I had to figure out why it was in the scene it was. Why was psychedelic mind-control powder well suited for political intrigue found in a forest in the boonies? How did it get there? Who was using it? You can see how content flows from this seemingly simple step. It also taps into a creative principle I insist on in worldbuilding- specificity. Specificity is a topic unto itself, but it can be rather fun for the GM to be bound, himself, by the fate of the dice. I have found some of my absolute best worldbuilding details to come from really uncomfortable dice results on a randomized chart that seemed to break the story I was telling in my head.
Soon, I will share some of my Call of Cthulhu weird science content and show you how to make your own! Unravel these mysteries with me, if you have the constitution.
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