The great pulp horror writer H.P. Lovecraft adored cats, so much so that he worked the creatures in among the Elder Gods and dark, squamous, gibbering tentacled things that haunt the shadows of his Cthulhu Mythos (in the short story "The Cats of Ulthar" most notably) and wrote about them at length in a 1926 essay:
”We have but to glance analytically at the two animals [cats and dogs] to see the points pile up in favour of the cat. Beauty, which is probably the only thing of any basic significance in all the cosmos, ought to be our chief criterion; and here the cat excels so brilliantly that all comparisons collapse. Some dogs, it is true, have beauty in a very ample degree; but even the highest level of canine beauty falls far below the feline average. The cat is classic whilst the dog is Gothic -- nowhere in the animal world can we discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to function, as in the felidae. Puss is a Doric temple -- an Ionic colonnade -- in the utter classicism of its structural and decorative harmonies. And this is just as true kinetically as statically, for art has no parallel for the bewitching grace of the cat's slightest motion. The sheer, perfect aestheticism of kitty's lazy stretchings, industrious face-washings, playful rollings, and little involuntary shiftings in sleep is something as keen and vital as the best pastoral poetry or genre painting; whilst the unerring accuracy of his leaping and springing, running and hunting, has an art-value just as high in a more spirited way but it is his capacity for leisure and repose which makes the cat preeminent.”
With this in mind, I can’t help but assume that he wold enjoy The Call of Catthulhu: a roleplaying game of cosmic horror in which the players take the roles of adventuring cats. It sounds like an enormous joke, and to be sure, it’s funny, but it’s also a fantastic low-complexity tabletop roleplaying game perfect for introducing new players to the hobby or for experienced players looking for something different.
The Call of Catthulhu comes in two core books. volume One, The Nekonomicon, is a player’s manual of sorts, but really contains everything that a group of gamers could need to start up a game, especially if they’re comfortable fudging some of the setting details.
At all corners of the world, cats are squaring up against unspeakable horrors from beyond this world, but the humans - the “two-legs” - are too unobservant tot notice. That’s okay, though: Cats accept this burden as part of the “Great Idea”. In the dawn of time, human beings were pushed alone their evolutionary path by cats eager to have servants and playmates, even if they’re generally as clueless and can’t seem to function without the presence of cats. Cats have been goading humans along ever since. After all, bellies will not rub themselves, and tuna cans won’t open when you don't have any thumbs. If the occasional monstrous servant of the dark gods has to be driven away, then so be it.
Within moments of choosing a cat’s lifestyle (ex.: feral cat) its lifestyle and a role (There are five of them, including things like Scrappers or Tiger Dreamers) each has to find “have no special powers beyond being smart kitties. They don’t have thumbs, or know what telephones are, or have the slightest idea of how to drive a car. They can’t pick things up except with their mouths, and they find it distasteful to do so. Instead, the player has to work within the limits of what a cat is commonly understood to be able to do.
If character generation is simple, the rules themselves are even more so. The Game Master (or Cat Herder), rolls one or more six-siced dice in a dice pool mechanic, and all action is skewed toward the player’s success. Results of one or two are treated as failures, and results of four through six as successes, which the players are rolling, but the inverse is true when the Cat Herder is rolling for bad guys. It is indeed possible to have a character get hurt or even killed playing the game, but it has to have been a phenomenally bad stretch of luck to get them there.
The characters, as cats, stand against the dark cults of other animals and the horrific things that wander the night. Dread Catthulhu, Doggone, and many other cat-friendly takes on Lovecraftian horrors figure prominently in the book, but so do sadistic human beings, dogs, and other natural enemies. Cats must defeat them by wits or by guile, or rarely, with the judicious use of claws and fangs. For the most part, violence isn’t a very good option: Cats are smart, sleek, and agile. Those are their gifts, but they have one other as well: Dreaming.
As any cat owner knows, our precious purr balls spend at least two-thirds of every 24 hours asleep. Perhaps we shouldn’t disturb them: In The Call of Catthulhu, these four-footed heroes are wandering the dreamlands, where everyone and everything has a counterpart. Especially gifted cats can call enter Dream and call upon mystical forces for assistance in the form of prophecies and other gifts. It’s a nice nod to Lovecraft and his Cats of Ulthar.
The second core book, Unaussprechlichen Katzen, presents Catthulhu Cat Herders with all sorts of information about the various gods and other cosmic powers in the universe, their cults and followers, magic rituals and rites, and other great background stuff. I especially liked the background information on the origin of the Great Idea and how it changed human evolution.
The book end with three sample adventures, which should be enough to give any Cat Herder and players enough of a taste for the game to know whether they’ll want to play more. I know I will.
The Call of Catthulhu will probably be a lot of fun for any gaming group, and the silliness of it is entirely dependent upon what kind of attitude players bring to it. Books like Tad Williams’s Tailchaser’s Song and Dark Horse Comics’ Beast of Burden make a convincing case that it’s perfectly within reason to have a “serious” fantasy tale with feline protagonists, but for those who are looking for a little goofy fun, that’s there too.
You can purchase both volumes of The Call of Catthulhu at DrivethruRPG.com.