The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.257: Macabre Tales

A good five years before Pelgrane Press released Cthulhu Confidential (a one player/one GM variant of their narrative/storytelling rpg Trail of Cthulhu),  Spectrum Games had already done something similar with Macabre Tales - a game which initially sought to address (both narratively, and in a simulationist sense), the fact that games of Call of Cthulhu are, traditionally, dependent on the standard D&D gaming trope of ‘the party’ - a trope which is not often evident in Lovecraft’s fiction (involving, as it often does, the first-person perspective upon events as they unfold in the eyes of a single narrator). This is why I think that Lovecraftian gaming - at least from a simulationist perspective - best reflects the themes f Lovecraft’s worlds when played solitaire. Whilst Macabre Tales doesn’t quite scratch that itch, it nonetheless tries to address some of the more purist Lovecraftian concerns when it comes to grazing within the meadows of Lovecraft’s fictive universe.