So I've heard about this Chuthulu thing over and over again. I heard that it's by Lovecraft or someone. I've noticed a whole bunch of games have been based on it or inspired by it. I know it is some kind of old-school psychological horror or something.

However, I have never looked into, read, played, watched, smelt, digested or otherwise encountered anything related to it.

Am I missing something awesome or is it just over-rated with a fanatic cult following?

Should I invest any time into it, and if yes, where should one start?

Maybe you should use google.

Thank you for that useless reply.

I obviously want the opinions of people on this forum. Google will only give me facts on what it's all about and a whole bunch of random opinions.

I can give you an easy answer. Google the story "The Call Of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft. The copyright is a bit spotty, since it was written in the 1920s and the copyright renewal is in question. You should be able to find the whole story available somewhere to read online due to its likely public domain status. It is a short story and you should be able to read it in about 15 minutes. All the other "Cthulhu Mythos" derives from that work. As for other Cthulhu stories, many Lovecraft fans refer to the universe he created in his work as Cthulhu Mythos.

Go ahead and read "Call Of Cthulhu" as the introduction. Likely it will cost you no money and only about 15 minutes of time. If you like it, read some of his other works. You will definitely find references to it in many games, sometimes in completely unexpected places such as Ultima Underworld II and the movie Congo.

You are now where I was about a year ago. I didn't know anything about Lovecraft either, until I played the board game from Fantasy Flight Games called "Arkham Asylum". That was enough to get me curious, which is where you are right about now.

So what I did was... downloaded some FREE works of H.P. and read them. You can find almost everything he ever wrote from a number of sources (like freebooks.com, etc.) so you don't need to buy anything. Put them on your phone or laptop and read them at your leisure. I found them really really fascinating. In particular I loved his style of writing.

Almost all his work is written in "first person", and from the perspective of a professor or scientist who is dictating his experiences as though they actually happened, and he's logging everything in a journal, day by day, hour by hour, "exactly as it happened". It's like you're reading the notes of a man who expects to be dead before he even finishes the story!

There is a common theme running through most of the stories, but I won't spoil it for you. Despite the notoriety of Lovecraft and Cthulhu, I don't think there is that much out there based on the mythos. Although there seems to be more in the last couple years (board games, card games, comics). Movie-wise... perhaps you've seen "From Beyond" or "Re-Animator".

But to be honest, I would just stick to the books, because that's the "definitive Lovecraft experience" I think. I'm not an expert, and I haven't read them all, but I've read a lot of his stories (maybe 30 or 40?) and they're very engaging. If you like to read, that is.

EDIT: now that I think about it, go see Cabin in the Woods. Although I don't believe they ever mention Cthulhu (chickens!) it is clearly based on the mythos... and not your typical "cabin in the woods horror flick".

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Cthulhu mythos (oddly named considering Lovecraft never really intended for them to be their own universe) is actually very much worth looking into. As you stated yourself it goes back to the heart of true horror, psychological and atmospheric. It plays up on true dread rather than cheap jump scares and schlock gore (though gore can be rather entertaining in some context).

There are a slew of different facets of Lovecraftian horror to look into. In terms of games there is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for the more modern of games, plus many really good classics based on other Lovecraft stories. For the table top gamer there is both the original and d20 Call of Cthulhu RPG. Very fun and has a lot of good literature based upon the stories.

For films, there has been a fair chunk of crap but a few really really good ones. Two of which are from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which are Call of Cthulhu, and The Whisperer in Darkness. They have also released several audio books based on some of my favourites stories. The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At The Mountains of Madness, and my personal favourite A Shadow Out of Time.

There is much more, and some Lovecraft stories branch out into a very good style of Science Fiction. I wouldn't say it's over-rated (especially in comparison to the amount of crap works released today), but like any fandom it has it's share of fantards. I recommend starting with something easy to digest for the beginner. Either read A Shadow Out of Time, play CoC: Dark Corners of the Earth, or watch The Whisperer in Darkness.

If you find yourself interested in the works, and get more versed into the mythology try reading more webbed stories like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath trilogy. Though I recommend waiting till you know more of the mythos before reading that story; while it is one of my two favourites, it does have quite a bit of self referential bits to some of the other stories and having context helps appreciate it much more. Stories like Nyarlathotep, Pikman's Model, any stories with Randolph Carter, and the like will help greatly.

Other stories that aren't not too long and well worth reading because they are fairly good stand-alone stories are The Outsider, or The Alchemist. It isn't as good as the stories I've listed they are still very very good and also excellent for starting out with Lovecraftian horror.

Cthulhu is an ancient god-like creature, who slumbers in city of R'lyeh, a sunken city deep in the ocean. One day he will awaken and enslave all mankind. Those who worship him, are the first one to go so that they don't have to witness the horrors of apocalypse prolonged.

If you're into board games, check out Arkham Horror. I think it's the best thing ever, and the one thing that somewhat got me interested in the lore. No prior knowledge of the Lovecraft books, mythos, etc. is required to enjoy the game. The game also gives you a pretty good package of information about all things Lovecraftian. The game's a co-op game (players vs. the game), and your job is to either prevent an Ancient One from awakening (Cthulhu is one of the Ancients you can choose at the start of the game), or in the case he/she awakes, battle him to the death, else Arkham (and later, the world) is destroyed. While you're doing this, smaller, but not any less horrifying creatures, pop up in Arkham to terrorize the townfolk, and it is in your best interest to remove these smaller monsters (or just plain lunatics) as well from Arkham.

Oh man I have not played Arkham Horror in forever! I need to order a new one. :P Also slight nit-pick, Cthulhu himself is a Great Old One, not Ancient (though that is an apt depiction really).

I played it on Saturday with a few friends, with the Dunwich Horror expansion. It brought some nice fresh ideas to the game :) But before that, I think we hadn't played since last fall so it was about time. Shudde M'ell kicked our ass though, after one of us had made a deal with "a dark man" (basically Satan) and it backfired a few hours later.

The game's really good though. I even ordered it myself about a year, maybe two ago so that I could play it myself too occasionally, when there aren't any friends available to play.

Awesome replies guys! Thanks a lot.

I'll try reading Call of Cthulhu like you mentioned. If I finish reading it soon I'll post up my thoughts here too for any who care.

Awesome, yeah it is a fantastic game. It really shows how boardgames still have life in them and can be entertaining and fun. I would absolutely love to see a Dream-Quest expansion for that game, though that stems a little more into fantasy than horror in some regards.

And as the thread starter may know, countless number of artists have mentioned Cthulhu or the Mythos in their songs too (few examples: Metallica - The Call of Ktulu and The Thing That Should Not Be; Cradle of Filth - Cthulhu Dawn. Hell, even I've made a little song with Cthulhu on the title (he's running for presidency in that song)).
And I'd love to see a perfectly mimicked video game version of the base game, mainly so that playing it alone could be done without all the work that goes setting up the game, but unfortunately I've heard that Fantasy Flight seems to have no interest in making that happen, and since they have very strict copyrights for the game, there's pretty much nothing that can be done :( Well, of course there's still always the board game.

Hear, hear on that. Yeah they seem to remind me of GW in that regard. Though atleast GW has released a slew of really good Warhammer and 40k games. I would love to see gog.com get the classic CoC PC games. That would be fantastic...

A good HP Lovecraft starter book is Dunwich Horror. It mostly deals with the oddities and the mystery of a family and a town, but eventually moves out from there. Doesn't have Cthulhu but it has ties. Call of Cthulhu is another good one, but I'd start with Dunwich which is readily available online.

I also recommend HP Lovecraft audio books if you like them. Some of them are exceptionally high quality.