Music To Roleplay To: Call of Cthulhu

In honour of the birthday of the big man himself Mr. H. P. Lovecraft, today's entry on Music To Roleplay To we discover our pointless existant role in the indifferent cosmos and other such things man was not meant to know in Call of Cthulhu!

I feel I should mention the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society and their excellent collection audio works, such as the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series. Great stuff to listen to whilst plotting the return of the Great Old Ones. Although most are not well suited for background music, the soundtracks for their two feature films are. Also, Darkest of the Hillside Thickets have great tongue-in-cheek songs about the Mythos if you like to gibber madly. And finally, The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast is absolutely phenomenal! They've discussed in detail nearly all of Lovecraft's works from the well known to the very obscure. If you want to know more about the man and his works, check these guys out.

Now, my Mythos collection is one of my larger ones, but mostly because I include a lot of period music from the 20's and 30's, as it's my favorite era to run CoC. But I've chosen to leave out such selections from this list as it will focus on capturing the mood of weirdness and cosmic horror, and thus be appropriate for any era may you subject your doomed players to.

Aside from atmospheric soundtracks, the dark ambient genre of music can provide that lowkey weirdness you're looking for to invoke the proper mood.

Artists & Composers

• Allicorn
• AKLO
• Atrium Carceri
• Atum - Agorafobia
• Buzz-Works - House of Nightmares
• Coil
• David Maurice Garrett - Al Azif
• Epsilon Eridani - Tribute To H. P. Lovecraft
• Erdenstern - At the Mountains of Madness
• Igor Stravinsky
• James Semple - Eternal Lies Suite
• Lustmord
• Midnight Syndicate - The 13th Hour, & Gates of Delirium
• Musica Cthulhiana
• NinjaDorg
• Nox Arcana - Necronomicon, & Blackthorn Asylum
• Reber Clark
• Sunn O)))
• uncertain
• Verbum Mentis - Refrigerium, and Past Appearances I & II
• ZewCthulhu.pl

Original Soundtracks

• Amnesia, and Penumbra by Mikko Tarmia
• The Call of Cthulhu by Troy Sterling Nies
• Clive Barker's Undying
• The Dunwich Horror (1970) by Les Baxster
• Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem by Steve Henifin
• Hellraiser scores
• John Carpenter's The Thing by Ennio Morricone
• A Nightmare on Elm Street by Steve Jablonsky
• The Ninth Gate by Wojciech Kilar
• ObsCure and ObsCure 2 by Oliver Deriviere
• The Omen by Jerry Goldsmith
• Quake by Trent Reznor
• The Shining score
• Silent Hill scores by Akira Yamaoka
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R by MoozE
• The Whisperer in Darkness by Troy Sterling Nies
• The X-Files by Mark Snow

Other RPGs these tunes could work well in: Obviously Trail of Cthulhu, Macabre Tales, and Realms of Cthulhu. This collection could also work well with certain types of horror RPGs like CthulhuTech, Dread, Little Fears, Necroscope, Noctum, etc.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions for additional listening!