# Cthulhu by Gaslight tags: #game/rpg/cthulhu-by-gaslight ![[Cthulhu by Gaslight (cover).jpg|600]] **Cthulhu by Gaslight** is **[[Call of Cthulhu]]**'s own Victorian re-casting — the same game, dragged backwards forty years into fog-choked 1890s London. Where the parent edition's default is 1920s Arkham, this sets investigators loose on a Britain at the apex of empire, where class does the work the monster usually does and the gaslight hides as much occult rot as it illuminates. First laid out by **William A. Barton** in 1986, it's the line's longest-running alternate era, and the current 7th edition incarnation splits its material cleanly in two: an **Investigators' Guide** for building Victorians, and a **Keepers' Guide** for running the era. ## Setting **Cthulhu by Gaslight** plants **Call of Cthulhu** in Victorian Britain — "dark streets of London," coal smoke and the ever-possible London fog, the class system, the British Empire at its height, and a society simultaneously entranced with science, pseudoscience, and the occult. The Keepers' Guide covers Victorian society, exploration, science, Spiritualism and the esoteric traditions, London's neighbourhoods and attractions, the Empire beyond, and the period's real history and institutions, all as a home for Mythos horror. The Investigators' Guide handles the other half — how to be a Victorian investigator at all: the class and social rules that shape who you can be, the occupations available, and the equipment and weapons an 1890s gentleman or scandalous lady actually carries. It's archaeology-and-estate horror as much as London-fog horror: the Mythos reaches Britain through colonial expeditions, country-house estates, secret societies, and the fin-de-siècle hunger for the exotic and the esoteric. ## Mechanics There is no new engine — **Cthulhu by Gaslight** runs the standard **[[Call of Cthulhu]]** 7th edition rules, re-armed for the era. - **Victorian investigators** — created under the same characteristics and skill-points system, but shaped by the hard realities of 1890s Britain: social class, occupation (and the limits class places on it), and period-grounded equipment and weapons. The Investigators' Guide is where this character work lives. - **Period tone** — the game leans on Victorian trappings as game content: the constraints of the era (what a woman, a servant, or a foreigner can and can't do) are as much the challenge as the Mythos itself. - **Two-volume structure (4e)** — the current edition ships the player-facing **Investigators' Guide** and the keeper-facing **Keepers' Guide** as paired volumes rather than one rulebook-plus-flavor book, so chargen material and running-the-era material each get full room. ## Editions - **1st Edition (1986)** — the original, written by **William A. Barton**, the book that gave the Mythos its Victorian home. - **2nd Edition (1988)** — an expanded revision. - **3rd Edition (2012)** — developed and expanded by **Kevin Ross** (with Scott Aniolowski, David Hallett, Colin Chapman, Fred Behrendt, David Conyers, and Glyn White), the pre-7e reference point. - **4th Edition (7e)** — the current two-volume edition by **Keris McDonald and Mike Mason** (with Penelope Love, Mike Lay, Lynne Hardy, David Wade, and the rest of the credited crew), building on Barton and Ross's foundations. *In the library (both the Investigators' Guide and the Keepers' Guide).* ## References - [Cthulhu by Gaslight — Chaosium](https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-by-gaslight/) - [Cthulhu by Gaslight — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_by_Gaslight)