A Classic Reawakens?

Last week, commenter Dick McGee pointed me toward a post over at the official Chaosium blog where the company's president, Rick Meints, teases "a classic reawakening of something from 40 years ago." Meints then adds, "It's been a long time since we had a 2" boxed set." Accompanying the post is the above image, which shows the cover illustration of the original 1981 edition of Call of Cthulhu, along with map of Arkham that accompanied that edition.

When I first read the post, my immediate thought was that Chaosium was planning to make a Call of Cthulhu boxed set that merely used the art and general appearance of the original while still making use of the current rules. But then I remembered that Chaosium already had a Call of Cthulhu boxed set for its current edition – a Starter Set, to be clear – so it seemed unlikely the company would produce a second one of a similar sort. 

This thought was further strengthened by two other details. First, the image above uses the tagline, "Fantasy Role-Playing in the Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft" (italics mine), which the current edition does not use. Second, the sentence "This is a Complete Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Ready for Use" also appears, exactly as it did back in 1981. Taken together, it now seemed more likely that what Meints was teasing was a boxed reprint of the original edition of the game and not merely wrapping the current edition in the warm blanket of nostalgia. 

For various banal reasons, I'm not a fan of Call of Cthulhu's current edition. I remain, however, a huge fan of the earlier editions of the game, especially the 1981 version, which is what I first started playing four decades ago. My copy of the game is long gone, worn out from continual use. The idea that I might be able to replace it makes very happy. Fingers crossed that I am not mistaken!