Cosmic horror is not (just) about meaninglessness

 

We talk a lot about “cosmic horror” as if it were synonymous with futility and nihilism. But futility alone isn’t horror, it’s inertia. Horror, to be felt, must still leave room for choice. It needs something to lose, something to risk, something to mean.

The Necessity of Hope: How Cosmic Horror Actually Works in Call of Cthulhu

People love to say that Call of Cthulhu is a game about futility. That cosmic horror means nothing you do matters, and the only sane response is despair. But that’s a misunderstanding. A game where nothing matters isn’t horror, it’s boredom. It’s not cosmic, it’s empty.

For a roleplaying game to work, players must have agency. They need to act, to choose, to hope, even if that hope is misplaced. Remove that, and what’s left is not a game but a slow theatrical death march. The players might as well just narrate how they die or go insane, and call it improv theatre. In fact, this understanding leads too often to Call of Cthulhu players who become too performative, to focused on showing to others how their characters go insane or die, and to little in deciding what they fight for.

The trick is not to remove agency, but to undermine it. Cosmic horror doesn’t work by denying action, it works by eroding trust in its expected significance. The players can do something; they just can’t be sure that it will help, or even that it will be understood. They fight, investigate, pray, and negotiate against a universe that has no reason to care. And that struggle, not its success or failure, is what makes the game come alive.

Every good Call of Cthulhu scenario walks a thin line between agency and hopelessness. Players must feel the creeping loss of control that defines horror, but also the conviction that their choices still matter in some personal way. That’s what makes the difference between a nihilistic grind and a genuinely human experience. Horror needs a crack in the wall through which meaning still flickers.

The “way out”, the ritual, the hidden escape, the sanity roll, doesn’t have to work. It only needs to exist. The belief that there might be a way to survive, or to save someone, or to understand what’s happening, keeps tension alive. Once that illusion collapses completely, the game is over, even if the characters are still breathing. Without that thin thread of possibility, the only thing left is detachment.

But this isn’t just about survival. Agency in Call of Cthulhu doesn’t always mean saving your skin, sometimes it means deciding what you’ll spend it on. You can invest what you have left — your possessions, your effort, your sanity, your life — in trying to achieve something. But what?

• Save the children now?

• Prevent the end of the world in some years?

• Preserve the knowledge that humanity once existed?

• Choose which species inherits the Earth after we are gone between some primitive mammals or sophisticated alien insects?

• Simply keep your honesty,  honour, and dignity in the face of annihilation?

All of these can matter. Or none of them can. It depends on the character and on the player. That is agency. And in that, however faintly, lies existential hope.

Because cosmic horror, when played well, isn’t about proving that nothing matters. It’s about asking what still matters when nothing else does. When the universe refuses to care, meaning must be chosen. And in that choice, even if it ends in death or madness, there’s something profoundly human.

A good Call of Cthulhu scenario isn’t about defeating the Mythos or just basking in the hopelessness of the human condition it reveals. It’s about defining yourself in its shadow. Horror becomes the pressure under which meaning is tested. Whether you fail, die, or succeed for a while, the story becomes an existential mirror: what did you decide was worth dying for?

That’s why Call of Cthulhu endures. It turns cosmicism's indifference into a stage for human choice. It’s not about escaping the void, it’s about reaching through it.

Cosmic horror doesn’t erase meaning. It forces you to create it.