Hall of Fame

Sean Branney was one of those nerdy kids, you know, playing D&D on his school lunch breaks. He moved on to try other games, until he stumbled across one called Call of Cthulhu, published by Chaosium. He gathered some friends to play, and it became a big hit in Denver in the early '80s. Then he and co-conspirators Andrew Leman and Darrell Tutchton said, "Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to do a live version of this..."

Sean has been a Keeper and a Player in many, many Cthulhu Lives! games first in Colorado and later in California. Among his favorite games are "Halloween I", "Fear on the Water", "Egypt", "Perigo", "The Call" and "Mose Ain’t Dead". Sean frequently played charismatic adventuring archeologist Charlie Twobears, who was later renamed Charlie Tower and featured in HPLHS films and Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episodes.

Philip Bell was a Cthulhu Lives! player and a prolific Keeper from the early days, having been involved in such classics as "Egypt", "The Black Man", "Perigo", and "Waiting for Goddeu". He played the frequently reappearing and enduringly popular character Al Neville. Phil was co-editor of Strange Eons, the monthly newsletter of the HPLHS, for over two years, and served as co-vice president of the society with Andrew Leman. He also served as a producer on The Testimony of Randolph Carter. In the game "Halloween III: Blood Wedding", Phil's character Al Neville married Judy Ruha's character Allison Morgan. Bride and groom were both killed horribly as they cut the wedding cake. Several years later Phil and Judy got married again, this time in real life. They are now the proud parents of two wonderful daughters.

Andrew Leman played as an Investigator in the very first game of Cthulhu Lives!, and has been hooked ever since. He has been an Investigator in 19 adventures, an NPC in 3, and the Keeper or co-Keeper of 24 games. Andrew created the character of naive astronomer Wally Forsythe in a number of games: Wally was later renamed Jordan Lowell and appeared in the HPLHS film The Whisperer in Darkness and the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episode "The Brotherhood of the Beast", played both times by David Pavao.
Andrew adapted one of his Cthulhu Lives! scenarios, "The Sentence", as a traditional Call of Cthulhu™ adventure entitled "With Malice Aforethought," which was published by Chaosium in 1993's Adventures in Arkham Country. With Phil Bell, he was co-editor of Strange Eons, the monthly newsletter of the HPLHS, for over two years.

Darrell is one of the co-founders of Cthulhu Lives!, having written and run the very first game, "The Randolph Mortimer Incident", with Sean Branney. He was the Keeper or co-Keeper of six adventures, including the classic "Fear on the Water", and the winner of multiple Black Tentacle awards. As an Investigator, Darrell played five times as Professor Nathaniel Ward, a brilliant but sometimes misunderstood member of the faculty of Miskatonic University. Professor Ward is one of the few characters to cross over from the dice-and-paper world of Call of Cthulhu. He was so popular that he appeared in two other games as an NPC, and in HPLHS films and episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre. A gifted artist, Darrell has provided illustrations that graced the pages of the HPLHS newsletter, Strange Eons, in the late '80s, and virtually every subsequent HPLHS project.

Jamie began his Cthulhu Lives career in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he met Andrew Leman attending the University of Illinois. Jamie’s first experience was as Investigator Jackson Basil Carleton in "The Ninth Talisman". Jamie was immediately hooked on Cthulhu Lives! and began to co-produce elaborate games with Andrew, creating epic adventures such as "The Mistress of Nyarlahotep" and "The Sentence". Jamie and Andrew also developed many Cthulhu Lives! staging standards, such as kokens for safety and special effects, consumer grade fireworks as simple pyrotechnics, and a firm belief that the “luck of the keepers” will prevail. Jamie continued to produce Cthulhu Lives! after leaving Champaign-Urbana, such as "Dirt" with Andrew Leman, and with other collaborators, such as "We Thought It Would Be Fungi" with his wife, Katia, and their friends, Rob Cimmerusti and Sue Marker. Jamie is instrumental in the development and maintenance of this website.

Judy Ruha is a veteran of 21 games of Cthulhu Lives!, four of them as the Keeper or co-Keeper, more than any other woman alive. As an investigator, she has played a very interesting variety of characters, most of whom died tragically or went stark raving mad. Perhaps her most notable PC has been Allison Morgan, the anthropologist who trekked across the Sahara in "Egypt", and who later married fellow investigator Al Neville (played by Phil Bell) in "Halloween III: Blood Wedding". Judy was a valued contributor to Strange Eons in its heyday, writing articles about various aspects of American life in the 1920s, including fashions, slang, medical technology, and women's suffrage. She also appeared as the court reporter in the 1988 HPLHS film The Testimony of Randolph Carter.

Liz Stanton played as an NPC in the very first game of Cthulhu Lives!, and thereby began a career as a wonderful damsel-in-distress. Liz's unfortunate characters have been tied to trees, handcuffed, shoved into crawl spaces, and strangled, among many other indignities. Liz played in seven games, four times as Investigator Melanie Forrester. Melanie had the longest known life span of any Cthulhu character, appearing as a young woman in games set in the 1920s and as a 96-year-old mental patient in a game set in 1998. Her death was among the most spectacular in Cthulhu Lives! history. Liz now lives and works in New York City, where she is a producer, director and actor in the off-Broadway theatre scene. An accomplished electronic and acoustic musician, she has toured the world with an ensemble that plays bowed piano.

Jenny Weins has the distinction of playing the Investigator character with the longest career. Her character, the feisty Priscilla Darby, appeared in ten different games, remaining amazingly healthy and sane throughout. Jenny played Darby in the first Halloween game, the classic adventure "Fear on the Water," and in the huge "Fate of the Ancients" trilogy. Jenny and her character Priscilla were the inspiration for the character of Jenny Alexander in the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episode "The Brotherhood of the Beast." The only other Investigator character Jenny ever played was Zelda Fitzgerald in "Halloween 2." Jenny became fluent in Arabic, and provided translations for the prop Necronomicon in the HPLHS film The Testimony of Randolph Carter. She went on to become a freelance journalist, traveling widely in Egypt and the Middle East.

Joe Baykun did a number of high school plays with Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, and was part of the gang that played Call of Cthulhu at Branney's house in Cherry Creek, CO in the early 1980s. He was one of the few to play the same character in both the tabletop and live-action versions of Cthulhu. His Investigator character, Michael O'Grady, was a dashing private eye. "Have Dust, Will Travel" was his motto. (Mummy dust, that is.) He took part in the very first game of Cthulhu Lives!, and in four subsequent adventures. Joe also played NPCs in "Fate of the Ancients" and "Possession Out of Time". Joe continues to live in Denver, Colorado, where he is an active member of the Buddhist faith.

Leslie Baldwin played as an NPC in "Moroccan Terror," the very first game that Sean Branney ran in California, from which time it would seem that her fate was sealed. She went on to play NPC roles in seven additional adventures. She also played as an Investigator in three games, winning the Black Tentacle award for Best Investigator in "The Valley of Death." Strangely, no one seems to be able to remember the name of the character she played. An extremely gifted actor, Leslie has appeared to rave reviews in numerous plays with Theatre Banshee, the company she runs with her husband Sean Branney in Los Angeles, California.

Joe had a somewhat rocky beginning as an NPC in the game "The Crawling Chaos", in which he and Nick Offerman went into business for themselves, scaring the crap out of the Investigators and the Keeper alike. As he later explained, "Nick and I had no idea what was going on, thanks to Mr. Leman. We thought the game was to be played as 'us vs. them' and we should play to win. Later, we discovered what the role of an NPC truly was, no thanks to Mr. Keeper himself, Andy Leman. All Nick and I got for our FOUR HOUR make up job and head shaving was 'we cancelled the game!' Luckily for Andy, Nick and I were able to make the next game flow smoothly by learning from his shameless mistakes." Joe learned well, subsequently playing in five games, and co-Keeping "The Dark Father" with Richard Ragsdale. Among Joe's extremely memorable Investigator characters were mental patient Clive Baneswell from "The Sentence" and Yithian-possessed Philip Grimm, the central character of "The Epic." Joe won the Black Tentacle award for his turn as NPC Albert Feldman in "The Chalice of Laggash." Joe is now an actor, director, designer, playwright and fight choreographer in Chicago.

Nick worked with Joe Foust to create complete pandemonium in his early games of Cthulhu Lives!, but quickly became one of the best players and an indispensible NPC. He won three Black Tentacle awards during his career, playing in seven games and co-Keeping one. He was one of several people to play NPC General Bart Brookstone. Two of his notable Investigator characters were gravedigger Wilbur Morlock from "The Ninth Talisman" and archeologist Hannibal Callahan from "The Epic". Nick was a Co-Founder of Chicago's acclaimed Defiant Theatre. Shortly after moving to Hollywood California, hunky actor Nick got caught up in the glamour of show business, and no longer has time for games since he has risen to the upper ranks of television and motion picture stardom. He also occasionally writes best-selling books. When not acting, Nick builds things out of wood.

Vince played in five games of Cthulhu Lives!, and he always made a strong impression. As an Investigator, his character Hugo Doss was so abrasive that some of the other Investigators plotted to have him killed, or asked the Keeper if they could themselves be killed in order to avoid working with him. In "The Sentence," the Keepers staged a gruesome death scene for him and got everybody off the hook. Vince never liked not knowing what was going to happen next, and always enjoyed being an NPC more than being an Investigator. As an NPC, he played the undead son of Luther Brisbane in "The Ninth Talisman", Peter Surratt and the aged John Wilkes Booth in "Dirt", and was amazing as the malevolent psychiatrist Jacob McCandless in "Mose Ain't Dead". After starring in the lengthy national tour of the hit comedy "Party," Vince is now an actor in New York City.

Richard was an Investigator in the first of the Illinois games, "The Crawling Chaos," and caught on to Cthulhu quickly. He played again as Investigator Simon Moon in "The Sentence," in which all his fingers were broken by gangsters. As an NPC, he played in "The Epic" and "Chalice of Laggash," and he was co-Keeper of "The Dark Father" with Joe Foust. Richard is a twisted genius, whose tortured mind has cheerfully explored every dark corner of space and cyberspace. He knows more about weird shit than any sane man should. A talented actor, director, and playwright, he lives in Los Angeles with his very talented wife Lisa Rothschiller and their daughter Veronica.

Peggy Cope played in 10 games of Cthulhu Lives! at the height of the Colorado era. She played seven times as Investigator Flo Denison, in such classic adventures as "The Horror in Egypt", "Perigo", and "The Black Man". Miraculously, Flo survived and stayed reasonably sane throughout her long career. Peggy was also co-Keeper of the game "The Wicker Man", played in London and Cambridge, England. So far, it remains the only game played outside of the United States. She contributed regularly to Strange Eons, the HPLHS newsletter, and worked on the Society's production of The Testimony of Randolph Carter. Peggy matriculated at Newnham College, Cambridge University, in the U.K. and received her master's degree in English history and literature from the University of Chicago. She became a magazine editor purely by serendipity, stumbling into her proper place in life. She has worked on Computer Shopper magazine, Windows magazine, several travel trade publications, and is now features editor of homeoffice magazine. She lives near the Jersey Shore with her boyfriend, James, and cat, Pooh, and commutes from there to her midtown Manhattan office behind Carnegie Hall, when she's not working from home on her laptop. She still sings from time to time, and writes feature articles on topics relating to small and home-based business operations, as well as travel. She has also become addicted to the landscaping aisles of Home Depot and is working on becoming a gourmet chef. She is conversant in French and Anglo-Saxon, and is given to quoting Monty Python on the most inappropriate occasions.

Paul and his fellow grad student Kevin O'Brien were drafted as jurors for the murder trial scenario of "The Sentence," and were sufficiently intrigued by the experience to continue playing. They brought their buddy Matt Sieger along for the next game, and "the physics guys" became indispensible NPCs, excellent Investigators, and cherished friends. Paul's fluency in French was a huge contribution to the Medieval France segment of "The Epic", in which he played the Friar. He also played a gangster and a koken in that game. He was nominated as Best Investigator for his playing of private eye Chip Wembley in "Dirt". He was co-Keeper of "Chalice of Laggash," and played multiple NPC parts in "We Thought it Would be Fungi." Dr. Nyhus and his wife live in the Seattle area, where he works for Intel.

Along with fellow grad student Paul Nyhus, Kevin's first experience with Cthulhu Lives! was as a juror in the murder trial in "The Sentence." And like Paul, he enjoyed it enough to get seriously involved, eventually becoming co-Keeper of "The Chalice of Laggash." Kevin played multiple NPC parts in "The Epic" and "We Thought It Would be Fungi," and was Investigator Clyde Icarus O'Connor in "Dirt". Dr. O'Brien earned his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and currently works for Intel. Swing dancing replaced Cthulhu in later years as his most passionately enjoyed hobby.

Matt was one of the beloved "physics guys" who contributed so much to the Illinois games of the RHS/HPLHS. His first experience of Cthulhu Lives! was an intense one: he played multiple NPC parts in "The Epic", including Jacques, the charismatic Russian-speaking leader of the French bandits. He played Investigator Max Holtemann in "Dirt", weaving a web of bogus cover stories that got him into serious trouble. He was also co-Keeper of "The Chalice of Laggash." Dr. Sieger is one of the many Cthulhu Lives! alumni with a Ph.D., and currently lives and works in the Seattle area.

Dan got his first taste of the Lovecraftian limelight as an NPC in some of Sean Branney's Cthulhu Lives! games at the California Institute of the Arts, playing cultists, undead ex-cultists, and a bloodthirsty were-creature stalking the foothills. He made his first foray into investigation as Trevor Carson, an operative with Guy Boyet's Ace Detective Agency, in Game 50, "Halloween 7: The Bastard in the Boat". After a turncoat politician murdered Carson with a butter knife, Dan went into semi-retirement, only to be drawn back into the world of The Old Ones as NPC Deputy Anderson Mills in Game 62, "The Call". As Mills became more involved in the case, he was handed the unprecedented (and unlikely) dual promotion from NPC to Investigator, and from Sheriff's Deputy to Sheriff's Homicide Detective. A big day for humble "Andy" Mills. Dan reprised his role as Detective Mills in Stephanie Morey's game "Chinatown Terror", in which he was stabbed, shot, stun-gunned, karate-kicked, pistol-whipped, drugged, and betrayed—and still got his man. Mills returned to duty ("Why do I always get stuck with these freak-show cases!?") in Game 64, "Mose Ain't Dead", reuniting with FBI Special Agent Jillian Crowe, and maintaining his spotless record of sending the Dark Fiends back to the netherworld while giving the cops someone to hang the blame on. When he's not keeping the streets of LA safe from tentacled monsters, Dan plays the roles of actor, director, producer, fight choreographer, and calligrapher. He appeared in productions with Theatre Banshee, and by day is the Marketing Director for Theatre LA.

Katia narrowly missed the chance to play in some of the Champaign-Urbana games of Cthulhu Lives! while she was there earning a degree at the U of I. Fortunately, she returned to Northwestern Illinois and Eastern Iowa in time to participate in "Dirt" with Jamie Anderson and Andrew Leman. In "Dirt", Katia played Robert Lincoln's nurse, a secretary at the offices of Davis & Brown, and various koken roles. She was a koken during the final scenario, until NPC Gail Stern decided to have her take off her koken hood and improvise a new, unplanned-for NPC hostage, much to the Keepers' dismay. Katia got her Keeper's feet wet assisting Jamie and Andrew during "The Thing In The Woods." Katia played investigator Lillian Blackwood in "Chalice of Laggash" back in Champaign. She then wrote, orchestrated, played various NPCs and literally saved the game as one of the four Keepers of "We Thought It Would Be Fungi."

Born and raised in the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities, Chris spent a great deal of his youth playing Chaosium's table top role-playing game Call of Cthulhu. But it wasn't until 1994 that he was introduced to the HPLHS. For the first adventure he was involved in, Game 61, "We Thought it Would be Fungi", Chris helped out with costumes and monster FX and also played a few minor NPCs. After his move to Los Angeles, Chris played a more active role in Keeper gigs, assisting Andrew Leman with Game 63, "Unholy Alliance", and making inestimably huge contributions to "Mose Ain't Dead". Chris created a Lovecraft-inspired animated series called "The Investigators", which was screened at the 2001 H.P.Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. He worked on the HPLHS Motion Pictures of The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness, and with his longtime collaborator Chad Fifer is the host of the beloved H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast.

Lindley Curry played Cthulhu Lives! while at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She played Investigators Alice Jamison in "The Ninth Talisman" and Ellie O'Hanlon in "The Sentence". She contributed great intelligence and emotional commitment to the games in which she played, and the action was always better when she was around. Unfortunately, demands on her time and talents prevented her from playing in more Illinois games. Lindley is a prodigiously gifted actor living and working in Chicago, where she was nominated for the Joseph Jefferson award for her portrayal of 'Glenna' in Bobby Gould in Hell. You have also probably heard her sultry voice in television and radio commercials. She is married to the very charming Paul Traynor, and is now the mother of two beautiful children, Alasdair and Lucy.

Jenn has had an extremely well-rounded career for someone who only played in six games. She got her first taste of Cthulhu Lives! weirdness as a koken/puppeteer for "The Sentence", run by Andrew Leman and her brother, Jamie. She stepped up to a major NPC role in "The Mistress of Nyarlahotep" as supervillain Mariel Thorne, and she tackled the part -- and Nick Offerman -- with gusto. She tried her hand as an Investigator as Creele Ryan in "Dirt". Then graduated to full-fledged Keeper status when she ran "The Chalice of Laggash" with the physics guys. She played Mariel again in "Unholy Alliance", and investigated once more in "We Thought It Would be Fungi". Jenn is a highly trained and extremely talented pastry chef and currently lives in the beautiful Napa Valley of California.