In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming

Got a chance to play Call of Cthulhu (6th ed) for the first time on Saturday. We had what I consider a very large group - 9 or 10 people around the table - which meant that our PCs were splitting up and running all over New Orleans (the scenario's setting). I tip my hat to the GM for keeping track of everyone and not allowing any 1 group dominate play to the point others lost interest.

I love my character: an antiquarian, Dr. Reginald P. Gristle, phd. Although NJ born and raised, and a Princeton graduate, he puts his phd in religion to use identifying artifacts from little known ancient and tribal religions for the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He is a collector of such things himself and appreciates them both for their beauty and for the mysteries they can reveal. It is not surprising that with his background he would become a "friend" of The Project. A man of extreme curiosity, he often leaps before he looks when an old book or artifact of mysterious origin is within his grasp - as such he has "seen things" he does not discuss with anyone outside of the Project. Despite the effects on his sanity, he does not temper his behavior.(I rolled a 25 starting sanity).

During our investigation, I managed to pilfer a copy of The King in Yellow (and lost 5 sanity as a result) as well as a carved Elder Sign. Neither of which proved useful when we encountered the thing we're tracking. Fortunately, my character is not a hero, and he dove for cover. With a pistol, borrowed from our group's priest, I joined in a brief fire fight where I nearly hit one of our team (oops!). The session ended with a young boy shot and bleeding, his mother delirious from torture and lack of food, half of our team jumping from a burning building, and some of us pushing some loose bricks in the back of the basement - possibly a hidden room or compartment.

*** Some thoughts ***
As I said, this was my first time playing CoC.  I have owned the rules for 2 years but just never got around to reading them all the way through. In preparation for this session, I downloaded and read the free demo PDF figuring it'd be enough to get by. Turns out I was right.

Generating a character took maybe 15 minutes and that was mostly trying to decide which of the skills would give me the character I wanted to play and benefit the group. The skills system was very easy to use in play, although our GM encourages role play, placing less emphasis on the result of the roll than on what you describe (which has a nice old school feel).

I'm looking forward to the next session - I believe we'll be wrapping this one up and I can't wait to see what the hell we're tracking!