Chaosium announced a permanent name change for one of its flagship cosmic entities in the upcoming board game Call of Cthulhu: Old Ones Origins. The Ann Arbor-based publisher will replace the traditional moniker Shub-Niggurath with Shub-Gorath across the title’s materials, citing automated digital censorship and modern table tastes.
The decision follows practical marketing barriers alongside player feedback during the crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound. By updating the entity’s label, the studio aims to circumvent algorithmic bans on social channels while keeping gaming tables approachable for wider audiences.
Algorithmic Moderation and Table Dynamics
The Chaosium Board Games Team addressed the adjustment directly in backer update number thirteen, acknowledging the technical hurdles created by modern content filters:
The decision to change the name of Shub-Niggurath to Shub-Gorath came from a few different considerations, both in and outside of the game’s world. One reason was the feedback we saw online. Some people pointed out that “Shub-Niggurath” could be hurtful to some audiences, particularly when considered alongside Lovecraft’s own views. We want everyone sitting down to play our games to feel welcome at the table, so this was something we took seriously. Although Lovecraft scholars concur “Shub-Niggurath” was not derived from the slur, unfortunately it is one of those words that sometimes triggers automatic content filters. This is something known as the “Scunthorpe Problem”. Since our games and campaigns are promoted and discussed across many different platforms, we wanted to avoid creating an unnecessary obstacle for players and the community simply because of a character’s name.
The “Scunthorpe problem” refers to automated software blocking benign strings of text because an embedded sequence of letters matches a banned word or slur. In commercial publishing, falling foul of these filters can silently suppress marketing posts, demonetise videos, block ad campaigns, or flag e-commerce product listings.
Online response to the update was swift. On the tabletop community Reddit board r/rpg, user InfiniteDM captured the community mood with dry resignation, noting: “The internet will be very normal about this.” While several commenters debated the etymological origins of Lovecraft’s prose, others pointed out practical table friction, noting that game sessions often derail when players stumble over or snicker at the historical pronunciation.
Lore Roots and System Implications
To ground the revision inside the game, the design team drew on pulp fiction history rather than inventing a completely novel phrase. The suffix “-Gorath” borrows from Shuma-Gorath, a monstrous entity introduced by Robert E. Howard in his 1967 short story The Curse of the Golden Skull and later popularised in Marvel comic books.
The publisher framed the revision as a natural reflection of an ancient era:
There is also a little bit of in-world reasoning behind the change. Old Ones Origins takes place in an age long before humanity, when these entities existed without the names and titles that human cultures would later give them. Names such as Mother of All or Black Goat are therefore not necessarily the names these beings would have used for themselves.
The etymological question has long been documented in Chaosium’s own history. In 1994, the company published The Shub-Niggurath Cycle, edited by Robert M. Price, which linked the deity’s name to Lord Dunsany’s Sheol Nugganoth from the 1910 tale Idle Days on the Yann. While literary researchers agree the original Lovecraft spelling did not originate from a slur, modern commercial realities and public convention play have made the phonetics a liability for mainstream distribution.
Chaosium has not yet clarified whether Shub-Gorath will replace the traditional spelling across its mainline tabletop roleplaying games, future Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition rulebook reprints, or upcoming Keeper supplements.
Creative Commons art credit: Shub-Niggurath by Carpet-Crawler, who has a store and a Patreon where you can see the process for the art commissions (actually done for Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt).
