Call of Cthulhu grows to the second best selling RPG core book on Amazon USA

[overgeeked]

I have never played however I may get the starter set and be a keeper. My questions are sort of related to Grahams post

Go for it. It's a lot of fun. If you like the idea of horror gaming.

4-6 players 1 shot? Can the starter sets handle that many players. Ive watched some lets plays and I'm not sure
after that best 4-6 campaigns

Yeah, it's a typical RPG in that it can handle groups that big, though it feels more in-genre if you have fewer players. Around 3-4 seems to work best. For me at least.

The Starter Set has four scenarios. One solo, a one-on-one, and two designed for 2-5 players. With the Starter Set, the Keeper Rulebook (two more scenarios for 2-5 players), and the Keeper Screen (two more scenarios for 2-5 players) you have a lot to work with as a new Keeper. There's also the free Quick-Start Rules which includes a classic scenario, The Haunting (again designed for 2-5 players).

Call of Cthulhu has also changed less over the years as editions pile up, so everything ever published for CoC is compatible with the current edition. There's a conversion guide in the back of the Keeper Rulebook. It comes down to taking pre-7th Edition stuff and multiplying the stats by 5 and consolidating a few skills. That's it. Everything else is basically the same, so you have about 40 years of modules to pull from. Seth Skorkowsky does a lot of great module reviews for CoC.

in many ways this game seems to work for non gamers as seems to be less complicated than 5e D&D

It's an odd one. It does seem to click for non-gamers a bit easier than hardcore gamers, but that's mostly down to the hardcore gamers needing to unlearn a lot of stuff to grok Call of Cthulhu. Parts seem more intuitive, here's your skill as a percentage, roll that or lower on these dice...vs roll this die, add that, meet or beat that number. But pure mechanics, CoC is heavier than D&D.

CoC is a horror game. It's about isolation and disempowerment. Paranoia, insanity, and strange vistas. Whereas D&D is a game of zero-to-hero (killing things, taking their stuff, gaining power, killing bigger stuff, repeat), Call of Cthulhu is a game of attrition. Self-described in the Keeper Rulebook. You lose Sanity. You lose Luck. You lose POW. You gain a few skill points, you regain a bit of Luck, and you regain a bit of Sanity...but the trajectory is downward. You can gain a few magic spells (but they cost you Sanity to learn and cast). Characters deteriorate over time. While D&D is very much a power fantasy, Call of Cthulhu is cosmic horror. It's a nihilistic and pessimistic horror & mystery game.

 

[GrahamWills]

I have never played however I may get the starter set and be a keeper. My questions are sort of related to Grahams post

4-6 players 1 shot? Can the starter sets handle that many players. Ive watched some lets plays and I'm not sure
after that best 4-6 campaigns

Yes, absolutely. I agree with @overgeeked that 3-5 works best, but if you have 6 and need to play with that many, I'd just go with it and expect things to be a littler easier. Also agree with the ease of converting older scenarios. I don't even keep mine sorted by edition -- there's too little difference to worry over.

in many ways this game seems to work for non gamers as seems to be less complicated than 5e D&D

At its core, it is a relatively simple system. The latest version (v7) adds some complexity to the combat rules which I quite like, but honestly, feel free to ignore it until you want to add those rules in. For comparable activities, rules are lighter than 5E. However, there are a fair number of extra rules -- sanity, luck, learning spells etc. that are more complex. The good news is that the system is pretty resilient to getting them wrong -- it's mostly a matter of "oh, you should have been penalized for that" or "it should have taken you 4 weeks, not 4 hours to read that tome". Nothing game-breaking. I have been there often ...

The trickiest thing for players and GM is to agree on a tone. It is a horror game, and that is hard. Fantasy is all about feeling powerful -- easy to GM as players level and get stuff that makes them more godlike. CoC is not. @overgeeked characterizes it as a downward trajectory game, and that is definitely one way to play the game -- probably the most common. For one shots it is the most fun, definitely and works well for short campaigns. For longer campaigns though you need as GM to decide how you are going to run it. I ran Masks of Nyarlathotep in that style -- people lost characters to insanity and death, and even the survivors were badly broken. It had that "how long can you survive" feel to it. In contrast I ran Beyond the Mountains of Madness for 20+ sessions, and it had the same characters until the epilogue. Sanity went down, but I gave plenty of opportunity to increase it, and mechanical horror checks were rarely more than once a session (with notable exceptions). If you play in a style where, at the end of an adventure, you can say "defeating the horror gives you a feeling of relief as you make the Bay Area safe again for mankind -- restore 6 sanity points" or if you allow the regaining of sanity by mental health intervention, you can keep going infinitely long.

Having said that -- as soon a player gets access to magic they are doomed. It's too much fun not to use and it absolutely will drive you insane faster than anything else in the game (expect great old ones). And the joy is -- the players will do it to themselves. There's a well established rule in CoC GMing -- if you want to kill the player, give them guns. Because then they'll fight instead of running, and when they go insane, they don't just punch their friends, they unload a shotgun into the backs of their heads. I'd also add that if you want to drive them insane, give them a spell book.

CoC is an odd bird -- I don't generally like old systems as RPG systems have so much improved over time. But the mix of simplicity at heart with special cases and few byzantine rules definitely appeals to me. It's still my go-to for horror gaming.

 

[wicked cool]

Is dunwich an actual adventure? Best adventures near the New England area (Boston providence New York etc) as simple city town adventures sound best for this group.thank you for feedback

 

[overgeeked]

Is dunwich an actual adventure? Best adventures near the New England area (Boston providence New York etc) as simple city town adventures sound best for this group.thank you for feedback

It’s more like a small sandbox from what I remember.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I could not even find the CoC 7th Ed book on Amazon, so I can't compare. I did find the Starter Set, which is currently #15,383 in Books. Also currently, Tasha's is ranked higher in Books than the PHB, being #82, while the PHB is #118. On top of that, some current core books for other games I looked at were not even in the general Books category, their sales through Amazon were so low. So just the fact the CoC Starter Set is selling enough to be on the Books list is a good thing. Oh, and I did this while not being logged in to my Amazon account, in case these lists are somehow manipulated for the viewer, as someone else here asked/suggested.

Edit: and now I see why I did not see it. Because it is not titled the way I was thinking it was. I did not realize Chaosium had split the rules into the Keeper Rulebook and the Investigators Handbook. Keeper is currently #15,353 and Investigators is #22,476. But both are in the general Books list, at least.

 

[darjr]

The keepers book has all the rules

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The keepers book has all the rules

Which, as the description on Amazon says, should be for the person running the game:

This book, the Keeper Rulebook, contains the core rules, background, guidance, spells, and monsters of the game. It is intended for use by the Keeper of Arcane Lore (the Keeper) that player who will present the adventure to the other players. You must have at least one copy of this book to play Call of Cthulhu. The other players, the Investigators, will find it useful to have one or more copies of the Investigator Handbook, containing expanded rules for character creation, skills, occupations, equipment, and more.

So it has all the rules, but it is titled like the way the DMG is titled, and that is confusing for someone who will only be a player, and not a Keeper, and is not familiar with the game.

 

[overgeeked]

Which, as the description on Amazon says, should be for the person running the game:

So it has all the rules, but it is titled like the way the DMG is titled, and that is confusing for someone who will only be a player, and not a Keeper, and is not familiar with the game.

Yes and no.

It operates under a different set of assumptions than D&D. The Keeper needs to know all the rules...the players don't. It's an old-school game that never dropped the old-school feel. The player describes what their character does and the Keeper parses that into the rules and renders a result and a description. The players don't need complete knowledge of how the game mechanics work to play the game.

The Investigator Handbook includes an introduction, the Dunwich Horror (HPL short story), full character creation, an expanded list of occupations, a complete list of skills and the skill mechanics, investigator organizations, life as an investigator, a guide to the 1920s, advice for players, and a reference section (mostly a timeline).

The only thing missing that you'd need as a player is...maybe the combat rules. Maybe the Sanity rules. Maybe the chase rules. But most everything else in the Keeper Rulebook is rules for the Keeper that the players generally don't need to know. Monster stats. Magic. Tomes. Alien artifacts. Scenarios to run. How to run the game...bizarrely titled playing the game. Everything a player needs to know in order to actually play the game is in the Investigator Handbook.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Yeah, that everyone either dies or goes insane every session is a wild misunderstanding of the game. Call of Cthulhu is a horror & mystery game, but it's not a grindhouse RPG.

It isn't is the party plays it with the mythos in mind.

However, if you go with the D&D mentality of 'attack, loot, attack', then it will quickly become a grind house.

A well-run CoC campaign requires players who understand the setting. D&D is upbeat, the good guys win, and live happily ever after.

In CoC. the 'good' guys break even at best, and go on to live in fear of the next potential break with reality and the hidden machinations of cultists.

War Hammer FRPG or 40k players transition better to CoC, IME.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It isn't is the party plays it with the mythos in mind.

However, if you go with the D&D mentality of 'attack, loot, attack', then it will quickly become a grind house.

A well-run CoC campaign requires players who understand the setting. D&D is upbeat, the good guys win, and live happily ever after.

In CoC. the 'good' guys break even at best, and go on to live in fear of the next potential break with reality and the hidden machinations of cultists.

War Hammer FRPG or 40k players transition better to CoC, IME.

My gaming group from the late 80's to the mid 90's played AD&D, Traveller and CoC. D&D was not the light and fluffy game that it is today, and in Traveller you can die during character creation, so transitioning between those three was pretty easy.