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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 168208" data-attributes="member: 1645">Strictly by the book, Ravenloft emulates Gothic Horror.  Think Dracula.  Lots of vampires, werewolves, and animated corpses, lots of curses, lots of dark and stormy nights -- all mixed with D&D: Clerics, Wizards, Paladins, etc.Call of Cthulhu presents rules for modern investigators in the modern world (1800's through today).  The monsters aren't the classic monster-movie monsters but misshapen tentacled abominations from beyond, the kind of thing you'd find in H.P. Lovecraft's writing.Ravenloft presents rules for horror checks; if you see something scary, it might scare you.  Call of Cthulhu presents rules for insanity; you keep a running tally of your Sanity score, and unearthly horror might permanently scar your psyche.In many ways, I find Call of Cthulhu scarier.  The investigators aren't generally great warriors, and even if they were, the monsters aren't carefully scaled to their power level.  (Ravenloft has a bit of that too, just not as extreme.)  The investigators also aren't great wizards, and -- my favorite part -- magic comes with a price.  No one automatically knows spells, and learning a spell costs Sanity.  Casting it costs even more Sanity, along with a couple points of Ability Drain (e.g. Str drain or Wis drain).  There are no free spells per day.</blockquote>