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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Turgenev" data-source="post: 770189" data-attributes="member: 6733">You forgot the smiley. Oh, you were being serious. *shakes head in disbelief* I've played and GM CoC (BRP version) off and on since 1984 or so. Some of my most fulfilling RPG experiences have been from this game. To see statements like that above just rubs me the wrong way. Call of Cthulhu is a different gaming experience than D&D (I'm not knocking D&D - I enjoy it also). CoC is a game of atmosphere. Set the right mood and watch the characters (and players) jump at the slightest bump in the night, or creaking door. Sure the characters are not as powerful as say their D&D counterparts but that is part of the charm of the game. For one thing, when you do succeed at something (i.e. defeating a monster, surviving a session, unraveling the secret of an ancient manuscript) you feel a greater sense of accomplishment since the odds were stacked against you. You don't have any magical weapons (with a few exceptions but even then they had severe prices to pay for their use, i.e. CoC spells) to fall back on to aid you, most of the time you have to rely on your own ingenuity and luck to see you through a session. Besides, any good CoC Keeper knows not to kill the characters too quickly. Another aspect of CoC that I've always enjoyed was the fact that most adventures tended to revolve around a mystery or two. It isn't enough to just confront the bag guys with guns blazing. You have to research the situation and talk to the locals, dig into the library's records and/or the newspaper morgue for clues. You have to find out 'why' the situation is happening and then that would often give you a clue on 'how' to stop it.  Sure some sessions did end with violence with casualties on both sides, but that didn't matter. If a character died or went insane - no big deal you make another.  Often how a character exited a game could become the highlights of a session. To this day, I still remember some of the more colourful sessions from 15+ years ago. I can mention certain NPC names to my old CoC buddies and they remember who I'm talking about instantly and how certain PCs bit the dust in that scenario (damn that Carl Stanford! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />).CoC is a fantastic game.  To generalize those who GM it as being on a 'power trip' is just rubbish. I'm sure there are some GMs like that, but we can say the same for our favourite game here, can't we? As with any RPG, the quality of the session is dependent on the skill of the GM/DM. Just because some CoC GM (players) are a**es is no excuse for you to act the same.Tim</blockquote>

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