Mythos magic also works great in this system, with spells capable of great power if only the practitioner is willing to sacrifice a small piece of themselves. You don’t have to convince your players that The King in Yellow is bad news. This is a body of work that has been curated and added to for the better part of a century, and it resonates with many people. The Cthulhu Mythos itself is probably CoC’s most pronounced asset. Players with fragile characters will pay far more attention when living colors begin leaking through the walls. This is important for establishing a credible threat, even if it’s from mundane damage and not the unmaking of one’s mind. While going insane is always a possibility, your character could also be crushed, shot, or stabbed to death. Players have a solid reference point instead of relying on the GM to tell them how their character feels.Īnother point in CoC’s favor is the relative lethality of its combat system. When something’s recorded on the character sheet, it feels real. It codifies psychological damage in the same way hitpoints codify physical damage. This is important, as the party bears witness to that which should not be known. The Sanity system is a fun way to track a character’s slow decent into madness. There’s no question that CoC has a lot going for it. For many, this is the be-all and end-all of horror roleplaying, but does it still hold up after so many years? It’s so ubiquitous that “Sanity Loss” is a reference even non gamers will get. It has spawned several games that are successful in their own right. This is the grandfather of horror roleplaying games, published in 1981 * and still going strong. Fortunately, there are a number of systems that are either designed specifically to terrify your players, or can be adapted to the task. Reflex saves and base attack progression do not good horror make. Anything that involves rolling a d20 is right out. You need all the help you can get, and choosing the right system is vital. As I pointed out last week, running horror is hard. By the same token, Olympic sprinters are fast no matter what they wear on their feet, but you don’t see Usain Bolt crossing the finish line in bunny slippers. In theory, any system can be used for running horror if the GM is good enough.
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