Call of Cthulu

Thanks for the advice user. I'll take it to heart. Maybe I was wrong starting this thread I suppose I wanted to do something not DnD. Had tonnes of idea's for horror, cyberpunk, superheroes that sort of thing but the only system I am familiar with is DnD (3.5 up to 5).

>That's a retarded and misleading conjecture put forward by Pelgrane marketing years ago to sell a system of dubious quality. ToC has no mystery, it has a Play-button.

>Don't listen to this dupe, OP.

Nice try Petersen, but you aren't fooling anyone, except this poor fool who doesn't know any better. Go back to >>>r/rpgs if you want to shill your game

>shill
CoC threads tend to contain a lot of ideas, question that arose in actual rounds being played, and a lot of keeper lore aggregated over decades of playing a game that people want to play for decades.

ToC threads tend to be about how awesome ToC is, and how broken CoC has supposedly always been.

Make of that what you will.

Dat fucking dog made my sides when tropospheric.
>"Come Fido, we have to kick Eldritch ass for the Lord"

No reason to doubt yourself. I applaud your quest to look beyond the DnD horizon, too few players do.

You should be aware of what DnD is before comparing it.

The mechanics of D20 are really complicated. It starts with class/level. Having different rules for each character attaches a learning curve to each new person you want to play. Then the fine tuning happens all over the cruch, not at one clearly discernible end where values are comparable - so a +1 at one end and a -1 at the other don't cancel each other out.

It doesn't try to render realism or explore the motivations of literary figures, it establishes an arbitrary contest and derives most enjoyment from playing with the intricacies of this competition. That is self serving and doesn't connect to other inspirations well.

It invites combat to a massive degree. Most of the sheet is about combat stats. Combat is the only game solution that has any mechanics attached to it other than "Make a hit-or-miss skill roll". If you do anything other than attack in DnD you might as well be telling a story freeform.

Characters are defined by the rules. Players only get to grind for the next advance in grinding feats. Fleshing out inner tension, background that can bleeds into campaign plot, or friction within the party is considered poor roleplaying in DnD. It harms the party's chances to dominate through combat in order to get to the next level with bigger monsters to defeat and bigger treasure to loot.

Most other games are not like this in any way. And if you tell us what you are looking for in a game we could make suggestions. The big hurdle here isn't to find a game you feel comfortable enough with to GM, all will do that. The trick is to find something that your group will enjoy. And that might be CoC. But not if you just push them into the deep end.

Ok this was a 10/10 response.

So my group are very rp heavy. We always put playing in character over all else. I was playing a wizard recently who was a coward and despite having witchbolt and a few other kill spells at my disposal ran from the fight as it was in character. This led to other characters in the party not trusting me but it suited. In the most recent session a player who was a close friend irl and in game died because our characters took to their morals and against better sense stayed to defend a village that couldn't be held. But it served to be a great boon for my character taking up his shield with his clan sigil and to continue his quest to find members of his ruined clan.

So in short, something realism and immersion are huge for us. My friends give equal xp for fleeing and fighting in sessions because they don't want to encourage murderhobo's.

I could homewbrew a mismatched DnD to suit what I want but I was looking for something that can comfortably run a different atmosphere/theme/setting. Cyberpunk akin to Bladerunner or Superheroes akin to Watchmen.

Even sci fi would be fun (not the 40k shit though) but I am curious as to should I look at new systems or should I try and cram DnD to work because it's what I know? I attempted running a star wars campaign once with gurps and although people enjoyed it the blatant imbalance between non force using characters and jedi was undeniable.

sorry for grammar also english is not my first language

I would recommend trying Burning Wheel, Mouseguard, or Torchbearer. The central mechanic of the game is based on your character getting rewarded for following their motivations and provided incentives for roleplaying negative traits

Don't mod D20. It's not made for it and grinds pretty much anything to a screeching halt that isn't heroic combat encounters. It is not even a good set of mechanics for combat in general, it's too slow and convoluted. It only does powerlevel comparison combat well. Something like all Jedi could work with D20. Anything else will be harmed by the mechanics, to a degree that may well be unplayable. I have tried Starship Troopers once - very bad idea.

Now genre isn't everything. But it can help you pick mechanics. More than genre though you should consider the table dynamic. What do you want player to do with the rules? It isn't about pages of lists of skills and equipment, you can steal those from anywhere. So go by game dynamic when picking crunch, not cover art.

Realism and immersion are antithetical. I think you might not mean realism but suspension of disbelief.

Cyberpunk isn't really a genre, more of a flavor. It has to many facets and easily becomes a kitchen sink. You have to be more precise. Blade Runner for instance has strong Noir flavors and is really a morality tale with characters of unconventional moral fiber.

Scifi stretches from gritty hard SF and speculative fiction all the way to Space Opera and Planetary Romance. There are countless systems and most are very limited in scope.

For Star Wars the FFG license seems to be alright, I haven't played it myself. And seing as the license is exclusive, the only alternatives are the good old D6 and the all-Jedi-party-mandatory Saga. ORE would make a great custom build with StarORE as a base, but it means making your own which is work.

Fate delivers the best Scifi games, and with your group's affinity to character play it may be just the right mechanics. The rules are entirely meta, concerned with the story, not the physics of the world. Diaspora is the best hard SF game I know and comes with the best ship combat mechanics ever made. Bulldog! and Mindjammer are Space Opera settings, there are...

...more available.

From what you explained ybout your game I think the Luke Crane games would be a great fit. It's all heroic Fantasy mind you, not as far from DnD as you were asking for. But they do Fantasy right and I have often described them as DnD done right for a change. Mouse Guard is the simplest and aims to tell simple fable stories along the lines of the graphic novels (with a movie in the works).

Torchbearer is the dungeoncrawler.

Burning Wheel is an epic Fantasy engine and the most elaborate of the 3. It weighs in at 600 pages though.

They all feature mechanics that take things which DnD will let you do as long as it doesn't disturb combat, but here they are dice relevant. The sheet has a Goal, and Instinct, and a Motivation, and whenever you go against those while performing a task hard enough to roll for, you get a penalty. But if your character acts in accordance there's a bonus to be had. It sounds simple, but it really changes things around. Suddenly characters can be in fundamental conflict, and all it causes in the party is some bickering. A character can be remarkable, and they will be, even to the dice.

Look at Fate, ORE, and a Luke Crane Game. Try out a few things. You won't find THE good game by chance. You will have to try a few and find one that works FOR YOU. Excluding games helps a lot. Get around. Get to know as much as you can, play with different groups, go to conventions. Games take a bit of effort to get to know them. And to make an informed system decision you will have to know quite a few. So don't expect too much. And don't be afraid to try.

Try a new system, hacking D&D always turns out bad (see: D20 Modern). Even complicated games are usually based around a simple mechanic (D100 roll under in the case of Call of Cthulhu and D6+spend points for Trail of Cthulhu) and once you learn it's easy to get players to a stage where they can say what they want to do and you tell them what dice to roll.

OP, I strongly recommend you give Unknown Armies a try instead. Simply restrict players to playing ordinary humans and run from there. Unknown Armies has two features that would be very useful to you: Firstly, it has by far the best sanity mechanics of any game, much better than the clunky Call of Cthulhu system. Secondly, it mechanically rewards players for making the kind of obsessed "can't resist going deeper and deeper" kind of characters that you need to really make a horror game work, since any normal person would just GTFO as soon as something crazy happens.

>Superheroes akin to Watchmen

Wild Talents

Think Powers (the show). It's ORE and grew out of Godlike, a Weird War 2 low power supers game with very dark tones.

Better Angels is also worth a look. It's reluctant super villains with a really nice modern interpretation of supers in mundane society. The clue is that you have to negotiate for powers with an inner demon played by the next player over at the table.

I agree with a lot of your points, but whole heartedly disagree with the deductions.

UA is one of the best systems out there, mechanics and setting. But it isn't made to just play normies doing whatever. It is full of fundamental tension among characters, between characters and the world, and between the game world and reality. Ignoring that just throws out everything that makes it remarkable leaving only Greg Stolze's excellent mechanics. But for that you don't need UA. Download the free Nemesis. The mechanics are even better and definitely easier to mod into whatever you want to do. As is they're bare bones horror in ORE with the Madness Meter.

Now the Madness Meter is far and wide the best sanity mechanics for giving mental stability stats. It has 4 or 5 tracks (violence, self, helplessness, supernatural, and sometimes isolation) that go out in 2 directions simultaneously (failed and hardened) to provide a specific readout at any time how a character might react to certain stressful situations or how they might appear to others who interact with them. 8+ hardened notches in self will let you stab a cultist from behind in cold blood without rolling for san, but it will also make mothers pull their kids close as the character enters the room. This is awesome, but it isn't all you can do with sanity.

CoC 7 has a different approach which is in no way clunky. There you have simple san rolls and elaborate effects for san loss. It's a much more simple readout of the character's condition, just one number (0-99). But the effects of it are much more detailed and in keeping with the genre. It gives the keeper a whole box of tools to underline the character's decay, starting from control in the moment. Then there can be blackouts where the character obviously did something but doesn't remember, like wake up covered in blood but unharmed. There can be delusions, the keeper can describe the scene to the player /wrong/. The player can roll to dispel the delusion

...but it risks more san loss. The character background is detailed on the sheet, with important people, places, items, events, etc. The keeper can rewrite a detail of this.

All in all the CoC san rules are an invitation to flesh out a horror story while the Madness Meter is a more generic people simulator.

As for making the players gamble away all security for knowledge and power, CoC does that pretty well. But not with sanity, that's UA's thing. However, san loss in UA is not a good thing. It changes the character, for better or worse. In the new mechanics which have been beta released for the kickstarter the Madness Meter even affects stats.

For the Silent Hill idea I'd recommend CoC, Dread, maybe even Don't Rest Your Head but for the F.E.A.R idea I'd strongly recommend Delta Green. You don't even need to use the setting, even if it is excellent, but the new rules are essentially CoC tailored for characters with military/intelligence experience. It'll be a good fit.

Here's a link for the quickstart rules.
>mediafire.com/?0j4nq0uv588bwir

I don't know what Mediafire reward you are after, but here's the official link

delta-green.com/2016/02/download-delta-green-need-to-know/

The biggest difference between CoC and DG is that DG is based on CoC6, not 7. There's no pushed rolls, no luck spending, sanity is much simpler, and opposed rolls aren't directly compared by success level.

DG is primarily suited to longer campaigns with a mission structure. It was made to overcome shortcomings of CoC in that regard, offering setting explanations for secrecy, replacement characters, and missions lining up in front of the investigators.

The sanity rules make no sense without time between missions. It's a gimped mix of CoC6 and UA with the addition of Bonds which are people in the agent's life the relationship to whom can suffer instead of direct san damage in the field, player's decision. Bonds are excellent, but totally without consequence in a one-shot.

The skills are not made to test characters in slice-of-life, but to test agents in the field. And in DG you don't roll a lot, only if the margin is tight. Most skill challenges can simply be passed by a high enough skill level.

DG corrupts characters. Where CoC only damages their sanity, DG also damages their integrity and their tragic social life. Where CoC is primarily suited to one-shots with new characters, DG is made for endless campaigns with changing characters.

Forgot Need to Know was available for free.

And OP said he wanted to run a campaign so it fits the bill pretty well.

/rant

chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/Adventures/CHA23145 - Alone Against the Flames.pdf