Sup
Some friends and I are going to be running/playing a campaign of Call of Cthulhu, set in the 1920s.
The thing is that none of us are too much into rules. We're more about the roleplaying than the dice rolling.
So, what super simple, bare-bones, stripped down RPG systems are out there that would fit the bill?
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Cthulhu Dark is good, but Call of Cthulhu's pretty simple as it is, it's just character generation that's complex. Once you get the hang of it, you'll love it.
CoC is fun and relies a lot on dm fiat. Look at it like GURPS. There are a bunch of rules in there but you are invited to pick and choose whats going to make it into your game.
Definitely had one of my most successful campaigns in CoC
Fate core, or Spirit of the Century if you want to add some pulp to the mix. Character gen is fast and easy, and the system has both a physical and mental stress track. The game can be easily modified too if the system is not to your taste.
Call of Cthulhu is incredibly light as it is.
Trail of Cthulhu is the rules-light CoC variant. Start with the Final Revelation, it's a lovecraftian, (almost) no-survivors type of campaign.
Well, it's not a CoC-variant, it runs on the GUMSHOE system.
CoC is too rules heavy for you? Okay, roleplay around a table and when you need to resolve something flip a coin. Heads you succeed, tails you fail.
Well, Trail of Cthulhu is, arguably, simpler.
Examples of said DM fiat?
I've never looked at it, but I just skimmed the wiki and saw the words points, pool, attributes, abilities bolded. Difficulty was also bolded next to a parenthetical reference to target numbers.
Anyone arguing that is simpler than flipping a coin has instantly lost the argument.
Call of Cthulhu 7th edition is stupid easy. Pretty much everything is settled by rolling a d100. Chaosium has a quickstart pdf you can download for free, the system takes about a day to learn.
When you're allowed to use the Luck stat or what EDU means specifically & situationally.
I'd argue not... the mechanics are more abstract/disassociated.
Whereas, at the end of the day, a CoC has a list of stuff he can do, with a number from 1-100 saying how good he is at it.
If you want more rules light, I suggest an indie game called Dead of Night. Ten numbers, and instead of skills you just have a rough description of your character (ie, a doctor can do doctor stuff, a pilot can fly aircraft, any adult can drive a car or do a google search, etc).
Lighter still is Dread, which is about as close to a coin flip as you can get while still having some kind of structure for RP.
Simpler than CoC, you stupid oaf.
You pay a point to get a clue. That's pretty easy.
Try this CYOA
chaosium.com
Here's the rules on 9 pages
chaosium.com
And here is the first of 5 3-minute videos explaining all you need to play
youtube.com
>We're more about the roleplaying than the dice rolling.
Would you like support for that?
Like tables to help flesh out character backgrounds or NPCs in detail, with tension, persons, places, and items that have relevance, even a basic outlook on life?
Do you like sanity that can take your character away for a night and return them oblivious and blood soaked, that can make your character experience a scene wrong through narration because they're delusional, that can alter background details due to lapses of memory and reinterpretation caused by san loss?
Do you like mechanics to present goodies that make the players feel powerful for a minute until they realize that sanity and luck might run out well before the mystery is concluded? Or combat rules that resolve fast and can kill a character in a round from a normal gun so the players see it as a last resort?
Do you like players who try again after failure, accepting raised stakes?
It sounds to me like you have an opinion of CoC that is not based on experience, or maybe unfortunate experience. It really isn't what you make it out to be.
It is neither complicated, players can learn the 3 or 4 central mechanics from the keeper as the game happens already. There is basically just d% roll under to perform, the rest is resource management: health, sanity, luck, and sometimes magic.
Nor is it about a lot of dice rolling. The keeper only asks for a roll if the task is a challenge. It is purely dramatic. The mechanics' main job is to present a spiral of decay that is balanced by a few glimpses of insight or even lore. Sure it does combat, and there's BRP games that are about that. CoC is not. Combat in CoC is deadly. It isn't the only way to lose a character, but it is an easy one.
Have you tried the new quick generations rules?
Just distribute numbers, no rolling, no point-by-point buy. Makes 3 minute NPCs as well as full player characters.
I'd say it's the opposite of gurps. Sure, both have a sim core. But where gurps goes into detail as much as possible, coc has everything printed on the sheet and when in doubt just find something to roll against.
Fate isn't complex, but it does have a bit of a learning curve. If the players don't get how to compel their characters or how to create an advantage as an action, then it's just freeform and fiat. Fate also has a lot of trouble with horror and must be modded to do it well.
ToC is nothing like CoC. It's a meta mechanic that pulls investigators through the story diorama, with optional bonus clues bought with bonus clue points. CoC is a simulation of a physical world with probabilities that are just framed by the keeper.
CoC is not a balanced combat encounter game like DnD. Everything is determined by the GM, and how deadly it turns out depends a lot on the players' reaction. It isn't so much fiat as it is framing: what's the best that could happen, what's the worst? - not in terms of damage but in terms of story progress. This can then be determined by player ingenuity and rolls.
This!
ToC is for GMs who have no clue what they're doing. Interesting enough their scenarios are very much for veteran keepers. I never understood that. Luckily ToC scenarios work in any system. For the players ToC isn't particularly simple. It requires them to understand the story structure.
What.
Trail has way more rules than Call.
The CoC mechanics and game structure have layers. They can and should all be used to control tension and to decay the characters. But they function in different ways and can be brought into conflict for the players while all coming together to corner the characters for the keeper.
The most immediate one is HEALTH. It is a scarce resource, about 10 HP for the average investigator. And a normal gun can deal 1d6 several times in a round. Getting into a situation that threatens health considerably should be reserved for investigators who have made an error in judgment or have made it all the way to the big boy threats revealed near the end. But a little damage early on can nicely set a tone, raise the stakes, and initiate a slow decay in this dimension.
The next layer is SANITY. It is not as scarce as health, but it doesn't heal as readily, or at all in most one shots. Its sphere is twofold: personal responsibility, and confrontation with extreme experiences. This is probably the main avenue of character decay in CoC. Roll san when witnessing the terrible thing, roll san to do horrible things in order to stop the terrible thing, or do both. Relevant knowledge and sanity tend to be inversely proportional to each other: it costs a lot of san to learn the mystery of a scenario clue by clue. But beyond a mere limited resource it is also a starting point for a lot of flavor detail connected to losing sanity. Unlike health the wounds suffered in sanity stick around in the mechanics and keep shaping the character with little episodes.
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Then there's LUCK. It can be rolled against directly to test if coincidence is in the investigator's favor. But it can now also be spent to boost failed rolls making it a bit of a moxy stash, one that easily runs out - just in time to test if coincidence is in the investigator's favor...
And finally there's the CONTEXT of the scenario, the rapport and trust that has been built among PCs and with NPCs, the leeway which the social order grants to anyone who doesn't seem mad, sinister, or violent, and also the feeling that the world has your back and isn't facing off against you after having torn off its mask. This is not in mechanics but up to the keeper managing the game dynamic with story.
These layers come together to form a spiral of decay that first lets the characters seem powerful in their wonderful world and then removes both power and world in increments that can be felt by the players. In the end their backs shouldn't just be against the wall in the story, their sheets should be close to character loss in more ways than just death through major wound as well.
Trail of Cthulhu is the best mystery game ever made
Lasers and Feelings. Just make it, Sword Sticks and Scholars or something.
For what kind of mystery?
It will be tricky formulating a mystery that can resist a bunch of SCHOLARSWORDS! results (1 in 6) which prompt the player to ask a meta question and have it answered truthfully and directly.
>If the players don't get how to compel their characters
Yeah, ran that system for almost 3 years and some players never really understood it. It's a pity, but if someone isn't really a story person, like they can't kind of make up their own narratives, that game is sort of lost on them. I loved it, but it really is by GMs, for GMs.
Then just remove that. Make it a crit instead of some meta knowledge thing.
I had a similar start with a big campaign. The I realized it didn't work and never would with 5 aspects per PC unless the players got a leg up.
So I prepared a tutorial inthe same world playing some antagonists for the other characters to confront later in FAE. I kept it really simple with just one challenge, one NPC in one location for each scene. Then we just had a little softball duel with advantages. The players always win because they're more and taken together have more actions in each round to create advantages with. And then it finally clicked with the players.
BTW, does anyone know anything about the Fate Core horror mod?
Or accept the challenge and write something interesting.
One trick is to have the apparent baddies be manipulated stooges and the true villain remain hidden even from any antagonists that the players can ask questions about.
>Simpler than CoC, you stupid oaf.
Poor communicator enrages himself with his own inadequacy.
People have to have an actual person teach trail of Cthulhu. I've played a few games with different groups who self taught by the book and they were sure they were still fucking a few systems up. People who were taught seemingly descended from knowledge of the forums showed us we were wrong.
I don't care.
Trail of Cthulhu
So simple and rules-light it makes me hard just thinking about it.
Here's a system I came up with that strives to recreate the mood of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Just roll 1d10 to see what happens:
1) live out a trouble life haunted by what you've seen
2) go insane
3) go insane and serve the great old ones, outer gods, or some other abomination, possibly nameless
4) turn into a fish
5) kill yourself
6) go insane and kill yourself
7) go insane and turn into a fish
8) go insane, turn into a fish, and kill yourself
9) kill yourself to avoid going insane as you turn into a fish
10) somehow go insane from killing yourself, and optionally turn into a fish
Dread is also a good rules-lite system, if you don't have philosophical objections to Jenga.
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But a shitty lovecraftian game.
It works perfectly with Lovecraft
WHERE'S ME WEE MEN?!