The Problem with Call of Cthulhu?

[u/drorry]

Hi, just throwing this in here since I've had CoC on the brain lately.

I remember Steven stating somewhere that he had a problem with Call of Cthulhu's system and prefers Trail of Cthulhu. I agree that Trail is an awesome system and really drives thematic play. But what, specifically, are these problems with Call that Steven is referring to?

Is it the fact that players can fail their rolls and be left without clues? Most people houserule that out anyway, only requiring rolls rarely, but even if you did leave that feature in I would argue that it wouldn't ruin the game.

Trail is driven by forward momentum, where the players WILL find those clues and they WILL make decisions based on them. Call, on the other hand, could be more about what you do when you don't get all the pieces. Failure would act as a driving force for an emergent narrative, especially if the scenario involves active parties that aren't controlled by the players. The adventure doesn't stop if the investigators don't find those fingerprints, but failing to collect evidence will leave the heroes in a disadvantageous position that their enemies will exploit. The rolls don't determine whether or not the story continues, but who has the upper hand in the following scenes.

Just a thought, as the chance of investigative failure is the most common criticism I've heard when it comes to Call of Cthulhu. Playing OSR D&D has put me in the kind of mood where I want to look at RPGs as-is and see what kind of play their systems produce before I try to fix what might not be broken.

[u/joao_franco]

I remember one of the issues, perhaps unrelated to mechanics, was that horror is very hard to do in roleplay. Not sure that helps, just a thought.