There is too much Cthulhu going on as it is. No criticisms on the mythology of the game, the actual SETTING is good, just the system is poorly designed. When will they ever create a Cthulhu system where you don't end up with complicated game mechanics and characters who do not suck at most things they do.
My advice would be to run something less mainstream like the World of Darkness, Warhammer 40K or Dresden Files. That would be something I'ed like to see.
less mainstream like World of Darkness, Warhammer 40k, and Dresden Files
you know, real underground shit
Hey, Z, wasn't there some system you like for this kind of thing? It was some kind of horror-sounding name. Enemy? Adversary?
Eh, I must be imagining something. Feels almost like I'm a single roll of the dice away from remembering.
Seriously, though, I like the flexibility and scope of improvisation that Call of Cthulhu provides. I've listened to a few of the Gumshoe APs, and while the system seems interesting, the resource management aspect seems ill-suited for horror. Not that resource management *has* no place in horror, far from it - you have six shots left and five monsters, do you save one for yourself if you miss? However the resource management that is involved seems to be a little wonky - You can absolutely rock shit with one roll at the expense of every other, and it seems to strongly discourage any sort of long, drawn-out scene that the horror genre can benefit so much from, in the sense that you WILL run out of points before much time has passed. I like the Call of Cthulhu system for the way that it models that a person can have some strong skills that they will be statistically likely to be able to perform under stress and pressure, but that those mitigating factors can cause even an expert to fail. If the task is simple and there's no immediate stress/danger, you should be modifying the roll or not rolling. The simplicity of the system makes it a lot easier to adapt on the fly - while I love Pathfinder, I'm not going to be able to generate a wholly new adversary based on the characterization of a few moments, unplanned.
As for the 'formless shapeless horrors'... Well, ok, sure. I'm a science geek - I get giddy looking at the stars in the night sky already, so the thought of imaginary horrors lurking between the stars is a fun one for me. At the same time, not every game must be a grand, sweeping apocalyptic plot to destroy the world - sometimes it's not aliens invading, sometimes it's a simple haunted house. The nice thing about good old Call of Cthulhu is that if you have a cool crazy monster, just toss up a couple of stats or conversions and you've got a dandy little monster. The point is that the system is simple and easy to use, not necessarily the background material. My first Call of Cthulhu game I ran completely fresh, 100% original monsters other than the main adversary, which didn't come into play until the final minutes of the last session. I still haven't read any actual Lovecraft other than the short story that comes with the rulebook. But a bunch of players and a GM who've never tried the system before were able to pick things up and have a blast in a matter of minutes, and for my group that was a first. Call of Cthulhu's now our fallback for when no other campaigns are going, because dying and going crazy never seems to get old.
