Asilo vs Call of Cthulhu
Compare Asilo and Call of Cthulhu side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Asilo | Call of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Deadly, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Improvisation, One-Shot Friendly, Random Tables, Roleplay-Heavy, Rules-Light, Strong GM Support | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based |
| Core Mechanic | When an action warrants it, a Patient rolls a d6 and succeeds by equaling or exceeding the difficulty the Caretaker sets. Traumatic events add a d6 result to the Sanity Clock, and completed stress sectors reveal new Behaviors. | Roll d100 equal to or under your skill percentage. Success tiers at half (Hard) and one-fifth (Extreme) of the skill value. Bonus and penalty dice adjust the tens digit. Failed rolls can be pushed for a second attempt at greater risk. |
| Dice | d6 | d100 |
| Complexity | Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | Chaosium Fan Material Policy |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Newborn Games | Chaosium |
| Year | 2025 | 2014 |
| Best For | Groups prepared to establish firm safety boundaries before a one-shot clinical-horror descent driven by character-specific stress. It suits Caretakers who want prewritten scenarios and prompts for tailoring Asilo to a table's chosen limits. | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. |
| Highlights | Stress Rolls fill each Sanity Clock until new Behaviors alter how that Patient is played. Goals and discovered Secrets can remove or add Stress Dots, making personal history affect whether a Patient deteriorates. Destroying a signed Liability Waiver sacrifices one Patient to clear another's Behavior, turning a physical table ritual into a final rescue. | Tracking Sanity as a depletable score ties mental erosion to the fiction, so confronting cosmic horror mechanically wears characters down. The percentile skills resolve on a d100 roll-under, with Hard and Extreme bands at half and one-fifth of the rating. Bouts of Madness convert failed Sanity checks into temporary phobias, manias, or loss of character control. |
| Considerations | The game centers clinical abuse, trauma, and other extreme material, requiring explicit group boundaries and active comfort tools. Each Patient's stress mitigations become Manias after three uses, making the downward pressure difficult to reverse. Asilo is designed for individual sessions, so it does not provide campaign advancement for recurring Patients. | The chase rules add a detailed positioning subsystem whose complexity outweighs how often it sees use. Character creation allocates points across a long list of skills, a slow first step for new players. In long campaigns the sanity spiral can strip a character of player control as madness accumulates. |