Belly of the Beast vs Call of Cthulhu
Compare Belly of the Beast and Call of Cthulhu side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Belly of the Beast | Call of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Post-Apocalyptic, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Survival, Grimdark, Gritty, Horror, Player-Only Rolls, Theater of the Mind, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Roleplay-Heavy, Atmospheric, Sandbox, Fiction-First, Faction Play, Classless, Skill-Based, Weird, GM-Friendly | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based |
| Core Mechanic | Roll 1 base d6 plus up to 5 Instinct Dice spent from a refillable pool plus any Advantage Dice, capped at 10 total. Each die is a success on a face value set by your relevant Skill Rank — Rotten (6), Acceptable (5+), Capable (4+), Brilliant (3+). Tasks have a Difficulty (successes needed), Severity (how much failure hurts), and optional Threshold (successes removed before counting). Players roll for everything; the GM never rolls. Spent Instinct Dice are gone until earned back by acting in line with your two Instincts. | 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 dice pool | d100 |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | High | High |
| License | Proprietary | Chaosium Fan Material Policy |
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Sigil Stone Publishing | Chaosium |
| Year | 2016 | 2014 |
| Best For | Groups who want grim survival horror in a confined weird-fiction setting where character Instincts and a scavenging mission cycle — not heroic combat — drive every session, and who are comfortable with a GM who never rolls and tunes threats by feel. | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. |
| Highlights | Instinct Dice tie character drives directly to dice pool depth — acting on your two Instincts earns dice you spend to survive future rolls, so leaning into your character's flaws is how you stay mechanically competent. Tasks have three independent dials — Difficulty, Severity, and Threshold — letting the GM build a D1/S4/T0 assassin or a D5/S1/T2 vault door that feel mechanically distinct without an enemy stat block. Succumb and Transcend let any player auto-resolve a Task or Scene by embracing or permanently renouncing an Instinct — Succumb leaves the character Ashamed and unable to Advance until they atone, while Transcend removes that Instinct and its dice income from the sheet forever. | Sanity system mechanically reinforces horror tone. Intuitive percentile skill system with tiered success levels. One of the largest published scenario libraries in the hobby. |
| Considerations | Players roll for everything and the GM never rolls, so every Enemy, Hazard, and Sickness is a Difficulty, Severity, and Threshold the GM sets by feel during play rather than reading from a stat block. Combat uses abstract Hand/Arm/Reach/Near/Far ranges with no grid, no movement tracking, and no initiative — the GM calls turn order from the fiction. Setting material includes normalized slavery, frenzy-mad cannibals, and an in-fiction gender framing where women are treated as more 'precious' than men due to reproduction — the book flags the last point in a sidebar and suggests GMs skip it if uncomfortable. | Chase rules add complexity with limited payoff, 46-skill list requires point allocation across multiple categories, sanity spiral can remove player agency in extended campaigns |