CAIN vs Call of Cthulhu
Compare CAIN and Call of Cthulhu side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| CAIN | Call of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Anime, Character-Driven, Corruption, Deadly, Fiction-First, Investigation, Mission-Based, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Theater of the Mind | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s from a skill rated 0–3 plus up to +3D of ordinary advantages; each 4+ is a success, and one success achieves the goal. The Admin judges difficulty and risk separately, so a roll can be both hard and risky. A hard roll scores successes only on 6s. A risky roll adds the Admin's risk die, which sets how much better or worse the outcome goes. A straight roll omits that die. Complex tasks use talismans, segmented trackers that take one slash per success. | 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 | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | Chaosium Fan Material Policy |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Creator-published permission for original supplementary content | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | CHASM | Chaosium |
| Year | 2024 | 2014 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish |
| Best For | Groups who want short monster-of-the-week campaigns where uncovering a sin's traumas makes the final confrontation easier. It suits tables ready to handle abuse, self-harm, and trauma themes with characters treated as expendable weapons. | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. |
| Highlights | Each trauma question answered during investigation can be invoked once in the final fight to reduce stress and slash the sin's execution talisman. Exorcists can pay for powers with 1d3 sin instead of scarce psyche bursts, a shortcut that builds toward overflow, mutation, or becoming an enemy Imago. Every rest raises pressure, and each pressure tick lengthens the sin's execution talisman, making recovery a direct trade against the final fight. | 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 | Investigations engage with abuse, self-harm, trauma, and mental health crises, so the book directs the Admin to discuss intentions and boundaries with players beforehand. Harm taken with three injuries, or 7 or more stress from one event after reductions, causes instant death unless the exorcist defies fate and suffers sin overflow instead. The author expects campaigns of about ten sessions or fewer, and Category advancement reaches its normal cap after seven missions survived. | 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. |