Call of Cthulhu vs Daggerheart
Compare Call of Cthulhu and Daggerheart side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Call of Cthulhu | Daggerheart | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based | Narrative, Collaborative, Heroic, Roleplay-Heavy, Fiction-First, Theater of the Mind, Character Building, Drama, Beginner-Friendly, Character-Driven |
| Core Mechanic | 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. | Roll 2d12 Duality Dice (Hope + Fear) and add modifiers vs. difficulty. Which die rolls higher determines whether the moment swings toward the players (Hope) or the GM gains Fear tokens to spend on complications. In combat, adversary attacks roll d20 + modifier against target's Evasion. |
| Dice | d100 | 2d12 |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | Chaosium Fan Material Policy | Darrington Press Community Gaming License (DPCGL) |
| Cost | $$ | $$$ |
| Publisher | Chaosium | Darrington Press |
| Year | 2014 | 2025 |
| Best For | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. | Groups who want heroic fantasy with emotionally driven storytelling, where every roll shifts momentum between hope and fear. Great for Critical Role fans and narrative-focused tables. |
| Highlights | 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. | Every action roll uses 2d12 Duality Dice, and whether Hope or Fear lands higher hands momentum to the player or the GM. Combat runs fiction-first with no fixed initiative, so the spotlight passes by the action rather than a turn order. Characters equip abilities as domain cards drawn from two domains, building a loadout the player can swap between. |
| Considerations | 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. | The domain-card system runs best with printed cards, though it can be played from the character sheet alone. Players and the GM use asymmetric rules, so each side has its own procedures to learn. Mechanics are tied to the game's own setting and ancestries, which takes work to reskin for another world. |