Call of Cthulhu vs Dread
Compare Call of Cthulhu and Dread side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Call of Cthulhu | Dread | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror |
| Tags | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based | Atmospheric, CC-Licensed Rules, Character-Driven, Deadly, Diceless, Experimental, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Fiction-First, Narrative, Rules-Light |
| 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. | The host calls for a pull when a character attempts something uncertain, outside their experience, or under aggravated conditions. The player removes one block from a shared tower and places it on top: a stable tower means success, while refusing means failure without character removal. Collapsing the tower removes that player's character. |
| Dice | d100 | Diceless |
| Complexity | Medium | Very Low |
| Accessibility | High | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | Chaosium Fan Material Policy | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Noncommercial only — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Chaosium | The Impossible Dream |
| Year | 2014 | 2005 |
| Best For | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. | Groups seeking focused horror where improvised character drama and irreversible risk matter more than tactical combat |
| 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. | Successful pulls leave the shared tower increasingly precarious, turning prior success into mounting risk for the whole table. Questionnaire answers establish capabilities and vulnerabilities, giving the host material that directly shapes rulings and scenarios. Deliberately toppling the tower converts character removal into one final dramatically appropriate success. |
| 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 intended tower-based experience requires a physical block tower, a stable surface, and manual dexterity. A collapse removes a character from play, so players can lose their original role before the session ends. Creating original scenarios asks the host to prepare tailored questionnaires and make frequent pull judgments. |