Call of Cthulhu vs Fear and Panic
Compare Call of Cthulhu and Fear and Panic side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Call of Cthulhu | Fear and Panic | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror |
| Tags | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based | CC-Licensed Rules, Classless, Deadly, Fast-Paced, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Low-Prep, One-Shot Friendly, Rules-Light, Skill-Based, Theater of the Mind |
| 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 d100 equal to or below the relevant skill. In opposed tests, a success beats a failure, the higher success wins, and the higher roll wins if both sides fail; doubles are critical. |
| Dice | d100 | d100 |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | Chaosium Fan Material Policy | CC BY 4.0 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Chaosium | Lyme |
| Year | 2014 | 2025 |
| Best For | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. | One-shots and short horror campaigns about ordinary people, especially groups converting existing d100 scenarios and wanting lethal conflict without tactical maps. |
| 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. | Player-triggered Fear turns frightening moments into a resource for desperate actions such as rerolls or rapid investigation. One opposed Violence roll compares Fight or Flee against Menace and Escape, producing injuries, displacement, capture, or death without hit points. Scars persist between adventures and exchange one capability for another, making survival change characters mechanically. |
| 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. | Fear gain relies on players deciding when their characters are scared, so the economy depends on shared genre judgment. Violence can end in death after one opposed roll, with simultaneous resolution, no tactical maps, and no hit points. Traits and campaign-specific skills are open-ended, leaving their scope and balance to GM adjudication. |