Call of Cthulhu vs Heartbeats in Perfect Sync
Compare Call of Cthulhu and Heartbeats in Perfect Sync side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Call of Cthulhu | Heartbeats in Perfect Sync | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Modern, Fantasy |
| Tags | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based | Anime, Character-Driven, Cinematic, Collaborative, Drama, Fast-Paced, Rules-Light, Superpowers, Tag-Based, Urban Fantasy |
| 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. | When an outcome is uncertain, the GM sets a target number of hits. Roll a d6 pool equal to your current Heart Rate; each 5 or 6 is a hit, and meeting or exceeding the target succeeds. Results can shift Heart Rate, changing the size of later pools. |
| Dice | d100 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | Chaosium Fan Material Policy | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Chaosium | Nathan Blades |
| Year | 2014 | 2024 |
| Best For | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. | Groups who want episodic urban-fantasy action centered on emotional escalation, relationship drama, and coordinated anime-style set pieces. |
| 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. | Heart Rate serves as both the dice pool and an emotional track, so roll outcomes alter the odds of later actions. Perfect Sync lets characters with matching Heart Rates combine their pools for a shared roll at the cost of later spotlight turns. While Heartbroken, the altered-state aspect does not expire, and later thresholds lead to recovery or loss of player control. |
| 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 default City is deliberately sparse, so groups build most setting detail themselves or begin from the included scenario. The GM decides uncertainty, target hits, and failed-roll consequences case by case. Under the base rules, Perfect Sync requires matching Heart Rates, though an optional Heartstring move can bypass that limit. |