Call of Cthulhu vs Outrunners

Compare Call of Cthulhu and Outrunners side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Call of Cthulhu	Outrunners
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Cyberpunk, Fantasy
Play Style	Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based	Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Narrative, Fiction-First, Collaborative, Survival, Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, GM-Friendly
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.	Each character assigns one die from a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and d4 set across six stats, then rolls the relevant stat's die against a difficulty number; if half that die's maximum already meets the DC, the action succeeds without a roll. Rolling a die's maximum value without beating the DC triggers a Twist of Fate, exploding up to the next larger die. Fate Points, earned mainly by failing rolls, are spent to reroll, sway outcomes, or invoke the Hands of Fate at a narrative cost.
Dice	d100	d4–d20
Complexity	Medium	Low
Accessibility	Medium	Very High
Runnability	High	High
License	Chaosium Fan Material Policy	ORC 1.0 (free SRD)
Cost	$$	Free / $
Publisher	Chaosium	Einsol's Razor
Year	2014	2025
Best For	Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots.	Groups who want a rules-light, emotionally charged one-shot or short campaign about doomed characters racing to outrun a foreseen death, and GMs who want a portable fate-and-survival horror premise they can drop into almost any setting with little prep.
Highlights	Sanity system mechanically reinforces horror tone. Intuitive percentile skill system with tiered success levels. One of the largest published scenario libraries in the hobby.	Every character begins with a prophesied glimpse of their own death, which seeds concrete clues into the story and ties each session's tension to a deadline the player already knows is coming. Rolling a stat die's maximum without meeting the difficulty explodes it up to the next larger die, turning desperate long shots into escalating last-second reversals rather than flat failures. Fate Points are earned mainly by failing rolls and then spent to reroll, sway outcomes, or invoke the Hands of Fate, so setbacks bankroll later comebacks and every intervention carries a narrative cost.
Considerations	Chase rules add complexity with limited payoff, 46-skill list requires point allocation across multiple categories, sanity spiral can remove player agency in extended campaigns	The default Adamah setting is sketched in only a few pages and the game expects the table to invent most of the world at session zero, so groups wanting a prepared, detailed setting must supply it themselves. Equipment grants only narrative permission rather than mechanical bonuses, so players who enjoy itemization or tactical loadouts will find nothing to optimize. The foreseen-death premise is built to resolve at the Vision's deadline, making the game strongest as a one-shot or short arc and harder to sustain across a long, open-ended campaign.