Call of Cthulhu vs Smallville Roleplaying Game
Compare Call of Cthulhu and Smallville Roleplaying Game side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Call of Cthulhu | Smallville Roleplaying Game | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Superhero, Modern |
| Tags | Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based | Licensed IP, Superpowers, Character-Driven, Drama, Narrative, Collaborative, Worldbuilding, Roleplay-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Strong GM Support |
| 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 a d4–d12 pool built from one Value and one Relationship, with an Asset die if applicable. Add the two highest dice. Dice showing 1 are Complications and never count. Plot Points can add dice to the pool before the roll or include more rolled dice in the total afterward. Tests normally pit your roll against the GM's Trouble pool. Ties go to the GM. Contests exchange action and reaction rolls until someone Gives In or fails to beat the previous total and takes Stress. Giving In concedes the opponent's demand but avoids Stress. |
| Dice | d100 | d4–d12 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Very Low |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | Chaosium Fan Material Policy | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | Unavailable |
| Publisher | Chaosium | Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. |
| Year | 2014 | 2010 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish | English |
| Best For | Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots. | Groups who want superhero stories driven by relationship drama, where the player characters' convictions and loyalties clash with each other as often as they face villains. |
| 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. | Challenging a Drive triples its die for one roll but steps it back for the episode, turning a crisis of conviction into Growth. Group character creation builds a shared map of people and places that supplies material for later episodes. When an opponent fails to beat your action result, they take Stress rather than concede your demand, making Giving In a separate choice. |
| 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. | Creating an original cast through Pathways takes a few hours of group work before the first episode. Episode preparation centers on conflicts between player characters rather than a unified party's shared objective. Winning a Contest cannot kill a character by itself, because killing in a Contest requires that character's player to Give In and accept death. |