Call of Cthulhu vs Symbaroum

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

	Call of Cthulhu	Symbaroum
Genre	Horror, Modern	Fantasy, Horror
Play Style	Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Horror, Corruption, Skill-Based	Dark Fantasy, Atmospheric, Player-Only Rolls, Corruption, Exploration, Roll to Cast, Classless, Tactical, Gritty, Lore-Heavy
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 d20 and try to land equal to or under one of eight Attributes: Accurate, Cunning, Discreet, Persuasive, Quick, Resolute, Strong, and Vigilant. Opposed tests apply the opponent's relevant Attribute as a penalty, written [Attribute←Opponent's Attribute]. Only players roll dice, so an enemy attack becomes a player Defense test and NPC stats appear as fixed modifiers on the player's roll.
Dice	d100	d20
Complexity	Medium	Medium
Accessibility	High	High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	Chaosium Fan Material Policy	All Rights Reserved
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Chaosium	Free League Publishing
Year	2014	2016
Best For	Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots.	Groups who want long-form dark fantasy exploration with mounting personal cost: expeditions into ancient ruins where each use of magic and each encounter with the corrupted forest leaves a lasting mark on the characters.
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.	Corruption tracks the mystical cost of every cast power, tainted artifact, and hour in dark Davokar: passing half a character's Resolute pins a permanent Stigma like blackening eyes or fangs that only rituals can lift. Reaching Resolute in total Corruption turns the character into an abomination and hands them to the GM, putting every mystic and every cursed treasure in tension with continued ownership of the character. Witchsight reveals the colored Shadow around any creature or object (green and red for things of nature, gold and silver for civilized beings, black and purple for the corrupted), but each glance risks taking on temporary Corruption from what was inspected. Only players roll dice, so combat resolves as the players' Attack tests, Defense tests, and damage rolls against fixed NPC values rather than back-and-forth opposed throws.
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.	Mystics pay heavy attrition for their craft: every learned power and every casting generates Corruption, and the four traditions only partially insulate the caster, so spell-heavy characters require careful tracking and trend toward eventual transformation if used freely. Combat resolves each attack against multiple thresholds (rolled Armor for protection, weapon damage against Toughness, and a Pain Threshold check for whether the hit knocks the target prone or triggers a free attack), adding bookkeeping in busy encounters. The core book deliberately limits its setting to the region around Davokar; the lands south of the Titans and the broader world receive only brief mention.