Call of Cthulhu edition questions

[FallenFallcrest]

A friend of mine wanted me to run a game, and I was asked about making the game have lots of potentially lethal scenarios and funny random out of nowhere stuff.

So I thought the "everyone dies or goes insane in the end by design" style of Call of Cthulhu would possibly be a good fit, and my friend thought that it sounded like a good idea.

Which edition is recommended for someone who hasn't played any amount of this game and knows almost nothing about it besides reading the Epic of Mr. Henderson? Is 7th any good, or do I do 6th (or older)? (All I know is that 7th contains much larger changes than the previous revisions.)

[Anonymouswizard]

The advantage of 6th edition (the one I own) is that it's all in one core book, there's no separate books for Investigators and Keepers. Actually the 6e corebook was interesting when I first got it, only a small portion of the book is focused towards Investigators, maybe a third for all the rules a normal player needs (AFB), and the majority is focused on fluff and keeper stuff.

Actualy, CoC6 is the one game I own that can be run very easily rom one book. The skills are generally self explanatory, meaning the book's only needed for combat or spells (which the players shouldn't have much of).

In terms of is 6e worth it, you have to be willing to except two things: the character creation rules make unbalanced characters, and older PCs are better. One Attribute is useless RAW, and for every 10 years above your character's minimum age gives an extra point of EDU and so bonus skill points (suffice to say I ignore that rule, and I believe that many do as it's easy to miss). I have made jokes about a party of CoC PCs consisting of four people in their 80s and the person with the tea trolley (which is one of the things 7th apparently fixed).

Oh, there's also no maximum age for characters, but the Keeper gets the ability to send heart attacks after you every 3 seconds, so it's not worth abusing.

Unfortunately I don't know much about 7th, 6e was basically perfect for my Lovecraftian roleplay so I've never felt the need to update.

[Telok]

I have the 3rd and 5th edition books, both of those are the complete game in one book too. While I don't know anything about 7th I have seen copies of 1st and 6th, the core of the is essentially the same. Over time some things got tweaked but the core ideas remain.

You'll also want to note that this isn't a rule lawyer game. Noting that there isn't a printed line saying you can't have a 1200 year old character is meaningless.

[Stan]

It doesn't matter that much. 1st through 6th have only minimal changes in the rules, varying mostly in extra content and art. Of 7th, I've seen only the quickstart, but I like the streamlining that I see. Both 6th and 7th have free pdf quickstart versions. You could probably run a few short games with that. There are quite a free fan made adventures around.

Here's 7th (http://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Q uick-Start%20Rules.pdf)

Here's 6th. (http://files.meetup.com/6282392/Call%20of%20Cthulhu%206th%20Edition%20-%20Quickstart%20Rules.pdf)

[Khedrac]

The game rules are pretty similar all versions as stated. There may be some slight difference is the effect of criticals in combat between versions (I play not Keeper, so I don't pay attention to the version, we just use what the Keeper says).

The only thing players will notice is that different versions do have different skill base %s on the character sheet so everyone should use a sheet from the same version (which doesn't matter). (Had that - a new player had a character sheet from a different version and had a base chance of 0 in some skills where we had 1% - he just updated his base chances and on we went.)

[haplessvictim]

This is a bit of a derail, but if you're interested in a Cthulhu mythos game, you should take a look at Pelgrane Press' "Trail of Cthulhu." It uses the Gumshoe rules, which were designed for investigation scenarios and as such doesn't suffer from some of the "failed roll equals failing to solve the mystery" problems you can run into in CoC. The rules are fairly lightweight, and is built in such a way to make sure every player gets time in the spotlight, and really emphasizes roleplay. I prefer it to CoC

[DontEatRawHagis]

As a new player 7th was easy for me to start with. The Free intro module online was enough for my players to have fun. And the character creation rules are quick. Though if you do get the actual book it goes into more detail.

For what I needed the 7th Ed book was enough. And if you just want to base everything on your player's stats you can get away with not having NPC or monster stats.

From what I've seen there isn't much difference between 7th and 6th except for a few things.

[TerrickTerran]

I can see 7th being good for new players, but I like 6th better for flexibility.

[Digitalelf]

I was asked about making the game have lots of potentially lethal scenarios and funny random out of nowhere stuff.

If you're looking for funny and random, the "Blood Brothers" scenario book has 13 scenarios that emulate classic "B-Movies" such as the various Vincent Price movies and the comedic Abbot & Costello movies like "Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein" (the book even includes states for both Bud Abbot and Lou Costello).

There was also a "Blood Brothers II", but I do not own that one, and thus do not know a whole lot about it.

You can find both titles on PDF on Chaosium's web site.

[ken-do-nim]

I have CoC 4th and 5th editions. The changes aren't vast like 2E D&D to 3E D&D, but they are still substantial. Many skills got reworked, playing a doctor is completely different especially, and overall characters have more skill points. 5th edition also has more combat rules, like trying to use a gun in each hand and other tricks. I actually think the way the skills were laid out in 4th made more sense, but I appreciate the more complete rules of 5th. Either would be fine.