Quote from: Nicephorus;246569That's true.  But that's easy to control by either not giving XP or giving them sparingly.

Personally, I think it's easily controlled by letting nature take its course. As I said, we've used it a fair bit and the only reason we had characters up in 5th and 6th level was because we stopped forcing folks to start over level-wise when they're characters died.

Seanchai

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;246572That said, I'm not sure that even BRP is the best system for Lovecraftian horror and investigation.  I've been thinking about getting Trail of Cthulhu, which uses the GUMSHOE system.  It sounds like it might fit the investigative style of Cthulhu game better.

BRP isn't, but, to my mind, neither is Trail of Cthulhu. It's okay - certainly no worse than the other choices - but were I to build a Lovecrafrian game, I wouldn't build it along Trail's lines either.

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;246594Now, they are DIFFERENT.  Keep in mind that, contrary to the stereotypes you might have heard, characters created in D20 CoC will be much WEAKER than your average starting character for BRP CoC.

That's a good point. I found that to be true in play. The d20 characters are very fragile at low levels, and generally never survive long enough to get very tough at all. BRP characters do seem to have an edge in this regard. I think a lot of critics think "D&D" when they read "d20," which just isn't the case.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;246636That's a good point. I found that to be true in play. The d20 characters are very fragile at low levels, and generally never survive long enough to get very tough at all.

We found this to be the case, too.

Seanchai

I find the BRP CoC rules best for one-shots.  I really enjoy using Chill for horror campaigns and I know some people who swear by Beyond the Supernatural for campaign length story arcs.

But horror RPGs are all about mood and atmosphere so the less system the better.   AD&D 1e + Ravenloft was tremendously cool, but that's because the GM made it clear that the Horror would trump any rules issues.

I think the BRP rules are fine.  They're well-tested, and it has a ton of support for it -- both as published adventures and online.  I recently ran a six-month campaign using them, and am continuing to play in an ongoing campaign.  

I picked up Trail of Cthulhu recently.  I'm not very thrilled with the GUMSHOE system (cf. my Esoterrorists play report) -- but it looks beautiful and looks to have a lot of resources even if you're not using the mechanics.

Thanks for the input guys, im running a d20 call of Cthulhu, with some house rules to make things easier.  

now i just have to throw together some adventures and im ready to go.  

Im setting the game in Boston at the moment, 1921.  I think the first adventure will have the gang hunting ghosts from the 1872 boston fire. Having it turn out to be rum runners scareing people away from their opperation.

Adding another system option to the conversation, allow me to point you to NEMESIS.  It uses the One Roll Engine, and has the benefit of being both medium-crunch and fast.  And it's free.

Now, specific system aside, my recommendation is to just find a system that you and your players enjoy and can handle without thinking about it much.  Ideally, the system should fade into the background, because a good Call of Cthulhu game is really about evocative mood.  CoC isn't a monster slaughter-fest -- it's an erosion of one's preconceived world view, of one's certitude.  That's what the Sanity mechanism in Chaosium's game is intended to model.  But you can achieve that same effect through mood and player participation...as long as the mechanics don't intrude too much or too often.

!i!