The problem is one of expectation.
Coc characters are not supposed to be 'heroes they are supposed to be investigators. Reporters, professors, students, jazz singers, actors, doctors etc normal folk plunged into extraordinary circumstance. They should be as used to and as skilled at combat as well professors, students jazz singers etc...
How many times have you seen a PC turn up with a history professor who has 25 in history 80 in rifle, and 60 in punching.... if you preload the expectations of the game with combat then your PC's are all exsoldiers, private detectives, cops, big game hunters etc etc. One or two of those guys is fine but a party of them and you are playing mercenaries spies and private eyes or Daredevils. There are already games that do 1920s pulp heroes and some of them are excellent why do that with CoC?

I once had a PI who punched out Nyarlothep. Of course, the PI died horribly.

Or did you mean successful combat? That's just silly. Excluding unsuccessful combat takes out most of D&D, too. Roleplaying games are all about futile fights where you're hoping to get lucky!

Quote from: Omega;804485For a more emulative Lovecraftian jaunt. It fits. Long as you dont meet any cultists. Wonder how it handles those? Do they count as monsters and thus unbeatable? Or are they beatable but via some non-combat resolution?

Interesting if your leanings are to the non-com side.

I don't know. Lovecraft has written some more pulpy stories, in which the big bad monsters are defeated by more or less ordinary men; Cthulhu himself losing that headbutting contest with a steamboat and all that.
I don't think that "failure is the only option" makes a good game. There should always be a tiny chance to succeed, even if it is highly unlikely, to contribute to the players' motivations. Some people win lotteries. Some people manage to  fight off a Shoggoth with nothing but a machete.

In the original story, you can ram Cthulhu in the face with a small ship and get away long enough to write it up in your journal.

Granted, Cthulhu just woke up so he may have been a bit groggy.

The question is perhaps related to a division going back to the game's development. I gather that Sandy was intent upon a Lovecraft-horror game, and would have made it grimmer; while the Chaosium folks were more interested in Roaring '20s adventures (gangsters and their gunnery being a significant part of that).

In at least one edition, the view was expressed that reliance on gadgets and stats easily goes too far and detracts from interesting choices and character development. In some games, there is not much else on offer; but CoC by design is primarily a game of 'investigators' (the standard term for pcs) and grapplers with threats to sanity (which gets really fun when the Sanity checks fail).

I think many of us like to play up what makes each game distinctive - as for instance the element of exploration in D&D. It's the variation in emphasis that gives reason for having a collection of games rather than just one.

Quote from: Beagle;804549Cthulhu himself losing that headbutting contest with a steamboat and all that.

Man wakes up with a flea in his bed, chases it off, goes back to sleep. Did the flea try to bite him? He didn't notice if it did.

QuoteI don't think that "failure is the only option" makes a good game. There should always be a tiny chance to succeed, even if it is highly unlikely, to contribute to the players' motivations.

I think the atmosphere of inevitable doom is important to the flavor of CoC... but staving off that fate for a while can be a decent victory.
Also, I think that 'Save the Earth' type scenarios should be relatively rare compared to smaller threats that only save a life or two... or maybe just steal some Mythos artifact away from inept/corrupt owners. Lots of successes can be had at that level without having them feel implausible in the larger scheme.

Answering to Pundit's question:

Usually it's up to the players. Also, it tends to depend on the campaign. I am running an intermittent game set around Innsmouth, and combat is rare, and non-lethal, usually (this will change when the raid comes, of course). In Horror at the Orient Express there is not a lot of combat.

Masks of Nyarlathotep or Shadows of Yog-Sothoth lend itselves to quite more combat. Either way is perfectly valid, and lovecraftian, IMO.

It really depends on the game we're in the mood to play, I guess, but I'll add an adage that I consider CoC a horror game, not a pulp game. We've had great fun playing out the Dying of St Margarete from ToC - where there is no combat, unless players start picking up fights with gardeners I guess, as well as seen scared players on intense scenes of being chased by Byakhees. Since scaring the players is paramount to me (as long as they desire to be scared, of course), I tend to wrap the combats in such a way that they are tense, short, and well, obviously, scary. Which is a bit of a pickle, as I've seen combats made scary by rolls of dice, or destroyed by rolls of dice, so a lot as well depends on the scenario and mood of circumstances.

Sometimes it's better to unleash a creepy Alien - like monster that'll just drag their victims away horribly without rolling for much (save an escape roll), and sometimes it's better to flash out those dices and have a tense shootout against chasing Byakhees as they try to rip off the roof from your car, and then, your arms.

In my group of players (it's been a while since the last time I GMed the game) there always are characters that have fighting skills, but just in case. Fights in CoC are (nicely) unpredictable and scary, and getting into a fight is always a bad idea. This doesn't mean that we only play academics and socialites; I've recently lost a totally action-focused character that was a world-class mountaineer, and had gone and come back from beyond the Mountains of Madness. Had he been more combat-oriented, he would probably have lived a shorter (and less horror-filled ) life.

I've only played Call of Cthulhu once, but the characters in that game did come to blows with a couple of ghouls and some cultists.
I played a film student who got skewered by a ghoul early on but somehow survived and recovered, then later helped to disrupt a ritual to summon star-spawn. It's been a while, but I believe my character tried to pummel a ghoul with his fists at the end there. I don't know how my guy survived. I think somebody shot the ghoul with a gun.

I like the idea of combat in CoC. I like the idea of having the odds stacked against the player characters but with just enough cosmic indifference in their favor that its possible to kill up a mythos-beast.
I just didn't like the 'whiff-factor'. To much dice rolling. Not enough rolls actually doing anything.

In my games it is indeed up to the players; but I make sure to do nothing to stop them.