Quote from: PencilBoy99;1031399Are there some house rules that could be applied to 6e to give it some of the cool bits of 7e without turning it into two giant books?

IMO there isn't much, unless you'd never heard of the idea of letting PCs occasionally re-roll skill tests, with added consequences if they fail the second attempt. Like making a driving test to keep up with a suspect, fail and fall behind, try again rushing at top speed to catch up and maybe spin out or go into a ditch if you fail.

I bought all the books for 7e, but having to digest and reference 3 dense tomes to run pulp cthulhu adventures seems like too much for me.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1031465I bought all the books for 7e, but having to digest and reference 3 dense tomes to run pulp cthulhu adventures seems like too much for me.

Well, Chaosium website is still selling pdf of the 6th for under $20--if you can get a refund on your tentacled white elephant that might be the way to go:  https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-6th-edition-pdf/

Again and again the misconception about 7E pops up that it requires two books. The Investigator Handbook is a 7E parallel to the old 1920's Investigator's Companion books available for earlier editions. The core rulebook is still all that is required to play CoC.

While I definitely do not like everything about 7E we must not forget that - while serviceable - 6E was an organisational mess and many of the houserules that had become part of the game as most people played it were either not in the book or offered as an optional addition. Many people were also referring to the BRP rulebook to fill in the blanks. According to many, all 7E needed to be was a cleaned-up version of 6E.

Quote from: 3rik;1031594Again and again the misconception about 7E pops up that it requires two books. The Investigator Handbook is a 7E parallel to the old 1920's Investigator's Companion books available for earlier editions. The core rulebook is still all that is required to play CoC.

After reading the Keeper's book, I agree - it seems the only thing in the Investigator's Handbook not in the Keeper's book are additional occupations. But here's the thing - by putting these into the book players are going to buy only, it creates a strong incentive for the Keeper to buy the book as well. Why would the Keeper not have copies of rules that players will expect to be able to use in their game?

So in the end, players are not incentivized to buy the Keeper's book, but the Keeper is going to end up getting both books. That is a massive increase in end user cost for the Keeper.

Quote from: JeremyR;1031210The thing is though, have they really been putting out great adventures/supplements? They just reprint a lot of stuff.

Well, since the new management, they've released "The Two-Headed Serpent" campaign for Pulp Cthulhu, "Down Darker Trails" (a setting book for playing in the Old West), and "Peterson's Abominations", a collection of adventures written by the creator of the game, Sandy Peterson.  And I think also "Doors to Darkness", a collection of adventures for beginning keepers and players.

I've heard good things about Two-Headed Serpent, although I haven't read it myself.

All their new stuff is really well done, of high production quality.

Quote from: 3rik;1031594Again and again the misconception about 7E pops up that it requires two books. The Investigator Handbook is a 7E parallel to the old 1920's Investigator's Companion books available for earlier editions. The core rulebook is still all that is required to play CoC.

While I definitely do not like everything about 7E we must not forget that - while serviceable - 6E was an organisational mess and many of the houserules that had become part of the game as most people played it were either not in the book or offered as an optional addition. Many people were also referring to the BRP rulebook to fill in the blanks. According to many, all 7E needed to be was a cleaned-up version of 6E.

The origin story I heard for the current 7e is that the authors approached Chaosium with a near complete manuscript at about teh time that a new print run of CoC was needed. So instead of reprinting 6e, or doing a 6e revised Chaosium went with what is now 7e.

I skipped the 7e Kickstarter in favour of Cthulhu Wars and don't regret it.  I have yet to pick up 7e, and may not. I always wrote my own adventures, so I didn't partake much of CoC products beyond the core book and 1920's Investigators Companion.  Didn't see the need.

7e seems a big expense, but I may yet be forced to go there just because it will be the standard going forward. Or I may decide to keep snapping up cheap copies of d20 CoC which is not actually a bad game.

Quote from: DavetheLost;10320577e seems a big expense, but I may yet be forced to go there just because it will be the standard going forward. Or I may decide to keep snapping up cheap copies of d20 CoC which is not actually a bad game.

Eh.  There seems to be a fragmenting across the Cthulhu D100 space.  There's CoC7e, there's Delta Green, there's whatever Cubicle 7 is going to spin up, there's Raiders of R'lhyeh (ha!  I can't spell) and of course the competition provided by the previous editions of Call of Cthulhu, of which there have been a lot of printings.  And then beyond that there's plenty of Lovecraftian rpgs that aren't based on percentiles: d20 CoC, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Hack, Realms of Cthulhu (savage worlds) and Silent Legions.

Heck, I had a cobbled together set of rules I was using with FUDGE for convention games, because making a character with 25 percentile skills can be a pain in the ass when other details can be more important.  At this point, it's more useful to consider a game or a module for the non-game-mechanic ideas and suggestions it provides, rather than the raw crunch, because it's not that hard to convert across.  I was running Horror on the Orient Express for d20 Call of Cthulhu without much trouble at all, for instance.

Most editions of CoC are pretty good. CoC7e, however, is where it jumped the shark.

Anyways, you should go with Raiders of R'lyeh instead!

I've played Call of Cthulhu since the 1st edition (In a box! With illustrations by Gene Day!). I started running a COC campaign soon after Chaosium released 7th edition, so I have a fair amount of experience with it. And I like 7th edition, which I do see as an improvement, not just churn for its own sake.

You don't have to agree. I'm not a fanboy making an argument that 7th edition is objectively better. You might have lots of good reasons to like earlier editions. Here's what works better for me.

The increase in attribute scores (5 X the base roll on 3D6) makes the resolution of many situations easier. I like the "roll to compare levels of success" core mechanic better than the old resistance table of earlier editions.

The two other main differences, pushed rolls and spending luck, work well. The motif of COC was always the opposite of D&D: your character will get more fragile, not stronger, over time. Originally, the main source of fragility was your declining sanity. Now it's your declining luck, too -- and the player is largely responsible for that decline. You don't have to spend luck, but the option is very seductive.

The players are also in control when deciding whether or not to push a roll. Sure, you could do it, but the consequences of failing twice will be very bad.

The rulebooks are well-organized and well-indexed. I've had trouble finding an important rule only once. I've had trouble finding one less important rule, too, concerning whether anything special happens when an Investigator has an Extreme success when trying to learn a spell, or casting it the first time. I wish there were a slightly more comprehensive, consolidated reference to situations like this, but the flowcharts summarizing sanity loss, combat, and magic are still pretty good.

Conversion from earlier editions isn't a problem. My group is in the early chapters of the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign, which means that I'm relying on a lot of material developed for earlier editions, including both the official campaign and the recently-published Companion. I don't have problems handling conversions, either before the session, or frequently on the fly.

I do mind a little that the Investigator's Guide has character generation information not included in the Keeper's book. However, I do like that there's a less expensive book that players can buy that doesn't include everything they shouldn't see. The split between the two books isn't perfect, but it's acceptable.

If you've never played COC before, you should be fine starting with 7th edition. If you're used to earlier editions, you might like it, or you might be perfectly happy with what you have.

I've been playing CoC 7th ed in an intermittent campaign.
It's a lot of fun, but I hardly notice the mechanics of the game.
It's almost all RP with the GM asking for an occasional dice roll for something.
The skills list helps define the RP aspect of the character really.

Still, it feels the same as earlier versions of CoC to me. Even though the skill crit values have  changed a bit and percentile stats.

I haven't bought it though. the rules are REALLY expensive, even for just a PDF and tbh, as a player I don't really need them.

I picked up 7th edition and while no single change seemed egregious, all together it added up to "just different enough" to be really confusing for our group of 1st-5th edition players. So I bought Delta Green and will probably run that instead.

I ran using the 7th ed playtest rules for a short campaign.

I don't remember the details of it, but roughly, I thought it was OK but not great. I found it debatable whether it was an improvement. To be fair, though, those were the playtest rules.

RPPR has a 7th Ed actual play if anyone is interested.