Now I don’t subscribe to all these, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a new edition, and new design team to want to improve the game. Ĝharacter backgrounds, goals and motivations were sparsely drawn out during the generation process, unless players chose to do it themselves.
The rules themselves were functional by design rather than promoting colourful action sequences. The combat system, as a standard BRP model, had a supposed ‘whiff factor’ wherein combats could be drawn out by lots of missed rolls. The investigative nature of the game could (allegedly) run to a halt if players failed in making various skill rolls (spot hidden, search, etc).
There were no official ‘opposed roll’ mechanics, outside of ‘Resistance Table’ for comparing Characteristics only. The Characteristic scores (STRength, CONstitution, SIZe, DEXterity, APPearance, INTelligence, EDUcation, POWer….and nominally SANity although it was just POWx5%) for the core character profile, operated on a different scale to the percentile based Skills that defined what they could do. Why fix things if they aren’t broken? Well, the game has accumulated some criticisms over the years: Complaints of tiny, incremental changes between editions has sometimes been overstated I feel, but generally all editions before 7th have used the same (BRP) system. The game has previously been through six official editions, although the bridge between 5th and 6th especially was somewhat convoluted with anniversary and ‘.5’ editions too.
The appeal of the game may be a subjective, but a large part of it was found in the effective balance it had between accessible rules, the adaptability of the background to nearly any type of historical or future setting (and the original exoticness of the 1920s), the investigative nature of gameplay, the fairly seminal notion of playing vulnerable people with deteriorating sanity, and a plethora of truly weird monsters, which all gave it a unique niche. Indeed, it is one of the few venerable games, over 20 years old or so, that still manages to make the top 10 popularity charts on this site for example. It has won more accolades and awards than I can care to recite and manages to appeal to both young and old gamer audiences alike. It’s hard to overstate the impact and influence that Call of Cthulhu has had on the roleplaying world.
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