The reasoning for this was that POW was too powerful, being the basis of Magic Points and Sanity too. This was rejected by play-testers, so it was kept as an optional rule – albeit one the designers think you’ll eventually succumb to….seeing as they kept the pool ladder on the character sheet! It is also now curiously disassociated from the POW score now, being generated separately as 3d6 x5%. There is also a Luck score, which was originally going to be used as a resource pool to influence dice rolls (like Hero points, etc, in other games). These scores determine secondary Ability scores, like HP (SIZE+CON), damage (STR+SIZ) and Sanity (POW), as well as new scores calculated for Build (used in Combat mainly), and MOV (used in Chases – see later). There are several options given for generating these – both random (roll 3d6 x5% or 2d6+6 x5%) and points building.
Three scales, actually – a full 1-100 scale, a Half scale and a 1/5th scale (see the Rules section below) that are all recorded on the character sheet. In visual style alone, it’s a worthwhile book to at least check out.Ĭharacteristic scores and skills are now both recorded on the same scale. Physically, the game is also full colour for the first time (unless you include the d20 Version of the game) – and some of the imagery is truly awesome. More than double the page count for the previous edition. There is some duplication involved in this and, in turn, this has helped expand it out to a whopping 448 pages, along with 265 pages for the Investigators book. It appears as if the original intention was to have Keepers requiring both books, but the decision was made to include character generation rules in the core volume too, so that it would be complete by itself. It mainly acts as a primer for players giving them more character generation options and an introduction into 1920s America. The 7th edition actually promotes itself as two core volumes – an Investigator’s Handbook and a Keeper’s Guide, although the latter is in fact the major core rules book and the former really just an expansion on the older Investigators supplement from 5th edition. 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.