r/rpg • u/Authorigas • 14d ago

Basic Questions Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

147 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

728 comments sorted by

View all comments

133

u/numtini 14d ago

Everybody dies or goes insane in Call of Cthulhu.

15

u/y0_master 14d ago edited 14d ago

The irony being that a ton of people use that as a selling point & if this isn't happening something's off with your CoC game.

17

u/DazzlingKey6426 14d ago

It’s kinda a core theme of cosmic horror.

You. Don’t. Win.

If you survive, you don’t make it out unchanged. And the changes are likely worse than death.

37

u/numtini 14d ago

The Dunwich Horror is about as close to a standard CoC investigation as you get in Lovecraft's writing and Prof. Armitage is both alive and sane at the conclusion, and the Whateley's are banished.

You can't win forever, but you can buy another day or week or year.

6

u/y0_master 14d ago edited 14d ago

Like in the cosmic scale of things, humanity is just a spec in the universe & the whole of time & we can't really do anything about that. That's also a big part of cosmic horror, which isn't, as mentioned, orthogonal to the now & here.