Battle of the Cthulhus: Trail vs Call

 I am quite fond of Trail of Cthulhu. As a system, it leans more toward a narrative-based game than Call of Cthulhu, placing more emphasis on crafting the right story "beats" rather than focusing on how actions with unknown outcomes are resolved. While I will not go into a detailed examination of the system — given that numerous posts and articles already do so — I want to  highlight a few advantages and disadvantages of Trail over Call of Cthulhu.

From my perspective, the primary advantages of Trail over Call include:

• Faster action resolution: Many actions can be resolved by simply possessing or not possessing the relevant ability. This generally makes task resolution faster, which is particularly noticeable in one-shot scenarios.
• A streamlined character creation process: The 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu has introduced a rather intricate and time-consuming character generation procedure (unless you employ the Quick Fire method, which I strongly recommend). In contrast, Trail merely describes characters by a list of abilities and a corresponding rating for each ability. There are no derived stats — or rather, there is one: the Hit Threshold, but that's all.
• Clearly organized, easy-to-read scenarios: Although this isn't strictly an advantage of the system itself, the system's focus on "core clues" leads to scenarios being designed with a scene-based structure and a list of clues in each scene that link to other scenes. This fits well with investigative scenarios — and based on my experience with Night's Black Agents, a variation of the system used in a technothriller game of spies versus vampires, it works quite well for more action-oriented scenarios too.
• Easier for less experienced game masters: Those who aren't comfortable with improvising clues may find the game easier to manage because characters with the right skills will automatically find core clues. While nothing in Call of Cthulhu expressly prevents a game master from automatically providing essential clues without a skill check, Trail formalizes this approach as a central part of the system.

However, there are also aspects of Trail that I find less appealing than Call:

• Few combat options. Without creativity of the GM to interpret the action declarations of the players into ability check bonuses and penalties, the combat system defaults to turn-based I-attack-you-attack, until one of the sides runs out of hit points (or Health, as it is called in Trail).
• Combat can feel strangely non-lethal. All weapons seem to be peculiarly underpowered. 
• As scenarios progress, characters become incrementally less efficient at performing tasks Due to the system's more narrative direction, characters start with an abundance of health points and abilities, which makes early combats easy. However, as the scenario progresses, these resources are spent, leaving characters more vulnerable and less competent in combat towards the end of the story.
• Players always knowing that they're on the right track can be detrimental to horror. The automatic acquisition of core clues by investigators often results in players missing out on the suspense and tension from not knowing whether a vital clue was overlooked, and the potential danger that might result from it.
• In general, there are fewer unexpected situations: since many successes are either automatic or can be bought with ability points, and there is no system for critical success or failure, the flow of the scenarios is more predictable. (Although this also makes games faster and eases the work of the GM).
• Some players simply don't like Trail. I've experienced this first-hand. Occasionally, I'll encounter a player in a session who entirely rejects the basic principles of the system. This seems to occur more frequently with Trail and other Gumshoe games than with other RPG systems.

In summary, the advantages and disadvantages of Trail over Call make it better suited to mystery scenarios and less adept at pure horror.

I want to clarify this point: Although mystery and horror scenarios share many structural similarities, they diverge fundamentally in their objectives. A mystery scenario aims to challenge the players to solve a mystery, while a horror scenario seeks to instill anticipation, fear, and anxiety. Often, the creation of a mystery surrounding horrifying revelations leads to a deliberate, escalating tension as clues are uncovered which is conducive to horror. But still the two genres have distinct goals, and the differences between Call and Trail show where they part ways.

That said, some of the issues I found with Trail are easy to fix. You can borrow combat options from Night's Black Agents, or create your own easily. You can increase weapon lethality by adding a +2 to all damage, and introduce critical successes and failures. In fact, I have done all of this, and from the discussions I had, others have done the same.

And overall, with or without changes, it is a great game. I do tend to run Call of Cthulhu more often these days (and Delta Green), but I spent several years running Trail almost exclusively. I think the best about Trail is that it has excellent scenarios. And I will write about that soon.

By the way, my scenario Bad Tidings was firstly written as a Trail of Cthulhu scenario, as you can still recognise in the scene-based structure. If you are interested in running it in Trail, please let me know. I can help you with the conversion.

You can find Bad Tidings at Drivethrurpg: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/435737/Bad-Tidings?affiliate_id=206726