Ten tips to improve your Call of Cthulhu games

I know I can be a bit long-winded. This is a shorter post with 10 practical tips. These are all taken from running thousands of sessions of Call of Cthulhu over decades. They work extremely well for me. I hope they work for you too, make your games more immersive, dramatic, and suspenseful.

1. Roll for Sanity Before Describing the Horror 

Want to instantly add anticipation and dread? Call for the Sanity roll before describing what triggered the Sanity roll.

It works because:  

• You build suspense before the reveal. Players know something horrific is coming, but not what.  
• You deal with the mechanics before the reveal. Players can focus on the fiction after we are done with the mechanics.
• You can tailor your description of the horror to match the result of the roll.  

Bonus Tip: if all the investigators who witnessed a horror have a bout of madness, you may decide not to describe it at all, just state the investigators have a bout of amnesia, and don't remember what they saw. You can even have them later experience short flashbacks or dreams that suggest what they saw.

2. Keep Bouts of Madness short in Action Scenes

Sanity loss often results in bouts of madness, but in action-heavy scenes—like combat or frantic chases—long bouts of madness can take a player out of the action. The standard number of rounds a bout of madness can last is a 1d10. This steals agency from the player for too much time. And a Call of Cthulhu combat rarely lasts more than 3-4 turns.

Instead, keep bouts of madness short and intense during action scenes.  My recommendation is 1D3 rounds.  If you want, you can have an extended bout of madness happen after the action is over.

3. Simplify Bouts of Madness options: Fight, Flight, or Freeze 

This one is stolen from Delta Green and Vaesen. I use it especially in combat.

Instead of rolling on the bout of madness table , simplify it to three options (roll for or choose):

• Fight – The investigator attacks either in desperation or in fury. 
• Flight – The investigator tries to escape.  
• Freeze – The investigator shuts down in terror.  

You then ask the player to fill in the details. By fighting, an investigator can either do something useful, like punching a cultist, or completely useless, like trying to attack Great Cthulhu with a stick. Running away may be a simple panic manoeuvre, or rationalised as a tactical retreat. If the investigator freezes, the player can decide how they freeze — collapse, start laughing hysterically, cry, scream, vomit, or play dead (for instance).  

This preserves drama while allowing players to express their investigator's character. 

4. Make Investigators More Resilient in Long Campaigns

One-shots work fine with high-lethality mechanics, but in longer campaigns, characters need more resilience to maintain continuity and allow them to develop complex personal stakes.

One way to achieve this is using a low-pulp version of the Pulp Cthulhu rules.

My own "Masks of Nyarlathotep" protocol was to:

• allow two Pulp abilities per character;
• boost character's starting POW (and SAN) by +20%;
• allow increased Luck regeneration using the Pulp rule (2d10+10/1d10+5) per session; 
• gain sanity by killing Mythos creatures (equal to sanity loss, once per creature type);
• allow each investigator to use the pulp Luck spend "Avoid certain death" once per campaign (pay all Luck, minimum 30%, to avoid certain death).

The game will still be tense and death will still lurk around the corner, but you are much more likely to have at least one character stay alive through the whole campaign.

5. Improve Chase Scenes (Not using 7e Chase Rules)

The 7th edition chase rules are slow, and occasionally lead to counter-intuitive outcomes. This kills the tension of a good horror chase.  

I use a simplified chase system, inspired by other rpgs. I am not great at describing mechanics, so this will sound more complex than it is.

1. Set a starting position. By default, make it one or two steps between pursuer and pursued. If there are several participants, they can be at different distances. Set the position of the furthest pursued character at the highest step, and of the most delayed pursuer at 0. Record the initial position of each character.
2. Play in rounds, like combat, with same DEX order (this allows you to transition from combat to chase and chase to combat seamlessly);
3. For each position, define the terrain. The more interesting terrains will have several options on how to get through.
• Example: On a narrow, busy street, with street vendors in wooden stands, the available options are to: squeeze your way through (DEX or Dodge roll), force your way through (STR or Fighting(Brawl) roll), climb up to the stands and jump from stand to stand (Jump or Climb roll).
• Example: on a large, empty street, only CON is of importance, make a CON roll.
4. Each character takes a turn
1. during their turn, characters can move by making a skill/characteristic roll depending on the chosen movement option; for a normal success, add 1 to the position of the character, add 2 for a hard success, add 3 for an extreme success. A botch means the character cannot move in the next round.
2. instead of moving, a character can take another combat action including an attack with the following restrictions:
• ranged attacks are possible against any character at the distance of one step or less.
• melee attacks are possible agains characters at the same step . The defending character can dodge or fight back.
• fleeing characters can try to hide (Stealth roll) to either escape the pursuit or ambush the pursuer. The difficulty of the Stealth roll should take into account whether the pursuer has a good line of sight (more difficult) and wether there are good hiding places (easier), and the pursuer has a chance to spot the hiding character (Spot Hidden roll), when they pass the same location.
5. If at any time there is a distance of more than 5 steps between two characters, the one behind cannot follow the one ahead. If a fleeing character cannot be followed by any body, they have escaped the chase.

6. Let villains seem to act at 0 HP

If a major villain reaches 0 HP, you don’t need to just make them drop immediately. 

Instead you can:

• Describe the result of the fatal attack as if it didn’t work —the villain grins, laughs, or whispers something chilling after being shot at; 
• The villain then gets their attack round, as if they were still in play;
• As they are about to attack one of the investigators with a murderous strike, they stumble and fall to the ground.

This can makes the moment much more dramatic. Players often hold their breath, unsure if the enemy is really dead. Obviously, you cannot use this trick too often, or it will become predictable. Better to use when an opposing investigator is expecting to die if hit again.

Bonus Tip: Villains Can Fake Their Deaths 

Some enemies can hit the ground before they are at 0 hp. They can then rise to attack by surprise (or run away) when the investigators think they have already cleared the room. Also to be used sparingly.

7. Use Doodles Instead of Tactical Maps

Cthulhu isn't a tactical RPG. Exact overhead maps with grids tend to focus players on tactics, turning combat into a chess match where investigators are pawns. This undermines the emotional immediacy.

Provide players with a rough, quickly scribbled diagram that conveys the basic layout of the battlefield and the positions of the combatants. This approach shifts focus away from exact measurements and tactical optimisation, encouraging players to think from their character’s perspective. 

8. Describe the Action from the Character’s POV  

You can heighten immersion and drama in combat through how you describe the scene.

At the start of an investigator's turn, describe the situation from their point of view. Paint a vivid, short, and functional picture of what they sees:

"The cultist facing you is ready to attack with his knife. On your right, some ten meters away, the monstrosity is slowly moving towards you. On your left is Sandra, who just shot her revolver at the creature, and is swearing while recharging."

9. Keep Combat Fluid and avoid "into combat" transition

It is a terrific thing that in Call of Cthulhu you can determine initiative order without rolling dice. Because of this, you can also enter combat seamlessly, without the call for "rolling initiative" that is so common on other rpgs. I keep track of the DEX of each investigator. When the first attack of a combat happens, I can call the investigators in the turn order to ask them what they want to do, fluidly getting into combat without a hard transition.

10. Build Tension by Cutting Between Investigators

When investigators split up, switch focus between them at the most suspenseful moments to build tension.  

• Cut just before something exciting (or horrible) is about to happen, leaving a cliffhanger.  
• Swap between groups often, so that everyone stays engaged.  
• Use timing to maximise suspense —right when they open the door, or as they hear a whisper behind them.  

Remember that the cuts do not have to respect any precise relative timing between investigator actions, as long as they are in separate locations. So, for instance, while an investigator is going from house to house interviewing the neighbours of a victim, you can have another investigator in the middle of a round-by-round combat. While visiting each neighbour may take 20 mins and two rounds of combat 10 seconds, you can still alternate between the two. You can also use this flexibility to delay revelations on one scene that may affect the other.

Please have a look at my three-hour Call of Cthulhu scenario Kane’s Tone!!! It is straightforward to run, tense, and exciting. 

Available on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/pr