Vaesen vs Call of Cthulhu

The short answer

Pick Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying if you want folklore horror you can reason with. The creatures of the Mythic North are old, rule-bound and often wronged, so a case can end in an agreement rather than a body count. The rules are light and a mystery fits in an evening or two.

Pick Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook if you want the universe to have no opinion about you at all. It is the older, deeper, far better supplied game, with campaigns that eat a year of Fridays. Investigators break down, and that breaking is the point.

What these two games have in common

Both are investigative horror in a historical setting, and both hand you people rather than heroes: a journalist, a doctor, a priest, an academic with a bad conscience. In both, the engine is research. Letters, parish records, a witness who will not talk, a village that closes ranks when you ask the wrong question. Drawing a weapon is almost always the second-best plan.

They ask the same thing of the person running the game: prepare a mystery, not a map. Seed clues, decide what the thing wants, let the players find their route. The horror grows out of understanding, not out of a monster jumping from a cupboard.

Where they really differ

The shape of the horror. Call of Cthulhu was designed by Sandy Petersen and has been published by Chaosium since 1981; the current seventh edition arrived in 2014. It rests on Lovecraft's central idea: the cosmos is vast, indifferent and not aimed at you, and the terrible part is that nothing about your death would mean anything. Vaesen, written by Nils Hintze for Free League and released in 2020, is built on the exact opposite. It grew out of Johan Egerkrans' illustrated books of Scandinavian folklore, and its world is inhabited. A church grim guards a churchyard because someone put it there for that purpose. A mill spirit turns cruel because the new owner drained its stream. The dread is not meaninglessness; it is a nineteenth century of railways and land reform breaking agreements older than any record of them.

How the evening ends. Because a vaesen has reasons, it also has terms. The rulebook is explicit that force alone will not settle things: you find the creature's weakness and its ritual, and then drive it off, bind it, kill it, or come to an arrangement. Some of the best Vaesen sessions end with a promise rather than a fight. In Call of Cthulhu, negotiating with the thing in the cellar is rarely on the menu. You banish it, you outrun it, or you shut the door and live with what you saw.

The dice, and what they cost. Vaesen runs on Free League's Year Zero Engine: four attributes, twelve skills, and a pool of six-sided dice. Every six is a success and one is usually enough. Fail a roll that matters and you may push it once, but pushing costs a Condition. Three physical and three mental Conditions and your character is Broken, which sends you to a critical injury table. Conditions clear with rest, so Vaesen wears you down rather than uses you up. Call of Cthulhu is percentile: roll d100 under your skill, with half that value a Hard success and one fifth Extreme. Then there is Sanity, a number that drains in bites written as 1/1D6, with bouts of madness along the way. The more Mythos knowledge your investigator gathers, the lower their Sanity ceiling drops. Understanding the truth is what costs you.

What the group builds between cases. Vaesen gives you a headquarters. Your investigators inherit Castle Gyllencreutz, seat of a nearly extinct Society, and between mysteries you spend what you earned on rooms, staff, contacts and discoveries, each with its own complications. It gives a run of separate cases a spine. Call of Cthulhu has no equivalent by default, and it is the heavier system besides. None of it is hard, there is simply more of it, and its campaigns are dense enough that most groups prepare between sessions.

The size of the shelf. Here Vaesen loses, and it is worth being honest about it. Call of Cthulhu has roughly half a century of published material, including campaigns like Masks of Nyarlathotep and Horror on the Orient Express that are widely treated as landmarks of the hobby. Vaesen's catalogue is small: a few mystery collections and a handful of setting expansions. If you want years of prepared play handed to you, one of these is ready and the other asks you to write it yourself.

What it feels like at the table

A Vaesen evening tightens slowly. You arrive at a farm in late autumn, the family is polite and unhelpful, and the child who saw something will only speak to one of you. Someone pushes a roll to keep searching in the dark and picks up a Condition. Then the answer arrives, sad rather than shocking: the thing in the woods was here first, something was taken from it, and you must decide whether to destroy it or give it back.

A Call of Cthulhu evening tips. For two hours it is a good detective story: a missing academic, a shipping manifest, a locked room in a private library. Then one player reads the wrong page, makes a Sanity roll, and the tone changes for good. From that moment the game is not about solving anything. It is about how much your investigator can carry, and who breaks first.

What you actually need to buy

For Vaesen you need one book. The Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying core rulebook is a full-colour hardcover at 49.95 euro, with character creation, the Mythic North, the vaesen, the headquarters rules and a complete introductory mystery. Free League released a revised printing in 2025 that clarifies the rules and stays compatible with everything earlier. To test the water first, the Vaesen Starter Set at 29.95 euro holds condensed rules, ready-made investigators, dice and an introductory mystery. After that, A Wicked Secret & Other Mysteries at 34.95 euro is the natural next step, and Mythic Britain & Ireland at 45.95 euro moves the game to the British Isles. Both need the core book to play.

For Call of Cthulhu the minimum is the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook at 44.95 euro, with the complete seventh-edition rules, the Mythos bestiary and an introductory adventure. The Investigator Handbook at 39.95 euro is optional and aimed at players; add it once your group knows it wants a campaign. To buy everything at once, the Call of Cthulhu 50th Anniversary Slipcase at 109.95 euro collects the Keeper Rulebook, the Investigator Handbook and the Keeper Screen Pack, with new cover art by Ola Larsson for Chaosium's fiftieth year.

Choose Vaesen if ... / Choose Call of Cthulhu if ...

Choose Vaesen if you want horror your players can bargain with, and endings that are melancholy rather than grim. Choose it if your group meets irregularly and needs mysteries that resolve in one or two sessions. Choose it if you are running horror for the first time and want rules you can hold in your head. Choose it if your table likes a home base to improve. And choose it if the folklore is the draw: trolls, church grims, myling and näcken rather than tentacles.

Choose Call of Cthulhu if you want horror that is genuinely hopeless, with a mechanic that makes the hopelessness stick to the character sheet. Choose it if you want a long campaign that is already written and tested. Choose it if your group enjoys a crunchier system with occupations, chases and tactical decisions in a fight you should not be having. And choose it if the 1920s and the deepest support library in horror roleplaying are half the appeal.

One caveat. If what you want is Mythos horror with competent, equipped characters who fight back, neither of these is it. That is Delta Green, which takes the same cosmology into the present day and hands you federal agents with clearance, ammunition, and bonds that hurt you through the people you love.

Where to start at Netherbook

For Vaesen, start with the Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying core rulebook, or the Vaesen Starter Set for a boxed introduction. Our Vaesen starter guide walks you through the line, and the Vaesen collection holds the mysteries and setting books.

For Call of Cthulhu, start with the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook. Our Call of Cthulhu starter guide sorts out which of the many books you need, and the Call of Cthulhu collection has the campaigns. Want it all in one box? The Call of Cthulhu 50th Anniversary Slipcase is the handsome answer.