This is high praise for Graham’s work, which makes me happy.

I still have hope and fondness for CoC, though. I feel like the games of it I played in college were very much the railroad (duh, it was the early ‘90s) + descent you describe here. Which of course begs the question of why have percentile skills and gun damage dice and whatnot — which is totally legit. Maybe I’m just a victim of nostalgia.