Adventures in Middle-earth vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare Adventures in Middle-earth and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Adventures in Middle-earth | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Journey, Corruption, Licensed IP, Low-Fantasy, Lore-Heavy, Social Intrigue, Character Building | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Character-Driven, Resource Management, Superpowers, Social Combat, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Uses the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition engine: roll a d20, add an ability modifier and proficiency, and compare the total to a difficulty number. Advantage and disadvantage, rolling two d20s and keeping the higher or lower, are the main swing on that roll. | Roll attribute plus skill in d10s, counting 6+ as successes against a difficulty. Paired 10s add extra successes. Hunger replaces ordinary dice in most pools: a winning critical containing a Hunger 10 becomes messy, while a failed test containing a Hunger 1 becomes a bestial failure. |
| Dice | d20 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Availability | Out of print | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | OGL 1.0a; Middle-earth Enterprises license | Community Content Agreement for the Storytellers Vault |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Community content program |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Cubicle 7 | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2016 | 2018 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese |
| Best For | Groups who already know 5th Edition D&D and want a low-magic, Tolkien-faithful campaign built around travel, reputation among the Free Peoples, and slow-burn corruption instead of spellcasting and dungeon loot. It suits a long campaign that plays out the Journey and Fellowship Phase cycle across in-game years more than a single one-shot. | Groups who want campaigns about vampire coteries balancing political ambition, predatory hunger, and relationships with the humans they still care about. |
| Highlights | The Journey subsystem resolves overland travel through assigned companion roles and branching event tables, so a trek across Wilderland produces its own hazards and pacing rather than being skipped over. Shadow points replace alignment with a tracked corruption economy that climbs from the Miserable condition to permanent madness, giving each character a mechanical moral pressure tied to their class. Audiences resolve encounters with lords and elders through an eleven-culture attitude chart and an introduction check, so a hero's standing among the Free Peoples is a concrete mechanical fact rather than pure GM judgment. | Using supernatural powers can increase Hunger, making the next hunt harder to postpone. Convictions and human Touchstones make moral compromise carry consequences beyond winning the immediate conflict. Coteries share hunting territories and social assets, giving political ambitions a foothold in the city. |
| Considerations | None of the six classes cast spells, so a group wanting a traditional wizard or cleric has to import one from another 5e game. Combat is essentially unmodified 5th Edition, so groups already tired of standard tactical D&D combat will find the same core fight rules here. Shadow adds a second per-character failure economy alongside hit points, with permanent points that never heal and must be tracked across an entire campaign. | Messy criticals and bestial failures can put predation or compulsions into scenes where players hoped to stay in control. Character creation requires choices across clans, powers, feeding habits, advantages, and human ties. Establishing the chronicle’s relationships and boundaries for mature themes takes group preparation even when using a published city. |