Adventures in Middle-earth vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Compare Adventures in Middle-earth and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Adventures in Middle-earth	Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Genre	Fantasy	Horror, Modern, Fantasy
Tags	Journey, Corruption, Licensed IP, Low-Fantasy, Lore-Heavy, Social Intrigue, Character Building	Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy
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.	Build a d10 dice pool, usually from an Attribute plus a Skill. Each 6 or higher is a success, and meeting the Storyteller-set Difficulty wins. Each pair of 10s counts as four successes. Rage dice replace regular dice up to current Rage and can cause Brutal outcomes.
Dice	d20	d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	High
Accessibility	Very Low	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	OGL 1.0a; Middle-earth Enterprises license	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	Unavailable	$$
Publisher	Cubicle 7	Renegade Game Studios
Year	2016	2023
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese
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 long-form modern horror about shapeshifter packs defending communities from ecological and spiritual threats, with violent power constrained by moral and social consequences.
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.	Brutal outcomes can force destructive failures or add four successes to actions the Storyteller judges can benefit from Rage. Choosing a Garou form changes a character's capabilities, creating tactical and narrative options. Caerns give the pack an improvable spiritual home whose traits connect campaign advancement to territory and community.
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.	A Crinos-form Garou who did not kill in the previous turn must spend Willpower at the start of the next turn or enter frenzy, making the war form difficult to sustain outside violent scenes. Harano and Hauglosk can remove a Garou from play when despair or absolutism fills either track, making moral decline a campaign-level consequence. The game centers mature environmental and spiritual horror, including graphic violence and themes of exploitation and extremism that require deliberate table boundaries.