Band of Blades vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare Band of Blades and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Band of Blades | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Narrative, Fiction-First, Playbook-Driven, Dark Fantasy, Grimdark, Horror, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Combat-Heavy, Deadly, Survival, Tactical, Resource Management, GM-Friendly | Social Intrigue, Drama, Roleplay-Heavy, Atmospheric, Faction Play, Investigation, Collaborative, Character-Driven, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Lore-Heavy, Noir |
| Core Mechanic | Forged in the Dark — roll a d6 dice pool equal to your action rating and read the highest die: 6 is a full success, 4–5 is a partial success with consequences, 1–3 is a bad outcome. Position (controlled, risky, desperate) sets the stakes, and players spend stress to resist consequences. Play alternates between a mission phase (specialists and rank-and-file Legionnaires execute one primary and one secondary mission) and a campaign phase, where each player runs a permanent Legion Role — Commander, Marshal, Quartermaster, Spymaster, or Lorekeeper — making strategic decisions about routes, supply, intel, and personnel as the army retreats toward Skydagger Keep. | Roll a pool of d10s (attribute + skill), count successes (6+). Hunger dice replace regular dice in the pool — their 10s trigger Messy Criticals and their 1s trigger Bestial Failures, making the Beast an ever-present threat. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | Forged in the Dark | Proprietary |
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions / Off Guard Games | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2019 | 2018 |
| Best For | Groups who want a campaign-length military fantasy where the Legion as a whole is the protagonist — character death is expected, players cycle through different soldiers each mission, and strategic decisions about routes, supply, and intel are split across the table rather than held by the GM. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Players rotate through Specialist, Soldier, and Rookie playbooks across missions rather than playing fixed characters, so attrition lands without ending personal arcs — the Legion endures even when individual soldiers fall. Each player also holds a permanent Legion Role that drives the campaign phase, splitting army-management decisions across the table instead of leaving them with the GM. Time and Pressure clocks turn the campaign into a race against the Cinder King — advancing toward Skydagger Keep burns time, but lingering builds undead pressure that escalates the difficulty and lethality of future missions. | Hunger system mechanically integrates the vampire's predatory nature into every dice roll. Detailed social and political frameworks with clan-based faction play. Humanity and Stains system tracks moral erosion with narrative consequences. |
| Considerations | The campaign phase (mission generation, spy deployments, supply, advance roll, Lorekeeper annals) takes substantial time between missions and only works if every player engages with their Role. Building a deep personal arc for a single Legionnaire is structurally difficult because characters rotate between missions — emotional investment lives with the Legion rather than any one soldier. The campaign is built around a single fixed arc ending at Skydagger Keep, with a defined map, locations, and Chosen/Broken roster — there is no open-ended sandbox mode, and a full campaign runs 12–20 sessions. | Hunger dice introduce high randomness at critical moments, dense lore spanning 30+ years can overwhelm new players, predator type and clan choice during character creation require setting knowledge to make informed decisions |