Batman Role-Playing Game vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare Batman Role-Playing Game and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Batman Role-Playing Game | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Superhero, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Licensed IP, Heroic, Investigation, Crunchy, Tactical, Character Building, Martial Arts, High-Power, Strong GM Support, Beginner-Friendly | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Investigation, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Abilities and quantities such as weight, distance, and time are rated in Attribute Points (APs), a scale on which each AP doubles the last. A Dice Action rolls 2d10 against a Success Number found by crossing the Acting Value with the Opposing Value on the Action Table. Doubles add and may roll again, while double 1s always fail. When a roll of 11 or more beats the Success Number, it earns a Column Shift for each entry counted rightward past the Success Number that is at least 11 and no higher than the roll. The Effect Value is then crossed with the Resistance Value on the Result Table, moved left by the Column Shifts, to give Result APs (RAPs) of damage or effect. Before the roll, both sides may bid Hero Points, each adding 1 AP to one value without more than doubling it. | 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 | 2d10 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Accessibility | Very Low | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Unavailable | $$ |
| Publisher | Mayfair Games Inc. | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 1989 | 2018 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want to play the Batman, his allies, or original Gotham heroes in detective and street-crime adventures against his rogues gallery. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Hero Points serve as both the bonus for rolls and the currency for advancement, so every point spent to win a scene is a point not banked toward growth. Starting Killing Combat forfeits all of a hero's Hero Point awards for the adventure, building the Batman's code against killing into the reward system. Interrogation and Clue Analysis turn Result APs into graded information, so a stronger roll reveals more of what a suspect or clue can tell. | Hunger system mechanically integrates the vampire's predatory nature into every dice roll. Clan membership and sect politics structure who a character allies with and opposes, giving the social game mechanical weight. Humanity and Stains system tracks moral erosion with narrative consequences. |
| Considerations | A Dice Action reads its Success Number from the Action Table and, only when the roll succeeds, takes a second lookup on the Result Table for its effect, so each successful attack or other rolled action needs two table references. Designing a Gadget runs a multi-step Hero Point cost formula with Reliability Number modifiers, Drawback discounts, and a final halving. Only one player can be the Batman, so everyone else plays another listed hero or one built with the creation rules. | Hunger dice inject swingy results at the worst moments, since a Bestial Failure can surface on a critical roll. Play leans heavily on social and political maneuvering, so groups expecting frequent combat will find that side of the system thin. Choosing a clan and predator type at creation assumes setting knowledge the player may not have yet. |