Blades in the Dark vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Compare Blades in the Dark and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Blades in the Dark	Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Genre	Fantasy	Horror, Modern, Fantasy
Tags	Heist, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Dark Fantasy, Collaborative, CC-Licensed Rules	Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Combat-Heavy, Corruption, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy
Core Mechanic	Roll a pool of d6s equal to your action rating; keep the highest. 1–3 is a bad outcome, 4–5 is a partial success with consequences, 6 is a full success, and multiple 6s are a critical with additional advantage. Before rolling, the GM sets position (controlled, risky, or desperate) and effect level, which determine the severity of consequences and the impact of success. Players can spend stress to resist consequences or trigger flashbacks to retroactively establish preparation.	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. Pairs of 10s add successes. Rage dice replace regular dice up to current Rage and can cause Brutal outcomes.
Dice	d6 dice pool	d10 dice pool
Complexity	Low	High
Accessibility	Very High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	CC BY 3.0	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	Free	$$
Publisher	Evil Hat Productions	Renegade Game Studios
Year	2017	2023
Best For	Groups who want structured criminal heists with shared narrative authority, where the crew's reputation and entanglements matter as much as individual characters.	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	Flashback system lets players establish preparations retroactively instead of planning before a score. Position and effect framework gives the GM a structured way to set stakes on every roll. Detailed faction game tracks rival gangs, noble families, and institutions with their own agendas and territory.	Rage dice make supernatural power volatile because Brutal results can redirect failed actions into destruction or magnify successful violence. 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	Stress is the currency for flashbacks, resistance rolls, and special abilities, so characters who use these tools heavily accumulate trauma faster. The faction tracking layer between sessions requires more GM bookkeeping than the score phase itself. Downtime phase has several interlocking subsystems (payoff, heat, entanglements, vice, projects) that take time to internalize.	After a turn without a kill, Crinos requires Willpower each turn or frenzy follows, 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.