CAIN vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare CAIN and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| CAIN | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Anime, Character-Driven, Corruption, Deadly, Fiction-First, Investigation, Mission-Based, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Theater of the Mind | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Investigation, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s from a skill rated 0–3 plus up to +3D of ordinary advantages; each 4+ is a success, and one success achieves the goal. The Admin judges difficulty and risk separately, so a roll can be both hard and risky. A hard roll scores successes only on 6s. A risky roll adds the Admin's risk die, which sets how much better or worse the outcome goes. A straight roll omits that die. Complex tasks use talismans, segmented trackers that take one slash per success. | 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 | Medium | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Creator-published permission for original supplementary content | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | CHASM | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2024 | 2018 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want short monster-of-the-week campaigns where uncovering a sin's traumas makes the final confrontation easier. It suits tables ready to handle abuse, self-harm, and trauma themes with characters treated as expendable weapons. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Each trauma question answered during investigation can be invoked once in the final fight to reduce stress and slash the sin's execution talisman. Exorcists can pay for powers with 1d3 sin instead of scarce psyche bursts, a shortcut that builds toward overflow, mutation, or becoming an enemy Imago. Every rest raises pressure, and each pressure tick lengthens the sin's execution talisman, making recovery a direct trade against the final fight. | 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 | Investigations engage with abuse, self-harm, trauma, and mental health crises, so the book directs the Admin to discuss intentions and boundaries with players beforehand. Harm taken with three injuries, or 7 or more stress from one event after reductions, causes instant death unless the exorcist defies fate and suffers sin overflow instead. The author expects campaigns of about ten sessions or fewer, and Category advancement reaches its normal cap after seven missions survived. | 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. |