Call of Cthulhu vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Compare Call of Cthulhu and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Call of Cthulhu	Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Modern, Fantasy
Tags	Investigation, Deadly, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Roleplay-Heavy, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Corruption, Skill-Based	Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Combat-Heavy, Corruption, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy
Core Mechanic	Roll d100 equal to or under your skill percentage. Success tiers at half (Hard) and one-fifth (Extreme) of the skill value. Bonus and penalty dice adjust the tens digit. Failed rolls can be pushed for a second attempt at greater risk.	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	d100	d10 dice pool
Complexity	Medium	High
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	Chaosium Fan Material Policy	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	$$	$$
Publisher	Chaosium	Renegade Game Studios
Year	2014	2023
Best For	Investigation-driven horror where combat is deadly and sanity is fragile. Great for one-shots.	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	Tracking Sanity as a depletable score ties mental erosion to the fiction, so confronting cosmic horror mechanically wears characters down. The percentile skills resolve on a d100 roll-under, with Hard and Extreme bands at half and one-fifth of the rating. Bouts of Madness convert failed Sanity checks into temporary phobias, manias, or loss of character control.	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	The chase rules add a detailed positioning subsystem whose complexity outweighs how often it sees use. Character creation allocates points across a long list of skills, a slow first step for new players. In long campaigns the sanity spiral can strip a character of player control as madness accumulates.	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.