Chronicles of Darkness vs Don't Rest Your Head

Compare Chronicles of Darkness and Don't Rest Your Head side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Chronicles of Darkness	Don't Rest Your Head
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Modern
Tags	Atmospheric, Character Building, Character-Driven, Classless, Corruption, Drama, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Improvisation, Investigation, Strong GM Support	Urban Fantasy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Superpowers, Corruption, Resource Management, Weird, Narrative, Character-Driven, Rules-Light, Atmospheric
Core Mechanic	Build a d10 pool from an Attribute plus a Skill and count each 8, 9, or 10 as a success. Tens reroll, five successes are exceptional, and a pool reduced below one die becomes a chance die that succeeds only on a 10.	Players roll their current discipline and exhaustion dice, any permanent madness dice, and up to six optional temporary madness dice against the GM's pain dice. They may voluntarily add one exhaustion die before rolling. Each d6 showing 1–3 is a success, and the protagonist wins ties in total successes. Separately, the pool with the highest die dominates regardless of success; tied pools compare their remaining dice from highest to lowest, with exact ties favoring discipline, then madness, exhaustion, and pain. Discipline dominance can reduce exhaustion or clear a response, exhaustion dominance raises exhaustion, madness dominance triggers a fight or flight response, and pain dominance adds a despair coin to the GM's coffer.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Medium	Low
Accessibility	Medium	High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$	$
Publisher	Onyx Path Publishing	Evil Hat Productions
Year	2015	2006
Languages	English	English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
Best For	Groups who want modern supernatural horror built around investigating mysteries, navigating personal consequences, and confronting threats before they overwhelm an ordinary life.	Groups who want short, personal urban-horror campaigns driven by each protagonist's insomnia, secrets, and goals, with powers that risk exhaustion and psychological breakdown.
Highlights	The investigation system can reveal an Incomplete clue on a failed roll, preventing a mystery from stopping at one check. Conditions, Aspirations, and Beats link consequences and personal goals to character advancement. Horror Anchors create investigative inroads for supernatural threats.	Dominance is decided separately from success, so a protagonist can win a conflict while exhaustion, madness, or pain still exacts a cost. Despair spent to alter dominance becomes shared hope after the conflict, funding recovery or extra successes. The five-question questionnaire structures personal scenes and gives players authority over their opening scene and the resolution of their path.
Considerations	The core contains detailed procedures for combat, chases, investigation, social maneuvering, and supernatural threats, so groups need to decide which rules to emphasize in a campaign. Damage, Integrity breaking points, and Persistent Conditions create lasting consequences. Social Maneuvering includes sexual goals and hard leverage, so players should back away from uncomfortable concepts.	Helping offers limited benefit: assistants contribute only discipline successes, cannot use talents, and remain vulnerable to dominance effects. Injury and equipment have no separate statistics and are handled through conflict outcomes. There is no XP-point or skill-growth system; advancement uses scars for rerolls or consumable transformations, including temporary or permanent talent changes.