Chronicles of Darkness vs Eat the Reich
Compare Chronicles of Darkness and Eat the Reich side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Chronicles of Darkness | Eat the Reich | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Historical, Horror |
| Tags | Atmospheric, Character Building, Character-Driven, Classless, Corruption, Drama, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Improvisation, Investigation, Strong GM Support | Pulp Action, Combat-Heavy, High-Power, One-Shot Friendly, Mission-Based, Playbook-Driven, Rules-Light |
| 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. | Roll a pool of d6s equal to your stat plus one die per piece of equipment or ability you activate; discard any die showing 3 or less, count 4–5 as a success, and 6 as a critical. The GM builds a separate Attack pool equal to the engaged Threat's rating and rolls it. You then allocate each remaining die to one of five slots, narrating one scene detail per die as you place it: advance an Objective, eliminate a Threat, defend against the GM's Attack dice, feed for Blood, or trigger a SPECIAL (criticals only). Any GM Attack dice you don't cancel with defence dice inflict Injuries. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Rowan, Rook and Decard |
| Year | 2015 | 2023 |
| Languages | English | English, Italian |
| 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 a self-contained, ultraviolent anti-fascist action romp playable in two or three short sessions with pregenerated characters and zero campaign overhead. |
| 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. | Every die spent on attack is a die not spent defending or feeding for Blood, so each turn forces an explicit tradeoff between killing nazis, staying alive, and refueling the abilities that make you dangerous. Reinforcement rules ratchet pressure up each round (defeated Threats roll d6 to restore rating and every active Threat's Attack rating ticks up by one), so lingering in a scene gets steadily more lethal. Six pregenerated vampires with fixed mechanics but explicitly malleable backgrounds let the table skip session zero entirely and be drop-coffin-deployed into Paris within minutes of opening the book. |
| 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. | Built around a single fixed scenario (the assault on Hitler's Paris stronghold) with no support for other premises, settings, or open-ended campaign play. Character creation is reskin or hack-from-the-pregens only; the book offers no point-buy or formal chargen system. Splatter-violence tone and nazi subject matter are confrontational by design; the rulebook opens with content warnings, lines-and-veils guidance, and an evil-calibration checklist the table is expected to work through before play. |