Chronicles of Darkness vs R'lyehwatch

Compare Chronicles of Darkness and R'lyehwatch side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Chronicles of Darkness	R'lyehwatch
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Modern
Tags	Atmospheric, Character Building, Character-Driven, Classless, Corruption, Drama, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Improvisation, Investigation, Strong GM Support	Rules-Light, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, Short Sessions, Player-Only Rolls, Weird
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 a pool of 1–3 d6s against a target difficulty (4 for easy, 5 for average, 6 for hard). Every challenge starts with 1 die: add a second if the challenge matches the character's stat (Agile, Brawny, or Crafty), and a third if their role applies (The Veteran, Rookie, Medic, Gizmo, Detective, or Weirdo). Success means at least one die meets or beats the difficulty. Players spend luck tokens to invoke a perk and lower the difficulty by 1, and recover luck by letting their quirk cause a problem (raising the difficulty by 1). Grit tokens absorb failure consequences; a character who runs out of grit is removed from the scene. The referee never rolls dice during a challenge: they choose the stat and difficulty, then narrate the outcome. Extended challenges (chases, fights, infiltration) deplete a shared pool of effort tokens, one per success.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Medium	Very Low
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Low
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary; third-party license and SRD permit derivative works
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	Hedgemaze Press / Third Chair Games
Year	2015	2023
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 quick, comedic cosmic-horror RPG that pairs Baywatch-style melodrama with the Cthulhu Mythos. Tuned for pickup play and 2-4 hour sessions, with three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) that retune lethality without changing the core rules.
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.	Three difficulty targets and a 1–3 d6 dice pool make up the entire resolution system. Three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) adjust grit recovery rate, retuning the same rules from sitcom-style play to deadly survival horror without changing any mechanics. All heroes share a universal Slow Motion quirk: narrating a slow-motion moment recovers a luck token but raises the current challenge's difficulty. Adventure generator combines random Objective, Location, and Complication tables for pickup scenarios; also includes an Elder Gods & Cults table, a Monster Maker, and a mapped Sunset Hills setting.
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.	Mechanically minimal: no advancement track beyond optional luck and grit cap increases, no gear lists, no tactical combat structure. Pacing assumes 2–4 hour sessions rather than multi-arc campaigns. Setting is anchored to Sunset Hills, California; running the game elsewhere requires reskinning the included cult, NPC, and location tables. Three difficulty values and a maximum 3-die pool give coarse resolution: granular skill differentiation is not the design.