City of Jerry vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare City of Jerry and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| City of Jerry | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Comedy, Fiction-First, Gonzo, Improvisation, Low-Prep, Mystery, Noir, Playbook-Driven, Random Tables, Rules-Light | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Investigation, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | When an outcome is uncertain, roll a d12 plus Heal or Harm and read the result on a five-tier scale: 12+ is a Critical Success, 9–11 a Success, 5–8 a Mixed Success, 2–4 a Failure, and 1 or less a Critical Failure. Natural 12s and 1s are always critical. Good or Bad Luck adds d12s and keeps the highest or lowest result. | 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 | d12 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | Made for Mischief Third-Party License | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Made for Mischief Third-Party License | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Drimbus | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2026 | 2018 |
| Best For | Groups who want low-prep noir mysteries with body-pun humor, player-created connections, and fast conflicts inside a human body. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Challenges, combats, and conversations share a Conflict framework, so one procedure supports objectives, fights, and persuasion. Matching results on multiple Luck dice trigger the Twist table, turning stacked advantages or disadvantages into an unexpected complication or benefit. Five biological Roles provide curated Abilities and Traumas, giving each Agent a distinct way to help or harm Jerry. | 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 | Agents choose from five biological Roles, so concepts outside the Immunization Task Force require reskinning. Each Wound adds a penalty, and a third Wound triggers a Death Roll, making dangerous conflicts costly. Investigations use general Challenge Counters rather than a clue or deduction subsystem, leaving evidence details to the Jerry Master. | 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. |