Dogs in the Vineyard vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Compare Dogs in the Vineyard and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Dogs in the Vineyard | Werewolf: The Apocalypse | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Historical, Fantasy | Horror, Modern, Fantasy |
| Tags | Narrative, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Tag-Based, Drama, Collaborative, Improvisation, Roleplay-Heavy, Social Combat, Strong GM Support | Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d4–d10 pool from relevant Stats and Relationships. Players Raise with two dice and See by spending dice that match or exceed the Raise. Traits, belongings, and escalation add dice as they enter the conflict. Seeing with three or more dice earns Fallout. Giving concedes the stakes. | 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. Each pair of 10s counts as four successes. Rage dice replace regular dice up to current Rage and can cause Brutal outcomes. |
| Dice | d4–d10 dice pool | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | High |
| Availability | Paid | Paid |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Proprietary | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | lumpley games | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2004 | 2023 |
| Languages | English, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want episodic frontier drama built around difficult moral judgments and arguments that can escalate into violence. | 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 | Escalation supplies fresh dice at the risk of harsher consequences, making continued opposition a choice about what the stakes are worth. Fallout changes Traits and Relationships to carry conflict consequences into later play. The town-creation ladder builds crises from interconnected grievances without prescribing how the Dogs should resolve them. | Brutal outcomes can force destructive failures or add four successes to actions the Storyteller judges can benefit from Rage. 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 Faith's patriarchal theology supplies concrete grievances in the town-creation rules and needs deliberate rewriting for another religious framework. Conflicts abstract range and movement into narrated actions rather than measured positioning. The GM must challenge the Dogs' judgments without preparing a preferred solution. | A Crinos-form Garou who did not kill in the previous turn must spend Willpower at the start of the next turn or enter frenzy, 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. |