Dungeons & Dragons vs Wicked Ones
Compare Dungeons & Dragons and Wicked Ones side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Dungeons & Dragons | Wicked Ones | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Tactical, Heroic, Character Building, High-Fantasy, Classic Fantasy, Combat-Heavy, Exploration, Resource Management, Strong GM Support, CC-Licensed Rules | Base-Building, Domain Management, Faction Play, Sandbox, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, CC-Licensed Rules |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d20 and add applicable modifiers to meet or beat a target number. Checks and saving throws use a Difficulty Class; attacks use Armor Class. Advantage or disadvantage means rolling two d20s and keeping the higher or lower result. | Build a pool of d6s equal to your action rating and keep the single highest die: a 6 succeeds, a 4 or 5 succeeds with a consequence, and a 1 to 3 fails. Before the roll the GM sets position and effect, which fix how bad the consequence can be and how much the action accomplishes. Stress can be spent to push a roll or resist a consequence. |
| Dice | d20 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (SRD 5.2.1); proprietary core books | CC0 1.0 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Publisher | Wizards of the Coast | Bandit Camp |
| Year | 2024 | 2020 |
| Languages | English, French, Italian, German, Spanish | English, French |
| Best For | Groups who want heroic fantasy campaigns with tactical combat and extensive character customization. | Groups who like the fiction-first Forged in the Dark engine and want to flip the dungeon crawl: instead of raiding a dungeon they build, grow, and defend one as its monstrous residents across a long campaign. It rewards tables that enjoy a strategic hoard-and-tier economy layered on villain-POV roleplay, and that are willing to set tone and safety expectations up front given the evil-protagonist premise. |
| Highlights | Weapon Mastery adds effects such as pushing or slowing enemies to qualifying weapon attacks. Class and feat choices let characters develop different roles over twenty levels. Optional Bastions give characters home bases with facilities that produce benefits between adventures. | Players design their own dungeon during downtime and later roll its traps and defenses against invaders, which turns base-building into the game's central strategic layer. Giving in to a monster's Dark Impulse earns a Dark Heart to spend for a bonus die, so playing to your character's worst instincts is rewarded rather than left as flavor. The four-phase cycle feeds each raid's fallout back as calamity and blowback that summon heroes to your door, so the campaign escalates its own stakes without the GM inventing threats by hand. |
| Considerations | Spells and class abilities have separate resource limits and timing rules. Higher-level magic can change travel and encounter assumptions that the DM must prepare for. Social encounters rely on ability checks and DM judgments about NPC attitudes. | The three magic disciplines have no fixed spell lists, so a spell's power is decided by the GM in the moment. During a dungeon invasion the player characters cannot leave the sanctum, so most of the defense is run through minions and traps until the heroes reach the final room. There is no published setting, so each group must build its own region and factions before raiding can begin. |