Hunter: The Reckoning vs Murder Mansion
Compare Hunter: The Reckoning and Murder Mansion side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Hunter: The Reckoning | Murder Mansion | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Investigation, Mystery, Character-Driven, Gritty, Deadly, Atmospheric, Social Combat, Strong GM Support, Lore-Heavy, Urban Fantasy | Survival, Dungeon Crawl, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Gritty, Deadly, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Random Tables |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d10s, usually an Attribute plus a Skill. Each 6 or higher is a success. Meeting the Storyteller's Difficulty wins. Each pair of 10s counts as four successes. On tests within their creed's Field, Hunters may choose to add Desperation Dice equal to the cell's shared Desperation rating. A 1 on any Desperation Die turns a win into a choice: keep it and raise the cell's Danger, or fail and enter Despair. A failed test with a Desperation 1 always causes Despair. | Roll a d20 and add Guts, Brains, or Nerve, meeting or beating a target number that is usually set by the GM, from 5 (almost trivial) to 20 (nearly impossible). There is no separate to-hit roll. A survivor's attack is the weapon's damage die plus Guts, minus the target's Protection. A turn allows up to two actions, normally only one of them an attack. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d20 |
| Complexity | Medium | Low |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Renegade Game Studios | Wall of Text Games |
| Year | 2022 | 2024 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish | English |
| Best For | Groups who want investigation-heavy modern horror in which a cell of ordinary people researches, plans, and confronts a monster at real personal risk. | Groups who want a survival-horror escape for a one-shot or short run, where rationing ammo and solving lock-and-key puzzles matter more than winning fights. |
| Highlights | Desperation rises after the cell's setbacks, so mounting trouble adds both dice and risk to later Field tests. Overreach lets a player keep a win by raising the cell's Danger, which escalates the quarry's response against the whole cell. Monsters have weaknesses Hunters can discover, so research pays off as concrete advantages in the final confrontation. | Gear with a durability die, such as flashlights and lockpicks, is spent when that die rolls a 1, which keeps survivors scavenging for replacements. Hunter-class bosses cannot be killed by ordinary attacks and return to ambush the party, so finding a scenario-specific weakness becomes its own objective. Three ready-to-run sample adventures with keyed maps come in the core book, so a group can play before designing its own mansion. |
| Considerations | Desperation Dice apply only to tests within a Hunter's creed Field, so a character's signature boost sits idle outside that specialty. The book recommends ending most conflicts after about three turns, which leaves little room for extended tactical combat. The content warning covers themes such as sexual violence and torture, so groups should calibrate boundaries before play. | There are no levels, experience points, or other advancement rules, so winning fights never makes survivors stronger. Healing items cannot be used during combat except through the Medic's Combat Medicine skill, so damage taken in a fight stays until it ends. The rules cover escaping a single location, with no procedures for social conflict, travel, or downtime between scenarios. |