Legend of the Five Rings vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Compare Legend of the Five Rings and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Legend of the Five Rings	Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Genre	Fantasy	Horror, Modern, Fantasy
Tags	Social Combat, Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Drama, Career-Based, Crunchy, Lore-Heavy	Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy
Core Mechanic	Roll-and-keep with custom dice. The player picks a skill and an elemental approach (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, or Void): the approach determines how the action is attempted, so a Fire approach to combat is a reckless overwhelming strike while a Water approach redirects an opponent's force. The pool is Ring dice (d6) equal to the chosen ring's value plus Skill dice (d12) equal to skill rank; after rolling, the player keeps up to ring-value dice. Kept faces show some mix of successes, explosive successes, opportunity, and strife symbols: successes meet a target number, opportunity spends create narrative effects, and accumulated strife eventually drives the character into Compromised.	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	d6 + d12 custom dice	d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	High
Accessibility	Medium	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Fantasy Flight Games	Renegade Game Studios
Year	2018	2023
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese
Best For	Groups who want samurai drama where internal conflict between sworn duty and personal desire matters as much as the sword, with structured rules for court intrigues and duels alongside skirmish combat.	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	Approach choice means the same skill check resolves differently depending on which ring drives it, mechanizing personality and method instead of relegating them to flavor. Strife accumulates from dice rolls and triggers Compromised when it exceeds composure, turning emotional pressure into a tracked resource without a separate sanity subsystem. Ninjō (personal desire) and giri (sworn duty) are written into each character sheet, and the conflict between them is the engine of advancement and downtime scenes.	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	Custom dice are required and not easily substituted: physical sets must be purchased separately or the official dice app used. Honor, glory, status, strife, composure, void points, and conflict-specific resources all track separately, so social bookkeeping is heavy outside of skirmishes. The mechanical structure is tightly bound to Rokugan's clan system and Bushidō expectations: reskinning to other settings unwinds large chunks of character creation and technique progression.	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.