METTLE Core vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare METTLE Core and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| METTLE Core | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Pulp Action, Toolkit, Hackable, Rules-Light, Classless, Fast-Paced, Open Source | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Investigation, Lore-Heavy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a pool of d6s equal to the Attribute being used. Dice showing 1, 2, or 3 are summed as the Score; dice showing 4, 5, or 6 are counted as Edge. The Check succeeds if Score meets or exceeds the Difficulty (Routine 1 to Nigh Impossible 15), and Edge measures how well it went. On a failure with Edge, the player may call for a Twist: accept a complication proposed by the rest of the table, then reroll the Edge dice for a second chance. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, who becomes the next to act. Mettle (Motive + Nature) acts as a combined morale and damage track, and characters may Surge by spending Mettle for bonus dice on critical Checks. | 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 | d6 dice pool | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Very High | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | CC BY 4.0 | Proprietary |
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Planarian Games | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2021 | 2018 |
| Best For | Groups who want fast pulp action-adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones, James Bond, or Tales of the Gold Monkey, with a hackable toolkit they can bend toward detective stories, wild-west gunfights, post-apocalyptic survival, or grounded science fiction. | Drama-heavy campaigns exploring themes of addiction, power, and losing your humanity. |
| Highlights | Score-and-Edge dice pool reads two outcomes from the same roll: whether the action succeeds (Score meets Difficulty) and how well it went (count of 4–6 dice). Player-invoked Twists let a failed roll be reframed as a messy success in exchange for a fictional complication chosen by the rest of the table. Six-attribute character sheet (Calling, Culture, Frame, Motive, Nature, Poise) replaces classes and skills with player-written Descriptors that justify which Attribute applies to a given task. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, eliminating turn-tracking and tying combat order to who is acting on whom. | 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 | Toolkit framing means the book provides scaffolding (factions, NPC seeds, sample castaway adventure) rather than a fleshed-out setting: groups expecting a defined world will need to build or borrow one. Mettle does triple duty as morale, hit points, and a spendable resource for bonus dice, which can take a session to internalize. Twist resolution depends on the rest of the table proposing complications, which slows play if the group is hesitant to add fiction. | 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. |