Murder Mansion vs Old-School Essentials
Compare Murder Mansion and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Murder Mansion | Old-School Essentials | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Fantasy |
| Tags | Survival, Dungeon Crawl, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Gritty, Deadly, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Random Tables | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | 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. | Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Availability | Paid | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 2 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Proprietary | OGL 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Wall of Text Games | Necrotic Gnome |
| Year | 2024 | 2019 |
| Languages | English | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean |
| Best For | 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. | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. |
| Highlights | 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. | Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain. |
| Considerations | 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. | Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting. |