Murder Mansion vs Vampire: The Masquerade
Compare Murder Mansion and Vampire: The Masquerade side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Murder Mansion | Vampire: The Masquerade | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Survival, Dungeon Crawl, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Gritty, Deadly, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Random Tables | Social Intrigue, Faction Play, Urban Fantasy, Corruption, Drama, Character-Driven, Resource Management, Superpowers, Social Combat, Lore-Heavy |
| 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. | Roll attribute plus skill in d10s, counting 6+ as successes against a difficulty. Paired 10s add extra successes. Hunger replaces ordinary dice in most pools: a winning critical containing a Hunger 10 becomes messy, while a failed test containing a Hunger 1 becomes a bestial failure. |
| Dice | d20 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | Community Content Agreement for the Storytellers Vault |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Commercial publishing allowed — Community content program |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Wall of Text Games | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2024 | 2018 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese |
| 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 campaigns about vampire coteries balancing political ambition, predatory hunger, and relationships with the humans they still care about. |
| 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. | Using supernatural powers can increase Hunger, making the next hunt harder to postpone. Convictions and human Touchstones make moral compromise carry consequences beyond winning the immediate conflict. Coteries share hunting territories and social assets, giving political ambitions a foothold in the city. |
| 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. | Messy criticals and bestial failures can put predation or compulsions into scenes where players hoped to stay in control. Character creation requires choices across clans, powers, feeding habits, advantages, and human ties. Establishing the chronicle’s relationships and boundaries for mature themes takes group preparation even when using a published city. |