Murder Mansion vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Compare Murder Mansion and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Murder Mansion | Werewolf: The Apocalypse | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Horror, Modern, Fantasy |
| Tags | Survival, Dungeon Crawl, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Gritty, Deadly, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Atmospheric, Random Tables | Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy |
| 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. | 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 | d20 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Wall of Text Games | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2024 | 2023 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese |
| 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 long-form modern horror about shapeshifter packs defending communities from ecological and spiritual threats, with violent power constrained by moral and social consequences. |
| 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. | 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 | 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. | 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. |