Regular Volk vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse

Compare Regular Volk and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Regular Volk	Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Genre	Fantasy	Horror, Modern, Fantasy
Tags	Rules-Light, Beginner-Friendly, Narrative, Character-Driven, Theater of the Mind, One-Shot Friendly, Low-Prep, CC-Licensed Rules	Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy
Core Mechanic	Roll 2d6, add the relevant stat plus small bonuses for a fitting item or trait, and meet or beat the Difficulty Score the GM sets. The same check resolves every action, attack, and beast action. Edge and Trouble add a third d6 and drop the lowest or highest die. Rolling double sixes on an attack lands a critical hit.	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	2d6	d10 dice pool
Complexity	Low	High
Accessibility	Very High	Medium
Runnability	Medium	Very High
License	CC BY-NC-SA 4.0	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	Free	$$
Publisher	Timo Acker	Renegade Game Studios
Year	2026	2023
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese
Best For	Groups who want a short, low-prep fairy-tale one-shot or brief campaign centered on a controlled shapeshifting risk, where a character's powerful beast form can consume them if they lean on it too often. It suits tables new to tabletop RPGs who still want some build texture from ancestry and curse choices.	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	Failing a roll while in Beast Form builds Beast Points, which escalate through animalistic compulsions and stacking debuffs to permanently trapping the character in beast form. Folding the character sheet along a marked line physically hides the volk abilities and reveals the beast ones, so the sheet itself shows which form a character is in. The GM builds any fairytale creature by picking one of five power tiers and an archetype such as Glass Cannon or Heavy Hitter, each carrying preset Difficulty Score, HP, and modifiers.	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	Combat uses no maps, grid, or positioning rules, so groups who want tactical movement or terrain play get no mechanical support for it. Entering Beast Form fully replaces a character's volk abilities, items, and weapons, so beast powers can never be combined with human-form gear in the same moment. A character who reaches 0 Health Points rolls on the Fate table, where a result of 6 or lower on the unmodified 2d6 means an immediate death that no bonus can prevent.	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.