Rifts vs Thousand Year Old Vampire
Compare Rifts and Thousand Year Old Vampire side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Rifts | Thousand Year Old Vampire | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero | Horror |
| Tags | Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical | Solo-Friendly, Narrative, GM-Less, Rules-Light, Character-Driven, Atmospheric, Drama, Journaling |
| Core Mechanic | Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage. | Roll d10 minus d6 to determine which prompt to answer next: positive results move forward, negative results revisit earlier prompts. Each response creates an Experience assigned to one of five Memory slots (three Experiences per Memory). When Memory is full, old Memories must be forgotten or recorded in a Diary that can be lost or stolen. 72 prompts with three entries each ensure high replayability. |
| Dice | d20, d100 | d10 + d6 |
| Complexity | Very High | Very Low |
| Accessibility | Medium | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | Free |
| Publisher | Palladium Books Inc. | Tim Hutchings |
| Year | 2005 | 2019 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses. | Solo players who want a reflective, literary experience chronicling a vampire's centuries-long life as memories fade and relationships are lost. |
| Highlights | Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds. | Memory mechanic (five slots with three experiences each) reinforces the vampire theme of forgetting, solo with no GM needed, 72 multi-entry prompts mean different paths each playthrough, ENnie-nominated for Product of the Year and Best Rules |
| Considerations | Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system. | Pacing is entirely self-directed which can lead to uneven sessions, memory management rules can feel arbitrary when forced to forget key experiences, prompt entries can become repetitive in longer playthroughs, no external structure to signal when the story should end |