R'lyehwatch vs The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Compare R'lyehwatch and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	R'lyehwatch	The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Genre	Horror, Modern	Historical, Fantasy
Tags	Rules-Light, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, Short Sessions, Player-Only Rolls, Weird	GM-Less, Diceless, Comedy, Narrative, Improvisation, Rules-Light, Gonzo, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Short Sessions
Core Mechanic	Players roll a pool of 1–3 d6s against a target difficulty (4 for easy, 5 for average, 6 for hard). Every challenge starts with 1 die: add a second if the challenge matches the character's stat (Agile, Brawny, or Crafty), and a third if their role applies (The Veteran, Rookie, Medic, Gizmo, Detective, or Weirdo). Success means at least one die meets or beats the difficulty. Players spend luck tokens to invoke a perk and lower the difficulty by 1, and recover luck by letting their quirk cause a problem (raising the difficulty by 1). Grit tokens absorb failure consequences; a character who runs out of grit is removed from the scene. The referee never rolls dice during a challenge: they choose the stat and difficulty, then narrate the outcome. Extended challenges (chases, fights, infiltration) deplete a shared pool of effort tokens, one per success.	There are no dice. Each player starts with a purse of coins equal to the number of players, or five each with fewer than five players. In turn, a player tells a first-person tale of about five minutes on a subject another player names just before it starts. A listener with a coin may interrupt by staking one coin on an objection. The teller either keeps the coin and works the objection into the story, or pushes it back with a coin of their own. A refused objection normally goes back and forth, one coin and one insult at a time, until one side backs down and takes the pile. A teller who backs down must then use the objection. After everyone has told a story, each player gives their whole remaining purse to the story they liked best, never their own, and the largest pile wins.
Dice	d6 dice pool	Diceless
Complexity	Very Low	Very Low
Availability	Paid	Paid
Runnability	3 of 5 book tools	2 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary; third-party license and SRD permit derivative works	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Hedgemaze Press / Third Chair Games	Fantasy Flight Games
Year	2023	2016
Languages	English	English, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish
Best For	Groups who want a quick, comedic cosmic-horror RPG that pairs Baywatch-style melodrama with the Cthulhu Mythos. Tuned for pickup play and 2-4 hour sessions, with three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) that retune lethality without changing the core rules.	Groups who want a short, GM-less party game of competitive boasting that needs only a handful of coins and quick wits, including tables new to roleplaying.
Highlights	Three difficulty targets and a 1–3 d6 dice pool make up the entire resolution system. Three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) adjust grit recovery rate, retuning the same rules from sitcom-style play to deadly survival horror without changing any mechanics. All heroes share a universal Slow Motion quirk: narrating a slow-motion moment recovers a luck token but raises the current challenge's difficulty. Adventure generator combines random Objective, Location, and Complication tables for pickup scenarios; also includes an Elder Gods & Cults table, a Monster Maker, and a mapped Sunset Hills setting.	Objections are wagers, so a sharp teller invites interruptions that can be woven in and pockets each accepted stake. Appendix One gives 186 ready-made story subjects that a player can hand to the next teller. Two coin-free versions for online play let the game run asynchronously over email or a forum, or live in text chat.
Considerations	Mechanically minimal: no advancement track beyond optional luck and grit cap increases, no gear lists, no tactical combat structure. Pacing assumes 2–4 hour sessions rather than multi-arc campaigns. Setting is anchored to Sunset Hills, California; running the game elsewhere requires reskinning the included cult, NPC, and location tables. Three difficulty values and a maximum 3-die pool give coarse resolution: granular skill differentiation is not the design.	A storyteller normally improvises a tale of around five minutes on a subject named moments before, which can put hesitant players on the spot. There are no advancement or campaign rules, so play suits one-off evenings rather than long campaigns. The core game assumes drinks are flowing, and a player who declines to tell a story must buy the company a round.