Smallville Roleplaying Game vs Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Compare Smallville Roleplaying Game and Werewolf: The Apocalypse side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Smallville Roleplaying Game | Werewolf: The Apocalypse | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Superhero, Modern | Horror, Modern, Fantasy |
| Tags | Licensed IP, Superpowers, Character-Driven, Drama, Narrative, Collaborative, Worldbuilding, Roleplay-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Strong GM Support | Atmospheric, Base-Building, Character Building, Character-Driven, Corruption, Drama, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support, Superpowers, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d4–d12 pool built from one Value and one Relationship, with an Asset die if applicable. Add the two highest dice. Dice showing 1 are Complications and never count. Plot Points can add dice to the pool before the roll or include more rolled dice in the total afterward. Tests normally pit your roll against the GM's Trouble pool. Ties go to the GM. Contests exchange action and reaction rolls until someone Gives In or fails to beat the previous total and takes Stress. Giving In concedes the opponent's demand but avoids Stress. | 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 | d4–d12 dice pool | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | High |
| Accessibility | Very Low | Medium |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | 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 | Unavailable | $$ |
| Publisher | Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2010 | 2023 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want superhero stories driven by relationship drama, where the player characters' convictions and loyalties clash with each other as often as they face villains. | 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 | Challenging a Drive triples its die for one roll but steps it back for the episode, turning a crisis of conviction into Growth. Group character creation builds a shared map of people and places that supplies material for later episodes. When an opponent fails to beat your action result, they take Stress rather than concede your demand, making Giving In a separate choice. | 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 | Creating an original cast through Pathways takes a few hours of group work before the first episode. Episode preparation centers on conflicts between player characters rather than a unified party's shared objective. Winning a Contest cannot kill a character by itself, because killing in a Contest requires that character's player to Give In and accept death. | 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. |