When comparing The Pool vs Vampire: The Masquerade, the Slant community recommends Vampire: The Masquerade for most people. In the question“What are the best tabletop RPGs?” Vampire: The Masquerade is ranked 6th while The Pool is ranked 34th. The most important reason people chose Vampire: The Masquerade is:
The emphasis of the game is to create drama and intrigue. The Hunger mechanic is central to the experience, and characters have strong, in depth motivations and drives.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Rolls are made to resolve intent not actions
Instead of rolling to perform actions such as swinging a sword, rolling is used for resolving intent with descriptions of actions left to players and GM to describe.
Pro Alternative experience to most other action-adventure based RPGs
The emphasis of the game is to create drama and intrigue. The Hunger mechanic is central to the experience, and characters have strong, in depth motivations and drives.
Pro Great connection to overall lore
Role-playing oriented system.
Cons
Con Monologue of Victory may stop any GMs plans
The Pool includes a system, called the Monologue of Victory, that allows a player to take over narration of the game in the event of a successful roll without the GM being able to interfere. As such using the system for complex plots may be difficult, because the player may remove an essential part of the story without knowing it.
Con Role playing oriented system requires a GM that is well informed of the world and lore
Con Edgelord Magnet
Game is perfect for high school theater geeks
Con Not for kids
Definitely adult orientated material - may not be to everybody’s taste and includes themes that may not be appropriate to children.