A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! vs BLACK SEVEN

Compare A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! and BLACK SEVEN side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine!	BLACK SEVEN
Genre	Universal	Modern
Tags	Comedy, Cinematic, Rules-Light, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Pulp Action, Fast-Paced	Espionage, Mission-Based, Rules-Light, Theater of the Mind, Fast-Paced, One-Shot Friendly, Beginner-Friendly, Cinematic, CC-Licensed Rules
Core Mechanic	Roll a pool of d6s equal to one of four Stats (Smarts, Moves, Style, Brawn) rated 1–5, add two extra dice if you have a matching Focus, and sum the total against a Target Number (10 normal, 20 hard, 30 herculean, 40 impossible). Sixes explode and reroll. One die in every pool is the Calamity Die: if the roll fails and the Calamity Die shows a 1, the Director invokes a comedic complication.	Roll 2d6 + Trait, 11+ succeeds. Characters have 12 Traits organized into three categories, each with four Traits linked to Body, Speed, Mind, or Communication: Infiltrate (stealth and access), Force (open combat), and Mob (silent takedowns). An abstract positioning system tracks agent status through Exposed and Noticed states rather than using maps. Threat escalates from 3 to 5 as agents are detected, with guards only returning fire at Threat 5.
Dice	d6 dice pool	2d6
Complexity	Very Low	Very Low
Availability	Free core rules	Paid
Runnability	2 of 5 book tools	2 of 5 book tools
License	Standard commercial	CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Not yet researched
Publisher	EN Publishing	Zero Point Information
Year	2021	2011
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want a fast, comedic action movie at the table with minimal prep and the freedom to swap genres between adventures: ghost hunters one night, talking-animal vigilantes the next.	Groups who want fast, low-prep espionage one-shots inspired by stealth video games like Deus Ex and Splinter Cell, with abstract facility infiltration and no maps required.
Highlights	Character creation runs through six steps on a comic-book ID Card, so a new Hero is table-ready in minutes: a Role (talking ape, druid astronaut, vigilante), four Stats split across 12 points, a Focus per Stat, and a single-word Trait. Karma is one shared currency that buys extra dice, damage reduction, or Flashbacks where the player retroactively establishes a useful item or prepared action, and Karma is refunded when the player leans into their Trait. Heroes never die: at zero Health you are Knocked Out for five minutes and stand back up at 1 Health, keeping the tone slapstick rather than tragic.	Abstract facility infiltration system replaces maps with positioning actions and escalating Threat levels. Three tactical approaches to every encounter: sneak past, ambush silently, or go loud. Character creation fits on an index card and takes minutes. Optional cybernetics and psionics modules expand the near-future setting.
Considerations	The whole rulebook is thirty comic-book-format pages with no advancement track beyond +1 Stat or +1 Focus per adventure, so long campaigns need imported structure. Genre, setting, and bestiary are intentionally a grab bag of one-paragraph Roles and Extras with no published world: published Issues (Spirits of Manhattan, Below Decks, Accidental Anthropomorphic Heroes) carry the setting work. Combat resolves quickly but is mostly damage exchange against flat Defence numbers with no maneuvers, conditions, or positioning rules beyond optional zone-based ranges.	47-page rulebook with limited content beyond the core loop of facility infiltration. No advancement or campaign mechanics: designed for one-shots and short arcs. No bestiary or NPC variety beyond guards and researchers. Sample adventure is the only published scenario.