A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! vs Black Star
Compare A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! and Black Star side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! | Black Star | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Sci-Fi |
| Tags | Comedy, Cinematic, Rules-Light, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Pulp Action, Fast-Paced | Rules-Light, Pulp Action, Space Opera, Beginner-Friendly, Fast-Paced, Mana Points |
| 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 + ability, 9+ to succeed. Ten abilities rated 0–5. Pick two archetypes from ten options (Commander, Engineer, Mystic, Scoundrel, etc.) to define your character's strengths. Resolve serves as both HP and hero points: spend it to boost rolls or fuel special abilities, but run out and you're down. Advantages and disadvantages modify the roll. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | 2d6 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Paid |
| Runnability | 2 of 5 book tools | 2 of 5 book tools |
| License | Standard commercial | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | EN Publishing | Lakeside Games |
| Year | 2021 | 2023 |
| 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, pulpy space opera with simple rules: pick two archetypes, grab some d6s, and blast off into adventure. |
| 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. | Simple to learn, dual archetype system creates unique combinations, Resolve as HP-and-hero-points is a clean design, fast character creation, suited for one-shots and pickup games |
| 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. | Limited advancement options, narrow space opera focus, lacks deep tactical combat |