A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! vs ESSER
Compare A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! and ESSER side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! | ESSER | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Universal |
| Tags | Comedy, Cinematic, Rules-Light, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Pulp Action, Fast-Paced | Rules-Light, Theater of the Mind, One-Shot Friendly, Short Sessions, Fast-Paced, Low-Prep, Freeform Magic, Cinematic, Classless, Roll to Cast |
| 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 d20 + skill bonus + attribute bonus. A result of 1–9 fails with a complication, 10–14 succeeds at a cost, 15–19 fully succeeds, and 20+ succeeds with an epic effect. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d20 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Very Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 2 of 5 book tools | Book tools not listed |
| License | Standard commercial | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | EN Publishing | Espen Erlandsen |
| Year | 2021 | 2026 |
| 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 seeking a two-hour, genre-flexible one-shot where the same d20 engine handles action and conversation. |
| 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. | The same d20 roll handles standard checks and direct contests, making transitions between scene types quick. Interface scales open-ended supernatural or technical effects by skill tier, letting one procedure cover magic and hacking. NPCs need a core bonus, Strikes, and an optional trait, so a GM can prepare threats with few statistics. |
| 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. | No default setting is provided, so groups must supply a world for their adventure. Gear grants fictional permission rather than numeric bonuses, limiting equipment-based builds. Strikes reset after each adventure, so the track does not preserve mechanical attrition between adventures. |