A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! vs Slugblaster
Compare A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! and Slugblaster side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| A.C.E. — The Awfully Cheerful Engine! | Slugblaster | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Universal | Sci-Fi |
| Tags | Comedy, Cinematic, Rules-Light, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Pulp Action, Fast-Paced | Narrative, Rules-Light, Cinematic, Fast-Paced, Gonzo, Character-Driven, Comedy |
| 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. | Forged in the Dark: roll a d6 dice pool and take the highest: 6 is a success, 4–5 is a partial success, 1–3 is a failure. No attributes or skills: instead, spend Boost to add dice. Kick lets you push your luck for Style Points by adding flair to any action. Style Points fuel advancement and reputation. Trouble tracks escalate consequences from parents, school, and interdimensional authorities. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Paid |
| Runnability | 2 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Standard commercial | Forged in the Dark |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | EN Publishing | Wilkie's Candy Lab (Mikey Hamm) |
| Year | 2021 | 2022 |
| 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-paced, irreverent adventures about teenagers hoverboarding through alternate dimensions, doing tricks, getting sponsorships, and avoiding getting grounded. |
| 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. | Combines teen drama with dimension-hopping action sports, Kick mechanic adds dice for adding flair to actions, Indie Groundbreaker Game of the Year winner, Trouble tracks escalate consequences from parents and authorities without lethal combat |
| 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. | Narrow genre focused on teenage hoverboard adventures, no attributes or skills: characters differentiate through playsheet and narrative choices only, five playsheets (Grit, Guts, Smarts, Heart, Chill) limit build variety, tone is specifically absurdist teen action |