Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs Dogs in the Vineyard

Compare Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier and Dogs in the Vineyard side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier	Dogs in the Vineyard
Genre	Historical	Historical, Fantasy
Tags	Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support	Narrative, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Tag-Based, Corruption, Drama, Improvisation, Roleplay-Heavy, Social Combat, Strong GM Support
Core Mechanic	Gunfights run on a Count Up measured in tenths of a second instead of turns or rounds. Each character rolls d10 and adds Speed for a Starting Initiative, where lower is better, then adds each action's Count cost to find when it happens. To shoot, place the Shot Clock overlay on the aimed point of a Target Silhouette and roll d20 plus Accuracy modifiers. A 25 or higher hits the exact spot and 14 or less misses. Totals in between draw a poker card whose suit sets the direction the shot drifts from the aim point. Skill checks roll d100 and succeed at or above a mastery number that falls as the skill improves, while ability checks roll d20 at or under the score.	Each side rolls a mixed pool of d4–d10 dice from applicable Stats and Relationships at the start of a conflict. A turn uses two dice to Raise with an action, and affected opponents See by spending enough dice to meet it. Traits, belongings, and escalation add dice as they enter play. Seeing with three or more dice causes Fallout, while Giving concedes the stakes.
Dice	d20, d100	d4–d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	Medium
Accessibility	Medium	Very Low
Runnability	Very High	High
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$	Unavailable
Publisher	Kenzer & Company	lumpley games
Year	2007	2004
Languages	English	English, Italian, German
Best For	Groups who want a long-running, town-centered Western campaign where characters build careers and reputations, and where gunfights are rare, precise, and often fatal.	Groups who want episodic frontier drama built around difficult moral judgments, with a GM who presents each town's crisis without planning its solution.
Highlights	Shots target specific locations rather than an abstract opponent, so a near miss can still strike nearby and hit location feeds a detailed wound and healing system. Profession Paths award Building Points for career objectives such as opening a business or winning an election, so a banker or rancher advances as surely as a gunfighter. Cattle drives and jury trials run as complete mini-games with their own daily checks or juror track, so frontier work generates play outside combat.	Raise and See uses one exchange for words and violence, allowing an argument to escalate into gunplay without changing resolution systems. Fallout converts the blows a character accepts into lasting Traits and Relationships, tying conflict consequences to later play. The town-creation ladder turns pride into escalating injustice and corruption, giving the GM a crisis whose outcome remains open to the players' judgment.
Considerations	Running the full game takes the Player's Guidebook plus its separate GM Addendum PDF, along with a poker deck, the Shot Clock overlay, and Target Silhouettes for gunfights. Characters die at 0 hit points with no recovery from death, and slow healing, infection, and incurable disease can sideline a character for weeks of game time. The alternate-history setting presents slavery and period racial attitudes as setting facts with mechanical effects, such as a higher literacy cost for freed-slave characters.	The Faith's patriarchal theology and colonial frontier frame are built into the town-creation procedure, so adapting the setting requires replacing more than names and imagery. Conflicts abstract range, movement, and weapon differences into arena and die-size choices, leaving little support for positional tactics. The GM must present moral crises without a preferred solution, which rules out plotted outcomes and prewritten answer keys.