Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs Feng Shui
Compare Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier and Feng Shui side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier | Feng Shui | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Historical | Fantasy, Scifi, Historical, Modern, Post-Apocalyptic |
| Tags | Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support | Cinematic, Combat-Heavy, Fast-Paced, High-Power, Martial Arts, Playbook-Driven, Pulp Action, Strong GM Support, Tactical, Theater of the Mind |
| 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. | Roll a positive d6 and a negative d6, subtract the negative die from the positive, and add the Swerve to an Action Value. Meeting or beating the Difficulty succeeds, while open-ended sixes create extreme results. |
| Dice | d20, d100 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Noncommercial only — Atlas Games Fair Use policy |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $ |
| Publisher | Kenzer & Company | Atlas Games |
| Year | 2007 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English, French, Russian |
| 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 that want fast Hong Kong action, tactical shot-by-shot fights, melodramatic hooks, and time-traveling campaigns that mix genres |
| 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. | A descending shot countdown makes every action and interrupt change when a character acts again. One-hit mooks support crowd-clearing spectacle, while featured foes and bosses use deeper wound rules for climactic fights. Feng shui sites link faction victories to changes in history across four connected eras. |
| 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. | Most starting archetypes have fixed statistics and schticks, so initial mechanical customization is limited. The default adventure structure treats investigation and social scenes mainly as connections between fights. Exploding positive and negative dice permit large reversals even when a character's Action Value substantially exceeds the Difficulty. |