Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs Rolemaster

Compare Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier and Rolemaster side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier	Rolemaster
Genre	Historical	Fantasy
Tags	Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support	Crunchy, Simulation, Tactical, Combat-Heavy, Character Building, Gritty, Deadly, Roll to Cast, Mana Points, Hackable
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.	Most rolls are d100 open-ended: 96–00 is rolled again and added, and a first roll of 01–05 is rolled again and subtracted. A maneuver adds the skill bonus and a difficulty modifier, and a total of 101 or higher succeeds. Some maneuvers allow partial success or partial progress on lower totals. An attack roll opens upward only, adds Offensive Bonus, subtracts the target's Defensive Bonus, and is read on the weapon's attack table in the column for the target's Armor Type. A hit gives damage and sometimes a critical, resolved by a separate d100 roll on a critical table.
Dice	d20, d100	d100
Complexity	High	Very High
Availability	Paid	Paid
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Kenzer & Company	Iron Crown Enterprises
Year	2007	2022
Languages	English	English
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 a long fantasy campaign with granular character building and combat where weapon, armor, and each wound carry mechanical weight. It suits tables comfortable resolving attacks and injuries through table lookups.
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.	Armor Type selects the column on each attack table, so armor changes both the damage a blow delivers and the total needed to score a critical. Profession sets what each skill rank costs, so a Fighter can still take magical skills at a higher cost. Spell Law organizes magic into 171 lists of 25 spells, and a caster buys ranks in a list to reach its higher-level spells.
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.	Core Law and Spell Law have no bestiary or treasure tables, which Core Law assigns to the separate Creature Law and Treasure Law volumes. Resolving one attack can take an attack-table lookup, a critical roll, and tracking of bleeding, stun, and injury penalties. Without magical healing, injuries can take days or longer to recover, and Core Law advises scheduling significant downtime between combat sessions.