Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs RuneQuest
Compare Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier and RuneQuest side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier | RuneQuest | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Historical | Fantasy |
| Tags | Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support | Crunchy, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Deadly, Character-Driven |
| 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 d100 under your skill percentage. Criticals at 1/20th of skill, specials at 1/5th, fumbles at 95+. Seven characteristics (STR, CON, SIZ, DEX, INT, POW, CHA). Combat uses hit locations (d20) with per-location HP and armor. Strike ranks determine action order. Runes are percentile-rated cosmic affinities that fuel magic and shape personality. Passions (Love, Hate, Honor, Loyalty) augment skills when invoked. |
| Dice | d20, d100 | d100 |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Availability | Paid | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | Book tools not listed |
| License | All Rights Reserved | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Kenzer & Company | Chaosium Inc. |
| Year | 2007 | 2018 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Spanish |
| 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 deep mythic fantasy where characters are embedded in cults, clans, and cosmic forces: with tactical hit-location combat and a world steeped in decades of lore. |
| 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. | Glorantha is one of the most detailed settings in RPG history, Rune and Passion mechanics tie characters to the mythic world, hit-location combat adds tactical detail, skill-based advancement through use, three distinct magic systems |
| 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. | Very steep learning curve, tightly coupled to Glorantha setting, combat bookkeeping is heavy, expensive to collect all sourcebooks, dense lore for new players |