Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs Traveller
Compare Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier and Traveller side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier | Traveller | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Historical | Sci-Fi |
| Tags | Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support | Sandbox, Simulation, Exploration, Deadly, Character Building, Faction Play |
| 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 2d6 + skill + modifier ≥ 8 to succeed. Character generation is a mini-game. |
| Dice | d20, d100 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Availability | Paid | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Traveller Fair Use Policy |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Kenzer & Company | Mongoose Publishing |
| Year | 2007 | 2022 |
| Languages | English | English, German, French |
| 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. | Hard sci-fi sandbox campaigns with trading, exploration, and realistic space travel. |
| 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. | Comprehensive sci-fi toolkit, lifepath character creation, detailed trade/travel 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. | Lifepath character creation rolls for aging and career mishaps, so a Traveller can leave chargen weakened or pushed onto an unwanted path. Subsystem rules are spread across multiple supplements, so the core book leaves several procedures without full depth. Characteristics are recorded as a hexadecimal Universal Personality Profile string, an unusual notation newcomers must learn before they can read a stat block. |