Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier vs Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

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

	Aces & Eights: Shattered Frontier	Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Genre	Historical	Fantasy
Tags	Simulation, Crunchy, Deadly, Gritty, Sandbox, Classless, Career-Based, Tactical, Lore-Heavy, Strong GM Support	Career-Based, Corruption, Crunchy, Dark Fantasy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gritty, Investigation, Licensed IP, Strong GM Support, Tactical
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 equal to or under a Skill or Characteristic. Success Levels are the target's tens digit minus the roll's tens digit. Difficulty modifies Success Levels and can change the outcome. Advantage lets you reverse the digits for a better result; Disadvantage requires the worse result. Opposed Tests compare Success Levels.
Dice	d20, d100	d100
Complexity	High	High
Availability	Paid	Paid
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	5 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	Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.
Year	2007	2026
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 career-driven grim fantasy campaign where investigation and consequential combat put precarious Old World adventurers under pressure.
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.	Success Levels express degree of outcome in ordinary and opposed Tests. Career status influences social Tests and income, giving a character's occupation consequences beyond advancement. Between-adventure procedures make long-term projects compete with earning a living.
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.	Critical wounds can cause lasting injuries even when a character survives a fight. Career progression requires filling an advancement tracker before spending XP during downtime. Downtime limits characters to a few undertakings and normally consumes any money they have not secured.