Amazing Heroes vs Hunter: The Reckoning
Compare Amazing Heroes and Hunter: The Reckoning side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Amazing Heroes | Hunter: The Reckoning | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Superhero, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Beginner-Friendly, Rules-Light, Family-Friendly, Superpowers, Narrative, Fiction-First, Cinematic, Theater of the Mind, One-Shot Friendly, Strong GM Support | Investigation, Mystery, Character-Driven, Gritty, Deadly, Atmospheric, Social Combat, Strong GM Support, Lore-Heavy, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | Each hero has four traits (an occupation, a body attribute, a personality attribute, and a superpower) assigned a d6, d6, d8, and d10 at creation. When the outcome is uncertain, the player rolls the relevant trait die against a difficulty of 3 (easy), 4 (normal), or 5 (hard), adding +1 if a body or personality attribute fits. Rolls of 1 or 2 on a normal or hard test inflict a condition like 'tired' or 'hurt'; a repeated condition becomes 'really [X]' and imposes a –1 penalty, and a third hurt condition defeats the hero. Defeating a villain requires successes equal to the villain's level times the number of heroes. | Roll a pool of d10s, usually an Attribute plus a Skill. Each 6 or higher is a success. Meeting the Storyteller's Difficulty wins. Each pair of 10s counts as four successes. On tests within their creed's Field, Hunters may choose to add Desperation Dice equal to the cell's shared Desperation rating. A 1 on any Desperation Die turns a win into a choice: keep it and raise the cell's Danger, or fail and enter Despair. A failed test with a Desperation 1 always causes Despair. |
| Dice | d6–d12 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Amazing Tales | Renegade Game Studios |
| Year | 2021 | 2022 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Spanish |
| Best For | Mixed-age tables wanting a fast, narrative superhero RPG that genuinely works for kids aged 7+ alongside adults: sessions are designed to cram an hour of TV-style action into a single sitting. | Groups who want investigation-heavy modern horror in which a cell of ordinary people researches, plans, and confronts a monster at real personal risk. |
| Highlights | Trait dice carry transparent in-fiction meaning at each step (d6 is 'best in your country,' d12 is 'best in the world'), so players and GMs negotiate power level by description rather than parsing stat blocks. Conditions like 'tired' or 'shaken' replace HP entirely and stack into 'really [X]' with a –1 penalty before a third instance defeats the hero, keeping damage in fiction while still tracking toward a losing point. The GM receives plot points equal to the number of players each session and spends them on cinematic moves (villain ambushes, escapes with a planted clue, perfect disguises, 'missing body' recurring foes), encoding superhero-TV pacing as a budgeted resource. | Desperation rises after the cell's setbacks, so mounting trouble adds both dice and risk to later Field tests. Overreach lets a player keep a win by raising the cell's Danger, which escalates the quarry's response against the whole cell. Monsters have weaknesses Hunters can discover, so research pays off as concrete advantages in the final confrontation. |
| Considerations | Superpowers have no defined list or mechanical effects beyond a die size, so the GM must adjudicate what each novel use of a power can do on the fly. Advancement caps at d12+1 and amounts to larger dice plus secondary powers branched from a parent power, so long-running heroes don't gain meaningfully different mechanical options from starting ones. Villain fights accumulate flat successes equal to villain level × number of heroes with no incremental damage per hit, which can grind against tougher foes when most attack rolls only mark a single tick of progress. | Desperation Dice apply only to tests within a Hunter's creed Field, so a character's signature boost sits idle outside that specialty. The book recommends ending most conflicts after about three turns, which leaves little room for extended tactical combat. The content warning covers themes such as sexual violence and torture, so groups should calibrate boundaries before play. |