Dread vs Outrunners
Compare Dread and Outrunners side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Dread | Outrunners | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror | Horror, Cyberpunk, Fantasy |
| Tags | Atmospheric, CC-Licensed Rules, Character-Driven, Deadly, Diceless, Experimental, Fiction-First, Narrative, One-Shot Friendly, Rules-Light | Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Narrative, Fiction-First, Collaborative, Survival, Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | The host calls for a pull when a character attempts something they could conceivably do but might fail, particularly outside their experience or under aggravated conditions. The player removes one block from a shared tower and places it on top, and the action succeeds if the tower remains standing. Refusing the pull means the action fails, though that failure cannot remove the character from the game. If the tower collapses, that player's character is removed from the game. | Each character assigns one die from a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and d4 set across six stats, then rolls the relevant stat's die against a difficulty number; if half that die's maximum already meets the DC, the action succeeds without a roll. Rolling a die's maximum value without beating the DC triggers a Twist of Fate, exploding up to the next larger die. Fate Points, earned mainly by failing rolls, are spent to reroll, sway outcomes, or invoke the Hands of Fate at a narrative cost. |
| Dice | Diceless | d4–d20 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Low |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 3 of 5 book tools | 4 of 5 book tools |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 | ORC 1.0 (free SRD) |
| Third-Party Publishing | Noncommercial only — Open license | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | The Impossible Dream | Einsol's Razor |
| Year | 2005 | 2025 |
| Languages | English, German, Italian, Hungarian | English |
| Best For | Groups who want a single-session horror story where improvised character drama and irreversible risk matter more than tactical combat. | Groups who want a rules-light, emotionally charged one-shot or short campaign about doomed characters racing to outrun a foreseen death, and GMs who want a portable fate-and-survival horror premise they can drop into almost any setting with little prep. |
| Highlights | Successful pulls leave the shared tower increasingly precarious, so earlier success raises the risk for every later action. Questionnaire answers define each character's capabilities and vulnerabilities, giving the host concrete material for rulings and scenarios. Deliberately toppling the tower lets a player trade their character for one final dramatically appropriate success. | Every character begins with a prophesied glimpse of their own death, which seeds concrete clues into the story and ties each session's tension to a deadline the player already knows is coming. Rolling a stat die's maximum without meeting the difficulty explodes it up to the next larger die, turning desperate long shots into escalating last-second reversals rather than flat failures. Fate Points are earned mainly by failing rolls and then spent to reroll, sway outcomes, or invoke the Hands of Fate, so setbacks bankroll later comebacks and every intervention carries a narrative cost. |
| Considerations | The game requires a physical block tower, a stable surface, and manual dexterity. A collapse removes a character from play, so a player can lose their character before the story ends. Running the game asks the host to prepare questionnaires and make frequent pull judgments, even when running a published scenario. | The default Adamah setting is sketched in only a few pages and the game expects the table to invent most of the world at session zero, so groups wanting a prepared, detailed setting must supply it themselves. Equipment grants only narrative permission rather than mechanical bonuses, so players who enjoy itemization or tactical loadouts will find nothing to optimize. The foreseen-death premise is built to resolve at the Vision's deadline, making the game strongest as a one-shot or short arc and harder to sustain across a long, open-ended campaign. |