Dungeons & Dustbunnies vs Odd Hours
Compare Dungeons & Dustbunnies and Odd Hours side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Dungeons & Dustbunnies | Odd Hours | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Comedy, Gonzo, Beginner-Friendly, One-Shot Friendly, Theater of the Mind, Improvisation, Survival | Fear & Stress Mechanics, Comedy, Gonzo, Weird, Rules-Light, Random Tables, One-Shot Friendly |
| Core Mechanic | Decrease Dice: each character has one die, starting at d20, that serves as both their health and their resolution roll. To attempt a risky action, roll the die against the Difficulty your class assigns that skill; meeting or beating it succeeds, while a normal failure costs only the attempt. The die steps down a size (d20 → d12 → d10 → d8 → d6 → d4) whenever you roll a 1, take major damage, or voluntarily force the scale to convert a failure into an automatic success. A character whose die would drop below d4 falls Exhausted or dies; sleeping in a safe shelter resets it to d20 and consuming a sugar ration steps it back up one size. | Roll 2d6 plus one of three attributes (Wit, Grit, Strangeness) plus a relevant skill and try to meet or beat a Target Number. Combat is an opposed roll. Beat the defender by 5 or more for a critical hit and double damage. Two resources then shadow every shift: Sanity drops when the supernatural presses on your mind, and Absurdity climbs as you lean into it. You spend Absurdity to reroll a failure, shrug off a point of Sanity loss, or take the higher of two rolls. |
| Dice | d4–d20 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | Very Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free core rules |
| Runnability | Book tools not listed | 4 of 5 book tools |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | Castamar RPG Studio | Route 9 Games |
| Year | 2026 | 2026 |
| Languages | English, Spanish | English |
| Best For | Groups who want a quick, comedic one-shot or short campaign as thumb-sized survivors scavenging a household that has become a hostile wilderness, with a ruleset light enough to read in a few minutes before the first session. | Groups who want low-barrier horror with a comedic streak for one-shots or short campaigns at a single weird location. It suits players who improvise from atmospheric prompts and lean into absurd moments instead of optimizing their characters. |
| Highlights | The Decrease Dice mechanic collapses health and resolution into a single die, so every roll both tests the action and visibly wears the character down as the die shrinks toward d4. Forcing the scale lets a player turn any failure into a guaranteed success by stepping their die down a size, making each clutch moment a deliberate trade of long-term stamina for an immediate result. Monsters are rated by a Threat Die that attacks and spells whittle down, and several (the chitin-armored cockroach, the static-charged dustbunny) shrug off ordinary weapons until players expose a weak spot or switch to fire, water, or magic. | Sanity and Absurdity move in opposite directions, so the dark humor that raises Absurdity becomes a resource you spend to reroll failures or cancel Sanity loss. The Overnight Manager plays the gas station itself as the lead character, voicing its moods and the cryptic calls from its unseen Owners as a presence the table improvises around. Reaching 5 Absurdity unlocks Strange Abilities bought with advancement, once-per-session quirks the station leaves on you rather than powers you earn. |
| Considerations | Combat has no initiative or turn order (the GM narrates enemy intent and players react with defensive rolls), so there is little structure for tactical positioning. Rolling a 1 on any skill check (including routine Stealth, Alertness, or social rolls) steps the die down the same as taking a hit in combat, so avoiding unnecessary rolls becomes a survival strategy rather than a purely narrative choice. There is no advancement system: skills are fixed at character creation and the Decrease Die only ever recovers to its starting size, so characters do not grow mechanically over a campaign. | The Overnight Manager sets every Target Number outside a few fixed tables and decides each Absurdity award, so difficulty and pacing rest on table judgment. Combat is deliberately thin: flat weapon damage, one primary and one minor action per turn, and only basic move-and-cover positioning rather than a tactical grid. Rituals, Strange Abilities, and backgrounds come as a handful of examples the book openly tells you to expand on yourself. |