Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game vs Rifts

Compare Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game	Rifts
Genre	Scifi	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Space Opera, Licensed IP, Ship-Based, Sandbox, Skill-Based, Tactical, Strong GM Support, Exploration	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
Core Mechanic	Roll a d10 and add your Skill bonus (one-tenth of your skill score, rounded down): equal or exceed the GM's difficulty number to succeed. A natural 1 always fails and a natural 10 always succeeds, within reason. The same roll plus a weapon's Accuracy bonus drives combat at all three scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) against a target's Defence score.	Combat and saving throws use a d20 plus bonuses, with high results overcoming a target number or opposing roll. Skills use d100 and succeed when the result is at or below the character's percentage.
Dice	d10	d20, d100
Complexity	Medium	Very High
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Medium	Very High
License	Proprietary (Frontier Developments licensed IP)	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Noncommercial only — Palladium Books Internet Policy limited license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Spidermind Games / Modiphius Entertainment	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2017	2005
Best For	Groups who want to play freelance starship commanders trading, exploring, and dogfighting their way across the 34th-century Milky Way. Particularly suited to fans of the Elite: Dangerous video game who want to expand the experience with crewed ground missions and off-ship intrigue.	Groups who want long-form science-fantasy campaigns that move from a ruined Earth to other dimensions. The game suits tables whose GM will decide which parts of the broad setting a campaign uses.
Highlights	Three integrated combat scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) share the same d10 resolution but each has scale-specific actions and damage rules. Spaceship combat uses a two-zone abstract flight system with zone-restricted actions (joust, dogfight, broadsides, ram, and others), so manoeuvre matters without a grid. Sixteen ships from the video game (Sidewinder through Anaconda) are statted with full component, weapon mount, and modification rules. The Random Generation System provides d10 tables for generating star systems, missions, encounters, and military objectives between or during sessions.	Occupational and racial class packages assign distinct abilities and advancement tracks, giving each archetype a different role in the party. Mega-Damage places many supernatural creatures and war machines on a separate durability scale beyond the reach of ordinary Structural Damage Capacity attacks. Rifts and ley lines make dimensional travel a standing feature of the setting, letting campaigns move between devastated Earth and other worlds.
Considerations	Spaceship combat has more moving parts than personal-scale checks: shield recharge, equipment actions, floating bonuses, component criticals, and ammo all need tracking each round. The conversational prose style is approachable to read but slow to navigate when looking up a specific rule mid-session. Single-pilot ships are the default; running larger crewed vessels with multiple PCs at the same console takes GM adjustment. The setting is locked to the video game's 34th-century three-superpower politics, which constrains departures from established lore.	Character creation combines rolled attributes with extensive skill selection, making first-time preparation lengthy. Combat asks each player to track an action economy, active defenses, and which damage scale applies. Magic and psionics use separate point pools and power procedures, adding class-specific rules to the shared system.