Fear of the Unknown vs Kids on Bikes

Compare Fear of the Unknown and Kids on Bikes side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Fear of the Unknown	Kids on Bikes
Genre	Horror	Horror, Modern
Tags	Tag-Based, Fiction-First, Collaborative, Investigation, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, One-Shot Friendly, Rules-Light	Mystery, Worldbuilding, Collaborative, Narrative, Character-Driven, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Superpowers, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Beginner-Friendly
Core Mechanic	Roll 2d6 and add tags: invoke up to three of your character's tags for +1 each, while the Oracle invokes up to two against you for -1 each. On 10+ you fully succeed, on 7-9 you succeed at a cost, and on 6 or less the Oracle chooses a consequence. The Encounter True Horror move instead adds your accumulated Horror to the roll, where a higher total is worse, so encounters grow more dangerous as dread builds.	Assign a different die from d4 to d20 to each stat. Roll the relevant die against a GM-set difficulty. A maximum result lets you reroll and add the new result only while the unmodified total remains below the difficulty. Resolve these explosions before adding bonuses or spending Adversity Tokens to meet or beat the difficulty. Failed checks earn Adversity Tokens that can boost later rolls or activate strengths. Planned actions can use half the die’s maximum instead of rolling.
Dice	2d6	d4–d20
Complexity	Low	Low
Availability	Free quickstart	Free quickstart
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Sixpence Games	Hunters Entertainment / Renegade Game Studios
Year	2023	2018
Languages	English	English, Italian, Spanish
Best For	Groups who want a rules-light collaborative horror mystery that plays to completion in a single session, especially fans of horror films who want to investigate a mystery and face escalating dread without any GM prep. Works well for convention one-shots and players new to narrative RPGs.	Groups who want to build a small-town mystery together and share control of its supernatural companion alongside their own everyday characters.
Highlights	Every successful Investigate roll hands the player a clue tied to the question they asked, so the mystery advances from what characters do at the table rather than from clues the Oracle hid in advance. The tags a player invokes on a roll become the fictional elements of the resulting scene, so each character's specific traits, not just the dice result, shape what happens in play. Each supernatural encounter permanently raises a character's Horror, which is added to future horror rolls, building escalating dread without a separate countdown.	Shared town-building and relationship questions give the GM player-created hooks for the mystery. Each player controls aspects of a shared supernatural character, distributing its choices across the table. Failed rolls earn tokens that can turn later setbacks into successes.
Considerations	A single Face Peril roll resolves every dangerous situation, from a fistfight to a fall, with no initiative or enemy stats, so groups wanting tactical combat must build it themselves. The Oracle prepares no clues and improvises every answer to investigation questions live, which demands real on-the-spot creativity rather than prepared structure. The three-act structure and epilogue are built for self-contained one-shots, with no advancement loop for ongoing characters beyond gaining and losing tags.	Combat can kill a character outright when the attack roll greatly exceeds the defense roll. Players must help narrate outcomes beyond their own characters under the default shared-control approach. Character growth is negotiated from events in play rather than governed by levels or an experience-point track.