Fear of the Unknown vs Rifts

Compare Fear of the Unknown and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Fear of the Unknown	Rifts
Genre	Horror	Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero
Tags	Tag-Based, Fiction-First, Collaborative, Investigation, Mystery, Fear & Stress Mechanics, One-Shot Friendly, Rules-Light	Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical
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.	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	2d6	d20, d100
Complexity	Low	Very High
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	Proprietary	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	Sixpence Games	Palladium Books Inc.
Year	2023	2005
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 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	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.	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	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.	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.