Kids on Bikes vs Outrunners

Compare Kids on Bikes and Outrunners side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Kids on Bikes	Outrunners
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Cyberpunk, Fantasy
Tags	Mystery, Worldbuilding, Collaborative, Narrative, Character-Driven, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Superpowers, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Beginner-Friendly	Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Narrative, Fiction-First, Collaborative, Survival, Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, Strong GM Support
Core Mechanic	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.	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	d4–d20	d4–d20
Complexity	Low	Low
Availability	Free quickstart	Free quickstart
Runnability	4 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	ORC 1.0 (free SRD)
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Hunters Entertainment / Renegade Game Studios	Einsol's Razor
Year	2018	2025
Languages	English, Italian, Spanish	English
Best For	Groups who want to build a small-town mystery together and share control of its supernatural companion alongside their own everyday characters.	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	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.	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	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.	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.