Night's Black Agents vs Rifts
Compare Night's Black Agents and Rifts side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Night's Black Agents | Rifts | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror, Modern | Post-Apocalyptic, Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, Superhero |
| Tags | Investigation, Espionage, Character-Driven, Gritty | Character Building, Combat-Heavy, Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Gonzo, High-Power, Mana Points, Mecha, Superpowers, Tactical |
| Core Mechanic | GUMSHOE engine. Investigative abilities auto-succeed: if you have the skill and there's a clue, you find it. General abilities (combat, athletics) roll 1d6 + spent points vs. difficulty 4. Point pools refresh between sessions, creating resource-management tension. Four play modes (Burn, Dust, Mirror, Stakes) tune mechanics to your preferred espionage tone. | 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 | d6 | d20, d100 |
| Complexity | Medium | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | Medium |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | GUMSHOE SRD (CC BY 3.0 / OGL) | 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 | Pelgrane Press | Palladium Books Inc. |
| Year | 2012 | 2005 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want spy-thriller action fused with supernatural horror: burned agents unraveling a vampire conspiracy through investigation, chases, and tradecraft. | 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 | Investigation never stalls: clues flow automatically, Conspyramid campaign structure is a well-designed GM tool, four tonal modes let you dial in the spy genre you want, highly modular vampire creation system, works stripped of vampires for pure espionage | 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 | NPC combat math can feel unbalanced against PCs, multiple point pools to track can bottleneck play, narrow genre focus limits reuse, requires significant GM prep for conspiracy networks | 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. |