Railgun XXVI vs The Sprawl

Compare Railgun XXVI and The Sprawl side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Railgun XXVI	The Sprawl
Genre	Sci-Fi	Cyberpunk, Sci-Fi
Tags	Tactical, Player-Only Rolls, Deadly, Gritty, Mission-Based, Random Character Creation, Beginner-Friendly	Mission-Based, Espionage, Heist, Noir, Gritty, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Player-Only Rolls, One-Shot Friendly
Core Mechanic	Roll d20 and add one of four stats (STR, CRD, AGI, or MND) against a standard difficulty of 12. Every roll is player-facing: players roll to attack and also roll to dodge incoming attacks, so the GM never needs to roll dice. Rolling a natural 20 banks an adrenaline point, which buys an extra action on top of the two each character gets per turn.	When an action matches a move's fictional trigger, roll 2d6 plus Cool, Edge, Meat, Mind, Style, or Synth. A 10+ is a strong hit, 7-9 is a weak hit, and a 6 or less lets the MC make a move.
Dice	d20	2d6
Complexity	Low	High
Availability	Free core rules	Paid
Runnability	2 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	MÖRK BORG Third Party License	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Nathan Freeman	Ardens Ludere
Year	2026	2016
Languages	English	English, French
Best For	Groups who want short, lethal firefights on a grid and a GM who narrates enemies rather than rolling for them. Suits a few-session campaign or a drop-in mission night more than a long character-driven arc.	Groups who want structured heist-style missions with a hacking minigame and a growing web of corporate rivals across a campaign. It suits players who enjoy risky planning and personal ties that complicate the crew's loyalties.
Highlights	Every roll is player-facing, including dodges against incoming attacks, so the GM runs enemies without touching the dice. Dropping to 0 HP forces a critical injury roll that permanently reduces a stat, so downed characters degrade instead of bouncing back up. Several weapons chain into a free attack when they drop an enemy, making target order a tactical decision rather than a formality.	Countdown Clocks track legwork noise, mission alertness, and corporate attention on separate tracks, giving missions a visible pressure gauge instead of a single doom clock. Cyberdeck ratings and tiered ICE turn hacking into its own tactical minigame layered on the standard moves. The Legwork and Action phase structure lets intel and gear earned through investigation convert directly into narrated advantages during the mission itself.
Considerations	Social scenes have no dedicated stat or subsystem, so persuasion is settled by player argument rather than mechanics. Play assumes a gridded map with movement and line of sight measured in squares, leaving theater-of-the-mind groups to convert those rules themselves. Out-of-combat scenes lean on ad hoc GM rulings and a single falling-forward technique rather than a dedicated exploration or investigation subsystem.	Combat and infiltration rely on fictional positioning and MC judgment as much as dice modifiers, so groups who want tightly defined tactical rules may find some outcomes settled by table discussion. Running an ongoing campaign means the MC tracks separate Countdown Clocks for every corporation, threat, and mission in play at once. Choosing how a character paid for their starting cyberware can permanently tie that character to being owned or hunted by a specific corporation.