Normally I'd apologize for two months of silence, but I've been busy with family (a couple of birthdays) and focusing on other areas of my life. Good stuff, but it has kept me busy.
But I have been gaming. The Deadlands game run by a good friend of mine is still going like gangbusters as we are coming closer to resolving a/the major storyline. My huckster is doing fine for all that he's grappling with what might be something beyond mere lust, and the fact that he may have a demon living inside of him.
The same friend is trying to start an Eclipse Phase (well the bare bones of the setting) game, set pre-Fall, and it is going to be a Leverage/Ocean's 11 style crime game; what should be folks used to living in the grey areas of the law doing good things for good people.
I'm looking forward to the game, now that character creation is over. It was painful. So many points to spend and variable rates of costs. Just so painful. I transferred to a spreadsheet generator and discovered I had another 100 points to spend. Whoops.
The other thing that struck me was how you differentiated characters - skills, advantages, flaws, and equipment. I just kept looking for "stunts" or something similar to change how I use "guns" versus how this other guy uses "guns".
And as I get settled into my job (gee only took almost 6 months), I find myself playing around with system creation more and the idea of modifying or creating something useful for my table. Something that works well with what I want to do, and encourages people to play in the way that I want them to play at my table. Something that rewards a character having motivations and connections to the world around them. I'm no Rob Donoghue, but luckily I'm more than willing to steal liberally.
Now I can see why Eclipse Phase creators decided to have the only variable on skill usage being "So what specialization do you get +10%" in. They have around 50 skills (and that's counting all the skills such as Piloting that specific focuses that must be taken as one skill), and coming up with all the variable usages would have been insane. And also, not what the game is about - it isn't about what you know, it is more about interacting with the world and the horror out there.
I'm going to try and be better about writing here, even if it is just small random gaming updates of what's going on inside my head. We'll see how long that lasts.
Showing posts with label Eclipse Phase. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eclipse Phase. Show all posts
Friday, August 17, 2012
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Eclipse Phase: A Short Review
I was asked to compose my thought regarding Eclipse Phase, and as I take requests. Let me do so, without much wait.
Note that my thoughts are based on reading the book a few times, and a half-assed one shot run by a GM who meant well, but didn't know the system.
And Eclipse Phase is not a system that is kind to people who don't know the game. Key items: It is percentile based, your characters are built off 1000 points, and you have nearly endless variety in the bodies you can sleeve your mind into. In case that seems like a totally alien and weird concept, I suggest the wikipedia article about it.
There is no way to model that sort of wide flexibility with actual mechanical differentiation without an overly complex system. The question is, of course, where does the complexity come in? It appears the complexity comes in when you create your character and change bodies. Otherwise the system is fairly easy - blackjack d100 (i.e., roll as close as you can to your adjusted skill without going over, doubles (00, 11, 22, 33...) are critical, beating an opposed roll by 30+ points is an exception success). That's basically it, there's remembering what your equipment does, but that can be easily cheat sheet away.
Except combat. Combat is crunchy as all hell, and what's worse, is the damage system is non-intuitive. You have Durability which is your total hit points, but your Wound Threshold is when you take penalties. As numbers on a sheet this is incredibly annoying, and would have been better served with boxes, ala White Wolf. How does it work?
One character has Durability 40, Wound Threshold 10; another has Durability 40; Wound Threshold 8. If they both take 8 points of damage, the second character is at a -10 to all actions, the first character is fine; if they both take 20 points of damage, both characters are at -20 (10/20; 8/16); and at 40 both are down and out. The problem with graphically representing this is that the first character will need 4 lines (No penalty/-10/-20/-30); while the second character would need five lines for the additional -40 penalty. If I was playing I'd just make a damage tracking side sheet.
But that just adds to the complexity.
Does Eclipse Phase do what it intends to do? Yes. It provides the verisimilitude of what I'd consider a Transhuman Horror universe to look like. Unfortunately, there's no clean smooth way to do this except by using a lot of numbers, and a lot of crunching. That means that for many of the people I game with, despite the numbers being primarily frontloaded, it is still going to be an uphill battle.
But do I want to play or run a game? Yes, to the first, and probably to the second. The latter will just require finding players who found older editions of Shadowrun not that crunchy.
Summary
Good: Flexibility, Theme, Mechanics
Bad: Non-intuitive calculations in combat.
Recommendation: Assuming a group that is okay with the buy-in to character creation and the math of combat, yes. As the system is available for free on PDF under the CCL, there's no reason to at least read it over. I did and bought the hard cover because of it.
Note that my thoughts are based on reading the book a few times, and a half-assed one shot run by a GM who meant well, but didn't know the system.
And Eclipse Phase is not a system that is kind to people who don't know the game. Key items: It is percentile based, your characters are built off 1000 points, and you have nearly endless variety in the bodies you can sleeve your mind into. In case that seems like a totally alien and weird concept, I suggest the wikipedia article about it.
There is no way to model that sort of wide flexibility with actual mechanical differentiation without an overly complex system. The question is, of course, where does the complexity come in? It appears the complexity comes in when you create your character and change bodies. Otherwise the system is fairly easy - blackjack d100 (i.e., roll as close as you can to your adjusted skill without going over, doubles (00, 11, 22, 33...) are critical, beating an opposed roll by 30+ points is an exception success). That's basically it, there's remembering what your equipment does, but that can be easily cheat sheet away.
Except combat. Combat is crunchy as all hell, and what's worse, is the damage system is non-intuitive. You have Durability which is your total hit points, but your Wound Threshold is when you take penalties. As numbers on a sheet this is incredibly annoying, and would have been better served with boxes, ala White Wolf. How does it work?
One character has Durability 40, Wound Threshold 10; another has Durability 40; Wound Threshold 8. If they both take 8 points of damage, the second character is at a -10 to all actions, the first character is fine; if they both take 20 points of damage, both characters are at -20 (10/20; 8/16); and at 40 both are down and out. The problem with graphically representing this is that the first character will need 4 lines (No penalty/-10/-20/-30); while the second character would need five lines for the additional -40 penalty. If I was playing I'd just make a damage tracking side sheet.
But that just adds to the complexity.
Does Eclipse Phase do what it intends to do? Yes. It provides the verisimilitude of what I'd consider a Transhuman Horror universe to look like. Unfortunately, there's no clean smooth way to do this except by using a lot of numbers, and a lot of crunching. That means that for many of the people I game with, despite the numbers being primarily frontloaded, it is still going to be an uphill battle.
But do I want to play or run a game? Yes, to the first, and probably to the second. The latter will just require finding players who found older editions of Shadowrun not that crunchy.
Summary
Good: Flexibility, Theme, Mechanics
Bad: Non-intuitive calculations in combat.
Recommendation: Assuming a group that is okay with the buy-in to character creation and the math of combat, yes. As the system is available for free on PDF under the CCL, there's no reason to at least read it over. I did and bought the hard cover because of it.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Gaming Again.
So this blog went into hibernation, mostly because I stopped gaming.
My Changeling game wrapped up in March, and while it ended fairly well (in the way of a satisfying ending), I didn't really have much to say about it.
My daughter was born in April. Exciting and very distracting.
About June/July I started getting itchy again. To the point where I was really tempted to run a game again, despite me feeling burnt out on running games, just to do it.
Luckily, I managed to badger one of my friends to run a game. After a few badly timed attempts, we have a Deadlands game off the ground, aptly described by one of my fellow players as "A fallen Southern belle, a journalist, a mysterious drifter, a priest." Which seems so very stereotypical and almost Whedon-esque. I'm playing the drifter in that little future fiasco.
Similarly, some networking I did earlier in the year is paying off, and I may get into a Dresden Files game. I'm excited by that because, on paper, Fate should be what I'm looking for in a system - joint world and integrated character creation; exception based rules system that minimizing player overhead, and a conflict resolution system that works for many different styles recently.
Finally, I did a one shot of Eclipse Phase at Labyrinth Games and Puzzles this past Sunday. I have enough material for a couple other posts - either later today or later this week, but I wanted to take a moment to state that the store is pretty awesome - not tailored to me, but that'll probably be its saving grace, my interests are too narrow/too specialized to be common enough to support a business model.
So I'm gaming again. Probably the past four months is the longest I've gone without gaming since I started gaming 16 years ago; and I missed it once I recovered from sleep deprivation.
My Changeling game wrapped up in March, and while it ended fairly well (in the way of a satisfying ending), I didn't really have much to say about it.
My daughter was born in April. Exciting and very distracting.
About June/July I started getting itchy again. To the point where I was really tempted to run a game again, despite me feeling burnt out on running games, just to do it.
Luckily, I managed to badger one of my friends to run a game. After a few badly timed attempts, we have a Deadlands game off the ground, aptly described by one of my fellow players as "A fallen Southern belle, a journalist, a mysterious drifter, a priest." Which seems so very stereotypical and almost Whedon-esque. I'm playing the drifter in that little future fiasco.
Similarly, some networking I did earlier in the year is paying off, and I may get into a Dresden Files game. I'm excited by that because, on paper, Fate should be what I'm looking for in a system - joint world and integrated character creation; exception based rules system that minimizing player overhead, and a conflict resolution system that works for many different styles recently.
Finally, I did a one shot of Eclipse Phase at Labyrinth Games and Puzzles this past Sunday. I have enough material for a couple other posts - either later today or later this week, but I wanted to take a moment to state that the store is pretty awesome - not tailored to me, but that'll probably be its saving grace, my interests are too narrow/too specialized to be common enough to support a business model.
So I'm gaming again. Probably the past four months is the longest I've gone without gaming since I started gaming 16 years ago; and I missed it once I recovered from sleep deprivation.
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