For those who aren't followers of RPG systems, EABA is one that is, in my opinion, not well enough known. It is, at its root, a point-based, build-your-character-from-scratch, "simulationist" game in the vein of GURPS and Hero System. However, there are a number of nice and unique things about it that I like.
First of all, dice. The best way I can think of describing it is that it works like rolling up character stats in 3rd edition D&D (at least, the default way). You roll a number of d6s based on your attribute and skill, but you only keep the best 3 (if you roll 3 or fewer dice, you keep 'em all). Thus, more dice gives you better chances of success, but only up to a point--beyond a certain level, tasks are completely impossible no matter how good you are (unless you've got a certain trait called "Larger than Life" which basically turns you into an action movie hero who CAN do impossible stunts). Pretty much everything in the game can be expressed in this manner, and there's a nice chart correlating this with various real-world quantities--how much you can lift with a given number of Strength dice, how quickly you can read X amount of information with a given number of Awareness dice, and so on.
Second of all, Powers. Lots of games have generic power creation rules, but EABA's is different. In something like GURPS or Hero, the default model is super hero powers. Characters have some ability that they just have, like superman's flight or invulnerability, or cyclops's eyebeams. Each of these is bought as an advantage with its own cost--powerful powers cost more than weak ones.
EABA's powers are more like spells. You build them using a system of additive points--doing nastier types of damage adds points to the total, taking an hour to cast removes points, for instance. However, those aren't attribute or skill points. Instead, you look on a chart to get the difficulty to cast your spell. Powerful spells are harder to cast, spells with lots of limitations on them, such as costing fatigue or requiring expensive spell components are easier to cast. You can improve your chances by adding such limitations, or simply by improving your casting skill--but remember, you can only get so much benefit from improved skill. Some spells are simply impossible for mere mortals to cast. In some ways, this reminds me of Inhuman/Zen difficulty from Anima, only better integrated into the system.
But if spells aren't how you want your powers to work, consider this. You can reduce the point level of the spell (and thus it's difficulty) by spending 3 attribute points on it--do this enough times and you've got a "spell" that's more like a talent--easy to use, but it's something you're either born with or not. Thus, you can do Cyclops's eye beam.
The third really cool thing about EABA is "Stuff!" This is the set of technology (plus creature and settlement) design rules for EABA. It's a separate product, but useful enough to be highly recommended. I'm a big fan of GURPS Vehicles, and am still bummed that 4th edition doesn't have a version of that yet. Stuff is somewhat similar, except that a) the math is simpler, and b) it's for more than just vehicles.
Stuff is basically a set of design rules with a built-in slide rule. Everything is additive (much like Powers--a big theme in EABA), even though the quantities themselves are multiplicative. Consider weapons. Being a high-tech weapon adds to the weapon's power. Being a big weapon also adds, while being tiny subtracts. Being a machine gun subtracts from the power--it's not that machine guns are weaker, but rather that they have to be bigger than semi-auto guns for the same amount of power per bullet. Add up all the modifiers and convert the result into dice of damage. If you don't like doing that, use the included PDF worksheet which does the math for you. It takes me more time to write down the stats for a gun than it took me to design it with the PDF worksheet.
There are some caveats. EABA is a lot more generic than other systems. For instance, I like sense powers and sensors--infrared, light amp, millimeter-wave-radar, detect magic, you name it. However, there's no "Sense" power modifier, and no "Sensor" function for a Stuff gadget. Instead, you can think of these as either Acting as an Attribute (Awareness), or negating a certain type of penalty. There's a lot of thinking outside the box involved, but this also means that things are a lot more fast and loose--you can take Acts as Attribute (Awareness) to mean that a gadget can sense things, or you can take the same modifier to mean that the gadget can make decisions. A pair of infrared goggles and a computer may be the same thing in terms of modifiers, but in terms of what you can actually do with them, they're totally different.
EABA's handling of damage is also, imho, not up to the standard of the rest of the system. It's a fairly simple ablative hit point system, with the addition of types of damage (lethal and non-lethal). The problem is the same as with any system that uses ablative hit points and logarithmic damage. Targets, especially vehicles, are too vulnerable to multiple weak attacks. Two 5-point hits are as effective as one 10-point hit, even though 10 points is much more than twice as effective as 5 points. I've found a better solution is to treat size as armor, rather than giving logarithmically-increasing hit points, but this is a fairly minor point. EABA gets around this issue for the most part by using things like damage limits when hitting big things, and the fact that taking damage makes you harder to damage further, but it sometimes feels like a patch rather than a true fix.
In general, though, I find EABA to be a mostly elegant gaming system based around a few central principles, and sadly underappreciated in the gaming community.
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