So EABA Warp World is an ENnie nominee and BTRC is finishing up EABA Rune Stryders, which I've seen and should satisfy magic-mecha-fantasy EABA fans. My question is: are there any EABA fans in these parts? It's a very cinematic system with roots in BTRC's CORPS system and WEG's D6. If so, which supplements did you like and what are you doing with the game?
Warp World got remade?! I really dig that game.
I don't know EABA any so I can't comment.
I'll shut up and go check out what I can on this WW remake.
Warp World (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=50&products_id=2046)
EABA (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=50&products_id=1530)
I like EABA for all the same reasons I like CORPS, only I like CORPS more. That's a weak response--not very useful at the table. But it's that kind of quandary. Both games are complete, no-nonsense generics, designed to get business done at the table with little fuss and bother. They're medium crunch, elegantly-designed to feel like less.
I used CORPS to run a crime-fighter cult (think Millennium) vs. Nephilim campaign, primarily because that campaign grew out of a campaign we played using the old-fashioned CORPS conspiracy game. You could do anything you wanted with CORPS or EABA. If you have weird powers, EABA has some character generation rules that make that easier. CORPS has rules for making mundane skills feel right in your campaign.
Otherwise, they're really very similar. Oh-CORPS uses a single d10 mechanic, while EABA uses dice pools, if that means anything to you.
Quote from: stu2000;224515I like EABA for all the same reasons I like CORPS, only I like CORPS more.
I don't like EABA for the reasons I liked CORPS. The CORPS dice mechanic was straightforward and simple; EABA took CORPS and replaced the dice mechanic with some gimmicky dice pool thingy out of the 90's.
As I said the first time I saw it: how the mighty have fallen.
I think that's completely fair.
Just the dice pool thing doesn't bother me as much. I do prefer CORPS. It's altogether more straightforward. But EABA is pretty straightforward, too, compared to some other construct-your-own generics.
Ythrek kicks ass as a post-apoc fantasy setting though I'd like to see Nanomagic developed more. EABA is solid, if someone held a gun to my head and said I had to choose between that and HERO and GURPS I'd take EABA over those other two in a heartbeat. Greg Porter is worthy of respect in general.
Quote from: brettmb;224507Warp World (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=50&products_id=2046)
EABA (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=50&products_id=1530)
Thanks!
I checked them just now. I wandered off immediately after my earlier post to check BTRC's site. Not a lot of info, but I'm interested.
It's alright but I've never really done anything with it. NeoTerra was neat at the time but post Matrix-glow it just doesn't seem to interest me anymore. I have games like BESM and now Mongoose Traveller instead.
EABAAnywhere (http://www.btrc.net/html/eaba2.html#FREE3) however is pretty neat. Free, print it out, fold it up, put it in a pants pocket and play a RPG using RPS, coins or dice. :cool:
Greg Porter does a great job at making good pdfs and was at the forefront of selling RPGs on cd or download. The BTRC PDFs are crisp and make good use of PDF advantages like links and bookmarks. I rather liked his VDS and Guns!Guns!Guns! for CORPS back in the day and his design work for Marc Miller's Traveller (or T4) was one of the few standouts of that edition.
(edit: ) Actually all of the settings look interesting enough to me to play. Good sign that. Some are somewhat Palladium ZOMG creative bursty, but again, a potentially good sign, and EABA is a consistent set of rules.
You can also pick up a free copy of EABAlite (http://www.yourgamesnow.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&manufacturers_id=50&products_id=1543) if you'd like a good look at the rules.
I used CORPS a lot, so EABA was a hard sell for me. I like the elegance of the CORPS d10 mechanic, and how well every aspect of the game seemed to reality-check. You can use it for cinematic games as well, if the GM is willing to be generous with the difficulty numbers.
However, I have come to like the consistency and flexibility of the Powers system in EABA, and a number of the approaches Greg Porter took with EABA. I like the damage system and how damage acts as protection against further damage (sort of a reverse death-spiral.) If you break an arm the second time, it won't be as debilitating as the first break. I also like the setting books (especially TimeLords, Ythrek and Nocturne), and the "Stuff!" supplement, allowing you to build anything from weapons to vehicles to aliens to civilizations.
So, I've come to the point where I really want to give EABA a more thorough run. I've run a number of CORPS campaigns over the years, but only a few short EABA adventures.
I really like EABA (not surprising, since I wrote EABAlite :) ), and I'm using it for two campaigns (a sci-fi setting, and a dark future/cyberpunk [without the cyber] setting).
Just to show the old "different tastes" argument, I quite like the dice pool method EABA uses. I like a dice pool vs the CORPS method (which I used for a few campaigns) because it averages out the result that's rolled (extremes at either end are much rarer). I like the "roll n select 3" bit because of my experiences with the D6 System - towards the end of the campaign my players were rolling a fair number of dice, and they're not particularly fast at mentally adding them up. At least with EABA they only have to add up three dice.
The two things I don't like about EABA are the combat system (too detailed for my tastes, but easily fixed) and the glitch the die roll statistics have when you start rolling more die, and go from (for example) rolling 4d+2 for a skill to 5d for a skill (the 4d+2 is much better statistically). I've never come up with a good solution to that problem (the solution that EABA offers works, but doesn't sit well with me).
Cheers,
Jason