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What the heck’s an
EE-bah?
EABA (pronounced
“EE-bah”) is a generic rpg core system. The designer never
explicitly tells us in the rule book what EABA stands for, but rumor
has it that it's an acronym for 'End All, Be All', an allusion to
the fact that it's the last role playing system you'll ever need. In
any case, it’s based on a simple-as-sneezing d6 mechanic, and anyone
who’s ever played the original WEG Star Wars RPG will be
instantly familiar with the idea.
Players receive a
number of points to purchase six Attribute scores with (strength,
health, agility, awareness, will, and fate), and naturally, higher
scores require increasingly more points to buy. The GM determines
how powerful the PCs are by varying the amount of points players
have to buy Attributes. A gritty, realistic setting may allow PCs 80
points to buy scores with, giving them average mundane human
abilities (attribute scores of "7", say), while a game of
super-powered heroes may start with 150 or more points, allowing for
characters with massive strength, damage resilience, and super-speed
compared to normal folk (attribute scores around "11").
Your Attribute
rating then determines how many six-siders you roll when attempting
a task using that Attribute, per a handy chart. If your Agility is
"6", then your dice pool for rolling tasks that require Agility is
"2d", or two six-siders. If your Agility were "9", you'd instead
roll "3d". (In between full-die increments, you have bonuses to your
rolls, such as an Agility of "8" giving you a 2d+2 dice pool, or two
six siders and then a +2 bonus to the roll.)
To succeed in said
task, you need to beat a Difficulty rating set by the GM by adding
up the best three rolls of your dice. (So having more than
three dice to use on a roll doesn’t guarantee you a success, just a
higher probability for success.) A Very Easy task requires a sum of
3 on your roll, while a Challenging task requires a sum of 9, and a
Heroic task needs a roll of 15. You get the idea. Combat attacks are
opposed rolls against your opponent's defense rolls.
There are then
Skills which are purchased using skill points the same way your
Attributes were purchased. By spending more points, you get
increasingly higher levels in your Skills, which grants you more
dice to roll when attempting to do something. The core book has a
standard list of skills to get you started, but really, any talent
you can think of can be a skill: computers, sword-making, scuba
diving, laser pistols, spell casting, forensics, alpaca farming,
etc. You and the GM simply agree on the details of what tasks your
skill covers, and you’re good to go.
EABA reads
as a basic rules set, but there are advanced optional rules for
almost every game concept as well. GMs may add as much complexity
crunch to their campaigns as they’d like by using none, some, or all
of these optional rules. As an example, for my play test I just used
the basic combat rules (do I hit, and if so, how much damage did I
do?), but there are optional rules for hit locations, continuous
damage, blocking and parrying, grappling, targeting systems, etc.
As with any
generic system, EABA is designed to fit any genre you’d like
to take on; supers, historical military, high or low fantasy, pulp,
horror, sci-fi, whatever crackles your Krispies. While this is not a
review of the EABA core system per se, I will take a moment
to note that I very much like that core. The scaling of points and
powers, the ease of combining basic and optional rules, the
malleability of the skills, and the many examples of rules and PC-
creation make for a tight, practical game system. In recent years
I've become more of a
fan of generic systems (GURPS 4th, Unisystem, Savage Worlds),
and even compared to those, I admire the way this one
works. A role-playing beginner could grasp the system and start
playing with little fuss, while a veteran gamer could use these
rules to begin crafting the perfect genre, setting, and power level
for their games immediately.
Boo-boos are
counted off with lethal and non-lethal varieties. Getting
sucker-punched by a grandma possessed by the spirit of a netherworld
boogeyman may lay you out, but you'll survive and regain your
stamina quickly. Getting your throat ripped out by the claws of a
ravenous werewolf… now that's gonna kill a dude. The EABA damage
system lets you easily differentiate between "lethal" and "just
irritating" wounds, unlike many straight "hit point" mechanics in
other games.
Interestingly, the
EABA damage mechanics are cool in that the more injured you are, the
less you need to worry about lesser forms of damage. The idea being that if
you've already been shot, then getting punched in the abdomen just
isn't gonna phase you as much. So bigger wounds make lesser wounds
less grievous. This allows for more cinematic fights, where the
heroes take a whompin' and keep on stompin', unless they're taken
out by the bug guns.
Now, on to the Black…
It Is Better to Be the
Lesser of Two Evils…
In an
unknowably ancient time, the final battle between Good and Evil was
fought. Most of the darkness was eradicated from the universe. That
Evil which was most powerful couldn't be erased, but it could be
imprisoned. So a world was created to act as a tomb for the Evil,
and the last powerful darkness was locked away, removed from the
rest of existence. In that moment, Goodness flashed across the span
of creation, illuminating every furthest star and hidden corner of
the universe.
And in that
same moment, every thinking being in the universe vanished in an
evanescent nanosecond of absolute righteousness. For Good cannot exist without Evil.
But the universe abhors a vacuum. With
Good gone, only the locked-up Evil remained. The Balance must be
maintained, and so little by little, the bonds of Evil's prison were
weakened, until the least threatening of the great Evils were able
to slip out. They were not exactly "good," per se, but they were not
the worst of the Evil, and that was enough. Balance had been
restored.
In time, the escaped evils forgot, or
chose to ignore, the ancient, powerful Evils who still remained
banished. They chose to not see the greater Evils' influence in
their daily lives. These most minor of the Evils, the first to
escape the prison, were mankind, and they became Blind. Unable
(unwilling?) to see the darkness within them, and around them, most
of mankind goes about its life, not knowing the Truth. But this
Blindness does not protect mankind, as they think it does. Rather,
it leaves them open to the influences of the Evil. How can you fight
against something you won't admit exists?
There are, however, in the midst of the
Blind, a few who can See the Truth. Out of those with the Sight,
most crack under the reality laid out before them, unable to cope
with the Truth of the universe, and mankind's role in it. They go
insane.
Those that survive are invited into the
Brotherhood of Gilgamesh. They are the only ones who See clearly,
who fight against the Evil. But, do they do so because they are
Good? Or merely because they want humanity to remain the strongest
force in the world, and can only do so if the greatest Evil remains
imprisoned? Whatever your reason, you are one of the Brotherhood;
the most secret, enduring order of crusaders on the face of the
Earth. The ones who stand between mankind, and the things that go
bump in the night.
In Code: Black,
you play members of the Brotherhood of Gilgamesh, in a present day
setting. The Brotherhood all have the ability to "See", and thus can
spot unearthly beings such as devils, vampires, lycanthropes, and
other more sinister beings, who are normally hidden amongst the
throng of humanity. Common man doesn't know them for what they are,
even when he stands next to them, and deludes himself into thinking
they don't exist.
You'll play a
low-level Brotherhood field operative. Think of a cross between
X-Files and Men in Black, with a dash of Supernatural
thrown in. Seriously weird crap goes down all over the world, and
somebody has to deal with it. All Brotherhood operatives lead a
double life; you've got your standard day job where you make your
living, and then you've got your periodic assignments from the
Brotherhood. Since there's no one quality that gives people the
Sight, members come from any and all walks of life: street bums,
CEOs, garbage men, lawyers, surfers, clergy. When making a
character, you should think of a day job, with appropriate
ramifications. There's no telling when in your life the Sight will
come upon you either, so both school children and doddering geezers
may be able to See things around them that they can't explain. |
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The Content
OK, that's the
Code: Black background. Agents from a secret society hunt down
supernatural threats before those dark nasties have a chance to
unleash more eeeeeeevil upon the world. Whether your PC agents do
this because they think they're the good guys, or whether they do
this because they want humans to stay on top of the food and power
chains is a philosophical theme for your own gaming group to
explore.
But now lemme give
you the low-down on the rest of the PDF contents, just so you know
what you're getting for your bucks.
The Black
PDF includes notes to fine-tune EABA characters to this setting,
such as explaining how to use the fate score as your Sight, and
examining several particular skills and how they function within the
setting, that sort of thing. Character generation rules are not
presented here, so again, you'll need the original core EABA rules
to play this material as written. However, the author, Mr. Porter,
happily encourages you to adopt the Black background to your
own favorite rpg if you like. (I can easily see this material being
used in Call of Cthulu, World of Darkness, or with Unisystem games such as
Buffy or Conspiracy X.)
The book discusses
the powers of evil within the game, like how it corrupts humans, and
what influence the ancient Evils still trapped in the Prison have,
and the role of sorcery in the game. (What? You really thought we'd
discuss a horror role playing game without adding black magic and
nefarious sorcery into the pot? Puh-lease.)
Code: Black
offers a fairly simple system for designing spells based on their
effects and the power that the caster wants the magic to pack. Some
useful sample spells are written up, in case the GM or player wants
to skip the tedious bits of actually inventing their spells, and
instead just use some pre-fabs from the list. There are blast
spells, and healing spells, and ability-boosters, and shielding
spells; all the basics are covered.
The side effects
of sorcery use in Black are uniformly bad, however. Fatigue,
distraction, and, oh, yeah, the risk of losing your soul are all
downsides to summoning a demon or scrying the neighbors. Using
healing magic actually hurts you… so, nothing's free, baby. PCs
wanting to use magic in Black need to consider whether it's
worth the risk. ("If you only knew the power of the Dark Side…" =wheeeeze=
)
A whole section of
the book is next dedicated to laying out the Brotherhood of
Gilgamesh. Standard operational practices are touched on, offices
and administrations in different parts if the USA and a few parts of
the world are glanced at (so you know, for example, that there are
twelve Brotherhood field operatives in Hawaii, and five in Guam).
It's also in this section where you discover the different code
colors used by the Brotherhood to indicate danger levels of
supernatural happenings. (Code: White is "Everything's cool."
Code: Orange is "Something's Afoot in Your Neck of the Woods."
There's a whole rainbow of codes, right down to Code: Black, which
is "All Hell Has Broken Loose!")
There's a Game
Master section, explaining how to run a campaign, how to keep things
eerie and evil and challenging, how to think up adventures, etc.
There's a section on gear and gizmos, including special Brotherhood
inventions unique to your PCs' line of work. (Think "Q" from the
James Bond labs.) There's a list of modern weapons and ammo, plus
some nifty specialized boomsticks to put the hurtin' on supernatural
critters when normal buckshot don't do the trick. (Nuclear-powered
laser rifle, anyone?) There are some sample adventures provided (one
quite extensive), plus seeds for other adventures for you to flesh
out. Quite a respectable amount of material for a reasonably priced
PDF.
(As an aside,
there's also a "campaign location" sourcebook for Code: Black
available, called
Brecken Ridge. A whole campaign booklet at your download-lovin'
fingertips.)
Lastly, there's an
Open Supplement License, for those of you who like doing your own
work. Got a nifty adventure or supplement idea for EABA? Publish
that sucker! Just give Mr. Porter at BTRC his due credit.
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(4 out of 5 Dice)
