Overview

EABA v2 is a technological and to some extent conceptual evolution of the first edition of EABA (or EABA v1). EABA is the self-mocking acronym for the End All Be All role-playing system, a universal system designed to work with any genre, level of realism or gamemaster style. BTRC has been at the bleeding edge of pdf development, with our first pdf gaming products actually predating the advent of places to sell them. EABA v2 continues the tradition, in that it is designed from the start to be a tablet-friendly game, but it is also equally at home on the desktop, laptop or in print-it-yourself form. In its most sophisticated form, the pdf has:

• pop-up navigation menus

• fully hyperlinked

• built-in dice roller

• semi-automated character sheets

• ability to import pictures directly into character sheet

• on-screen mapping

• one-click character creation

• savable changes so you can have your own library of custom characters, NPC's, vehicles, maps and so on.

And all this is in the pdf, so you do not need anything other than a pdf app capable of implementing it. At the moment, the best choices are Acrobat Reader (desktop), PDF Expert (iOS) and qPDF Notes (Android). A free quickstart version with all the advanced features can be downloaded from here.

        US$20.00

Note: At the moment, the advanced features of EABA v2 run slow on Android and we recommend you only try these features with the quickstart or the separate record sheets (which you can test out at the free stuff link). We have also been informed that some of the advanced features may not run properly on an iPad 1.

System details

EABA v2 is about 300 pages long, of which 100 pages are the core rules (everything you need for basic campaigning) and the other 200 are for all practical purposes "free supplements" (power creation, advanced combat rules, vehicle design, etc.). EABA v2 is with the exception of power creation and vehicle rules, compatible with all EABA v1 supplements. Even then, all the stats are the same, it is just the way you get to them that has changed. The EABA v1catalog of gameworlds will be re-issued with more content and updated rules as fast as we can manage to get it done.

Character creation is point-based, with separate pools of points for attributes, skills, and if used in a gameworld, powers. Players can take on traits that cost or grant points, like Enemies, Unusual Background, Larger than Life or many others. There are six attributes, each of which can do multiple things, depending on the level of detail you want for a campaign. For instance, Will is normally willpower and determination, but can also be used to represent charisma and force of personality. If you use the optional abilities on an attribute, you can have a Forte or Weakness in certain aspects of it. So, you might have a bonus to your Awareness for your mad scientist, but a penalty on the aspect of Awareness that covers perception because he is also near-sighted. Or, you might have a high Health, but be lame and take a penalty on Health for determining how fast you can run.

Skills are based on a particular attribute or sub-attribute and simply give you a bonus to the attribute roll when doing that task. Shooting is an Agility task, so if you had an Agility roll of 2d+2 and a +1d in using rifles, you would roll 3d+2. Many times, you can attempt to do something even without a skill, but you take a -1d penalty. So, if you had an Agility roll of 2d+2 but no skill with rifles, you would fire one with a roll of 1d+2.

Powers, if available, are constructed from sets of modifiers. The gamemaster can simply provide a list, or players can construct them from scratch. The level of effect you get is based on the type of modifiers, and you can mix and match to meet a particular need or the built-in nature of a specific gameworld. So, if all magic requires that you wave a wand and chant mystic syllables, then all powers have the modifiers "requires a focus", "requires gestures", "requires speech". Mundane gadgets are merely a subset of power design, so the power system can create a laser rifle as easily as it could create a wand of fireballs.

Mechanics

All dice rolls in EABA v2 use six-sided dice and additions of +0, +1 or +2, conventions most gamers are familiar with. Most skill rolls and tasks in EABA v2use a "best three" model, where you roll all the dice you have for a task, but only keep the best three results, trying to match or beat the difficulty of the task (like the difficulty for range for shooting something). This means that no matter how good you are, things can get too difficult for you to succeed at, since you only keep the best three dice. The difficulties for real-world tasks are designed to match what real-world people can do. If your character has the skill of an Olympic archer, what they can do in the game matches what they could accomplish in real life.

EABA v2 has three combat mechanics that may throw you for a loop, but trust us, they work and you'll like them once you give them a try.

First is armor. Weapons have a rating in dice, but so does armor. You only roll the difference in the two. If a weapon does 2d+1 damage and you have an armor of 1d+1, you take 1d+0 damage. This means that if armor is equal or greater than the weapon, the weapon never penetrates. Think about it. A bulletproof vest rated to stop a 9mm bullet does not stop a 9mm bullet some percentage of the time. It always stops a 9mm bullet. EABA v2 has optional blunt trauma rules so that non-penetrating hits can still rattle you around a bit, but actual penetration of defenses requires damage that exceeds the armor. Conversely, if damage does exceed the armor, it always penetrates. You never have to worry that your anti-tank rocket will roll minimum damage and bounce off something it has no right to. This model works far better at dealing with the way armor actually works than the "roll damage and compare to armor" method.

Second is damage. Characters have a hits track that has periodic penalties on it. These penalties apply to the character's actions and to the damage they take. If you are at the "-1d" mark on your hits track, all of your actions take a -1d penalty, but all damage that penetrates your defenses is reduced by -1d as well (down to a minimum of 1 hit). If someone shoots you in the leg twice, the second shot is not going to impair you as much as the first one. In game terms, the damage of the second one is reduced by -1d. You will still take damage, just not as much. This declining effect allows for damage that quickly reduces your ability to fight, but means you do not need an insanely high number of hits in order to have real-world events work out in game terms, like people who were stabbed dozens of times and survived.

Third, and possibly most important is the combat scaling. EABA v2 uses an "expanding scale" model. The default is that each round of combat is twice as long as the one before it. Wait. Before you think "that's a terrible idea", think about your rpg sessions, real-life combat and movie or other dramatic combats. How many combat rounds would it take to recreate a two minute movie scene? How many shooting or melee actions would everyone else get to take while one character spends a minute trying to pick a lock or download files? How many hours of player time would it take to adjudicate a ten minute car chase?

EABA v2 handles it just fine. As the rounds in the expanding scale get longer, characters get to do the same sort of things, but they also get to do things that take inherently longer. If the turn is only a second long, one action might be firing one shot. If the turn is a minute long, one action might be "hotwire a car", but it could also be "fire one shot" or "fire my entire clip" or "run around to the other side of the building". As the rounds get longer, characters get an increasing bonus that they can apply to what they are doing. If you empty a clip at someone, you are applying the bonus to your skill roll. If you run around the building, you are applying the bonus to your movement. And you can split the bonus up any way you want. So if you have a +8 turn bonus, you can apply a +2 to three different shooting actions and the remaining +2 to your movement.

The expanding scale lets you do all the cool stuff everyone loves at the start of a fight. The "who draws first" gunslinger duel, the "kick the weapon out of the guard's hands", that sort of thing. But as the turns get longer, you also get to do the other things, the "pick the lock" action, the "discuss tactics" stuff that players do anyway, the "hide behind the crates and reload", the "drive the stolen car through the plate glass and surprise the bad guys" thing, all the sort of stuff you see in a cinematic combat, but which would be painfully tedious to run if you had to do it all on a one-second-at-a-time basis.

So, that's the short form of what you get with EABA v2. This is what it looks like to use EABA v2 in its native environment:

EABA v2 demo video:

If you think it might be a system you want to try, download the free version. If it something you want to buy, we can help you with that too. All the online pdf sellers carry EABA v2 (see the links to the left), and you can buy it direct from BTRC as well using the PayPal button.

        US$20.00

Reviews!

Not the singularity (05-15-2013): BTRC does it again with EABA v2 - Excellence meets Realism

Nine hundred and thirty-five years ago, the Aeth attacked Earth. They abducted millions of humans. Not just humans, though. The Aeth arrived with a ship bigger than Earth and took entire chunks of the planet with them, setting them down like sod on the surface of their worldship. They never communicated with us, made no demands, they just did it, and then their worldship slowly accelerated back up to a fraction of lightspeed and with its tiny suns providing light, disappeared into the interstellar dark.

You are a descendant of those original involuntary colonists. Over the centuries, we have discovered that we are not alone. The Aeth remain silent and out of sight, living inside their worldship and only rarely venturing to the surface, but humanity has plenty of company on the surface. Some are friends and allies, some are enemies. Some we have not even met, for the worldship Aethos is a big place and humans only occupy a small part of it. We have recovered and adapted, remembering Old Earth in language and culture, but it is too far away for us to ever return. But more important is that Aethos has fired up its maneuvering drive. It is slowing down, a process that will take a century or more. The Aeth, for whatever reason motivates them, are approaching another star system. Allies who have been here far longer than us say that it is almost certain this system has intelligent life and habitable worlds, and that this is the most dangerous time to be alive. The Aeth will be out and about, hostile races will seek to take advantage of the chaos. Some may even try to escape and find a new home on whatever world or worlds are left when the Aeth get through with them.

Aethos is difficult to pin down as a particular genre. It is a hard SF setting with aliens and advanced tech, but it all takes place on one planet. It is about humans, but does not involve Earth. There is science and superstition, history and legends, open lies and hidden truths, redemption and destruction. It is 200 pages of space opera, exploration, political intrigue, espionage and military rpg setting rolled into one. As a pdf, it will have all the advanced features of EABA v2, and the download also includes a feature-lite pdf (form fields, bookmarks and hyperlinks) for those who do not want or need the extra functionality. You can get a flat sample chapter of Aethos right here, or buy it from the link below.

        US$15.00