allgeektout

Alright, Zach Houghton of RPG Blog II beat me to writing about what makes Epic RPG unique – he has a very nice summary up on his site here, and anything I could have done would pale in comparison. But I did get a chance to ask Kent Davis, a Partner in Dark Matter Studios, a few questions about the Mark II edition of Epic RPG, so I still have something to bring to the table. Here’s what he had to say.

What’s New in the Mark II Edition of Epic RPG

The largest change we’ve made to the book is the addition of a raft of brand new material. Our online forum community is a great part of our creation process and they’ve had some amazing ideas and suggestions to make Epic better. We’ve added a sweet section on action sequences and chase scenes, included the new Drive mechanic which materially rewards players for working towards their aspirations, and also provided more, more, more examples of all manner of gameplay and rules situations. We also added adult life event tables to the character creation section, bumped up ethos and motivation options by a factor of 10, and streamlined the family occupation and class rolls.

With regard to changes to the current ruleset, we vastly simplified the experience system and implemented gameplay masteries and grandmasteries for every specialty in the game. There are also numerous small tweaks meant to improve player experience. My favorite is the “Point of No Return” rule where dying characters have an opportunity to get in a couple of last cracks on their nemeses with one foot stuck in death’s gate.

Why Wasn’t Magic in the 1st Edition?

Actually, the separate model was from our pilot release of the game, and we incorporated magic into the first version of the Game Manual. That said, it’s pretty simple. People loved the game, but didn’t want to buy four books to play it. We thought folks might like a modular approach, but the overwhelming response we got was that customers wanted to sit down and play with one purchase.

The new setting, Audhum.

Ah, yes! Cold, and spear, and shield. The Audhum setting assumes the dawn of organized civilization. Written language is about two hundred years old. City-states are the largest level of social organizations. Technology is on the verge of the Iron Age, but most of what you’ll find is still bronze. The first great monuments are being built. Every city-state has a hero or two, icons of their people and defenders of their homes. Heroes have often ended wars through single combat at the heads of armies. There are no consistent legal codes and you have what you can hold on to at the point of your spear.

The Audhum gameplay experience is rougher and a bit more savage. There are no ancient civilizations with artifacts waiting to be discovered. The setting is centered in the lower, colder, southern hemisphere of the game world. This is the beginning of civilization. We wanted to create a kind of combination between The Iliad and Conan the Barbarian, with some Beowulf thrown in there.

Does Epic RPG make it harder to convert your own setting?

Actually, we have a lot of folks who come to Epic as a ruleset for their homegrown worlds or to port into other settings that they love. I’d say there’s a solid percentage of our fans who have incorporated Epic into their previously existing worlds.

The Game Manual has some excellent resources for porting various fantasy races to the system, as well as a couple of sections for incorporating the idea of character class into a more diversified character occupation model. The really important part of character creation, organizations and professions, is very simple. All GMs have a ton of organizations inside their worlds already – merchant’s cartels, the duke’s guard, secret societies. That imaginationative leap is the hard part. After that, it’s a matter of assigning skills and secret masteries and that’s it. The cool thing about organizations and professions is that they connect characters to settings in a very potent way. Affiliating at the top of the game with, say, a mercenary company gives the character a set of skills, but it also gives them organizational priorities, rival factions, reputation in the community, superiors and so on. For the GM and the player that provides a lot of opportunity for tons of plot and tons of adventure.

Be sure to check out some of the other Small Press articles going on this week!