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All right, I admit it: I love magic in roleplaying games. When a game has magic in it, (or psionics, or superpowers,) you know it's guaranteed to be a break from the ordinary. Consequently, I fell in love with this game when it was first released as a PDF on RPG.Now. For those that haven't followed the game, I'll give a brief rundown.
You are a powerful wizard. You live in a collection of floating chunks of land that used to be Anhelm, a beautiful civilization that literally fell apart when the wizards of the time inexplicably went mad (the details are sketchy) and tore the place apart. For safety's sake, the lands outside Anhelm banded together and dropped what was left (including the wizards) into a strange void. During the day, you duel with other wizards (for long standing grudges, for a "noble cause," to make a name for yourself, to remove the threat of boredom, etc.) , and at night, you meet up with your friends at the preferred tavern of your choice to gossip, vent your frustrations, and plan for world salvation/domination. Along the way, crises arise, and it's usually up to your wizards to set things right, or at least figure out how to turn things to your advantage. Old castles, ruins, and stores of treasure (including the all-important magical lore!) abound, so it serves your best interests to go out and explore.
Character creation is simple. You have three stats: Agility (dexterity and initiative), Endurance ( strength and constitution), and Concentration (intelligence and awareness). Multiplying these by three, you get Speed (how fast you move), Life Points (how much damage you can take), and Focus (how much of an attention span you have.) You get one free point in each base stat, and 12 extra points to fill them in. Then you get 35 skill points (up from 25 in previous editions! Wheee!) to beef up your magical power. Yes, all of your wizard's skill points go into arcane lore; tellingly, no known wizard has yet wasted his or her time learning "useless" skills like Seduction, Architecture, Farming, Hunting, etc., because every wizard knows that all of that nonsense is best handled by using magic. The schools of magic used by most wizards are Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. If you're feeling creative, you can invent a new school of magic for your character, as long as you come up with a school of magic that thematically opposes it. (Air opposes Earth, Fire opposes Water, Life would oppose Death, Mind would oppose Body, Creation would oppose Destruction, Ice (air + water) would oppose Lava (fire + earth), etc.) This gives your character an edge, as it's more difficult to counter an attack without using the opposing school of magic. You also get a special Word of Power that you can use any time during combat to give your wizard a +5 (or is it +4? The book gets confused at points.) bonus to your action. Finally, you write down your wizard's origin, a dramatic entrance scene for him, two minor and one major goals (called Events) that your character wants to accomplish, and you're as ready as you can be to smite with great wrath any vile l00zer that annoys thee!
The mechanics are simple, although the new version has added a few interesting twists. You roll 2d10, "0's" counting as zero, and add the appropriate Skill or attribute. Compare to the Target Number; if you beat it, you succeed, and if not, you fail. What kind of success you get, or how much damage you inflict, is determined by how much you beat the TN. They have an Outcome chart, but just assume higher is better. For more complicated maneuvers, you take a variable penalty off of your total, or, with a good description of your magic and some tactical thinking, you can add a variable amount to your total. Description is key to this game. If you get creative while describing your magic usage (as long as you stick to the theme established by what school of magic you're using), the GM will (is encouraged to) add a bonus to your roll. As long as you stick to your school, you can practically describe the effects anyway you want to; the dice merely tell you how effective your magic was. That's why it adds to the game to invent new schools during character creation. You also have a limited ability to narrate your victories, with guidelines from the Outcome chart. No spell lists, no "magic fuel" stat, and a liberal approach to designing magic on the fly make this one of my favorite spellcaster games.
You can also, as game play progresses, build Constructs out of your schools of magic. Fire specialists can build fiery battle creatures, fiery automatic shields, fiery death traps, or fiery servants to tidy up the base of operations. This costs Focus: you spend a certain amount of Focus to establish a rudimentary awareness and a limited control over the Construct, and you don't get it back until the Construct is destroyed. Or you can mutate an animal into a twisted companion with powers. Or you can build your own magical artifacts. Or hunt down some swell real estate, and defend it from your enemies. The rules cover the steps you have to go through. Usually there is a cost to the wizard, but the results tend to make up for it. Most of the time, but that's part of the wizard's life. Again, only a few simple rules and no limits due to experience, as your wizard is assumed to be competent from day one.
So, how did I like the new, spiffier version of Eldritch Ass Kicking?
ART: The illustrations by Tom Weighill were perfectly appropriate to the game, being mostly caricatures of old men in wizard garb looking slightly ridiculous. There are some typos: page 64 has some flavor text dropped, and Words of Power are either a +5 or +4 bonus, depending on which page you look at. The character sheets aren’t as artsy to look at, but they’re now two pages to hold more info instead of one, so I consider that a fair trade. The text was easy to read and follow.
THE GAME: In addition to a couple of modifications I mentioned above, Eldritch Ass Kicking has two optional rules that both add to longer-term campaigns. One is the inclusion of Avatars, wizards who specialize in one school of magic to such an extent (26+ points in that school) that they come to represent that school. No other wizard except the Avatar can go beyond 25 skill points in a school, unless they defeat that Avatar in combat, in which case they become the new Avatar.
The other, more important optional rule is Hubris. Hubris is a rough measure of how successful your wizard is. The better he does, the more Hubris he gets. Hubris can be spent to boost initiative rules for a scene, and can also be spent to boost magical rolls in combat. Hubris refreshes after a day’s rest. Of course, if he gets beaten by enemies, loses magical artifacts, or gets grievously insulted, he can lose Hubris as well. Nothing succeeds like success, among wizards, and this handy stat should help interest players in a longer campaign, along with fulfilling Events and the regular experience system. It also helps the GM gauge what caliber of enemies he needs to throw at your wizard. Although optional, this represents something I thought was missing from the original EAK, and I’m glad to see it included.
Speaking of which, they also added an optional insult rule to the game, to encourage high-blown disrespect of the enemy. If you’re up against a speedier foe, taunt him in game. She taunts back. If your insult is judged by GM and fellow players to have been better, you get to use your opponent’s higher Speed score. If you lose, you lose your next action for being a weenie.
Also, lest I forget, you can now cast Epic Magic. Ever wanted to become immortal, raise a castle or continent from the depths of the swirling void, or resurrect a dead comrade? Well, if you can beat the high TN and find the right components to do so, you can. Usually, these cause big changes in the world, so consult with your GM before you try. Usually, they let you; after all, isn’t this what being a magically proficient egomaniac is all about? Plus, they make great plot devices in the hands of NPCs, too.
In sum, I really liked this game when it first came out, and now I love it. The freer-form magic got me hooked, but what kept me on the line is the subtle humor of the game. I love irony, more so than magic in an rpg. People tend to (if they’ve heard of it) seriously underestimate this game, treating it as an episodic, beer-and-pretzels game. Now it can more readily support long-term play, but people might still dismiss it as just another comedy rpg. It’s a funny game, but it’s even funnier than it might appear at first glance.
Like Ron Edward’s Elfs, it takes a hackneyed game trope (the wise and spiritual wizard) and skewers it mercilessly. Wizards in this game are geeks, obsessed with lore no sane person would ever go near, consumed with emotion over petty sleights any normal person would shrug off, egomaniacally certain that they know best how to run the world, only able to interact with each other while fighting or while drinking and complaining about how rotten the world is, centered on pursuing even bigger and better weapons of mass destr…uh, arcane lore, all to prove to their socially inbred little clique that they are the best, while letting any opportunity to do something constructive with their power slip through their hands, without even acknowledging it. (Sound like anyone you know?) Thanks to this game, I now understand why wizards wear robes: they got tired of being pantsed all the time when they were growing up. Even the wise and nobly-intended “good wizards” in this game are out there dueling and taunting one another, chanting spells of enormous property-destruction at the bad guys who pantsed them in their formative years.
Ah, but the fact that the geeks now own all the big guns adds another level of humor to the game, a grim level. These very nerds who destroyed the world are the same emotionally-damaged egomaniacs who have the power to restore it. The question is: can they step outside their narrow mindset long enough to work together to do so? The game addresses this in a refreshingly angst-free manner, which enhances the irony (and the comedy) by not dwelling on it.
While all of this can be shoved into the background, to my way of thinking that does this gem of a game some disservice. Even in its early stages, this game gave me visions of old men with sticks flying around and blasting each other in a world that was one part Vance’s The Dying Earth and one part Terry Prattchett’s Sourcery, as directed by Jerry Bruckheimer or The Wachowski Brothers in a comedic mood. Even while giving the magic-happy powergamers a poke in the ribs (and I say this as a barely-reformed member of that tribe), it does so in a way that allows everyone to enjoy the joke, by giving them the wizards they always wanted back in the dark days of old-school gaming and letting them rip. All the old-school game mechanics that would annoy me in another game (hit points, simplified stats, gain XP by killing opponents, as well as taunting them and being diabolical, combat-centered mechanics, etc.) fit this game perfectly, and I couldn’t imagine it as being this good any other way.
It’s not for everyone. If you don’t find the image of supposedly wise and mysterious sorcerers blasting each other with magic and taunting each other like school children funny, or you don’t like the idea of having to describe in an overblown manner the unholy devastation your magic just wrought, this game’s not for you. If you like comedy games with a subtle edge, or just want some good old-fashioned special-effects style ass-kicking, this game is well worth the investment.
