 Goto [ Index ] |
Since I'm not familiar with the Omni System, I won't be able to comment much on the mechanical aspects of eco; however, there aren't very many of those anyway. Besides, eco is the sort of product that could easily be adapted to nearly any game system you desire. You can find a brief summary of the core mechanic of the Omni System in Matt Slepin's recent review of Atlantis: the Second Age.
Overview Player characters in eco are animals. However, it's not a "furry" game; physically speaking, these are ordinary animals. In other words, eco characters are like the characters in Charlotte's Web or The Incredible Journey or maybe Watership Down, not those in Redwall or Beatrix Potter. (Which is not to say that you couldn't create such characters if you wanted to; the Omni System was designed as a generic system, after all.)
eco is a game with an agenda; specifically, an environmental agenda. (It's also intended to be usable as an educational game for younger players.) It's not as heavy-handed in its treatment as some games, though. There's a fair amount of "humans are a plague on the planet" mentality, which I found rather irksome, but the problems caused by humans are realistically portrayed. eco doesn't deal in the simplistic caricatures of Evil Polluters that you find in, say, Werewolf: the Apocalypse or Captain Planet.
The PDF of eco is 98 pages, which includes the front cover, title page, credits page, a one-page index and a character sheet. There's no table of contents, but it's thoroughly bookmarked. The main body of the text is divided into four chapters:
Chapter One: Gaia's Call (9 pages) The first chapter serves as an overview of the setting of eco and introduces the concept of the Aware. eco is based on the premise that all animals are sentient (or at least, all those with a brain, although I don't know how jellyfish qualify). The authors go into a fair amount of detail explaining how animals see the world, how they are like and yet unlike humans. The player characters are intended to be among the Aware, animals who have a special gift of understanding. That doesn't mean that they're more intelligent than other animals, but they have the ability to see things from another's perspective, which other animals lack. This ability enables them to cooperate with animals of other species, to understand and use human tools (within the limits of their physical capabilities), and to see the big picture and devise plans for the preservation of nature.
(Tangent: The sidebar on animal names states that many animals call themselves by human names, and specific mention is given to the use of names from different human languages. However, since most animals are incapable of human speech, I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. How is a turtle supposed to pronounce the word "Tortue" or "Kame", let along "Macroclemys Temminckii"?)
This is followed by an account of animal mythology explaining how the Aware are the chosen ones of Gaia (there are no Aware humans, by the way), and a section describing the different attitudes that Aware may have towards humankind.
Chapter Two: eco Characters (34 pages) This chapter opens with a discussion of how eco differs from other Omni System games. For example, there are no Callings; there's a new attribute called Blend, which determines how conspicuous an animal is in an urban environment; and starting attributes are determined by species (with limited scope for individual modification) rather than randomly. Of course, not all skills can be used by animal characters, and this chapter lists those that are available, notes changes to a few of them, and introduces a new skill, Manipulate, which is the ability to use human tools. Naturally, this is highly dependant on species, and most (but not all) of the species listed later in the chapter have a bonus or penalty of one kind or another.
After skills come Talents, and again there's a list of which Talents from the core rules are appropriate for eco characters, as well as a selection of new Talents. (Interestingly, the table listing Talents from the core rules includes one called "Blend In", which makes me wonder how it interacts with the new Blend attribute.) There are no Talent Trees in eco, whatever that means, although some Talents do have prerequisites (mostly skills or attributes rather than other Talents).
Next is a rule called "Gaia's Favor", which gives the players Favor Points that they can spend to get themselves out of a scrape, and rules for character size. There are also rules on Fear, which I found highly questionable. Animals are afraid of unfamiliar humans and human technology; it apparently makes no difference whether they're domesticated or not. Likewise, humans must make a roll to resist fear when confronted with a nondomesticated animal. Personally, I'd be much more afraid of a vicious dog or angry bull than a squirrel. Of course, the rules do state that fear rolls are at the GM's discretion, but that just highlights the fact that it's an arbitrary and pointless distinction.
The bulk of the chapter is taken up by 15 sample species. The reason this section is so long is because it includes detailed information on the behavior and lifestyle of each species. Most of the species included are animals you'd find in or around a North American city. All of them are Small or Tiny except for the coyote, German shepherd and black bear, all are birds or mammals, and none of them are farm animals. Obviously they couldn't include every animal under the sun, but the limited variety is still a bit disappointing. The authors clearly decided to go for depth over breadth, which makes the descriptions of the sample species more flavorful than just a list of stats – but why they saw fit to include coatis while leaving out mice and rabbits is beyond me. (They don't include seagulls either, even though the default setting is a coastal city.)
Although I can't comment much on the mechanical aspects, there are a few things that struck me as odd here: - All of the animals have a list of "Preferred Skills" which they get at specific levels for free. Many of them also have bonuses to certain skills listed under "Bonus Skills & Talents". I don't know how skills are purchased in the Omni System, but I can't help wondering why these were listed separately. - Dogs are described as having the ability to "see the spirit of death as it approaches," which seems weirdly out of place since none of the other animals have any sort of supernatural abilities attributed to them. (This statement isn't backed up by game mechanics, either.) - Crows, foxes and owls get significant bonuses to Intelligence (ranging from +3 to +5), whereas dogs have no bonus and cats only have a +1.
Chapter Three: The City (43 pages) This is the default setting for eco: an unspecified North American coastal city (though from the description of the surrounding terrain, it seems most likely to be on the west coast). Of course, the city can be relocated to anywhere in the world, and this is addressed in a sidebar. The City is divided into districts (downtown, industrial, waterfront, etc.), each of which gets a general description followed by a selection of key locations and notable animal residents therein. On the whole, these are quite interesting and flavorful. There are plenty of potential adventure hooks embedded in these places, but no specific suggestions for possible scenarios. A few of the locations described (e.g. the Death Factory, NGen) do border on Evil Polluter caricatures, but since they're described from the viewpoint of the animals, this is understandable. (Tangent: Why would a company that does pharmaceutical testing be called Nationwide Genetics?)
Chapter Four: For Gamemasters This chapter begins with equipment (for the GM, not the players) – specifically, animal traps and poisons. There's also a selection of diseases suitable for inflicting on the player characters, such as avian flu, hanta virus, and of course rabies. Finally, there's an assortment of "Friends & Foes", which includes a stat block for an "Average Joe" human as well as nine more animals, with less detailed stats and descriptions than those in Chapter Two. The division of animals between Chapter Two and this section seems rather arbitrary. There are still no reptiles (though frogs are included), no farm animals, and no mice, rabbits, deer or seagulls.
Style The illustrations in eco are realistic black-and-white ink drawings (some of animals, some of urban or forest environments), which are quite nicely done. The illustrations of The City have a retro look to them (or perhaps I should say timeless); they could just as easily be from a city of the 1940's as today. Incidentally, very few of the drawings depict humans. The pages have a border resembling ornamental ironwork which adds to the retro feel and also results in rather wide margin on three sides.
The writing style is easy to follow and fairly entertaining. However, it has quite a number of typos, which cost it a point from Style. Fortunately, these are mostly grammar and punctuation errors; very few have any impact on the game mechanics. I made a list of all the errors I found to ensure that I wasn't over-estimating them, and I'll post the complete list in the forums below (for the benefit of the editors at Morrigan Press); here, I'll just comment on a few noteworthy points: - The frequency of errors is much higher in Chapter Two than in any other part of the book, which leads me to suspect that it was either written or proofread by a different person. - Whoever wrote Chapter Two badly needs a lesson in the use of apostrophes. - The Tracking skill is marked with an asterisk, which is footnoted as "Changes to these skills are detailed below," but there are no changes described. - Memory Training isn't listed as an available Talent in Chapter Two, although three of the sample characters in Chapter Three have it. - Neither shrews, rabbits, nor bats are rodents (they're insectivores, lagomorphs and chiropterans respectively), and I don't think rats are diurnal either. - Squirrels are listed as Small, despite being given as an example of a Tiny animal in the section on size. - It's "Every once in a while", not "Every once and a while"! (If people would think about what idioms actually mean, they'd make fewer mistakes.)
Substance eco seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. After the broad scope of the first chapter, which implies that the whole of the animal kingdom is open to player exploration (and even has a sidebar on the possibility of including Aware plants, bacteria and viruses!), the limited selection of sample species and the narrow focus of the sample setting is a disappointment. The fact that it has a sample setting at all is a mixed blessing; if I'd been writing it I would probably have ignored setting details – this is Earth, after all – and tried to cover a wider variety of animals rather than spend nearly half the book describing city locations.
Still, I can't fault eco for not living up to my own expectations of what it ought to have been. It scores rather poorly on breadth, but makes up for it in depth. In other words, within the narrow scope of what it covers, it covers it quite well. The one major shortcoming aside from the limited selection of sample species is the lack of any concrete suggestions for adventure scenarios. Oh, there are a few suggestions as to what Aware animals might do to forestall the continuing destruction of their habitat by humans, but no details on how they might actually do it, let alone any fleshed-out adventure outlines. While I don't consider sample adventures a must, in a game as different from the mainstream as eco is, they would certainly have been a help. Of course, some people might find it easier and/or more interesting to use eco as a vehicle for "traditional" animal adventures rather than trying to stick to the ecological theme intended by the authors.
If I had the choice, I'd probably rate eco a 3.5 on both Style and Substance, but since I've rounded down on Style I'll round up on Substance, giving a 4. Would I have paid money for it? Probably not, but then it's not really my sort of game (although I do like animals). If it sounds like it might be yours, you could do worse than to check it out.
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
