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Before digging into the contents of the book, perhaps a discussion of genre is appropriate. In the section titled “May I Have a Genre, Please?” the author (Greg Stolze) explores how eC has certain similarities to the cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, and super hero genres, but doesn’t really fit any of them. While technology has advanced greatly in many ways, for the most part advances and the business that would make them have both stalled out. So it doesn’t really fit the traditional cyberpunk genre. Society is still going along, if only barely, and the old social orders are still in place. So it doesn’t really fit the post-apocalyptic genre (although it feels like it’s maybe a pre-apocalyptic setting in several ways). Super-powers exist, but they’re minor and illegal, and even though “heroes” and “villains” wear capes, they tend to come across more like mentally ill vagrants in costumes than comic book heroes (and in fact, they may be mentally ill vagrants in costumes). So it doesn’t fit the (traditional) super hero genre either. Honestly, I’d peg it as a near-future low-powered commonplace-supers pre-apocalyptic setting myself. And for those wondering: eC doesn’t bother with the Wild Talents “color axis” of world building, so if you’re hoping to see it in use here you’re out of luck. Anyway, on to the contents!
Chapter 1: Where Are We and What Are We Doing Here? A brief overview of the setting, exploring the themes of the game. In the near future there’s a global collapse, and Americans have turned from a consumer lifestyle to a new ideological one. Or rather they’ve turned to numerous new ideological lifestyles; apparently one or more for every person. Christian Communism (or “Christomunism” as it’s called) is given as the one (and only) example of these new ideologies that drive the game. Cybernetics have come and gone, replaced with bioengineered organs, chemical boosts, and the like, that give their recipients superhuman abilities. When you combine radical ideologies with super human powers, and maybe a catchy name and costume, then you have a character. A character that’s a symbol for something. You may not be sure what exactly, but nobody said demagoguery is easy.
Chapter 2: Identity Crisis How to make characters for eC using the Wild Talents rules, with occasional side notes for the Smear of Destiny. No Archetypes, no Willpower, just 20 points to build a power that has some basis in biology (chameleon effects are fine, true invisibility is out) or else your choice of a premade power. You also get 80 points for Stats and Skills, but it’s buried later on (a small complaint). Characters are also expected to have a weakness (along the social or psychological lines mainly), and a belief they fight for and a belief they fight against. Mechanical penalties and bonuses are used with theses beliefs, along with some sample ideologies (common stuff like anarchy, socialism, etc. rather than fun new stuff like Christocommunism) and how believers and critics might approach them. I don’t think Stolze is quite up to the task to expressing how critics and supporters might really feel for some of these ideologies, but ultimately it’s just a game book and not a deep exploration of social themes. Those you’ll have to bring yourself.
Probably the high point of the chapter though is the 23 pre-made mods and boosts available for PCs to have. Some of these powers are kind of… well, it’s hard to call an “Acid Barf Mod” exactly boring, but let’s just say that I didn’t find some of them as inspiring as others. Take the Linguo-Jam Boost: it lets you not only learn languages at an accelerated rate (weeks instead of years), it also lets you understand the underlying context and the hidden context as well, making it almost impossible for people to lie to you. The Spatial Orientation Mod gives you a hyper-acute perception of your spatial environment; you won’t be dodging bullets or moving any faster, but if your reflexes are naturally fast enough no one will ever lay a fist on you in the boxing ring. The two catches with these and other powers however is that you only ever get one, and that one is illegal. Any more than that and your body rejects it and you both in messy fatal ways. Super powers have changed the world in numerous ways, and they’re supposed to be fairly common, but the setting is upright in being about pretty strongly “low supers”.
Chapter 3: Important Things to Know About the Dystopian Future. I Mean, Present. For me this was probably the high point of the book. In a nutshell, the world is about 70% suckier than before. Grocery stores are still open, but the selections aren’t what they used to be. Oil prices fluctuate from day to day and city block to city block thanks to DIY biofuel refineries. Global warming didn’t happen, but extreme global temperature fluctuations are the norm; I’m guessing 110 degree summers in the Wisconsin followed by -10 degree winters in Florida seem like something that would be normal in the setting. Artificial Intelligence is real, but it’s kind of limited to mega-corps and large research institutes. Uplifting of animals has occurred, but they’re basically exotic pets. All the great advances of the cyberpunk and biopunk future have come, and gone, and nobody cares anymore. Take every nightmare of economists, ecologists, and a bunch of other people besides, and make them worse; take the news stories of doom and gloom and fear and amplify them tenfold. On the upside, people are still getting by. The world is in a much worse shape than it is now, but it’s not an apocalyptic setting. It feels like a cyberpunk setting, only the megacorps and the governments are equally broke and ineffectual and nobody really does anything anymore. And I think that’s the problem with this chapter (and setting). I’m not sure what anybody does in it. Outside of fight for Anarchist rights, or oppose Socialist government spending, or other “putting fists to Ideologies” sort of stuff I mean. How do people make a living, how do employers pay people, who are the upper classes, that sort of thing. The world is one of multiple collapsing systems, but now that the collapses have occurred where did the world land? If things are still in flux, how do people keep from “falling” further? I don’t expect a detailed economic analysis (although I wouldn’t reject one), but I think some more information on an average person’s lifestyle and where the money for it comes from would have been nice. Traditional cyberpunk settings have the fallback of “mostly stable corporations employ millions of people directly and indirectly across the globe”, but that doesn’t seem like it applies in this setting. I’d also have liked more information on the cultural nature of the mods, like just how common they are, who makes these illegal pieces of gear, and how people go about actually obtaining black-market biotech implants. But as it is I’m not sure how people obtain a loaf of bread in this setting.
There’s also a large chunk devoted to new gear. It’s a decent mix of “normal” cyberpunk-style stuff (gauss guns, civilian HUD helmets, “fractal” knives, etc.) presented with a dose of bitter eC attitude. Take “switchblade implants” for example: people pay shady back-alley surgeons to install retractable knives in their forearms because they’re fashionable. They don’t consider that it’s illegal, that concealing them results in them tearing through the skin (no hidden replaceable false flesh covering exit ports in this setting apparently), and they’re a wonderful way to expose a person to a victim’s blood-borne diseases. Fans of Wild Talents might also enjoy the near future toys presented here for more generic supers games, although point costs aren’t given.
Chapter 4: Hero, Villain and Crux. Before a game of eC starts, players take a deck of regular playing cards and remove the King of Hearts (the Hero card), the King of Clubs (the Villain card), and the King of Spades (the Crux card), and Ace cards for any remaining players. Players draw from this reduced deck and keep their card for the rest of the “episode” (i.e. all the sessions leading up to a climax). Players who have the Hero card get bonuses to being heroic and doing heroic things but penalized for being villainous, while Villains are the reverse. Crux players can penalize either the Villain or the Hero (or both) in any task they try to undertake, except when they try to actually hurt the Crux. Aces are free to do whatever they want, without mechanical edges one way or the other. The end result of this system initially seemed like an excuse to limit or direct players in the role-playing of their characters, and it kind of is. But it also forces players to think outside the box on accomplishing their goals as well as explaining why Captain Goodguy can’t seem to do anything right lately other than smacking on people. Meanwhile one player (the Crux) is given an impressive degree of power in stopping the actions of the other Hero and Villain (a fact every good Villain or Hero should try to use to their advantage). It’s an interesting idea that would be easy to incorporate into other games, but I also fear many people would find it too restricting and not fun.
Chapter 5: Running and Playing eCollapse in Particular. What we have here is a mixture of good general advice for gaming, along with specifics on how players should handle the Hero/Villain/Crux roles, and some tips for GMs on how to work conflicting ideologies into a game. Not a bad chapter really, and its inclusion really helps groups focus on some of the more unique aspects of playing eC I think. And this is coming from a guy that generally hates “how to role-play” advice for GMs and players; the generic stuff is good, and there’s a lot of setting specific information as well. Kudos.
Appendix: the Smear of Destiny System. Remember back in Chapter 4 where you pulled out some cards to assign some traits to your character? The Smear takes (most of) the rest of those cards, spreads them out on a table (face down) and replaces dice rolls with a game of Memory, but with a smeared deck of cards rather than a grid. I’ll be straight up here: this system gives a huge amount of narrative control to the players, and tosses dice and math-based resolution out the window. Those not interested can move on to some other part of the review.
Okay, so you’ve got your deck of cards laid out in front of you. Players can hope that their mods and traits on their sheet (called Factors in this system) are enough to get things done, or they can draw a card face up and have it aid their action. And players on subsequent actions can draw the same card, or draw a different one and hope to find something higher (like the King of Diamonds). Why wouldn’t players just draw and draw and draw then? Until the episode reaches a “tipping point” characters can’t die; they just accumulate damage (points of Suffering, be it from a physical, emotional, or some other source). Once the episode “tips”, then anybody and everybody can die, and characters that took a lot of narrative damage (called Suffering) earlier can suddenly be out of the action. They’re dead, too hurt to go on, insane, or something similar. And this tipping point is reached either when 10 cards are drawn, or the moment someone draws the King of Diamonds. But there’s an aid for characters who do draw, in that they get points of Valor. And as long as they have more Valor than Suffering, they stay in the game. So the system gives an immediate edge to someone who draws from the Smear in the form of a card’s value, and a long term edge for the person who draws in the form of Valor, but it penalizes everyone by bringing death one step closer. A very interesting idea. GMs never touch the Smear by the way. Now there’s a lot more to cover, and a person could just review the Smear of Destiny System alone. The chapter includes two sample sessions using the eC setting, and an extensive set of rules for what narration players (and GMs) can and can not make that are good for a lot of other player-controlled-narrative games out there. Having said all that, I think some more clarification would’ve helped me. After the tipping point I assume that Valor doesn’t increase and that the Smear can continue to be used, but I’m not sure, and these are fairly big issues in play. Still, it’s a neat idea for a diceless system that has the potential to provide tension between players and promote creativity, without falling into the usual traps of arbitrary handwavium so many other diceless systems do.
Style: With one exception, this is possibly the best edited book I’ve seen in some time. There’s some confusion between the body of the text and the table of contents as to a chapter break. It’s the only editing error in the whole book I noticed, and that was only during the writing of this review, so I’ll cut it some slack. I’m only mentioning it here in case some wag wants to chime in that my chapter breakdown doesn’t match the listing in the table of contents. As for the writing, Stolze’s work is fairly light-hearted and fun, or at least as light-hearted and fun as a pre-apocalyptic hell hole of a setting deserves. I think Todd Shearer’s art here isn’t as good as it was in Wild Talents. There’s some really good stuff, but there’s also a lot of “Poser art” CG of people standing around with recycled base facial expressions. When it’s good, it’s literally monkeys attacking hobos or blindfolded schoolgirls with guns, but when it’s bad it’s something bland and fairly generic. The pages themselves are easy to read, with a lot of wasted margin space and an okay background. I’ll give it a just under the line high 3 for style; if it wasn’t for some of Shearer’s better pieces and especially Stolze’s overall writing quality I’d probably be giving it a much lower 3 or even a 2.
Substance: It depends on a couple of factors. The Smear of Destiny is short, but those wanting to explore a new diceless system can find a lot of meat here. I’ll give it a solid 4; the Smear is original, stimulating, and engaging. It’s missing some clarification I think, but there’s still plenty of material for such a light system. eC as an idea mine is a very high 4. Fans of Kromosome, Underground, Wild Talents, or even gaming in general will likely find at least a few ideas, gadgets, or mechanics worth stealing for other games. I don’t think it’s a must buy in this regard, but it’s a good idea mine nonetheless. As a stand alone setting though, eC gets a high 2. What’s here is good, but it feels sparse and I’m not sure how normal people get by in this world or what PCs are expected to do. The second part of that complaint is pretty common to sci-fi games in general it seems, but having an answer for the first part makes it easier for people to come up with answers to the second. As is it feels less like a setting that runs on inertia and more like one that runs on authorial fiat. Plus, other than one or two passing references to Christomunism there’s no real exploration on how crazy ideologies have become, which seemed like a big point of the setting. Overall, I’ll give eC a just over the line 4 for substance. I think it’s a good idea mine, with some neat ideas for mechanics, both of which can extend to other game settings, but as a stand alone setting it feels like it needs some more depth.
I think I figured something out by the end of this. eCollapse isn’t a near future supers game, or a cyberpunk game, or a post-apocalyptic game. It’s a middle-class white American horror future that replaces zombies with future-shock, vampires with crushing economic despair, witches with environmental chaos, and werewolves with augmented humanity. It’s a world that feels like it was thought up after someone spent too much time reading internet forums while channel surfing between nothing but MSNBC and FOXNews, and then proceeded to have a nightmare from it all. It’s a future based not on technology or technoshock, but on the fears from the year 2010. Or maybe it’s just a failed attempt at satire of it all? Despite the squids and bad attitude it’s not really funny, but I may just be taking it more seriously than it’s meant to be. I don’t think eCollapse is as complete as it should be, but I do think that what is here is pretty dang good.
