Seriously people.
I picked up this game in 2000 at a local convention and tried it once and then tossed it into storage. I figured it was a local product and that was part of my explanation to myself as to why it sucked so ferociously and why I had bought it.
Later research showed that the game wasn't a local product, but had seen a fair-sized publication run somewhere in Wisconsin. It had active fan forums and even fanfiction and so on. After a few years of selling the game, the publisher made it available for free from the website, which is now gone - so I can't figure out a way to inflict the horror of this game on you other than to write this post.
It is the worst post-apocalyptic RPG I have ever tried to play.
I own a lot of crappy games. I admit that. I love games though, and I love the post-apocalyptic genre, and I have incredibly low expectations from a game. But I can't look past the horror that is this game.
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The Back Cover
I'm one of those guys who gets pissed off as soon as I see an edition war or someone bashing another system (and yet, here I am posting a rant about another system - I am the crown prince of Irony - it's related to Evony, honest, check out the ads all over the internet).
That's what the back cover is. One big "we are better than the other role-playing games" bullet list.
The best though are the claims of realism and flexibility.
Realism - because no one in the real world can survive a sword blow to the neck.
Realism - because radiation makes people pee napalm, become a woman, have PMS, or suddenly swap all their skills with another person.
Realism - because the universal european currency was deployed world wide pre-world war III, and is still traded at face value in a post-war apocalyptic economy.
And flexibility. "Other role-playing games require a new book for every character you want to play, every setting you want to use, and every piece of quipment you might come across. deadEarth has unlimited flexibility in characters, equipment and setting, depending only on the imagination of the players"
That's right. You can't make stuff up in other games, that's against the rules. Only deadEarth allows you to make stuff up and use your imagination.
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The Skill System
Skills are rated from 2d6 to xd6 (but generally no higher than 6d6 but with references to characters with up to 8d6 in a skill). The average difficulty for a skill roll is 15, so you need 5d6 in a skill to usually succeed at the average task. That costs 70 skill points during chargen (from the average character's starting alotment of about 600 skill points). But there are 100 skills in the game, and many of them have a half-dozen prerequisite skills that you have to buy up to 4d6 before you can get.
And to make things fun, difficult rolls are difficulty 24. And that's the next step up from Average. So if you want to be able to do difficult things with a decent chance of success, you need a skill level of 8d6. Which would cost 630 skill points (assuming the skill has no prerequisites).
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The Mutations
"Radiation Manipulations" is what they are called in here. And there are 1,000 of them in the book. In fact, the majority of the book (over 90 of the 170 pages) is the Radiation Manipulations table.
You start the game with a number of radiation manipulations based on your age. Because in the nine years since WWIII, older people have obviously been exposed to a lot more radiation than younger people. There's that realism again.
And the radiations are awesome. I would go into them here, but I'm going to roll up a few characters and some of the good ones should show up through that process. Then I'll post the other good ones I managed to miss. But I will mention a few... (970) Kindred - you are a vampire now. (898) Freudian - roll to see how big your genitals (male) or butt (female) is. Depending on the result, you gain bonuses or penalties based on self-esteem. And somewhere on the list (I'm not willing to read the whole thing right now to find it - since the list isn't categorized in any way by usefulness or the alphabet) is the ever-realistic "Pee Napalm".
-
Combat
The combat system is tick-based and you get a number of ticks (usually around 7) to act each turn. You plan your actions for the round and chart them, and then if you get attacked you can abort actions into defensive actions. Of course, if someone has more ticks than you (measured by the moves attribute), then they can attack with impunity once you've run out of ticks - so don't defend, kill them first.
It is no harder to hit someone in the throat as to hit their torso. And every hit location has a specific number of hit points. Which is awesome because the damage of a sword (1d6+2+Strength) is enough that the average human (Strength 1) will automatically kill someone with a sword blow to the neck (which has 4 hit points). Fear the realism!
-
Character Creation
This is a nice little slice of hell all on its own. I'll explain in my next post, as I try to roll up a character for this game.
I picked up this game in 2000 at a local convention and tried it once and then tossed it into storage. I figured it was a local product and that was part of my explanation to myself as to why it sucked so ferociously and why I had bought it.
Later research showed that the game wasn't a local product, but had seen a fair-sized publication run somewhere in Wisconsin. It had active fan forums and even fanfiction and so on. After a few years of selling the game, the publisher made it available for free from the website, which is now gone - so I can't figure out a way to inflict the horror of this game on you other than to write this post.
It is the worst post-apocalyptic RPG I have ever tried to play.
I own a lot of crappy games. I admit that. I love games though, and I love the post-apocalyptic genre, and I have incredibly low expectations from a game. But I can't look past the horror that is this game.
-
The Back Cover
I'm one of those guys who gets pissed off as soon as I see an edition war or someone bashing another system (and yet, here I am posting a rant about another system - I am the crown prince of Irony - it's related to Evony, honest, check out the ads all over the internet).
That's what the back cover is. One big "we are better than the other role-playing games" bullet list.
The best though are the claims of realism and flexibility.
Realism - because no one in the real world can survive a sword blow to the neck.
Realism - because radiation makes people pee napalm, become a woman, have PMS, or suddenly swap all their skills with another person.
Realism - because the universal european currency was deployed world wide pre-world war III, and is still traded at face value in a post-war apocalyptic economy.
And flexibility. "Other role-playing games require a new book for every character you want to play, every setting you want to use, and every piece of quipment you might come across. deadEarth has unlimited flexibility in characters, equipment and setting, depending only on the imagination of the players"
That's right. You can't make stuff up in other games, that's against the rules. Only deadEarth allows you to make stuff up and use your imagination.
-
The Skill System
Skills are rated from 2d6 to xd6 (but generally no higher than 6d6 but with references to characters with up to 8d6 in a skill). The average difficulty for a skill roll is 15, so you need 5d6 in a skill to usually succeed at the average task. That costs 70 skill points during chargen (from the average character's starting alotment of about 600 skill points). But there are 100 skills in the game, and many of them have a half-dozen prerequisite skills that you have to buy up to 4d6 before you can get.
And to make things fun, difficult rolls are difficulty 24. And that's the next step up from Average. So if you want to be able to do difficult things with a decent chance of success, you need a skill level of 8d6. Which would cost 630 skill points (assuming the skill has no prerequisites).
-
The Mutations
"Radiation Manipulations" is what they are called in here. And there are 1,000 of them in the book. In fact, the majority of the book (over 90 of the 170 pages) is the Radiation Manipulations table.
You start the game with a number of radiation manipulations based on your age. Because in the nine years since WWIII, older people have obviously been exposed to a lot more radiation than younger people. There's that realism again.
And the radiations are awesome. I would go into them here, but I'm going to roll up a few characters and some of the good ones should show up through that process. Then I'll post the other good ones I managed to miss. But I will mention a few... (970) Kindred - you are a vampire now. (898) Freudian - roll to see how big your genitals (male) or butt (female) is. Depending on the result, you gain bonuses or penalties based on self-esteem. And somewhere on the list (I'm not willing to read the whole thing right now to find it - since the list isn't categorized in any way by usefulness or the alphabet) is the ever-realistic "Pee Napalm".
-
Combat
The combat system is tick-based and you get a number of ticks (usually around 7) to act each turn. You plan your actions for the round and chart them, and then if you get attacked you can abort actions into defensive actions. Of course, if someone has more ticks than you (measured by the moves attribute), then they can attack with impunity once you've run out of ticks - so don't defend, kill them first.
It is no harder to hit someone in the throat as to hit their torso. And every hit location has a specific number of hit points. Which is awesome because the damage of a sword (1d6+2+Strength) is enough that the average human (Strength 1) will automatically kill someone with a sword blow to the neck (which has 4 hit points). Fear the realism!
-
Character Creation
This is a nice little slice of hell all on its own. I'll explain in my next post, as I try to roll up a character for this game.
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