Mythic Ages Online
2003
Complexity: 2
Alright, after a short hiatus I’m back with more obscure role-playing game reviews, since that’s kinda the general theme here. Today I will be looking at Eldritch Ass Kicking: The Roleplaying Game—hereafter referred to as EAK because I’m lazy—a game with the interesting hook that everyone are wizards. Yes, an entire game based around crotchety old magic-users and their obsession with obtaining obscenely powerful arcane secrets and treasures. Well I guess hypothetically you could hypothetically play a young amicable wizard dedicated to preventing forest fires or some such thing, but I fail to see the appeal in such an endeavor.
I should mention that there was another edition of this game released in 2004, but I have this version so that’s the one I’m reviewing.
Setting: 2/3 [•]
EAK takes players to the wizarding world of Anhelm, a previously peaceful and prosperous kingdom until one day when the wizards suddenly went mad and began waging wizard wars. This prompted neighboring kingdoms to magically banish Anhelm to “a distant astral realm,” leaving the players with an isolated war-torn land populated primarily by wizards. It’s not the deepest setting, but it’s more than sufficient to establish that what, where, and why of the game world.
Character Creation: 3/5
Characters have 3 primary attributes—Speed, Endurance, and Concentration—and 3 secondary attributes derives from those—Movement, Life Points, and Focus respectively. All attributes start at 1 with players being given an additional 12 points to spend on them. The only skills to speak of are the magikcal disciplines of air, fire, earth, and water, with guidelines for creating additional magicks—e.g. Ice, necromany, root beer, etc—with the only requirements that it be clearly defined, and have an opposing power—which will be discussed in the next section. Players are given 25 points to spend on their skills, but can only use skills that they’ve spent points on. Players also choose a “word of power”—usable once per day for a bonus on a roll—and come up with a dramatic description and backstory for their wizard. Players are also asked to define 3 “events,” which are specific personal goals for their character. I really like this, as it not only encourages players to think about their characters goals, but also motivates them to actually work towards achieving those goals with an xp reward.
Mechanics: 3/5
The basic mechanics of EAK involve rolling 2d10—with the distinction of 0/10 counting as 0—adding a skill/attribute and miscellaneous modifiers and comparing to a target value—usually 15—with success level determined by degree to which the roll exceeds the target. Of course the core of the game is the magick [sic] system. Basically, you can do “kinda whatever” with magick, provided it is reasonable for the chosen element. For example, you could reasonably use earth magick to create a bridge across a gorge, but if you wanted to to make a bridge of fire the GM could reasonably say that it’s not possible. Additionally, each type of magick has an opposing type which grants a bonus when used to counter or defend against the opposing element. Players also have the option to create magickal constructs to assist them, which are basically elemental constructs that serve a combative, protective, or utilitarian purpose, and their construction seems to be the only use of the Focus attribute.
Writing and Presentation: 3/5
EAK is overall well-written, it seems to refer to itself as comedic, but isn’t really written in a comedic style. There is a lot of use of examples throughout to illustrate the ideas that are being presented, which is something I always like when done well. Unfortunately, the text size and font used in the examples can make them a little hard to read at times, and occasionally seem to contradict the values given in the preceding text.
Content is more-or-less laid out where it should be, and easy to find when needed. The choice of doing a two-column layout in a six-inch wide document reads okay, but ends up with a lot of weird spacing in the justified text. Also there’s a lot of page and column breaks where I would prefer them not to be and an inappropriate number of widows*.
While the art in the book is well-done and fits thematically with the game, it is incredibly sparse and more-or-less fails to illustrate and specific points.
Content: 1/3 [−]
The game provides additional rules for binding demons, a selection of magic items, and a number of bad guys and locations. Unfortunately there’s only a handful or creatures with a general “just kinda use these as a guideline to make other things,” but strangely enough the book actually devotes more space to describing a number of taverns. Basically within the limited amount of content, it seems like more attention was given to less-important elements.
The book does repeatedly mentions how additional content is available from their website—which of course is gone now, but can be viewed via the Wayback Machine—although said content is still lackluster.
Summary
EAK is another one of those games which definitely prioritizes imaginative role-playing over hard rules. The fun comes from playing an over-the-top character and wielding magic in creative ways. As previously stated, EAK makes an effort to reward players for acting in accordance with their character’s goals rather than their own, which I’m pretty sure in part of the overall aim of good role playing.
Base Points: 9
Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 3/5, Presentation: 3/5
Adjustments: −1
Setting: +0, Writing: +0, Content: −1
Overall Score 53% (8/15 Points)
Good ol’ fashioned fun with wizard tropes.
*I realized people might not know that a “widow” is a single word in the final line of a paragraph—or final line of a paragraph appearing after a column or page break—which, while not grammatically prohibited, is generally frowned upon in layout design.
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