EPICS

Deserve to Survive
Universal (superheroes)
Dragonslayer Games
2003
Complexity: 2

EPICS--The Easy, Player-Initiated Character System--is a superhero game that didn’t want to be a superhero game so it became a “universal” system. It’s also a game that talks pretty big of itself, being described as “one of the most original game systems in years” and “a new type of roleplaying system” by its publisher. Which is convenient for me because that tells me exactly what I should be expecting, and to what standard I should be holding it--obviously very very high.


Setting: 2/3 [•]
Unlike most “universal systems,” EPICS actually provides a setting known as A.N.G.E.L.S.--the book doesn’t ever seem to actually state what this stands for, so either the author couldn’t figure it out, or just forgot to include it, both seem like valid possibilities. A.N.G.E.L.S is a superhero setting… oh I’m sorry, it is not a superhero setting, the book is very clear about that, they used an exclamation mark and everything. So basically, this non-superhero setting is about a secret group of “abnormally gifted” persons with a secret base below a “majestic estate” and a “personal supersonic aircraft” led by a brilliant wheelchair-bound scientist with psychic powers. Now if this were a superhero setting I’d point out the obvious similarity to the X-Men and/or Doom Patrol, but since it’s not it must be a completely-original concept--and certainly not the author going through a “they’re not comics, they’re graphic novels!” phase.
Alright, now that I’ve delivered by Savage Sass™ about the setting, I guess I’ll actually discuss it. Basically it’s a superhero secret agent setting, players are part of A.N.G.E.L.S. and they fight monsters of “The Dark” as well as the P.S.A.D.--Paranormal Search And Destroy--agency, who are trying to destroy the creatures of The Dark and the A.N.G.E.L.S. Overall it’s a serviceable setting. It’s not particularly deep or original, but it’s good enough.

Character Creation: 2/5
The character creation system is the main selling point of EPICS--more on that later--so presumably it’s super amazing. To make a character, payers must select a name, Role, Motivation, Personality, and Trademark. All of these things have no in-game function beyond telling you how you’re supposed to roleplay. Next they choose a Specialty, which is a specific thing that you get to role twice for--I’d recommend a combat Specialty, you’ll see why later. Then they set their two attributes: Influence and Power. The actual rules for setting these values are stated to be set by the setting and range from dividing 10 points between the two to just kinda whatever as long as the GM approves. Last players calculate their ‘Survival Points,’ chose their ‘Inhuman Forces’ if applicable, and gain bonus Survival points for detailing their character--all that stuff will be explained in the next section. Overall, it is quick and easy which is what they keep going on about, but all the focus on creating ‘deep’ and ‘nuanced’ characters is just fluff that you could add to your character in almost any system. But then again, this is very much a game of fluff.

Mechanics: 2/5
The bulk of the game mechanics revolve around the Survival Points, which are not life points, sure they’re a pool of points that you lose in combat and running out can result in death, but they are not life points, they are very clear about that, they even used an exclamation mark so you’d know how serious and revolutionary they are. So, in game Survival Points are a measure of how much a character “deserves to survive,” and are a non-renewing resource--i.e. You never regain lost Survival Points--but you can always earn more. “How?” you ask? Well, by telling everyone about your OC. Okay, now I know that seems a little odd, but that’s just because it is. Basically, you gain Survival points by adding ‘Facets’ to your character, so if you say “my character likes cats,” that’s 1 Survival Point right there, but if you say “my character don’t trust dames every since that number with the blue eyes double crossed him Morocco and disappeared with the diamonds… and his heart,” that would be like 4 Survival Points. Now I understand the idea here, rewarding layers for role playing and having a deep nuanced character, but to me it just seems like forcing players to constantly pile fluff on top of their character to actually be able to play the game. And speaking of playing the game, I should probably actually get into that. Actions are classified as either ‘Action Checks,’ or ‘Skill Checks.”--although the book states that Skill Checks may be referred to as Action Checks because apparently editing isn’t a thing, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Action Checks are all checks where one character is directly opposing another--like combat, which is what I’ll be using as an example--and are resolved by comparing the two characters’ Influence and consulting a chart to determine the ‘Success Number’ that must be rolled of 3d6 to succeed, then if successful comparing the attacker and defender’s Power and consulting another chart to determine the ‘Result Number.’ The Result Number is the amount of Survival points lost to the attack, which I must remind you are not life points. If a character doesn’t have the necessary Survival Points they become ‘wounded’ and suffer a penalty to their attributes. Of course a character can also choose to be wounded if they normally wouldn’t and actually gain Survival Points for doing so--this is part of an ongoing theme. Skill Checks on the other hand have a completely different system--or lack thereof. When a character makes a Skill Check the GM just decides if they’re successful or not based on the character’s ‘Skill Rating.’ And how does a player determine their character’s Skill Ratings? By saying that their character does or does not possess the skill when it comes up. So if the players are trying to break into a room, one could just say “oh yeah, uh, my guy’s a skilled lock picker.” and then they are, and they get a Survival Point for adding something to their character. But anyone who specifies that their character doesn’t have a skill--especially at a time where it would be useful--gets an even bigger Survival Point Reward. This is the “ongoing theme” I mentioned earlier, rewards are always greater for limiting, injuring, or giving your character some kind of tragic backstory. And those things do not magically add up to character depth, they add up to ham-fisted, angsty, DeviantArt-level attempts at character depth.

Writing: 1/3 [−]
The rules are… understandably most of the time, but tend to be presented in the most pretentious overly-explained way possible, while not backing up that attitude. Of not is the fact that one of the first things in the book is a “Problems with other role-play games and how EPICS solves them” section, which I will now summarize.

• Character Creation Time: EPICS’ character creation system is quick and easy.
• Over-Detailing/Unused Details: Characters won't be over-detailed because EPICS’ character creation system is quick and easy.
• Character Death: If your character dies, you can make a new one since EPICS’ character creation system is quick and easy.
• Fear of Character Death: The GM shouldn’t worry about killing characters because EPICS’ character creation system is quick and easy.
• Lost Time and Adventures: You can easily scrap an entire campaign, the players won’t care if that have to make new characters since EPICS’ character creation system is quick and easy.
• Power Playing: EPICS’ quick and easy character creation system is doesn’t actually have any rules to exploit, in fact the less powerful they are, the more likely they are to survive.

This isn’t me joking, they literally insist that their character creation system solves the problems of every other role-playing game. Although it is odd how they seem to really play up the disposability of characters when the who point is supposed to be crafting a nuanced character through gameplay. Oh well, it’s not like I’m expecting them to be consistent at this point.
My biggest issue is the editing, or lack thereof. For example, as noted there are no actual Skill Check rolls, but there are multiple references to them--and the fact that they use different charts--in the rules. And while I normally have to guess about this kind of thing, in this case I can say with high certainty that they just replaced the section on Skill Checks without updating any other text referencing it. How can I know that? Because that section is in a different typeface and has different paragraph formatting than the surrounding text, and not like “I can see it with my trained designer’s eye,” no, it’s obvious. At other points rules immediately contradict previously-stated ones. In another instance, the entry for the “Super Luck” Inhuman Force has a description of Super Luck, and then the mechanics for Super Speed--and it’s not like the two got mixed up, those are the only references to either power. However, the worst offence is multiple breaks in the middle of lines. Now I don’t mean “in the middle of a sentence,”--although they are also in the middle of sentences--I mean paragraph and page breaks in the middle of a line of text.
Basically a line starts and halfway
through just breaks into another line or page, like that. Wasn’t that a horrible reading experience? The weird thing is they’re in places where there’s plenty of room for the text to keep going.

Presentation: 2/5
This book definitely looks like it was made by someone who had some kind of idea about what a game book was supposed to look like. If you flip through it quickly it looks like a well-made document, and I think that may have been the extent of the proofreading that was done prior to release. Unfortunately it doesn’t really hold up when you actually read through it. As stated earlier, a few sections just randomly switch from a serif to sans serif typeface with different indents and headings. At one point a bulleted list is started, but only the first item actually has a bullet. One page randomly has side margins twice as wide as the others, and on that topic, the top and bottom margins are huge--okay, they’re only 1 inch, but that’s a lot of blank space at the bottom of the page--and even they aren’t consistent across all pages. The cover not only doesn’t fill the entire page--a pet peeve of mine that I generally don’t mention even though it comes up a lot--but it’s not even centered.
The graphics are a combination of photographs with a few illustrations, all of which are posterized in black and white and many displayed at what could be best described as a “comically low” resolution. Some of the photos look familiar but I can’t really place any of them except this one.

As I said, it very much has the feeling of someone saying “well it looks like a book from far away” and just shoving it out without really putting any effort into final editing.

Content: 1/3 [−]
Overall content is minimal, skill and weapon lists are provided but are far from comprehensive.  There’s a handful of NPCs and some animal stats, but the NPCs seem more geared towards showing off the author’s friends’ cool characters rather than actually being a useful resource. It seems like there’s enough stuff there to actually play the game, but that’s mainly because I can’t imagine playing it more than once.

Final Remarks
This is yet another one of those games that feels like it could have been good if they had actually put the effort into making it so instead of assuming that their ideas were so “revolutionary” that nobody would notice it’s sloppily-written and poorly put together. It’s very clear that the author has some very specific ideas about how role-playing games should be played, and had understandable goals of making a game that best facilitated that play style, but ended up coming across as incredibly arrogant and condescending towards anyone who doesn’t follow their “role playing first, everything else never” mentality.

Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −2
Setting: +0, Writing: −1, Content: −1

Overall Score: 27% (4/15 Points)
Seriously though, I bet the People on DeviantArt would love this.