Tommy Brownell
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2017
- Messages
- 3,983
- Reaction score
- 10,758
I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for derailing the Supernatural Hunters thread once talk of Night Shift came into it, so I thought I’d start a thread to appreciate Eden Studios, which had quite the run in its day.
Eden was kinda how I got my foot in the door working on gaming stuff, even though I’m really just a complete imposter. I was a playtester and got credited for work on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Revised core book and the Angel core book (which got me a bit of attention as I was credited right after CJ Carella, but only because the rest of us were listed alphabetically), work that I’m fairly sure never saw the light of day.
I liked the Unisystem and loved the Cinematic Unisystem even though - or because- the system was nothing flashy and just got out of the way.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Still the best treatment of the zombie genre in RPGs that I’ve seen. The sourcebooks were as stellar as they were esoteric (Zombie Smackdown was fantastic if you really needed to combine pro wrestling and zombies). One of the Living is just shy of being a “must buy” if you pick up AFMBE.
Witchcraft: Combined with the Mystery Codex and Abomination Codex, this gave me everything I needed to run a World of Darkness style game, and with a system I prefer much more.
Armageddon: The over the top sequel to Witchcraft focused on higher power and larger scale conflicts. Demons, Angels and Inheritors were the order of the day here as the struggle for the End Times was in full force.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I was excited when I heard Eden got the license. I was blown away at the end result. I remember on the Buffy play test group, before we got the files, people being convinced they knew how Carella was going to adapt it to Witchcraft/Armageddon...but what we got was the core of a system that was loosely compatible with other Unisystem games, but more free flowing and adaptable, as evidenced not only by the Angel, Army of Darkness and Ghosts of Albion games, but fan adaptations of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Crow, and Highlander, and a bunch more.
Angel: The stsndalone spin-off game to Buffy, it focused on slightly more experienced characters and slightly weaker magic. In fact, my favorite Unisystem combo is this core book combined with The Magic Box from Buffy.
Army of Darkness: Special mention here because this game introduced me to my favorite mass combat rules. Written by Shane Hensley, the mass combat rules here share the same DNA as the Savage Worlds mass combat rules, which I adore so much that I work into every Savage Worlds campaign. Since Unisystem uses hit points, I hacked these mass combat rules into my D&D 5e mass combat rules.
I could go on, and I might later, but I hate typing this much on my phone.
I used to have a solid understanding of the system, such as designing Qualities, but I’m far too rusty now.
I wish they were still active and I’d be a day one backer if Beyond Human ever hit Kickstarter.
Eden was kinda how I got my foot in the door working on gaming stuff, even though I’m really just a complete imposter. I was a playtester and got credited for work on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Revised core book and the Angel core book (which got me a bit of attention as I was credited right after CJ Carella, but only because the rest of us were listed alphabetically), work that I’m fairly sure never saw the light of day.
I liked the Unisystem and loved the Cinematic Unisystem even though - or because- the system was nothing flashy and just got out of the way.
All Flesh Must Be Eaten: Still the best treatment of the zombie genre in RPGs that I’ve seen. The sourcebooks were as stellar as they were esoteric (Zombie Smackdown was fantastic if you really needed to combine pro wrestling and zombies). One of the Living is just shy of being a “must buy” if you pick up AFMBE.
Witchcraft: Combined with the Mystery Codex and Abomination Codex, this gave me everything I needed to run a World of Darkness style game, and with a system I prefer much more.
Armageddon: The over the top sequel to Witchcraft focused on higher power and larger scale conflicts. Demons, Angels and Inheritors were the order of the day here as the struggle for the End Times was in full force.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I was excited when I heard Eden got the license. I was blown away at the end result. I remember on the Buffy play test group, before we got the files, people being convinced they knew how Carella was going to adapt it to Witchcraft/Armageddon...but what we got was the core of a system that was loosely compatible with other Unisystem games, but more free flowing and adaptable, as evidenced not only by the Angel, Army of Darkness and Ghosts of Albion games, but fan adaptations of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Crow, and Highlander, and a bunch more.
Angel: The stsndalone spin-off game to Buffy, it focused on slightly more experienced characters and slightly weaker magic. In fact, my favorite Unisystem combo is this core book combined with The Magic Box from Buffy.
Army of Darkness: Special mention here because this game introduced me to my favorite mass combat rules. Written by Shane Hensley, the mass combat rules here share the same DNA as the Savage Worlds mass combat rules, which I adore so much that I work into every Savage Worlds campaign. Since Unisystem uses hit points, I hacked these mass combat rules into my D&D 5e mass combat rules.
I could go on, and I might later, but I hate typing this much on my phone.
I used to have a solid understanding of the system, such as designing Qualities, but I’m far too rusty now.
I wish they were still active and I’d be a day one backer if Beyond Human ever hit Kickstarter.