The Eden Studios Appreciation Thread

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Tommy Brownell

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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.
 
I have a bunch of their stuff, and back in the day I ran some great campaigns. Mostly using the Buffy rules, but I also own Army of Darkness and it's a great sourcebook.

I didn't like Witchcraft because I didn't like the artwork. All B&W, all dark and hard to see. I feel bad saying that because I've always had a "don't care about artwork, give me simple OD&D-style line art" kind of guy. Something about that book just never interested me, even though my wife loves to play witches and wizards. (That's pretty much all she plays.) Something about the rulebook just turned me off. :sad:
 
I have a bunch of their stuff, and back in the day I ran some great campaigns. Mostly using the Buffy rules, but I also own Army of Darkness and it's a great sourcebook.

I didn't like Witchcraft because I didn't like the artwork. All B&W, all dark and hard to see. I feel bad saying that because I've always had a "don't care about artwork, give me simple OD&D-style line art" kind of guy. Something about that book just never interested me, even though my wife loves to play witches and wizards. (That's pretty much all she plays.) Something about the rulebook just turned me off. :sad:

True story: ONLY reason I picked up Witchcraft was because All Flesh was so hot at the time that I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Truth be told, it’s my favorite Classic Unisystem game.
 
I never even owned or played anything by Eden in hard copy but I’ve been thinking about some of these games recently.

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.

The support is insanely good. If this game had come out 5-10 years later it would be a pop culture phenomenon.

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.

I’m a bit burned out on CoD/nWoD, which I originally embraced as a “build your own World of Darkness” sort of toolkit, and now I’ve been giving this book (which has been a legal free download on the internet for literally decades) some sideways looks. Gotta give it a new look.

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.

The other day I was daydreaming what a “Warhammer Modern Day” would look like (you know, over the top apocalyptic fantasy) and what I envisioned looked a lot like this game. Never played it but it’s my favorite Eden game so far.

I wish they were still active and I’d be a day one backer if Beyond Human ever hit Kickstarter.

Seeing as I am still on the market for a supers game, I’d definitely give it a try. Hell, Unisystem might have become one of my go-tos if Savage Worlds hadn’t grabbed me at the time. (Mid to late 2000s)
 
I bought Conspiracy X and the supplement Forsaken Rites, but I never ran or played it. Eden did seem pretty big and I remember Unisystem frequently recommended on rpg.net back in the day. What happened that caused them to fade away?
 
I have all the Buffy and Angel RPG books. They were on clearance at a bookstore, and I snapped them all up.

Never watched the shows. Well... I tried to watch Buffy, but I got a couple of episodes in and just didn't like it.

I find the RPG books fun to skim but boring to read, if that makes any sense. They survived my big purge a decade ago because I like the premise of the RPG even if I don't like the specific implementation of the show, and the system has some broad similarities to Interlock, so I felt that I could hack parts out of it for use elsewhere.
 
I bought Conspiracy X and the supplement Forsaken Rites, but I never ran or played it. Eden did seem pretty big and I remember Unisystem frequently recommended on rpg.net back in the day. What happened that caused them to fade away?

I don't recall. I know losing the Buffy license didn't help. They had two Angel books and three Buffy books in the pipeline if I recall correctly.

I have all the Buffy and Angel RPG books. They were on clearance at a bookstore, and I snapped them all up.

Never watched the shows. Well... I tried to watch Buffy, but I got a couple of episodes in and just didn't like it.

I find the RPG books fun to skim but boring to read, if that makes any sense. They survived my big purge a decade ago because I like the premise of the RPG even if I don't like the specific implementation of the show, and the system has some broad similarities to Interlock, so I felt that I could hack parts out of it for use elsewhere.

See, I think those are among the funnest I own to read, but I hate the "textbook" feel of RPG books, and I thought Carella straddled the line between conversational and informative.

But I'm also a big fan of both shows. :smile:

The support is insanely good. If this game had come out 5-10 years later it would be a pop culture phenomenon.

Fun fact: I'm in an issue of The Walking Dead, when the prison arc started, talking about how One of the Living had a prison setting. Juuuust a bit ahead of their time.
 
I'm a huge fan of Witchcraft/Armageddon (though sadly I don't have a copy of the latter.) I also have Buffy along with a few supplements. I generally prefer CinuUni to classic uni, but I'm not beyond using either one.

If I ever get to run my "Fists of the Dead/Swords of the Dead/Dragon of the Dead." trilogy, I'll probably use Ciniuni over AFMBE (I've owned it twice, because of a friend.) But getting players for "just zombies" was hard except for him and one other, and one moved out of town. The general idea is that at a martial arts tournament someone unleashed an ill-purposed spirit, that creates several "zombie" types. The spirit's purpose is to grow in power and conquer China, but of course, there are other things going on.

I'd be using a mix of AFMBE books (Including the Luchadore one.) So it is up to the best talented martial artists from wherever to fight back the hordes first on a small scale, then larger, etc. Guns wouldn't do much to anything but "basic" zombies. You have to beat them down, then remove the Chinese spell inscribed placed on them. Of course, it is not always in the same place. Plus the appearance and powers differ per zombie type. Beyond basic, you had the "muscle" zombies--martial arts capable, skinless ones that only showed the raw human musculature system beneath the no langer present skin.

Ah well. Sadly never got the chance. Other ideas like a set of Nomad Special Forces peoples who were "recruited" after leaving their service to fight real monsters was another.
 
I had all the Buffy books at the time. Really liked them, except for certain niggles regarding the advatage/disadvantages (a few seemed to exist just because they were expected in RPGs at the time, but didn't reflect the show at all - like giving ander the "Attractive" advantage, or Willow the disadvantage - "Minority (Jewish)"). Sadly lost them all in a move and at that point it was too expensive on the second market to replace them.

Considering how tied the Buffy/Angel IP is into the basic geek DNA, even these days, I'm surprised no one else ever tried for the license.
 
I had all the Buffy books at the time. Really liked them, except for certain niggles regarding the advatage/disadvantages (a few seemed to exist just because they were expected in RPGs at the time, but didn't reflect the show at all - like giving ander the "Attractive" advantage, or Willow the disadvantage - "Minority (Jewish)"). Sadly lost them all in a move and at that point it was too expensive on the second market to replace them.

Considering how tied the Buffy/Angel IP is into the basic geek DNA, even these days, I'm surprised no one else ever tried for the license.

Fair point on the minority bit, especially since it never seemed to come up in the show, except for the odd Christmas joke and the like. I remember arguing in the playtest about Attractiveness ratings for characters. Most of the list thought Willow should be +4 because they had a thing for geek chicks, I was all about Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Eden was dead set on Cordelia having the highest because it was supposed to be her schtick. :grin: (Not that Charisma Carpenter is hard on the eyes, and good lord she's aged like she's a vampire or something.)
 
I have fond memories of all these games. I will never forget one guy's reaction when we were setting up for an Angel game, he complained that there weren't enough skills and that made the system garbage. Nobody else agreed and he walked out.
 
I have fond memories of all these games. I will never forget one guy's reaction when we were setting up for an Angel game, he complained that there weren't enough skills and that made the system garbage. Nobody else agreed and he walked out.

Funny you say that. My biggest gripe about Classic Unisystem is all. The. Damn. Skills. Beautician? Really?
 
I bought Conspiracy X and the supplement Forsaken Rites, but I never ran or played it. Eden did seem pretty big and I remember Unisystem frequently recommended on rpg.net back in the day. What happened that caused them to fade away?
I believe CJ Carella has said he moved away from RPG writing to a job that would actually pay him what he thought he was worth.
 
I've never gotten to play, but I've picked up a few of the books and always admired how the AFMBE genre books (particularly Dungeons & Zombies and Pulp Zombies) managed to keep adding zombies to various scenarios interesting. The zombie twist on King Arthur I remember as being particularly clever, and there was one that was a sort of Spelljammer in the Renaissance that I've always thought would have been interesting even without the zombies. I've often wondered what it would be like if Terra Primate had gotten the same treatment . . .
 
Fair point on the minority bit, especially since it never seemed to come up in the show, except for the odd Christmas joke and the like. I remember arguing in the playtest about Attractiveness ratings for characters. Most of the list thought Willow should be +4 because they had a thing for geek chicks, I was all about Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Eden was dead set on Cordelia having the highest because it was supposed to be her schtick. :grin: (Not that Charisma Carpenter is hard on the eyes, and good lord she's aged like she's a vampire or something.)


It's funny, I went from hating Cordelia on Buffy and then her becoming my favourite character on Angel (I actually think she was the heart and soul of that show and it never really recovered from losing her)
 
So...you largely had the reaction you were supposed to when they rehabbed her character? :grin:

I disagree about the latter part. But I was a huge fan the whole run.
 
I vastly prefer Cinematic Unisystem over the original, though I made decent use of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, which was a fun game.

Combining Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Ghosts of Albion and Army of Darkness gave you an incredible toolkit for modern/historical horror. Each book delved into one aspect of the supernatural and, if you were willing to do some world building, blended together so well.
 
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.

Witchcraft and the subsequent MC, AC and Hod were all great stuff.
Armageddon, some of the stuff felt a little forced like the deity and angel powers, something just did not quite gel there. Plus the 2e of Armageddon misses the whole backstory bit of Lucifer sinking Atlantis etc, all of which is gone into in more detail in 1e. The one thing I did not like about Witchcraft was Immortals not being able to use invocations, but vampires could. Something I did not really agree with, and completely ignored.

Conspiracy-X was also awesome. And now we have Bloodshot out, we kind of have a feeling of what Atlantean immortals are capable of too.

We all know some of the classic Unisystem books never saw the light of day, but I am sure some did exist in various formats but were never completed.

Funny you say that. My biggest gripe about Classic Unisystem is all. The. Damn. Skills. Beautician? Really?

Too many skills in classic, but easily trimmed down really.
In fairness i would likely take a Palladium approach, in that players get skills packages, and extra skills on top plus specialisations - e.g. Physics (General), and Quantum Physics as a speciality to remove all the detritus.

I vastly prefer Cinematic Unisystem over the original, though I made decent use of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, which was a fun game.

Combining Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Ghosts of Albion and Army of Darkness gave you an incredible toolkit for modern/historical horror. Each book delved into one aspect of the supernatural and, if you were willing to do some world building, blended together so well.

Actually in the process of hacking it at the moment actually.
Want to do a Gurps Cabal / Champions: Mystic World kind of game. So I have incorporated Dread Powers from BtV, and a few other Wod bits. As well as trimming down the skills.
 
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Too many skills in classic, but easily trimmed down really.
In fairness i would likely take a Palladium approach, in that players get skills packages, and extra skills on top plus specialisations - e.g. Physics (General), and Quantum Physics as a speciality to remove all the detritus.

I'm not a fan of the number of skills in Classic, nor am I fan of tracking Endurance or Essence....so by that point, I might as well be playing Cinematic, most of the time. :smile:

That isn't to say I wouldn't run Classic, even as written. Just the Cinematic definitely skews towards my preferences better.
 
I ran a game of The X-Files twice using Conspiracy X 2.0, and I ended up picking up all of the books in that line, which are very impressive-looking.

I do wish the lines were better supported, as I think Unisystem is pretty fun to play.
 
Out of curiosity, anyone here own Eden Studios Presents #2?

I had an article about playing good vampires in Buffy/Angel in it, along with a series of archetypes. And all my work actually made it into the book! That's actually my first real "published work".
 
Yeah, I really like Conspiracy X 2.0 and picked up all four books as well. Unfortunately I never got a hold of the Zener cards and Area 51 map.

I have several of the original ConX Eden books, and I have the ConX 2.0 core. That's actually probably the Classic Unisystem game I'd be most excited about running, honestly.
 
Out of curiosity, anyone here own Eden Studios Presents #2?

I had an article about playing good vampires in Buffy/Angel in it, along with a series of archetypes. And all my work actually made it into the book! That's actually my first real "published work".

I do actually and I loved it as it was a way to run WoD type vampires in a nice simple system - Unisystem ftw!
 
My main group formed 13 years ago to play Angel. While we went to a rotating game format, we've played four "seasons" of the game. My character has appeared in other games we've played too. (So much so that one player/GM refuses to have him in any of his games). It's an excellent game.
 
My main group formed 13 years ago to play Angel. While we went to a rotating game format, we've played four "seasons" of the game. My character has appeared in other games we've played too. (So much so that one player/GM refuses to have him in any of his games). It's an excellent game.

Angel is the only RPG I've ever gotten my wife to play. For two whole sessions, but she did.
 
I believe CJ Carella has said he moved away from RPG writing to a job that would actually pay him what he thought he was worth.

Not a job, exactly. He writes novels and that does pay better than RPG writing. He still games. He was in my game Thursday and I will play in his game Wednesday if he isn't still behind schedule on his next novel.
 
Angel is the only RPG I've ever gotten my wife to play. For two whole sessions, but she did.

I thought having Angel as a separate game, instead of just creating scenarios for it with the Buffy rules, was silly but Eden wanted it and C.J. did it. I remember playtesting Buffy, before he even had the Cinimatic rules written.
 
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