Shrapnel Games is thrilled to announce that the much anticipated pen and paper tabletop role-playing game (RPG) from Disrupted Gears, Total Eclipse, is now available for purchase. While designed for classic tabletop play it is available only in the very modern format of digital delivery, and has been specifically formatted to take advantage of the variety of smart phones, tablet devices, and e-readers (but is fully compatible with your good ol’ fashioned computer) accessible to today’s gamers.
Total Eclipse is not a single RPG experience, but an open ended RPG system created to allow gamers to experience a rich variety of settings based around a single set of rules. Currently there are three books: The Standard Manual, The Adventurer’s Forge, and The Virdean Gazetteer. A fourth book, The Celestial City State, a campaign setting, will be available soon.
The Total Eclipse Standard Manual is the core rulebook that all other books use as their foundation. Featuring easy to learn unique mechanics that blends the art of old school simple systems with modern gaming expectations, gamers will learn the ins and outs of the system within its eighty-seven pages. Attributes, skills, and combat are all covered in the book in complete detail. For example, the section on special combat circumstances includes being bound, blinded, comatose, cursed, deafened, diseased, distracted, hobbled, knocked back, knocked down, pinned, poisoned, and stunned. Hopefully not all at once!
The Adventurer’s Forge weighs in at three hundred and fifty pages (single column, and not as daunting as it sounds) and is the first supplement, focusing on the time honored genre of fantasy role-playing. The Adventurer’s Forge details fantasy character creation set in Disrupted Gears’ own campaign world, Virdea. Character creation is a joy, with characters springing to life on paper dynamically through a wonderfully expansive creation process. A skill based and class-less system, players will create social classes, family backgrounds, possess advantages and disadvantages, all before stepping foot in the first dungeon. Playable races are both new twists on old standards, and brand new exciting choices. Play as a Forlorn, once human and now undead, the fairy like Hada, the reptilian Haguni, or the wolf-like Woldurno.
Finally there is The Virdean Gazetteer, the official fantasy campaign world that took shape way back in 1980. The Virdean Gazaetter clocks in at two hundred and twenty-nine pages and allows players to step into the fantastic and magical world of Virdea. Not only does it examine the world of Virdea intimately, but it also provides players with treasure tables, magical items, a bestiary, a starting town for sandbox play, and some starting adventures. Everything one needs to start their own adventuring crew on the road to glory!
The Total Eclipse RPG has been enjoyed for decades, and now with its professional publication Disrupted Gears and Shrapnel Games look forward to introducing more gamers to this fast and fun system. Micro-advancement allow players to grow their character every session, yet in manageable chunks that reflect growth and experience realistically. Attributes are creatively used, encouraging role-playing over roll-playing. The skill based system allow characters to be shaped as the player sees fit. Combat is once again exciting thanks to the inclusion of morale mechanics that eliminate the typical grind.
The core rulebook, The Standard Manual, sells for only $4.95, while The Adventurer’s Forge and The Virdean Gazetteer retail for only $7.95. At such low prices you will indeed be able to answer the question, "Is that an entire role-playing system in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
For more details check out the official support site here at www.virdea.net
Watch for news on upcoming Total Eclipse products at www.shrapnelgames.com and be sure to check out the entire line up of Shrapnel Games products while visiting. Anyone interested in Total Eclipse should check out the award-winning Dominions 3: The Awakening, the ultimate turn based fantasy strategy game, or the classic sci-fi thirty minute RPG, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.