Eclipse Phase vs Shadowrun
Compare Eclipse Phase and Shadowrun side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Eclipse Phase | Shadowrun | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Sci-Fi, Horror, Post-Apocalyptic | Cyberpunk, Fantasy |
| Tags | Crunchy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Weird, Investigation, Espionage, Faction Play, CC-Licensed Rules | Crunchy, Tactical, Heist, Character Building, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Skill-Based, Mission-Based, Classless, Espionage |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d100 and try to land equal to or under your skill (or aptitude × 3 for unskilled checks), adjusted by difficulty modifiers in ±10 increments. The 33/66 rule grades each roll on a single throw: a success of 33 or higher is a superior success, a failure of 66 or lower is a superior failure, and doubles (00, 11, 22, …) are criticals. Four pools, Insight (mental), Moxie (social), Vigor (physical), and Flex (wild card), spend to add +20 to target numbers, flip-flop a roll's digits, upgrade a success, ignore wounds or trauma, or introduce narrative elements like NPCs and environmental details. | Roll d6s equal to an attribute plus a skill, counting 5s and 6s as hits. Reach the required threshold to succeed, or compare hits in an opposed test. Situational advantages generate Edge points that can fund rerolls or extra hits. Dice pool modifiers still apply alongside Edge. |
| Dice | d100 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Very High |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Community content program |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Posthuman Studios | Catalyst Game Labs |
| Year | 2019 | 2019 |
| Languages | English | English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian |
| Best For | Groups who want hard transhumanist sci-fi with cosmic horror undertones, dense subsystems for hacking and body-swapping, and the Firewall conspiracy framework where cortical-stack backups turn death into a setback rather than the end of a character. | Groups who want cyberpunk-fantasy heists and enjoy mastering specialist rules together across a continuing campaign. |
| Highlights | The ego/morph split separates mind from body: characters back up their cortical stacks and can resleeve into biological morphs, robotic synthmorphs, or digital infomorphs between sessions, making body choice a tactical decision and death a recoverable setback. The 33/66 rule grades each percentile roll on a continuous scale of superior success or superior failure without rerolls, so a single throw produces a degree of outcome rather than just pass/fail. Seven distinct reputation networks (@-rep, c-rep, f-rep, g-rep, i-rep, r-rep, x-rep) replace cash for many transactions in post-scarcity territory, modeling factional standing as a parallel economy with its own favor limits and weekly refresh caps. | Specialist roles divide a heist across physical security, hacking, and magic, giving the team several ways into the same target. Edge turns situational advantages into a spendable resource for tactical choices. Reputation and Heat carry the consequences of conspicuous jobs into later missions. |
| Considerations | Bookkeeping splits across an ego sheet (mind, skills, traits, pools, rep) and a separate morph sheet (body, ware, Durability, derived combat stats), and resleeving mid-campaign swaps out the morph half including pool maximums. The book takes an overtly political stance: the introduction states it is "not the game for you" if you support authoritarianism, and faction writeups present anarchist and autonomist values as the authorial baseline rather than one option among many. Routine cortical-stack backups make character death recoverable by design, so traditional life-or-death stakes need to be reframed around backup destruction, exsurgent infection, or memory lack to carry weight. | Character creation requires coordinating priority choices with detailed gear purchases. Cyberware reduces Essence, which limits magical development. Wireless equipment bonuses expose connected gear to hacking. |