Eon the roleplaying game!
Worldmap (not the whole world, but the majority of it)
Long story made short: Eon is a roleplaying game that has come in four editions, the first one in 1996, the most recent one in 2014. The first edition(s) were made by Neogames, a roleplaying company that later changed name to Helmgast. Other than four editions of the roleplaying game, Eon has produced dozens of books with additional material, such as "Necromancy", Books for various countries/races (The Elf book was amazingly good), Three books for warriors (Knights, Warfare and Weaponmasters) and books about Sailors and Pirates, etc).
In between these games, Neogames has produced other roleplaying games that has used largerly the same dicesystems, amongst others Neotech (futuristic neopunk) and Viking (viking roleplaying game, duh!).
The earlier editions of these games, from Viking to Neotech to Eon, were all pretty rule and mechanic heavy. Character creation could easily stretch over an hour even if you had a clear idea from the start of what you wanted to do, mainly because the characters were randomly generated. From height and weight to value in base-stats. Not to mention the dreaded background table, where you could roll with EXTREMELY variying results. For instance, the player to your left could roll "Very good physique, +2 to strenght and endurance!". Awesome you think, and roll, and get that you are extremely honorbound and could never imagine to steal or stab someone in the back. Well, there goes my rogue concept down the drain. Then the third player down the line rolls that he has adopted a new pet, like a cat.
(Base stats are Strenght, Endurance, Dexterity, Perception, Psyche, Willpower, Wisdom, Presence).
When character creation was done you have a rule-system that requires half a dozen rolls to determine who hits who just from trying to slash someone with your sword. Critics call it rule-heavy and fans call it realistic or detailed.
Major differences: Earlier editions to Eon IV
Scope: Earlier versions have covered all of the world, more or less. Eon IV focuses on a single country, the far-stretching nation of Jargia, to make it easier for new players to get into the setting and to allow more focus on this particular nation. Nothing prevents veteran players from playing outside of Jargia, it's just that events and descriptions are more Jargia focused.
System: Slimmed and trimmed. The major difference would be that in earlier versions you had a value in a skill/attribute, and you tried to roll below it with a number of D6. Now it is the other way around. You have a number of D6 in skills and in attributes, and you roll those dice to try and beat a set difficulty level.
Character creation: Less random, much more stream-lined and much more control of what your character ends up being.
Holy magic/Arcane magic: In older versions the Holy Magic was downright terrible, now it works more like other magic, except all the spells have been reworked to have more of a cool feel than just be your average "Fireball +2". For example, there is a Holy Spell called "Blacken tongue" which prevents the victim of speaking by turning their tongue black and weak or "Proclamation of Saint Darius" which changes a character trait of a character, for example from "Greedy" to "Kind". Shortly put, the spells are a lot more thematic than in earlier versions.
CHARACTER CREATION IN EON IV
What Eon IV did was to promptly kill of a lot of the heavy rules and the heavy randomness that was used in earlier character creation. There are still the tables that a lot of people loved to roll in (including me), but they are a lot less random and none of them are ever just plain out bad. They always give you a bonus to -something-. They are also split up into categories where you more or less get to chose which you want to roll from (examples are "Travels and adventures" or "Intrigue and Ill-deed").
Instead of having some 60-ish avaliable jobs to choose from as you did in Eon III, you have seven as follows: Labourer, Warrior, Leader, Entertainer, Shadow, Scholar and Mystic. Along with these you have seven different enviorements to chose from (where you spent the majority of your time before now) Sea, Court, City, Criminal underworld, Countryside, Wilderness, University. This allows you to create your own combinations, a Warrior from Wilderness could be a barbarian, while a Warrior from Court would be knight and a Warrior from a University is a knights templar.
Combine this with a race (more on these below) and you get a set amount points to spend on skills and x amount of rolls on various event-tables. For instance, the wilderness table gives you rolls on Travels and Adventures while University gives you on "Mysteries and Knowledge".
Races
You have the pretty standard races, like Dwarves and Elves, their own approaches in Eon naturally. There is also a handful of human races from various cultures (pseudo-Phonecia, Pseudo-Romans, pseudo-Ottomans, etc). There is also Tiraks, which I would call half-orcs more than orcs, seeing how they are more or less accepted in human society and aren't inheritly evil as they are in Lord of the Rings, for instance. Every race comes with its own unique bonuses (and in some cases flaws).
Rolling and skills
After rolling your events you set out points which have been given to you from these, your race choice, your job choice and your enviorement choice. Spending the points gives you dices in various skills, and these dices are what you roll in skill challenges. For instance, a storyteller demands that you roll 12 or higher to stay on your horse in this wild horse-chase. You have 4D6 in riding and roll 14. Success! You stay on your horse!
The system uses something called Exploding Dice or Infinity Dice, which means that if you ever roll a 6 on a dice-roll, you instantly reroll the dice and add one more dice. That means that in theory, if you are really lucky, you can perform a feat which you normally wouldn't be able to (you have two dices in riding and I demand that you roll 14 succed).
Now I'm tired of writing, so here's a picture of Saint Udar being crucifed next to The Holy Blue Lion.
) ... i got some comments on another forum but that was mostly about the game using a lot of tables in earlier editions.
