Eternal Soldier
tabletop role-playing game
Eternal Soldier is a set of rules for role-playing game combat that was published by Tai-Gear Simulations in 1986.
Description
Eternal Soldier is a universal system, focusing mainly on providing combat rules usable in any genre or time period. The rules system is skill-based, covering character attributes, over 100 skills, combat, weapons, and many standard professions. The game includes appendices for science-fiction, fantasy, superheroes, magic, and psionics rules.
Publication history
Eternal Soldier was designed by Chris Arnold, Rob Arnold, and Joe Mays, and published by Tai-Gear Simulations in 1986 as a 164-page book with two cardstock sheets.
Reception
Stewart Wieck reviewed Eternal Soldier in White Wolf #9 (1988), rating it a 7 out of 10 and stated that "In general, I have to say 'thumbs up' to Eternal Soldier despite my prejudice against generic games. Tai-Gear has shown that a workable comprehensive system is possible."
Rick Swan wrote two reviews of Eternal Soldier.
In the January-February 1989 issue of Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer, Swan commented that "I guess you know when you've got something good when the clones start crawling out of the woodwork. The latest serving of sincere flattery for Steve Jackson's GURPS is Eternal Soldier, a role-playing system for 'Adventures in Any Age' that is, sad to report, not even a nice try."
In his 1990 book The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, Swan called it "ambitious but disappointing", finding the rules derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, with underdeveloped ideas.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q25112661. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eternal Soldier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.