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The old thread is way dead, and since then we have a whole new version with a whole lot of trimmed fat and expanded/reworked systems, it's time to hop back into everybody's favorite post-scarcity, unashamedly political sci-fi mishmash d100 system! What is Eclipse Phase Here's what the book has to say quote:In Eclipse Phase, you play a secret agent protecting the scattered remnants of transhumanity from threats that could wipe it out once and for all. You are transhuman. You are genetically modified, physically and mentally augmented, and functionally immortal. Your mind can be digitally backed up, like a save point. If you die, you can be brought back, your ego — both consciousness and memories — physically restored. You may also copy your mind and download into a body of your choice. This new body — your morph — can be biological, a synthetic robotic shell, or a digital infomorph. Your body is essentially gear that you customize according to your mission and requirements. Why should I play Eclipse Phase? Personally I think Eclipse Phase's greatest asset is how gigantic the world is. The book is absolutely dripping with details, and they're not afraid of shying away from the overtly political. The inner system is ruled by hypercorps, with a smattering of revolutionary independence movements. The asteroid belt is the domain of the "criminal" element, independent autonomous habitats (anarcho-capitalist havens). US and South American religious paramilitary state groups completely dominate the Jovian system and rule with the kind of iron fist that a fully monitored technostate offers. Past that is the outer systems, where Nordic-socialist style Titanians, anarchist brinkers and various post-humanity extremists manage to not blow each other up. Teleporting your consciousness is the most efficient way to travel the solar system, anything and everything can be nanofabricated (if you have the blueprints and a fabber, or if your government lets you have either), sapient AI and animals alike rub elbows with pod-grown humans and synths, and death is almost entirely abstracted away, yet the stratification between the rich who will be able to eternally reap their income and the poor who, if they're lucky, can afford to get woken up from cold storage to labor away at slave wages in simulspace, has never been bigger. And it's up to you to protect these schmucks from the TITANs who could easily return one day and wipe them all off the galaxy. What's new? The first thing you'll notice is how character creation is way more streamlined. It is, functionally, the same as in 1e, but the book is a lot better about walking you through your options, and rather than giving you some 1100 points to dole out into random abilities, they package point buys into "Professions", "Interests" and "Backgrounds" which help you drive your stat buy more smoothly. You are of course free to ignore these and try to minmax. Pools! 1e had just Moxie, a kind of luck meter which let you fiddle with the dice rolls to mitigate failures and upgrade successes. In 2e they reworked these pools to make them way more impactful. You now have 4 pools, for essentially your mental skill checks, your social skill checks, and your physical skill checks. Additionally, pools can be spent to impact the plot directly. You can spend a point to get a clue or a lead without needing a test, or to introduce an NPC to the scene or declare your relationship to a new character. Less crunch (in general). There's still a lot of crunch. Combat is still fairly weighty by indie TTRPG terms, but goes far faster than the absolute slogs that were full 1e combat encounters. Psi has been more or less mechanically overhauled. The exsurgent virus now manifests itself in a couple different forms (The Haunter, The Stranger, The Xenomorph) and using powerful abilities makes the infection stronger, which increases the power of the abilities. Reach a tipping point, though, and all of a sudden the virus takes over, pushing your character to do certain things or exhibit certain behaviors at risk of accruing stress.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:07
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having said that, trying to play RAW is nearly impossible because there is a ton of little fiddly bits of detail buried all over the book. Did you know synths get a +30 to decieve checks vs kinesics? Because they're robots and it's harder to read their minute physical mannerisms or emotes. one of like a hundred examples tucked away all over the place For some reason there's still the idea of languages, despite the fact that we currently have machine translation which is more or less capable of facilitating conversation across language barriers in a pinch. The books does a really pisspoor job of explaining exactly how hacking works (various levels of access and alert, and what checks are applicable in what situations) and kinda breezes over "mesh combat" which is the thing the group hacker gets to do while everybody else is pulling out plasma guns and shock batons Also I could see somebody rankling at the stress mechanic, which culminates in your character receiving "disorders" such as Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, etc, which can be "cured" with psychosurgery. And there really just is a ton of gear and mechanics to juggle and keep track of, both mechanically and for RP purposes. GNU Order fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 16:22
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Whoa when did a new edition come out? Is there still the issue where too much of your ability relies in the morph you are in?
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Jun 2, 2020 16:24
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Metapod posted:Whoa when did a new edition come out? Is there still the issue where too much of your ability relies in the morph you are in? Late Februrary. Yes and no? Depending on your group it can be pretty easy to grow attached to your robo-bodies, but the book is pretty good about saying "if you egocast, or if your body is destroyed while doing Firewall poo poo, there's a good chance insurance will cover it or be able to get you an equivalent replacement" Money is totally abstracted out of 2e, as well, so you get "morph points" which can be used to buy morphs and slot back in abilities and mods. There is an "availability test" where you have to make a check to even see if you can get your hands on the rare killbot you've grown accustomed to.
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Jun 2, 2020 16:39
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Oh nice but are morphs still giving like +20 in attributes and things like that
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Jun 2, 2020 19:07
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Morphs don't have inherent stat bonuses, but they do give bonuses to your pools, and one thing your pool can be spent on is an ongoing bonus to a stat.
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Jun 2, 2020 19:59
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Metapod posted:Oh nice but are morphs still giving like +20 in attributes and things like that Yeah the morph stat caps are gone, morphs now affect pools. You still technically kinda need two character sheets especially if you're changing morphs often, but it's way less math and accounting. The Roll20 module for 2E is slick as hell, also
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Jun 2, 2020 20:47
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That's way better im going to read the new edition
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Jun 2, 2020 21:57
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I like this game and asyncs are pretty neat
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Jun 3, 2020 22:02
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i ran a campaign of EP where we just stripped out combat and skill use and mashed in spacemaster and it owned. the world and ideas in it are incredible, but the system is, idk, i'm tempted to say barely playable but I didn't actually play it so maybe it's great. i just remember initiative where you were supposed to roll d100 with a bunch of modifiers for every player, every turn and shudder.
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Jun 4, 2020 04:46
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that must've been 1e which was kind of a mess, 2e iirc is just a 1d6+modifier for initiative. the book is a bit of a mess but as far as the game it's run pretty smooth for me and thats even as an async which has all the PSI sleights + infection poo poo to track
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Jun 4, 2020 05:23
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First edition had some errata or second printing style things that changed some of that up. Make initiative a ton simpler (broke it down to a basic +modifier that you added to a d10 roll), changed margin of success away from the old way (the amount you rolled under your skill) to blackjack rules (higher is better if you don't go over), stuff like that. Overall, there is some system mastery stuff going on, but its less "you need to build your guy this way or you're hosed" like in d20 systems, and more that prep/smart play get rewarded. Between gear and doing stuff to give yourself bonuses your character can do a lot of stuff that they're not designed for. Like with no skill in guns you could be rolling at 50 to hit (10 from COOR, 10 from sights on gun, 30 from full auto for hit). Non-combat if you're trying to do crazy stuff you'd do more prep work, so maybe you call in a favor to get a better disguise though fame rep, a favor from criminal rep to sow some rumors, and some infosec to get some inside info, and your infiltration should be getting some nice bonuses (or if its an extended scene maybe a pool of bonus points to spend). Haven't had a chance to look through 2e myself, but most of the changes I've heard seem good. Moxie spread out to different things gives some granularity to it, some of the math/bonuses and stuff better balanced, new asyncs seem neat.
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Jun 4, 2020 06:29
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ZypherIM posted:First edition had some errata or second printing style things that changed some of that up. Make initiative a ton simpler (broke it down to a basic +modifier that you added to a d10 roll), changed margin of success away from the old way (the amount you rolled under your skill) to blackjack rules (higher is better if you don't go over), stuff like that. As far as character creation goes, it's way simpler and streamlined compared to 1e. Moxie being spread to different pools that work for certain stats is also nice because it gives gameplay reasons to want to be more particular about the kind of morphs your character prefers which I think is neat.
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Jun 4, 2020 19:33
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Synthetics getting bonuses for deceive and melee is cool as hell imo
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Jun 4, 2020 19:51
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My group is in our 5th session of 2e tonight and I gotta say its a slick little game. Liking it alot
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Jun 13, 2020 17:33
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Is it normal for a gm to just start handing out stress damage without WIL checks?
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Jun 30, 2020 17:46
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What no that would be awful. Your gm needs to read the book
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Jun 30, 2020 18:06
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My gm has put my team in a precarious situation. Our mission is to save a half man half cow named mancow but instead of coming along on the ship he's charging head first searching into our async because someone said he was killing people (which he was lol). Any tips on how to control this majestic beast if psi doesn't work
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Jul 2, 2020 18:22
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Metapod posted:My gm has put my team in a precarious situation. Our mission is to save a half man half cow named mancow but instead of coming along on the ship he's charging head first searching into our async because someone said he was killing people (which he was lol). Any tips on how to control this majestic beast if psi doesn't work Have you tried leafy greens and/or grains
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Jul 3, 2020 03:41
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you're a genius
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Jul 4, 2020 22:36
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sebmojo posted:i ran a campaign of EP where we just stripped out combat and skill use and mashed in spacemaster and it owned. I am intrigued, but also scared.
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Jul 5, 2020 00:00
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Super interesting article on some of the differences between 1E and 2E 1E Rep and Networking rules were a pain in the rear end, but I think Transhuman reached a happy medium, by ditching Networking and just rolling directly against Rep any time you needed to use the reputation economy. Mechanically distinct from the credit economy, without the need to cross reference rep tables and favor levels to generate bonuses and penalties to a Networking skill check.
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Sep 7, 2020 00:50
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LatwPIAT posted:I am intrigued, but also scared. it's v easy; you do EP character creation, which gives you a bunch of skills designed around a percentile. Whenever you use a skill, you decide how hard it is, roll percentile, add your skill number and look it up on this god chart right here:  That tells you how much of the task you achieved. For weapons you do the same but subtract the opponent's fray skill (Defensive Bonus in Spacemaster terms). You need a separate chart for each weapon, and you need to do some prep in working out what armour type is what; that part is a little fudgy if you want to do it on the fly. Interesting side effect is that moxie is even more incredibly powerful, since a 19 E critical is a scratch and a 91 is like a vaporised limb. Honestly rolemaster is a very clean and simple system at base, it's put most of the complicated stuff into precalculated charts for you. Character creation is a nightmare, but frankly not as much as 1e Eclipse Phase. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Sep 7, 2020 |
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Sep 7, 2020 01:48
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mellonbread posted:Super interesting article on some of the differences between 1E and 2E I really really like both the networking and currency changes in 2e, which the person writing the article seems to be annoyed by. Ignoring that there is a sort of currency mechanic (the Resources trait) it reinforces the disposable nature of objects and encourages you to not hoard poo poo. You jump into a system, get whatever you need to do your job (either by calling in rep favors or by spending Resources GP) then throw it all the trash and move on. Like this line quote:Beyond that, there’s an entire campaign premise about being a criminal…with no mechanics which explain how you can use crime to enrich yourself!
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Sep 9, 2020 22:53
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Yo, goons  I'm looking for info/guidance on being a gm for EP. I've been playing another pnp system for the better part of a year now and our gm approached me a couple of times about how he misses being a player sometimes. So we talked about me doing gm for another system that we can play on the side. We talked about shadow run at first but I remember the rules being cumbersome and not actually great. So I suggested EP since I know and adore the setting and he was good with it. But since I have close to zero knowledge about the rules/systems I'm kinda flailing about atm. Like should I just buy the 2ed basic books and read them until I think I can handle it or would ya'll suggest another course of action?
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Nov 23, 2020 18:03
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Field report from an ongoing game: 3 asyncs with 3 different strains in a single game is a wild hell ride. Xeno in particular is a lot of fun. Also xenofauna is scary. Overall I'm not sure how I feel about 2e, having played with both some. 2e's structure leans hard into "Firewall mission loop or gatecrashing and that's it" with the mission-based GP mechanics and generally stripping away the sandbox-ability of the system. A weird choice since they pushed Criminal, which really benefited from the sandbox setup, as one of the three main play styles. Guess I'm not getting that Barsoomian revolutionaries game with 2e. Asyncs are actually useful and hacking is good for group play now, I even set up a combat hacker with great success in a combat test, but the structural elements of the game still rub me the wrong way, and I'm disappointed with how far morphs were pruned down (even if it made resleeving much faster).
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Nov 23, 2020 18:25
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Tin Tim posted:Yo, goons More than anything, Eclipse Phase demands the whole group be invested in the setting. There's a huge amount of information that has to be internalized in order to play characters in the Eclipse Phase universe without being constantly confused and frustrated. The 1E books are all free on the developer's blog. Pick up the corebook and see if it's a world you can get excited about - and sell your players on. If it really sucks you in, and the rest of your group is onboard, the 2E rules are easy enough to get around.
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Nov 23, 2020 20:18
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At the end of the day it's a d100 system, so if you're here for the lore and don't want to get bogged down in gear tables and RAW modifiers you can kinda wing it If you already know a decent amount about the lore and setting and just want to learn the rules I wouldn't advise trying to look at the 1e book just because 2e's biggest differences are mechanical. But as far as learning the actual mechanics then yeah reading the book is the way to go. IIRC the book doesn't have a "here's how combat plays out" section the way some modern books do, and it doesn't do an amazing job demonstrating how hacking/mesh activity operates, and I've never found a clear resource for either so it's kinda up to you to figure out.
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Nov 23, 2020 23:26
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Thanks for the input! Once I have the time, I'll give the free materials a look and see where I go from there. The density of the setting actually came to my mind as a blessing and a curse. I know a bunch about it since I got introduced to it through a group on the forums that made their sessions public in Let's Play many moons ago. I'm a sci-fi/cyberstuff lover and after listening to their sessions I delved into the documented lore stuff on my own. But yeah I already dreaded how I can introduce this to people who don't know it and how we could possibly play it without needing a full evening where I just educate the whole group for a while. So far my pitch to them was "imagine that your mind is like on an USB stick and can be stuck into whatever body you want and that being human only relates to that mind and not your form". They liked that but at the same time I was already sweating about how I tell them about the fall, firewall, what the mesh is or how space crab viruses will get you. Could be that it's too much for a group where only I know the setting in detail
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Nov 24, 2020 00:42
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I feel like an odd-man out as I never found the system for morphs from 1st edition to be as super clunky as a lot of people say and am not a huge fan of how 2e decided to change it up. And this isn't because I'm the type who's into needless crunch; there's still so many mechanics and sub-systems in 1e that I still don't even understand, and I've been playing this game for 7+ years, it's just the modifiers you got from switching morphs was always one of the mechanics I found more intuitive to work with.
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Nov 24, 2020 07:09
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SkyeAuroline posted:Field report from an ongoing game: 3 asyncs with 3 different strains in a single game is a wild hell ride. Xeno in particular is a lot of fun. Also xenofauna is scary. This kinda owns. Are goons still mad about asyncs ~space majicks~ ruining immersion in a game with a talking cyber crow whose skillset revolves around gunplay and accounting E: my group has 1 async. Id be fine with catching it, but I'd prefer dealing with the horror of becoming a space wizard vs picking it at start
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Nov 25, 2020 20:31
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So the group I play with on Saturdays has returned to our 1e Eclipse Phase campaign this Saturday (We have rotating GMs and campaigns, you see) and I just wanted to ramble a bit about that since I really like what's been going on with that game. Rather than playing a group of Firewall agents, the party are all members of a homebrewed, Mars-based organization that troubleshoots issues with the Martian TQZ. It's set up with a decentralized structure similar to Firewall, but is explicitly public-facing. The party is primarily based out of a mobile scum caravan that wanders the Martian outback near the TQZ and, excluding my characters, currently consists of a rogue AGI-uplift hacker originally who escaped captivity on the moon and is currently trying to ingratiate herself into hypercorp society; A slightly socially awkward infiltrator with a mysterious past and some shady connections to the Guanxi; and our newest addition, an ex-Sufi nomad mechanic/crafter associated who's a sort of "Extropian-lite" ideologically (Saturday was her player's first session with the group and first experience playing Eclipse Phase, and everyone was really impressed with how well she incorporated her character into the setting lore). And that brings us to my character(s): A former sociologist who was living amongst the Sufi Nomads when The Fall hit and was the only survivor of the conclave she was travelling with. Following her traumatic experience during The Fall she dropped her old identity, went off the grid in the Martian outback and became an important member of the homebrew organization I mentioned. She's not my only character, though, as I'm also playing her surrogate daughter who is secretly a gestalt ego created primarily from the vapor of a Sufi Nomad girl my main character used to travel with before The Fall. She's 8 years old and loves dinosaurs. I especially excited for this adventure since the party (including my main character) have only recently discovered that the girl is a gestalt and are trying to track down the scientist who created her, who has possibly gotten caught in a faction dispute between Cognite and 9-Lives. I am looking forward to good times!
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Dec 1, 2020 19:00
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I am not a fan of the ep system, but God I love the world they made.
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Dec 2, 2020 20:55
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KingKalamari posted:So the group I play with on Saturdays has returned to our 1e Eclipse Phase campaign this Saturday (We have rotating GMs and campaigns, you see) and I just wanted to ramble a bit about that since I really like what's been going on with that game. This owns bones. Do you all ever get sick of slumming around the TQZ all the time? Every time I open the book I see a new hab or area I want to take my players to, which is obviously more in line of the Firewall or Guanxi campaign structure the 2e book suggests
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Dec 2, 2020 23:53
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May as well post about my own game since I'm here. I spun up a bunch of lore about Nimbus, an egocasting hypercorp that gets a sentence of fluff in the book. From the outside it looks like one guy runs the whole company, but in reality he and a suite of about 20 forks have been slicing up the operations for years. The CEO (and original fork) for some mysterious reason decided he wants to check out, wipe all his backups, and leave the company to his handpicked successor. He outed himself to the group of Firewall agents as one of the org's wealthy benefactors and asked for one final favor on the way out. Like any good collection of clones there's a bunch of schisms and pent up animus amongst them, so the party has been running around convincing, blackmailing, and mind controlling the forks to get them to vote their way in The Big Boardroom Meeting. I was inspired by one snippet I remembered seeing (i'm going to spoiler tag it because I know at least one person in my game reads this thread) I can't find it now but somewhere in the book they imply that TITANs or some kind of ASI is the only advanced system that could possibly manage the whole egocasting network which they're on the verge of finding out. It's been very combat light which I think helps the flow a ton, because even a small skirmish takes up a ton of time compared to other systems GNU Order fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 3, 2020 00:03
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Are pods the middle class option for morphs?
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Dec 13, 2020 08:18
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Derek Fcking Carr posted:Are pods the middle class option for morphs? Not particularly. They have a similar, though weaker, stigma to synths and most of them get relegated to poor/working class in the inner system. They're bodies off a literal assembly line with cookie cutter looks and clearly artificial skin seams, they were hijacked en masse by TITANs due to the cyberbrain... plenty of cause for stigma.
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Dec 13, 2020 15:21
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The middle class option is probably slapping a synthetic mask over a synth or pod. According to the rules text they're indistinguishable from real biomorphs, unless you have a scanner that can see all the way through to the bone underneath.
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Dec 13, 2020 20:40
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That, or just plain splicers/etc cheap biomorphs. Hazers are the middle-low one out in Titan, but that's a regional exception; OBPM means there's mountains of those and not near as many synths. Elsewhere, Splicers are common enough (1e claims them as the majority on their own, as a single type) and unstigmatized enough most people would probably be fine with them. This is why we really needed that "life in the transhuman future" book that we never got for either edition. On an unrelated note, our 2e campaign just wrapped last night, second campaign I've ever had come to a conclusive ending. Enjoyed the setting, still wary of the system, I don't think it works especially well (particularly pools). Had a good time though.
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Dec 13, 2020 21:04
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Did anyone save a copy of the Portal writeup from 1e? The one posted to the forums, not the one from Gatecrashing. There was an anarchist mediator lady, an ultimate who did security, a criminal gangster, a body bank made up to look like a hair salon... The forums got wiped a year or two back, and there's no archive of the homebrew subforum on the wayback machine.
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May 22, 2022 01:18
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