Eclipse Phase - The Scary Door RPG - The Something Awful Forums

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Kire: Aug 25, 2006

I'm super excited to try and create an adventure in this sci-fi system. Previously I had tried Alternity but I can't find anyone who plays that anymore (I think it died a sad death back in the 90s).

The main website has great resources and an active forum:
http://www.eclipsephase.com/

Here's the background story for the game:

Official Website posted:

Humanity stands on the cusp of a new age, with accelerated technological growth converging toward a singularity point, promising an undreamt-of future. Despite the ecopocalypse and social upheavals on Earth, humanity has conquered the solar system and partially terraformed Mars. Advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science have transformed our lives. Everyone is wirelessly networked with the world around them, AIs process vast amounts of information, and nano-fabrication enables people to �print� complex devices from the molecular level�at home. Biotechnology allows people to genefix, enhance, and clone their bodies, while others pursue body modifications to adapt to new environments or make themselves into something no longer quite human. People�s minds and memories can be digitized, uploaded, transferred over long distances, and downloaded into new bodies (biological or synthetic). Death has been defeated�for those who can afford it.

From within, disaster struck. Transhumanity reaped the rewards of its arrogance when conflict spiked between the battered nations of Earth, already weakened by decades of climate catastrophes and other disruptive factors. Rampant netwars soon exploded into physical conflicts with spiraling body counts. In the midst of these aggressions, a group of military AIs known as TITANS quietly achieved full sentience and autonomy, and rapidly began exponentially incrementing their own intellectual growth. The AI intelligences spawned by this hard-takeoff singularity quickly turned against transhumanity, enveloping the system in unprecedented levels of violence, disaster, and warfare. What began as a whirlwind of conflict between political factions, revolutionaries, and hypercorps soon escalated into a struggle between man and machine.

In just a few years, transhumanity was nearly wiped out with nuclear strikes, biowarfare plagues, destructive nanoswarms, infowar attacks, mass uploads, and other unexplained singularity events, ripping the superpowers of old to pieces. Our planetary home�Earth�was transformed into a toxic and strange hellhole, while many major habitats were left frozen sarcophagi in the vacuum of space. Just as quickly as they came, the TITANS disappeared, taking millions of uploaded minds with them, leaving behind a network of wormhole gateways. Known as Pandora Gates, these poorly-understood devices allow instantaneous teleportation to distant star systems�often one-way and/or fatal. Though only a handful of Pandora Gates are known to exist�each highly contested�the foolish, brave, curious, and desperate are already risking certain death to enter and explore what lies beyond.

In the aftermath of the Fall, transhumanity lives on, divided into a patchwork of hypercorp combines, survivalist stations, transhuman faction species, and city-state habitats. Under the oppressive police states of immortal inner-system oligarchies, advanced technologies remain highly restricted, and refugee infomorphs are held in virtual slavery or resleeved in robotic bodies and forced into indentured labor. In the outer system, rebel transhuman scientists and techno-anarchists struggle to maintain a new society�from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. And on the fringes and in the niches lurk networked tribes of political extremists, religious fanatics, criminal entrepeneurs, and bizarre posthumans, among other, stranger, and more alien things ...

Though most claim the Fall was carefully orchestrated by the out-of-control TITANS, others whisper that the driving powers behind the wars�both AI and transhuman�were infected by a mutating virus with multiple infection vectors�biological, information, nano�dubbed the Exsurgent virus. Whatever its source, this virus has been known to sometimes transform its victims into something unexplainable ... something monstrous and reality-altering. Whatever the truth, the remnants of the TITANS and this virus were left to the desolated ruins or driven to the edges of the system, where they remain hidden away in dark corners, quietly waiting to infect the minds of the scavengers and explorers who find them ...

The core rulebook, modules, and other materials are licensed under Creative Commons and are available as legal pdf torrents.
Feel free to download legally! Even if you just want to read the fun scene-setting stories in the front of the books ("Lack", and "Melt"), and scattered throughout. My roommate doesn't play but he's borrowed the books to read as sci-fi short story collections.

UPDATE: Here's an interview with the two creators at GenCon, where they discuss what they want players to be able to do with EP, and the future of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSA3k9adrFs

So far there have been 4 core rulebooks released, as well as 7 stand-alone adventures.
Gatecrashing, all about exploring planets beyond our solar system:

Glory, a sci-fi horror adventure set near Jupiter:

and Sunward, a dive into the inner system:

New Book! Use your cyberbrain to control an entire habitat as your morph, learn about new uplifts, and discover more secrets about the EP gameworld!

There are many homebrewed, CC-licensed fan creations, including a quarterly zine and this collection of fan-made NPCs, locations, and adventures: http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/

Kire fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Dec 13, 2011

# ? Oct 19, 2010 17:38

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 20:49

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

[reserved]

:tali:

Kire fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Sep 7, 2011

# ? Oct 26, 2010 18:10

that ostrich: Jul 18, 2005; Don't worry, I'm a Media Technician Lead. This shit is on LOCKDOWN.

Kire posted:

It looks like I'll be GMing a game based on the Glory module (initially) starting sometime in the first two weeks of November. If any goons are in the Boston area, let me know if you want to join.

This game looks really interesting, and I've got the rulebook, but I doubt I'll be able to pull my group away from Rogue Trader/Deathwatch long enough to try it. I'm curious to see what your experience with the system ends up being, though. Maybe I'll force them to run a one-shot.

# ? Oct 27, 2010 06:27

Bullbar: Apr 18, 2007; The Aristocrats!

After we finish the current game of Don't Rest Your Head and play a few games of Shock, me and my newly formed Skype gaming group are going to start an Eclipse Phase campaign. I really like it, it's a fun setting and in some ways is a more accessible and crazier version of Transhuman Space. My personal description was 'The Culture: The Teenage Years'.

What makes it handy for an online game is that the book is able to be freely shared in PDF form amongst the group or even downloaded (they seeded it themselves), all thanks to the license and attitude of the publishers. I'm glad I was able to give them my money.

# ? Oct 27, 2010 09:43

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

that ostrich posted:

This game looks really interesting, and I've got the rulebook, but I doubt I'll be able to pull my group away from Rogue Trader/Deathwatch long enough to try it. I'm curious to see what your experience with the system ends up being, though. Maybe I'll force them to run a one-shot.

I'll keep you updated! I'm interested to see how the combat phases work out, and the percentile-d10 system.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 01:13

Bullbar: Apr 18, 2007; The Aristocrats!

Since I love this game setting, despite not having played it yet, I thought I would throw in some more information about it.

I used to be absolutely in love with the Transhuman Space setting, which is a hard science-fiction game looking at what life could potentially be like a century from now. As the name suggests it really covers issues of Transhumanism, of what it means to be human or more than human, of identity and of techno-shock, as well as the divide between the rich and the poor. In short, it's a very cool setting and it's huge. That was one of the things that made it so intimidating. It covered so much ground and so many different feels that it was hard to know just what to do with it.Plus it required GURPS and I just never got around to getting that.

Then I heard about Eclipse Phase and it sounded interesting. Someone told me it was a softer, crazier version of Transhuman Space, because after all it includes aliens and it includes wormholes and some psi abilities. But I'm cool with that, I can deal with firm sci-fi. So I checked it out, saw a copy in a store, loved the look of it and bought it. It's really cool! It's like Transhuman Space with a healthy chunk of horror and conspiracy thrown in, it's way more focused on what it wants to do mood-wise and although it covers almost as much territory, you never feel like it's going to be difficult to tie it all in together. Actually let me just quote the website:

Eclipse Phase Website posted:

Eclipse Phase is a pen & paper roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror.

An "eclipse phase" is the period between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is.

Players take part in a cross-faction secret network dubbed Firewall that is dedicated to counteracting "existential risks" � threats to the existence of transhumanity, whether they be biowar plagues, self-replicating nanoswarms, nuclear proliferation, terrorists with WMDs, net-breaking computer attacks, rogue AIs, alien encounters, or anything else that could drive an already decimated transhumanity to extinction.

Eclipse Phase Website posted:

Humanity stands on the cusp of a new age, with accelerated technological growth converging toward a singularity point, promising an undreamt-of future. Despite the ecopocalypse and social upheavals on Earth, humanity has conquered the solar system and partially terraformed Mars. Advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science have transformed our lives. Everyone is wirelessly networked with the world around them, AIs process vast amounts of information, and nano-fabrication enables people to �print� complex devices from the molecular level�at home. Biotechnology allows people to genefix, enhance, and clone their bodies, while others pursue body modifications to adapt to new environments or make themselves into something no longer quite human. People�s minds and memories can be digitized, uploaded, transferred over long distances, and downloaded into new bodies (biological or synthetic). Death has been defeated�for those who can afford it.

From within, disaster struck. Transhumanity reaped the rewards of its arrogance when conflict spiked between the battered nations of Earth, already weakened by decades of climate catastrophes and other disruptive factors. Rampant netwars soon exploded into physical conflicts with spiraling body counts. In the midst of these aggressions, a group of military AIs known as TITANS quietly achieved full sentience and autonomy, and rapidly began exponentially incrementing their own intellectual growth. The AI intelligences spawned by this hard-takeoff singularity quickly turned against transhumanity, enveloping the system in unprecedented levels of violence, disaster, and warfare. What began as a whirlwind of conflict between political factions, revolutionaries, and hypercorps soon escalated into a struggle between man and machine.

In just a few years, transhumanity was nearly wiped out with nuclear strikes, biowarfare plagues, destructive nanoswarms, infowar attacks, mass uploads, and other unexplained singularity events, ripping the superpowers of old to pieces. Our planetary home�Earth�was transformed into a toxic and strange hellhole, while many major habitats were left frozen sarcophagi in the vacuum of space. Just as quickly as they came, the TITANS disappeared, taking millions of uploaded minds with them, leaving behind a network of wormhole gateways. Known as Pandora Gates, these poorly-understood devices allow instantaneous teleportation to distant star systems�often one-way and/or fatal. Though only a handful of Pandora Gates are known to exist�each highly contested�the foolish, brave, curious, and desperate are already risking certain death to enter and explore what lies beyond.

In the aftermath of the Fall, transhumanity lives on, divided into a patchwork of hypercorp combines, survivalist stations, transhuman faction species, and city-state habitats. Under the oppressive police states of immortal inner-system oligarchies, advanced technologies remain highly restricted, and refugee infomorphs are held in virtual slavery or resleeved in robotic bodies and forced into indentured labor. In the outer system, rebel transhuman scientists and techno-anarchists struggle to maintain a new society�from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. And on the fringes and in the niches lurk networked tribes of political extremists, religious fanatics, criminal entrepeneurs, and bizarre posthumans, among other, stranger, and more alien things ...

Though most claim the Fall was carefully orchestrated by the out-of-control TITANS, others whisper that the driving powers behind the wars�both AI and transhuman�were infected by a mutating virus with multiple infection vectors�biological, information, nano�dubbed the Exsurgent virus. Whatever its source, this virus has been known to sometimes transform its victims into something unexplainable ... something monstrous and reality-altering. Whatever the truth, the remnants of the TITANS and this virus were left to the desolated ruins or driven to the edges of the system, where they remain hidden away in dark corners, quietly waiting to infect the minds of the scavengers and explorers who find them ...

Basically a bunch of malicious AI came along, tried to kill humanity and in the process made the planet an unlivable (mostly) wasteland. One thing I really really love is that there were a whole heap of people who couldn't afford or didn't have time to escape with their bodies intact and had to upload themselves into computers and beam themselves out into space, into spaceships and storage in order to survive. Some of them still cannot afford what it takes to get a new body.

There's a lot more I could say, but that's the basics of why I love Eclipse Phase. The thing is, I love it a lot but I haven't played it yet so I can't talk much about how the system actually works. Personally I don't have any problems with it.

Bullbar fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Oct 28, 2010

# ? Oct 28, 2010 08:10

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

CNN Sports Ticker posted:

Basically a bunch of malicious AI came along, tried to kill humanity and in the process made the planet an unlivable (mostly) wasteland.

Or so we're told by the Hypercorps and other elites. But humanity was doing a pretty drat good job of destroying itself long before the TITANs were created, and even then it doesn't make sense for singularity-capable AIs to attack people. But any speculation beyond that would be spoilers!

# ? Oct 28, 2010 15:10

Not Keyser Soze: Mar 7, 2007; Endless Celestial Sex

Eclipse Phase is a blast. My group has run a couple games in a Troupe-style campaign. Personally, I find the game has a few hang ups that need to be addressed by the GM just to help the game run smoother.

In our first game session we had this weird moment where we needed to hail a cab and we realized we had no idea how to do that. What if the cabby doesn�t take Space Bucks? Do we really have to sacrifice precious social cred just to get across town? The game is, quite frankly, up its own rear end about how amazing and full of wonder and possibility the setting is that it completely glosses over how to do very simple things. Now obviously, it can just be hand waived and then move on but it�s something that may come up.

Also, EP suffers from the same problem as Shadowrun where often the game can seem like a series of single player games. Our AI party members spent a great deal of time hacking into the local mesh and making little admin accounts for themselves while the rest of the non-hacker PCs had to just kill time waiting for the GM�s attention. This not a great solution, nor one that�s easily done, but I think having a GM and a GM Helper would make the game run significantly smoother.

Those are just some initial impressions of the game. Make no mistake it was drat fun, regardless.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 15:33

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Not Keyser Soze posted:

Eclipse Phase is a blast. My group has run a couple games in a Troupe-style campaign. Personally, I find the game has a few hang ups that need to be addressed by the GM just to help the game run smoother.

In our first game session we had this weird moment where we needed to hail a cab and we realized we had no idea how to do that. What if the cabby doesn�t take Space Bucks? Do we really have to sacrifice precious social cred just to get across town? The game is, quite frankly, up its own rear end about how amazing and full of wonder and possibility the setting is that it completely glosses over how to do very simple things. Now obviously, it can just be hand waived and then move on but it�s something that may come up.

Also, EP suffers from the same problem as Shadowrun where often the game can seem like a series of single player games. Our AI party members spent a great deal of time hacking into the local mesh and making little admin accounts for themselves while the rest of the non-hacker PCs had to just kill time waiting for the GM�s attention. This not a great solution, nor one that�s easily done, but I think having a GM and a GM Helper would make the game run significantly smoother.

Those are just some initial impressions of the game. Make no mistake it was drat fun, regardless.

What's "Troupe"?

I finished reading the section on using Rep to buy stuff, and it is really absurd. If you have level 4 rep (60-79 I think) then the "cooldown" on calling level 4 favors (which are a renewable resource as you don't have to burn rep to call them if you succeed on your Networking rolls) is only 1 month. You can hire someone fulltime for 1 month as a level 4 favor, or have someone murdered. Each month. With level 5 favors, the rulebook says "mass murder" or "terrorist attack" are favors you can call. What bullshit!

So for the hailing a taxi example, I guess you would have to spend local credit-bucks, because it just doesn't make sense to say "Oh you're on Mars? Sure, that's inner system, so you can use your Networking:Hypercorp and relevant rep score to get a free taxi ride for up to 5000km". Although most transportation is probably automated, run by AIs, extremely cheap and so forth...it seems like I'll have to do a lot of tinkering to get the non-capitalist economy to make any kind of sense, or be sustainable.

I know what you mean with the "many single player games" thing. I was designing characters for a scenario that I'd like to open with, and it occured to me that the infolife PC is going to have a much different experience than the standard-fighter PC, or the psi-character. If the players don't give themselves very, very similar backgrounds it could be really difficult for them to move around the system as a group too. How would I get a party with one Hypercorp executive, a SCUM PC, an anarchist brinker, and a ruster? I'll just have to put some limits on character creation for my players that want to make their own.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 17:54

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Also how do you feel about the standard starting CP of 1000 during character creation? It feels to me like running a D&D campaign where the characters start out at 8-10th level. Especially with up to 10 moxie points, which are renewed each game session. I'm probably going to limit moxie points to 1 per character to start, and make the initial CP limit 800.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 18:11

anagramarye: Jan 2, 2008; Array Age Man

The one mechanical change I would make to the system were I ever to run it would be to divide all the numbers by 5 and make it a d20 instead of a d100.

Seriously, it doesn't need to be that fiddly.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 21:19

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

anagramarye posted:

The one mechanical change I would make to the system were I ever to run it would be to divide all the numbers by 5 and make it a d20 instead of a d100.

Seriously, it doesn't need to be that fiddly.

I've been wanting to do a straight up dice-pool conversion, ala SR4. When you divide everything by 5s, you start seeing the rules similarities to Shadowrun a lot more clearly.

# ? Oct 28, 2010 23:07

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Anything I should add to the OP? I'm going to morph this into a general EP thread after my group starts playing.

# ? Nov 2, 2010 22:58

Bullbar: Apr 18, 2007; The Aristocrats!

Setting and game info, some of the cool artwork (love the artwork in that game), some information about the creative commons license the game is under.

# ? Nov 2, 2010 23:09

Sinatrapod: Sep 24, 2007; The "Latin" is too dangerous, my queen!

Kire posted:

Also how do you feel about the standard starting CP of 1000 during character creation? It feels to me like running a D&D campaign where the characters start out at 8-10th level. Especially with up to 10 moxie points, which are renewed each game session. I'm probably going to limit moxie points to 1 per character to start, and make the initial CP limit 800.

If you're playing a Firewall game, your character is assumed to be a seasoned professional with years of experience in their chosen specialty, they SHOULD be pretty serious folks.

If you're not playing as Firewall agents, yeah, I'd say tune that CP down some.

# ? Nov 17, 2010 02:03

ThreeStep: Nov 5, 2009

Something like 800-900CP for characters maybe? Been wanting to run something in EP that isn't Firewall for a while now, probably a salvage and search-and-rescue based campaign. Lots of loose debris around the Inner System, after all.

# ? Nov 17, 2010 19:47

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

ThreeStep posted:

Something like 800-900CP for characters maybe? Been wanting to run something in EP that isn't Firewall for a while now, probably a salvage and search-and-rescue based campaign. Lots of loose debris around the Inner System, after all.

I would add a cap on starting Rep of 40, and make each point cost 1CP instead of 0.1CP.

# ? Nov 17, 2010 21:55

Sombrero!: Sep 11, 2001

Any chance of a PbP of this game? I just bought the rulebook and wanna give it a go.

# ? Nov 24, 2010 10:05

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Well, my group has schedules that just won't work with the game. Too much school and work. I've had to put it on suspension until summer.

I am hoping to use a 3D printer at a nearby community workshop to make custom figurines so that our battles aren't just coins vs. dice.

# ? Feb 21, 2011 00:07

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

The Gatecrashing book came out, lots of info about the Pandora gates and exoplanets. Here's a legal, CC torrent:
http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Eclipse-Phase-gatecrashing-Official-Torrent-v1-Dec-2010/3665d1342105f1e62356f3bfc381f5de90070dadcbc9

# ? Mar 17, 2011 06:43

ThreeStep: Nov 5, 2009

Gatecrashing is such a weird book. I haven't read the whole thing cover to cover but some of the morphs are rather out there compared to Sunward's. I'm looking at the Scurrier and Whiplash in particular. Spares are pretty awesome though.

The Gates are a neat concept, but sometimes they seem out of place. When most the setting is hard sci-fi (or close enough) mysterious stargates can be jarring.

# ? Mar 17, 2011 07:43

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

Mmm. I'm only twenty-odd pages into Gatecrashing, but it's tasty reading. It is much more in the vein of psi powers and the horror elements that the Exsurgent Intelligence brings into play, than something like Varley's Eight Worlds stories, but that's more the kind of thing that I'm interested in than the rest.

# ? Mar 17, 2011 08:04

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

The fanzine is finally out, a long time in the making but pretty high quality and fun to read. Check out The Eye:
http://www.firewall-darkcast.com/theeye

# ? Apr 12, 2011 17:16

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

I've run two sessions of EP and planning to run another. Here's an actual play of it http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/03/genre/horror/eclipse-phase-a-glorious-fall/

I ran a short tutorial adventure I made up myself to introduce some setting elements and game mechanics (simulspace, hacking, forks, combat) then I ran Glory.

# ? Apr 12, 2011 21:39

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

clockworkjoe posted:

I've run two sessions of EP and planning to run another. Here's an actual play of it http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/03/genre/horror/eclipse-phase-a-glorious-fall/

I ran a short tutorial adventure I made up myself to introduce some setting elements and game mechanics (simulspace, hacking, forks, combat) then I ran Glory.

Thanks for posting that. I did the same thing - a short intro adventure that I wrote myself, before beginning Glory. My new group's going to do something our GM wrote (although I think he modified part of an old Shadowrun adventure, and changed the setting to be on Phobos and Mars).

I updated the OP with an interesting interview with the creators.

# ? Apr 13, 2011 01:11

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

We just had the funniest RPG session I've ever had. Our group was heading down the Elevator from Phobos to Mars' surface, when we got hit by a minor meteor shower. Our GM had just intended that to be innocent flavor text (the pilot of the craft told us to enjoy the meteor shower) but one of the PCs decided to try and "help" us avoid it by hacking into the system and taking over the controls, speeding us up and then accidentally disabling the breaks. It resulted in us stealing some orbital divers' high-alt parachutes and escaping before the elevator crashed.

Less than a game-day later our group had botched a delivery and was eaten by an exsurgent nanoswarm. My character, the last one alive, had barely enough time (thanks to immunogenic armor coating) to fire off a quick text message to an NPC associate letting him know how we died, so we could get restored from backups quickly despite leaving no corpses.

A literal and figurative crash and burn of an adventure.

# ? Apr 15, 2011 05:42

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

My new group has been gatecrashing non-stop, so far we've visited two jungle worlds on recovery missions. I'm trying to get our GM to let us run an anarcho-saboteur mission for the Love and Rage collective against a hypercorp mining outpost. I really want to try and free some indentured infomorphs and cases.

I got a hard copy of Gatecrashing, and I'm loving the short stories and info included in it. I still don't have much interest in Sunward though, partly because of the terrible cover art. Does anybody know if it has a lot of good cyberpunk potential for inner system adventures? It seems like the best opportunities for cyberpunk style gameplay are on the SCUM barges, or in the shantytowns of Mars and Luna.

# ? May 11, 2011 20:19

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

I'm going through gatecrasher now and it is indeed awesome.

I like Sunward too and I think the space whales are neat. I feel like I have to redeem them by creating a sun based adventure.

Anyway other inner system hooks

WELCOME (BACK) TO EARF: Earth is a crazy loving post apocalyptic world. All kinds of mission ideas - from Metro 2033 run and gun missions to Twilight Zone TITAN sites (humans 'rebuilt' by TITANs for god knows what) are possible here. Oh and there's possibly a gate under Antarctica.

The Hidden Pirate Aerostat of Venus: an entire adventure to infiltrate the criminal underworld of Venus so the players can get to their hidden aerostat to find a reclusive criminal warlord. Think heart of darkness but on Venus. With aerial morph gunfights.

Mars: The Martian TQZ. Also the EP Community project town Meltwater: http://eclipsephase.com/meltwater-mars-habitat-community-project

# ? May 11, 2011 23:11

Iron Squid: Nov 23, 2005; by Ozmaugh

Wanna try out this game, but I *hate* PDF books that are in portrait mode.

# ? May 22, 2011 18:03

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

Iron Squid posted:

Wanna try out this game, but I *hate* PDF books that are in portrait mode.

portrait mode? Like, uh, pretty much every game book PDF I've ever seen?

Also if you don't like it in that mode, you can always buy the dead tree edition

# ? May 22, 2011 22:27

Iron Squid: Nov 23, 2005; by Ozmaugh

clockworkjoe posted:

portrait mode? Like, uh, pretty much every game book PDF I've ever seen?

Also if you don't like it in that mode, you can always buy the dead tree edition

Yeah, the whole portrait thing isn't limited to Eclipse Phase. I just wish that people who made PDF versions would make them an orientation more appropriate for monitor viewing. (And I understand this'll never happen.)

I thought about buying the book version but I'm not sure I want to drop $50 on something I might not like.

Edit: I guess this is just random complaining that could apply to almost any game system, so, uh...nevermind me.

# ? May 23, 2011 00:16

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

The designers have been converting everything to alternate landscape pdfs, starting with some of the smaller releases and I believe they will do it for the core book when it hits its 3rd edition.

http://www.eclipsephase.com/faceted_search/results/portrait

# ? May 23, 2011 03:54

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

Kire posted:

The designers have been converting everything to alternate landscape pdfs, starting with some of the smaller releases and I believe they will do it for the core book when it hits its 3rd edition.

http://www.eclipsephase.com/faceted_search/results/portrait

They probably will put them all out in landscape format, the adventures are, but it will take a while. Posthuman Studios isn't that big and they don't produce that much.

If your monitor is big enough, just two page view the books. That's what I do with mine when I read pdfs but then again my monitor is 25.5 inches. I feel like Batman sitting in front of the big computer in the Batcave sometimes.

# ? May 23, 2011 05:18

Saith: Oct 10, 2010; Asahina...
Regular Penguins look just the same!

You know, this has gotta be my favourite setting for pretty much any system. Like I guess a lot of people, though, I haven't really gotten around to playing all that much.

# ? Jun 7, 2011 20:47

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Saith posted:

You know, this has gotta be my favourite setting for pretty much any system. Like I guess a lot of people, though, I haven't really gotten around to playing all that much.

I think people have been playing it, I've already been in two separate groups in my town (Boston). But it's a young game so it's still striving toward critical mass.

I adore the system because you can put anything awesome into it- gritty scarcity campaigns ala Gibson-esque cyberpunk set in the inner system or on Mars, or post-scarcity super-powerful campaigns closer to Iain Banks' Culture novels if you set it in the outer system (or a group of rich elites).

Right now I'm trying to port Half-Life 2 into EP, by keeping City 17 on Earth and having the PCs be a group of reclaimers trying to help some survivors fight back against the "combine" (an exsurgent Titan). I was playing through HL2 Ep 1&2 the other day, and I really, really wanted to play with the advisors and their psionic powers, as well as the stalkers (who you could just call exsurgent humans) in a post-apocalyptic setting.

# ? Jun 7, 2011 22:36

Barrakketh: Apr 19, 2011; Victory and defeat are the same. I urge you to act but not to reflect on the fruit of the act. Seek detachment. Fight without desire.

Don't withdraw into solitude. You must act. Yet action mustn't dominate you. In the heart of action you must remain free from all attachment.

Eclipse Phase!

So I'll be the GM this saturday. Could be a one shot thing or the start of something beautiful.

:stare:

It'll be my first time GMing in 14 years. :stare:

It'll also be my first time seriously playing Eclipse Phase, or any kind of sci-fi rpg. :ohdear:

This is the party lineup so far:

Mikhail Bison, as in THE M.Bison of Street Fighter fame. The player wanted to play Raul Julia's Bison in SPAAAAAAACE. We've agreed he was the dictator of Migranka. He nuked his country to cover his escape from Earth. Sadly, his ego was a bit a scrambled by all the Electronic warfare/fallout going on at the time, resulting in edited memories. We've joked about his character being responsible for the kill-sat network that has quarantined Earth. His edited memories lets me hand-wave away whether or not he was intimately familiar with the game's metaplot. His character build is based on military knowledge, Dr.Doom super-science, and political skills. He is now a low-level lieutenant in the Triads. I picture him as HK-47 with Bison's hat and cape. Delicious!

Mask, a drug addicted, paranoid schizophrenic psychic assassin. One of the Lost, he's escaped from the Nine Lives' bloodsport games and has been working as Mikhail's hitman. I think the dude built him with nothing but combat in mind. Which I guess is good, since the others are more technically-inclined characters. Kind of dreading what will happen with Mask since he is prone to "freaking out".

A bio-conservative smuggler, so far un-named, in a flat morph with zero upgrades except a cortical stack. A man who won't admit that he is the inferior to his transhuman brethren. Hailing from the Outer System, his background is that he had his memories wiped when he stumbled on a science experiment linked to the Fall. That he is at the heart of this great conspiracy and pursued by unknown forces. In reality, I want to turn this background story on its head and reveal that there is no great conspiracy. That the truth of the matter is he willfully abandoned his family during the Fall to a gruesome death. Ravaged by guilt, he wiped his own memories but there is still some kind of mental residue that metamorphosizes itself as this grand "conspiracy" against him. He knows something is wrong and has always started digging into his past. Here's the kicker: he has discovered the truth repeatedly about his past, but each time, when confronted with the truth, he has wiped his memory again. the Nameless One from Planescape Torment was a bit of an inspiration. I'm thinking of making his muse, which knows the true story, based on his character's sister.

Arch, an AGI with no built-in programming blocks that was spawned in the wake of the Fall by a group of dying scientists. Arch is the amalgamation of these researchers. When we started talking about what kind of personality Arch would have, it quickly became apparent it could be summed up by one one word: "SHODAN". Arch is another hard take-off Singularity in the making. It's all my fault for joking "So it wants to enslave mankind?"

Lastly, There's another un-named character. This one is supposed to be a multiple fork hacker. I'm waiting on the player to give me more details about the character.

I've cooked up a scenario that'll introduce the system as much to myself as to the players. They have beent tasked to salvage as much as they can of a direlict Command and Control kill-sat in Earth's orbit (it's more of a space station, actually). They will encounter mercs who will try to stop them, discover the former crew, and the station itself, is thoroughly infected with the exsurgent virus and a Seed AI that was the top secret weapon kept aboard.

Ultimately, I'd like to have them trapped aboard the kill-sat as it burns up in the atmosphere and crashes down into the Meditteranean Dust Bowl. The party would then have to find a way to escape Earth.

# ? Jun 9, 2011 17:20

Kire: Aug 25, 2006

Barrakketh posted:

Eclipse Phase!

So I'll be the GM this saturday. Could be a one shot thing or the start of something beautiful.

It'll be my first time GMing in 14 years.

It'll also be my first time seriously playing Eclipse Phase, or any kind of sci-fi rpg.

This is the party lineup so far:

Mikhail Bison, as in THE M.Bison of Street Fighter fame. The player wanted to play Raul Julia's Bison in SPAAAAAAACE. We've agreed he was the dictator of Migranka. He nuked his country to cover his escape from Earth. Sadly, his ego was a bit a scrambled by all the Electronic warfare/fallout going on at the time, resulting in edited memories. We've joked about his character being responsible for the kill-sat network that has quarantined Earth. His edited memories lets me hand-wave away whether or not he was intimately familiar with the game's metaplot. His character build is based on military knowledge, Dr.Doom super-science, and political skills. He is now a low-level lieutenant in the Triads. I picture him as HK-47 with Bison's hat and cape. Delicious!

Mask, a drug addicted, paranoid schizophrenic psychic assassin. One of the Lost, he's escaped from the Nine Lives' bloodsport games and has been working as Mikhail's hitman. I think the dude built him with nothing but combat in mind. Which I guess is good, since the others are more technically-inclined characters. Kind of dreading what will happen with Mask since he is prone to "freaking out".

A bio-conservative smuggler, so far un-named, in a flat morph with zero upgrades except a cortical stack. A man who won't admit that he is the inferior to his transhuman brethren. Hailing from the Outer System, his background is that he had his memories wiped when he stumbled on a science experiment linked to the Fall. That he is at the heart of this great conspiracy and pursued by unknown forces. In reality, I want to turn this background story on its head and reveal that there is no great conspiracy. That the truth of the matter is he willfully abandoned his family during the Fall to a gruesome death. Ravaged by guilt, he wiped his own memories but there is still some kind of mental residue that metamorphosizes itself as this grand "conspiracy" against him. He knows something is wrong and has always started digging into his past. Here's the kicker: he has discovered the truth repeatedly about his past, but each time, when confronted with the truth, he has wiped his memory again. the Nameless One from Planescape Torment was a bit of an inspiration. I'm thinking of making his muse, which knows the true story, based on his character's sister.

Arch, an AGI with no built-in programming blocks that was spawned in the wake of the Fall by a group of dying scientists. Arch is the amalgamation of these researchers. When we started talking about what kind of personality Arch would have, it quickly became apparent it could be summed up by one one word: "SHODAN". Arch is another hard take-off Singularity in the making. It's all my fault for joking "So it wants to enslave mankind?"

Lastly, There's another un-named character. This one is supposed to be a multiple fork hacker. I'm waiting on the player to give me more details about the character.

I've cooked up a scenario that'll introduce the system as much to myself as to the players. They have beent tasked to salvage as much as they can of a direlict Command and Control kill-sat in Earth's orbit (it's more of a space station, actually). They will encounter mercs who will try to stop them, discover the former crew, and the station itself, is thoroughly infected with the exsurgent virus and a Seed AI that was the top secret weapon kept aboard.

Ultimately, I'd like to have them trapped aboard the kill-sat as it burns up in the atmosphere and crashes down into the Meditteranean Dust Bowl. The party would then have to find a way to escape Earth.

That sounds fun, I hope you find many interesting and amusing ways to torment your powergamers! Good luck with it, if you need a few things to help I recommend these cheat sheets:
http://www.voidstate.com/rpg/voidstate_eclipse_phase_hacking_cheatsheet_v1-1.pdf

Weapon stats sheet: http://www.mediafire.com/?mtp2imd5ud27rlc

# ? Jun 10, 2011 15:54

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

I posted this question on the EP forums but I haven't gotten much in the way of replies about actual play experiences:

Obviously death is very much a real possibility in EP and it's fortunate that death is not the end. However, on a game mechanics level, death is still a major penalty as you lose your morph, implants and most likely your gear. This matters a large deal because morphs are usually expensive in CP and some characters may invest heavily in gear. Also given the current state of the marketplace, resleeved characters will be forced into cheap morphs if they are not given a fiat by the GM. The high quality morphs are extremely expensive and rare.

Given that a character only earns an average of approximately 1 Rez point per game session with the rules as written (4-7 points per 3-6 sessions), character death has the effect of making a character substantially weaker than they were at character generation - losing the benefits of 20-50 sessions of game play - an entire campaign!

For example: Sally the Soldier has an exalt morph (30 CP), with toughness 1 (10 CP) 5000 credits of combat armor and misc gear (starting cash) neurachem (5 CP), a plasma beam bolter (5 CP) and skillware with 1 skill at 40 points (10 CP) if she dies and resleeves with a splicer (10 CP) she has a net loss of 50 CP. Sally's player is better off by making a new character because Sally's going to be operating as a weaker character for a long time to come.

The only way to get around this is to purposefully design a character that has minimal gear and a cheap morph.

So, my question is: how do you handle these game mechanic issues in campaign?

# ? Jun 11, 2011 22:58

Bistromatic: Oct 3, 2004; And turn the inner eye
To see its path...

You could include morphs in the backup insurance, perhaps for an extra fee.

And if you're using the Firewall setting, i'm pretty sure they have a policy of reimbursing (reasonable) expenses incurred while on a mission.

# ? Jun 11, 2011 23:15

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 20:49

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

That's part of the problem I have with EP (and Shadowrun's) character generation: in a game where life is ostensibly cheap, chargen really shouldn't be as complicated as these are. For Eclipse Phase in particular, with its cosmic horror and variably solid SF angles, introductory prose often involving the death or violent subversion of entire adventuring groups, and an introductory adventure where the characters are supposed to be killed and resleeved, it's a really bad fit.

That said, look to classic cyberpunk: put the characters in hock to some outfit that can afford to resleeve them and replace their gear. Maybe dock them Rep if they're clearly just throwing 1-ups at a problem. Don't punish them if it's something unavoidable, but don't be afraid to complicate their lives if they're not being at least a little careful.

# ? Jun 11, 2011 23:22

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