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Ithle01 posted:Because a lot of people can still enjoy a game despite the mechanics? Also because a lot of what goes on here is opinion and not straight up fact and some posters just have terrible opinions (not about this specifically, EP sure does have its mechanical issues no doubt). Maybe it's personal taste, but becoming aware of a system's failings severely undermines my enjoyment of it. Like, I don't think I can touch FFG's 40K games again and I'd only ever attempt Savage RIFTS instead of the original. Similarly sad to see EP2 poo poo the bed, since the setting seems appealing; not that many games do cyberpunk but also sci-fi while also staying in the Solar system. On a tangent: how much support is there for gatecrashing content? I never read stuff, but how developed is the stuff out there? LatwPIAT posted:It often felt like the writers could never quite decide whether the Jovians were a scary threatening space-Soviet Union, or just pathetic Luddite North Korea. They had to be pathetic to reflect/be evidence that their ideology was bad, but also frightening to show that their ideology was an existential threat. Like a bad Baen villain. Curiously enough, this is how Umber Eco posits one of the points for identifying fascists: their enemies are held to be, at the same, huge and world-threatening, but also weak and lame.
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Jul 30, 2019 09:53
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Zereth posted:For an RPG setting book if I had to use an unreliable narrator I'd have it annotated by a reliable narrator pointing out "Whoa this this is a complete lie" "Technically accurate but misleading" etc Unreliable narration is a good way to show what someone thinks about something. You could use the unreliable narration of a patriotic Jovian to show what Jovians think about themselves, or want to think about themselves, or what the party line on the Republic is. It tells you what they're proud of, what they willingly acknowledge as problems, and how they frame things. It can tell you how they view their enemies. But that works best if the reader knows what things are actually like. It's like... Imagine if you showed a lay person a piece of propaganda from Nazi Germany talking about how prosperous Germany had become under Hitler. That person could probably conclude that since it's Nazi propaganda it doesn't tell the truth... But the lay person can't tell you how things actually were, becuase they don't actually know anything about Germany in the 1933-1939 period. They can tell you the Nazis don't like socialists, but they can't tell you anything about socialism. They know the lies, but not the truth.
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Jul 30, 2019 10:00
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LatwPIAT posted:Can they actually? I don't think they can. I think there's a mention of software being used to ease the integration of an ego into a new sleeve, but there's no indication I can remember that this makes the the new body feel as natural to operate as the old body. In part because the rules give mechanical consequences indicating this is not the case. There's no explicit option for it, but skillsofts exist, and if you can record one manual skill and grant it to someone else you can record another. Operating a differently proportioned body is a skill like any other. like i said earlier, I had my growth spurt all at once at the age of 16, and went from 5'4 with a squeaky voice to 6'2 with a baritone voice over the course of a summer. I basically had to relearn how to a bunch of poo poo, and pretty much gave up on skateboarding (partially because it was like someone had shrunk my skateboard, partially because it hurts way way more to fall over the larger you are). I don't think my mind ever really caught up, I still assume I'm a lot smaller than I am.
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Jul 30, 2019 11:15
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LatwPIAT posted:They can tell you the Nazis don't like socialists Depends on your layperson 
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Jul 30, 2019 11:43
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JcDent posted:I'm still somewhat baffled when you read about something being deeply flawed, mechanically, on FnF, and then someone comes in and goes "yeah, I love playing it." Why? D&D is the most popular RPG in the world
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Jul 30, 2019 11:44
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juggalo baby coffin posted:There's no explicit option for it, but skillsofts exist, and if you can record one manual skill and grant it to someone else you can record another. Operating a differently proportioned body is a skill like any other. They can record manual skills and grant it to people (who have specialized hardware installed), but this process is not flawless: this recording process can't increase a skill to above 40 in a system where skills typically top out in the 80-98 range. (Incidentally, the average person will be rolling against a 45 to acclimatize their new body, and only on a critical success is the process flawless.) Moreover, if operating a differently proportioned body is a skill like any other, do you learn to operate the new proportions, or do you learn to acclimatize faster no matter which kind of body it is? The former is largely handled by various bonuses to acclimatizing to bodies similar to ones you've used before, and the trait Right At Home which waives the roll for one morph type entirely. There's just no way to become completely immune to all consequences no matter what kind of body your transfer to.
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Jul 30, 2019 11:58
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LatwPIAT posted:There's just no way to become completely immune to all consequences no matter what kind of body your transfer to. Besides Rule Zero. But it sounds more and more like they're saying that the tone implied by the rules isn't one they would enjoy, rather than this being an objective flaw in the system.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:09
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LatwPIAT posted:They can record manual skills and grant it to people (who have specialized hardware installed), but this process is not flawless: this recording process can't increase a skill to above 40 in a system where skills typically top out in the 80-98 range. (Incidentally, the average person will be rolling against a 45 to acclimatize their new body, and only on a critical success is the process flawless.) Moreover, if operating a differently proportioned body is a skill like any other, do you learn to operate the new proportions, or do you learn to acclimatize faster no matter which kind of body it is? The former is largely handled by various bonuses to acclimatizing to bodies similar to ones you've used before, and the trait Right At Home which waives the roll for one morph type entirely. There's just no way to become completely immune to all consequences no matter what kind of body your transfer to. I'd say it's a bit of both. If there was going to be skillsofts then it'd be per body. On the other hand, how exactly does resleeving work in Eclipse phase, like physically. Is it a brain transplant? Is it your ego/engram/ghost being written into a new substrate? is it a .exe file running on a new computer? in Altered Carbon people didn't have much trouble resleeving because their cortical stack was their personality and memories, but the body they sleeved into still had it's own brain in there, so they could use the 'muscle memory' (aka cerebellum) of the host body in order to not have to learn to walk in it. There were other problems, like residual physical responses to people the previous owner had been in relationships with, etc. FrozenGoldfishGod posted:Besides Rule Zero. It's dumb to have potentially heavy resleeving penalties in a game that seems written with the assumption that you will be some type of firewall agent who resleeves frequently, unless you boost up your willpower stat high enough. It punishes people whose character concept doesn't need willpower otherwise. The tone is the coolest part of the game, and I understand why some impoverished dude being shoehorned into big bob's bargain basement bodies would have mental issues from it. There's also technology established in the setting that would ameliorate the stress of resleeving, and the only reason they don't use it in-fiction is to make things a little darker. juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 12:17
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ZeroCount posted:D&D is the most popular RPG in the world Isn't it a stereotype that people will bend over backwards to justify how DnD is actually good? Also, to paraphrase you ZeroCount posted:40K is the most popular miniature game in the world 
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Jul 30, 2019 12:26
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Ithle01 posted:Because a lot of people can still enjoy a game despite the mechanics? Also because a lot of what goes on here is opinion and not straight up fact and some posters just have terrible opinions (not about this specifically, EP sure does have its mechanical issues no doubt). It's not a bafflement that people can still enjoy the game, it's more that... technically any game can be fun, with the right group and application of Rule Zero. Someone out there is capable of running a non-creepy game of Bliss Stage that gets rave reviews from all the players and leaves each of them a changed, better person with a more optimistic and joyful outlook on life after every session. Rather, it's the fact that... this doesn't change that the game is loving bad-as-written, and often these "but I enjoyed it!"-comments come with a side-order of: "oh and I enjoyed it because we ignored or houseruled these several huge, glaring, poo poo-tastic flaws in the game." The fact that something needed to be houseruled/changed for the game to be fun is not supportive of it, it's just a further indictment. Even though these comments tend to be explicitly slated to argue that "gosh, guys, the game isn't that bad!" That Old Tree posted:Most games fall into the loose, incredibly arguable broad category of "just fine, or at least mediocre." I mean, bar one or two, every game reviewed here has something that gives it some minor merit, you're right. Middenarde's hilariously bad feats that turn it into Comedy Dirtfarmer Exalted, Degenesis' excellent art, In Dark Alleys' two awesome archetypes out often(all trapped behind the bars of a bad system...) and more. Something that you could houserule and mod the game around to make it, if not a good game, then at least a funny one(or something you could lift to inspire you to make something good in another system, or your own good system!). But to review them, you have to assume that Rule Zero is never used, that the game is run exactly by RAW, that this was the author's intention. And then if it falls apart? Then it's a badly loving made game. Often hilariously so if RAW means that, say, you get attacked by 2d6 birds every minute for the rest of your life if you cast the wrong spell on the wrong day. Otherwise it's like arguing that TES4: Oblivion is actually not a bad videogame because "gosh, guys, someone modded every single aspect of it so it's now a retro metroidvania written by Stephen King and he's really having fun with it!" juggalo baby coffin posted:It's dumb to have potentially heavy resleeving penalties in a game that seems written with the assumption that you will be some type of firewall agent who resleeves frequently, unless you boost up your willpower stat high enough. It punishes people whose character concept doesn't need willpower otherwise. Fun fact, Willpower has little mechanical use except for save-or-crazy rolls and Async powers(which in 1 are dogshit, in 2, well, we'll see). So if you remove this one incredibly moronic mechanic, whomp whomp, you've obviated one sixth of the game's stats entirely. juggalo baby coffin posted:The tone is the coolest part of the game, and I understand why some impoverished dude being shoehorned into big bob's bargain basement bodies would have mental issues from it. There's also technology established in the setting that would ameliorate the stress of resleeving, and the only reason they don't use it in-fiction is to make things a little darker. Actually, funny thing, in EP1? In none of the fiction(that I recall, at least. Oddly enough the fiction never really focused on the resleeving much...) anyone ever really suffered any sort of resleeving trauma. Just "wake up, inspect new body for tats and flaws, complain about new body's nicotine addiction, get off slab, start firewalling." In the first, and so far only, piece of fiction in EP2, the mental consequences of being shifted from a biological Flat morph to a Case/Synth morph(and a ten-year time gap as a result of being in frozen storage for a while) more or less pass in a couple of days. "oh no, my meat : (" "hey buddy want some robot drugs?" "yaaaay, who cares about my old meat" and that's basically it.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:49
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juggalo baby coffin posted:
If the new morph has a meat brain then they use a thingymajicawhatsit called an 'ego bridge' to realign all the neurons so that they're now encoding your Ego. If it has an electronic brain then they just copy your code over. By default everyone with a meat brain has an implant that's constantly reviewing their brain and incorporating any changes into an electronic copy for archival purposes. When you want to change morphs you just blank the meat and use the electronic copy to write yourself into the new morph.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:54
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Chapter 5: Game Mechanics  Degenesis Rebirth Katharsys Chapter 5: Game Mechanics Editorial This prefaces the contents of DEGENESIS BOOK 2 KATHARSYS, but I didn't want to make an entire post just for a few jokes. So in the editorial, we can see that Degenesis is the brainchild of Christian Günther & Marko Djurdjevic: both of them are listed as responsible for concept and development. Christian is separately listed as the author, with Marko sharing the co-author credit with Alexander Malik. Marko also appears in every listing for art, design, and anything else that requires you to draw well. However, he’s not the only artist, so we can’t know how much of the really cool art is his.  Look my eyes are just pingpong balls Look your writing has drawn red from hands However, the real culprits behind out suffering are, in my eyes, Oliver Hoffmann, Joe LeFavi and Brian McGackin. The former is the translator, the latter two – the editors. You all know what they did! The “special thanks” bit features surnames of possible (long-suffering) spouses as well as gamer nicknames as imagined by boomers, like Nox, Deathrace King and Das Grauen. There's also a diclaimer. Disclaimers are hilarious. Disclaimer posted:Degenesis advocates tolerance and international understanding. The game world of Degenesis has evolved from ours and distorts it into an imaginary future. Conflicts within the game world are, of course, not real – and we do not wish for them to be, either. They only exist for excitement’s sake. Although we know this kind of conflict from films, we urge you to use them with caution. None of the seven Cultures mentioned in Degenesis is better than any of the others. All of those Cultures have an equal right to exist in the game world of Degenesis. We know that Apocalyptics are objectively worse than anyone else and should not exist!  Disclaimer posted:We have actively avoided the term “race” common to RPGs as we deem it discriminatory. We strictly oppose violence and racism. Illustrations of combat action are not meant to promote violence, but to depict a cruel world we should strive to overcome. Culture and civilization are the major goals in Degenesis, accompanied by hope. We still recommend Degenesis for people 16+ as we cannot be sure whether our message and our appeal to humanity will be understood. To be fair, I dunno if any of the readers of this FnF are younger than 20 AND got the “appeal to humanity” Anywho!  CHAPTER 5: GAME MECHANICS Character The chapter starts by explaining that a character is the player's avatar in the game world. It notes that characters can be very similar to their players – or entirely dissimilar – and that your scores become more important the more different you are from your character. I guess it's a hint to an idea that roleplaying would grant bonuses, and if you can't cut it, you have to rely on scores? In a more elegant world, it would just mean that that you don't need to roleplay to get them charms rights just like you don't really need to act out combat.  Art comes in fast and hard, but I don't think I will be inserting all of it. The game system is called KatharSys, Attributes “Best be described as genetic predispositions,” the Attributes are six in number and the book claims that all of them are equally important. They are: BODY: Am strong, enduring and impressive. AGILITY: Dodge, shoot, do crafting better. CHARISMA: your “authentic presence,” does negotiations and stuff. INTELLECT: “enables abstract thinking and deep concentration,” it marks you as a HUGE NERD. PSYCHE: willpower, but also lying and deception, and resistance to Primer. INSTINCT: “Instinct guides our rudimentary reactions to outside influences, unleashes the beast within us. In a world without any measure, Instinct guarantees survival.”  A nerd kidnaps a child to dress him into jokey DnD T-shirts, 2019 (colorized) Notation Side-section! Skills in the book are usually referred to as Attribute+Skill, like BOD+Force (and marked out with a >, like “>BOD+Force). Here's how they're abbreviated: BOD – Body AGI – Agility CHA – Charisma INT – Intellect PSY – Psyche INS – Instinct Next time: Jay is skilled at turning tricks behind the old cinema.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:56
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PurpleXVI posted:
yea if you have to invent new dumb mechanics that arent even really included in your fiction in order to justify the existence of a stat, its a sign you should redesign your stats.
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Jul 30, 2019 12:56
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juggalo baby coffin posted:yea if you have to invent new dumb mechanics that arent even really included in your fiction in order to justify the existence of a stat, its a sign you should redesign your stats. quote:The words dig their claws into my new vocal cords and yank themselves up and out of my parched throat. My diction is predictably poor, as it always is during the first few minutes following a resleeve. The pitch of the voice is apparent despite the mumbled, sandpaper slur of the words. quote:It takes a second to sink in, but when it does, it stings. It never ceases to shock when time slips away from me. Two weeks. Gone. Completely wiped from my existence. Two weeks ago, there was another me, sleeved in another morph. There was a mission and it led to my death. That is all I know. Either Firewall failed to retrieve the cortical stack off the corpse so I could retain those two weeks, or the fuckers deliberately chose to swipe that time from me. quote:I bring my hands in front of my eyes, arms feeling like two-ton sacks of rocks. The fingers are thin and long; the knuckles callused, scarred and misshapen. Obviously the work of many thrown punches, fists connecting with jaws, metal, flesh. Yep. A well-worn fury morph. You get what you pay for, I suppose; or what Firewall is willing to pay for. Why do I do it? As far as the org is concerned, I’m nothing more than a cheap precision instrument, tossed into the recycling bin when I snap in half. There will always be more of me, until the horrors prove too intense, until the files get too corrupt, until I know too much quote:My arms weaken and flop back to my sides. The strength just isn’t there yet. quote:“What’s your hurry?” he says. “Just relax, willya? You collapse onto the floor, you’re gonna stay there until you get yourself up. They don’t pay me enough to babysit newbies.” quote:What experiences are no longer a part of my consciousness? Perhaps the thrill of a lifetime. Did I discover true beauty? Fall in love? Have an epiphany? Save a life? I’ll never know. Those memories, that life, that version of me, is gone. The new me, lying on this slab, was never shaped by those experiences. My chest hollows out from the weight of the loss. quote:I need those two weeks. I don’t feel whole without them. Hell, I feel incomplete if even an hour is sacrificed. I have to know. quote:A nervous energy starts to itch my entire system and a thick familiar taste begins to coat my tongue. I need a cigarette. quote:I shift my attention to the new sleeve. The strength to stand is finally there. I push the morph up and swing the feet onto the floor. Spasms shoot through every muscle. New morphs always take a bit of time in which to acclimate. Luckily, I’m familiar with the CoreCorp fury, sleeved it a few times in the past. This one feels like an old pair of shoes, bit worn and abused, but able to pound the pavement if need be. The left ankle is a bit tender. I hold it up a bit to get a look. Bit swollen. Definitely not new sleeve dysmorphia. Probably a nagging injury. There's three pages devoted to the process, traumas, and difficulties of waking up in a new sleeve. Where are you getting the idea that the processes and aptitude controlling the central attrition mechanism isn't part of the fiction?
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Jul 30, 2019 14:49
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LatwPIAT posted:There's three pages devoted to the process, traumas, and difficulties of waking up in a new sleeve. Where are you getting the idea that the processes and aptitude controlling the central attrition mechanism isn't part of the fiction? half of those are about dying then being restored from a backup, which is understandably traumatic. the rest are minor inconveniences, not week-long mental freakouts.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:10
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This is all from the first page of the EP1 intro fiction. The remaining pages, set a brief period after, the protag uses the body pretty much like they were born to it. This isn't resleeving trauma, this is, to use the analogy from further back in the thread, having to adjust the car set and rear view mirror when getting into a car someone else has been driving. Which is kind of the point we've been making, yes, there's a check, but it's a formality that happens when you resleeve and then effectively never leads to anything of interest except maybe like an hour in-game of stat penalties. It's just a bit of fluff that you might as well let players roleplay, because actually loving them over for resleeving, when you make it clear they're expected to resleeve regularly and for dozens of reasons, would be terrible moron game design.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:19
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Or you could just have some resleeving sickness that does minor debuffs that go away with time, no save or suck involved, as well as Feels Like Home, for when you're used to certain morphs.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:24
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juggalo baby coffin posted:half of those are about dying then being restored from a backup, which is understandably traumatic. the rest are minor inconveniences, not week-long mental freakouts. A -10 to physical actions for anywhere from a few minutes to 11 days is not a "week-long mental freakout". PurpleXVI posted:This is all from the first page of the EP1 intro fiction. The remaining pages, set a brief period after, the protag uses the body pretty much like they were born to it. This isn't resleeving trauma, this is, to use the analogy from further back in the thread, having to adjust the car set and rear view mirror when getting into a car someone else has been driving. Which fits accurately with a Success or better on an Integration test, which describes a penalty to physical actions that lingers for up to a day. PurpleXVI posted:Which is kind of the point we've been making, yes, there's a check, but it's a formality that happens when you resleeve and then effectively never leads to anything of interest except maybe like an hour in-game of stat penalties. It's just a bit of fluff that you might as well let players roleplay, because actually loving them over for resleeving, when you make it clear they're expected to resleeve regularly and for dozens of reasons, would be terrible moron game design. What it actually does is discourage switching between morphs to take advantage of their physical bonuses more than once daily unless you're willing to spend a point of Moxie. It's not inherently moronic design to have two elements that are in tension with one another.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:39
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LatwPIAT posted:What it actually does is discourage switching between morphs to take advantage of their physical bonuses more than once daily unless you're willing to spend a point of Moxie. It's not inherently moronic design to have two elements that are in tension with one another. There were also the possibility of critfails and the like, ranging from losing Brain HP(i.e. Stress and eventually Trauma) to permanent maluses until getting resleeved. Plus all that random multi-day physical stat penalties get you is suddenly a lot more trouble balancing encounters and difficulties, or the players kicking back and doing a filler session until they can actually play the game at full power, if it's an option. And if all it was meant to do was discourage excessive resleeving, why not just have it only kick in if people resleeved more than once in a short span of time? Also just to further add to the "why are they even in the game," most of the morphs that got the hefty "exotic morph" integration penalty were all Pod Morphs, and uplifts getting penalties for any Morphs not of their same uplift type(and with most uplifts only having one or two options in their general category, while humans had dozens of very human-like morphs to choose from...) seemed like again pointlessly penalizing people for playing anything that is not Space Man w/ Space Gun. Generally all this mechanic amounts to is "stop having fun with this game and please avoid actually using our mechanics." Like if you have a game that's all about the resleeving as an option, why would you penalize resleeving?
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Jul 30, 2019 15:49
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LatwPIAT posted:A -10 to physical actions for anywhere from a few minutes to 11 days is not a "week-long mental freakout". it's different in EP2
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Jul 30, 2019 15:54
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y'all know you're having this big multipage debate about a rule the rest of the thread doesn't know cause none of you with the book have explained the rules for resleeving by the way, right?
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Jul 30, 2019 16:00
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PurpleXVI posted:Generally all this mechanic amounts to is "stop having fun with this game and please avoid actually using our mechanics." The whole resleeving process is part of the primary gameplay loop and the main attrition mechanism in a game about attrition. If you don't want to engage with the mechanical premise of the game that's fine, but I'm not sure it's the game's fault you don't want to engage with its primary gameplay loop. PurpleXVI posted:Like if you have a game that's all about the resleeving as an option, why would you penalize resleeving? Because thematically it's a game about self-sacrifice, victories coming with costs, and treating your own mind as a disposable tool that gets worn down and replaced? And there's more to the game than just resleeving?
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Jul 30, 2019 16:05
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I've flipped through the book a couple of times and according to the art the game is about a Cyborg-gorilla and his pal Robo-squid who shoot guns at robots. (Sorry, I just love the contrast between "Existential horror/Am I really me/poo poo is teetering on the brink of hosed" with "Cool nova-ravens don't look back at explosions")
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Jul 30, 2019 16:15
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8one6 posted:I've flipped through the book a couple of times and according to the art the game is about a Cyborg-gorilla and his pal Robo-squid who shoot guns at robots. Hard to draw a nanoswarm that's having a crisis of identity and it doesn't play well with "there's literally no possible downsides to abandoning the human form" crowd.
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Jul 30, 2019 16:26
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This is getting real close to surpassing “Ars Magica is full of boring history stuff, what’s the point” in bad reviewing.
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Jul 30, 2019 16:42
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LatwPIAT posted:The whole resleeving process is part of the primary gameplay loop and the main attrition mechanism in a game about attrition. If you don't want to engage with the mechanical premise of the game that's fine, but I'm not sure it's the game's fault you don't want to engage with its primary gameplay loop. Yeah, the penalties are being way overstated, you only get turbomurdered by it if you roll exceptionally badly, which fits it sometimes being an absolutely ghastly experience over something that's very uncomfortable but workable with 24 hours of practice. Mr. Maltose posted:This is getting real close to surpassing “Ars Magica is full of boring history stuff, what’s the point” in bad reviewing. Yeah, I'm fine with people reviewing things they don't like, but when it's pretty clear a thing is mechanically fine and executes what the devs are clearly aiming for well, calling it "moronic design" when the truth seems to be closer to you not liking it because you don't like that style of game changes it from a review to someone complaining about gameplay styles they don't like. I like PurpleXVI called out that them hating the flex point thing as a personal issue while also raising the potential problems they feel it could raise, that's good! But then going "in the game about not caring about your physical stuff, I hate me and my players being in the wrong mindset to play the game and its the game's fault" I'm not such a fan of. That's just me personally though!
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Jul 30, 2019 17:01
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LatwPIAT posted:The whole resleeving process is part of the primary gameplay loop and the main attrition mechanism in a game about attrition. If you don't want to engage with the mechanical premise of the game that's fine, but I'm not sure it's the game's fault you don't want to engage with its primary gameplay loop. Eclipse Phase doesn't know what it's own primary "gameplay loop" is, so I doubt anyone else does either. Specifically talking about EP1, here: It's a game about self-sacrifice and constantly swapping out your body... that provides detailed rules for, and chargen easily permitting, super-tricked out morphs. In fact since the equipment rules are so shallow, tricking out your morphs is like 90% of your option for sinking spare credits. In fact considering that you basically can't upgrade your core skills after chargen, more boosts from your morph is also the primary part of your character growth post-chargen. It's a game about deepest darkest ultimate ultra horrors and mental collapse... that handles insanity by giving you Brain HP and Brain AC, as well as primarily focusing on the ways you can shoot things. It's a game about identity crises and transhumanism... where 90% of the available bodies are just humans w/ robot dicks/arms and where the written fluff almost completely engages with the "go to cool places and shoot new things"-aspect(which is actually kind of a shame, because the few pieces of fluff that do deal with the potential horrors of psychosurgery, ego-alteration, memory-editing, fork-napping, etc. are generally better written and more memorable). It's a game that provides you with a large(and primarily useless except for about three options), armory, rules for super-tricking-out your morph and becoming a combat monster... but most of the primary hostiles engage with you through save-or-die effects that are often triggered just by looking at them, being in the same room as them or letting them bleed on you, leaving actual combat somewhat pointless. EthanSteele posted:But then going "in the game about not caring about your physical stuff, I hate me and my players being in the wrong mindset to play the game and its the game's fault" I'm not such a fan of. That's just me personally though! See here's the thing. The game's rules and chargen focus is heavily on the physical stuff, thus them turning around and going: "Har har, tricked you, you were meant to not care about that huge part of the rules.  " is bad game design. It's not that I don't want to engage with a game where physical equipment and attributes are meant to be disposable, but this is like if Shadowrun expected you to lose your entire inventory every session.This is explicitly why I had hoped that EP2 would go in the direction of less detailed gear/morph rules(which they did, slightly), so they could actually live up to their premise. So that dumping your morph and your inventory and resleeving would not be a major accounting exercise. Or that they'd move slightly away from Firewall campaigns(with the constant expected X-threat save-or-dies, resleevings, egocasting-and-sleeving travel, etc. that causes it) as the encouraged and expected core campaign. EDIT: Also, mechanically fine? Jesus. EP1 is anything but mechanically "fine."
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Jul 30, 2019 17:08
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E: PurpleXVI posted:EDIT: Also, mechanically fine? Jesus. EP1 is anything but mechanically "fine." EP is an incoherent mess full of absolutely terrible rules that betray its origin as an unholy mashup of Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and GURPS: Transhuman Space. I've found the game downright agonizing to run because of overwrought subsystems and more traps options than a sadistic DM's dungeon. But I think that the game facilitated the most by the rules, the one where you run around trying to fight TITANs and Exurgents, dying over and over again until the inhuman stress wears you out, is built around a workable set of rules. (That, in fairness, are mostly stolen from other, better games.) MollyMetroid posted:y'all know you're having this big multipage debate about a rule the rest of the thread doesn't know cause none of you with the book have explained the rules for resleeving by the way, right? Whenever you want to transfer your mind from one body to another, roll: An Integration Test of 1d100-1 against your character's 3x physical aptitude (standard 30-60), with results: Critical Failure: -30 to all physical actions until you transfer your mind into another body[1], Failure: -10 to all physical actions for 2 days, and an additional 1 day for each full multiple of 10 you failed the roll by, Success: -10 to all physical actions for 1 day, Success by 30 or more: No penalty. Critical Success: No penalty and you get 1 point you can use to do dice tricks or upgrade critical failures to failures and successes to critical successes An Alienation Test of 1d100-1 against your character's 3x intuition aptitude (standard 30-60), with results: Critical Failure: +2 Stress per full multiple of 10 you failed the roll by, Failure: +1 Stress per full multiple of 10 you failed the roll by, Success: No penalty. Critical Success: Heal 1d5 Stress. A Continuity Test of 1d100-1 against your character's 3x willpower aptitude (standard 30-60), with results: Failure: take X Stress, and +1 Stress per full multiple of 10 you failed the roll by, Success: take X Stress, and -1 (minimum 0) Stress per full multiple of 10 you made the roll by. Where X is: Moving consciousness from one body to another with continuity: 0 Restoring consciousness from a backup or upload with up to 1 day of lost time: 1d5 Restoring consciousness from a backup or upload with more than 1 day of lost time: 1d10 Restoring consciousness from a backup of a body that died peacefully: 1d5 Restoring consciousness from a backup of a body that died violently: 1d10 You can get up to +50 to Integration and Alienation rolls from a combination of being experienced at switching bodies and putting your mind in bodies or body types you're familiar with. Typically, you'll have +10 or maybe +20. You can get up to -60 from a combination of unusual bodies[2] and being bad at switching bodies. Typically, you might get -10 or maybe -20. The average is therefore somewhere between -20 and +20. If you have the Right At Home trait for the body-type you're trying to transfer your mind into, you don't make Integration or Alienation tests and take no penalty. You can have up to 2x willpower in Stress without being incapacitated (standard 20-40), but if you take more than 2.5x willpower (standard 4-8) at once you pick up a mental trauma of some kind, giving -10 all actions until healed (which takes at least 8 hours of psychiatric therapy). [1] I don't like this result because at best the results are that you have to roll Alienation and Continuity twice, and at worst there's no other bodies to transfer into and you have to live with a -30 penalty until you switch bodies, which is overly painful. [2] Uplifted animals take a -10 penalty to attempts to transfer their minds into any body not an uplift of their own type, and infolife take -10 for downloading into physical bodies. The game shipped with only one body for each uplift type, and while technically point-balanced it's not a very encouraging design. LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Jul 30, 2019 |
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Jul 30, 2019 17:12
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PurpleXVI posted:
tbh it sounds like you're weirdly attributing some level of malice or trickery to them. The focus on physical stuff is because that's how you make the rules clear for all the physical poo poo you do, which will be a lot of poo poo you do regardless of morph! It's not really some 'gotcha' it's more 'regardless of if you're a baseline human or a talking octopus in a mechanical body suit you still need to know how to handle it when you need to shoot the gun or whatever'
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Jul 30, 2019 18:05
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Thank you for providing the rules. Those look completely reasonable to me.
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Jul 30, 2019 18:08
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sexpig by night posted:tbh it sounds like you're weirdly attributing some level of malice or trickery to them. The focus on physical stuff is because that's how you make the rules clear for all the physical poo poo you do, which will be a lot of poo poo you do regardless of morph! It's not really some 'gotcha' it's more 'regardless of if you're a baseline human or a talking octopus in a mechanical body suit you still need to know how to handle it when you need to shoot the gun or whatever' It's a genuine issue caused by three interactions. There's a ton of rules for buying stuff for money and buying stuff for money is an integral part of character generation, but... 1: Money is suboptimal compared to the relatively toothless rules for asking the local anarchists if you could borrow whatever stuff you need. 2: Buying stuff is suboptimal compared to buying blueprints and nanomanufactuing stuff for cheap (or beggar the local anarchists to cover the cost) 3: Stuff is nice but if you travel by uploading your mind and transferring it to someplace else (common in the setting), you can't use any of your stuff and need to buy/rent/make new stuff, see 1, 2. The game encourages spending character points on the money to buy stuff when it's the least efficient way of getting hold of stuff. This is bad.
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Jul 30, 2019 18:48
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O my god please at least wait until we get all of the relevant rules so I can follow this debate. I know you posted some of them, but this is just meaningless white noise about whether [mechanics that are only partially known] backs up [setting that I don't really know except for hearsay]. I'm sure this is a great and insightful conversation if you can follow it, but maybe just hold off a bit until us randos can follow it too, please? (Not to you, specifically, LatwPIAT ; I mean everyone pretty much.)
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Jul 30, 2019 20:13
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LatwPIAT posted:Unreliable narration is an extremely difficult technique to use to begin with, and not good for a reference work for an RPG setting. If you can't tell what the truth is, you have to make it up yourself, and then what's the point of having the book? The one book that got good mileage out of using that was the Old World Bestiary for Warhamsters Fantasy RPG.
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Jul 30, 2019 20:25
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Kemper Boyd posted:The one book that got good mileage out of using that was the Old World Bestiary for Warhamsters Fantasy RPG. And it did that entirely by being really clear 'these are sources from X perspective, these are sources from Y perspective'. You need to do that if you're going to do the whole 'multiple narrators with different views of the truth' thing in an RPG sourcebook. I think LawPIAT's point about RPGs being reference documents is well made and important to understanding why 'oh it's unreliable narration' tends to end up falling flat in RPG books.
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Jul 30, 2019 20:41
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Xiahou Dun posted:O my god please at least wait until we get all of the relevant rules so I can follow this debate. I know you posted some of them, but this is just meaningless white noise about whether [mechanics that are only partially known] backs up [setting that I don't really know except for hearsay]. This would be strongly appreciated.
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Jul 30, 2019 20:44
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Xiahou Dun posted:O my god please at least wait until we get all of the relevant rules so I can follow this debate. I know you posted some of them, but this is just meaningless white noise about whether [mechanics that are only partially known] backs up [setting that I don't really know except for hearsay]. Yeah, I get this. Part of the problem is that we're also talking about both 1E and 2E EP at the same time, which, uh, does not help much for clarity of conversation.
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Jul 30, 2019 21:04
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JcDent posted:Maybe it's personal taste, but becoming aware of a system's failings severely undermines my enjoyment of it. Like, I don't think I can touch FFG's 40K games again and I'd only ever attempt Savage RIFTS instead of the original. Similarly sad to see EP2 poo poo the bed, since the setting seems appealing; not that many games do cyberpunk but also sci-fi while also staying in the Solar system. There is no game made that someone in FnF cannot take a poo poo on. I think it's best to just find what you're comfortable with and go with that, but at some point you're going to have to make your compromises.
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Jul 30, 2019 21:14
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Ithle01 posted:There is no game made that someone in FnF cannot take a poo poo on. I think it's best to just find what you're comfortable with and go with that, but at some point you're going to have to make your compromises. It's often down to taste and priorities. There's no such thing as a perfect game, but if you know what matters to you, you can find the closest thing. For instance, I'm complaining about EP2, but I'll be frank and say that simply because of the pools, I'd probably rather run it than EP1(and hell, rather than a lot of other sci-fi systems). Giving players a chance to actively impact the odds and/or rerolls, and making it something they don't have to hoard a limited ration of for an entire adventure or level, is good, real good(would probably make the small daily recharges a fixed number rather than a random roll, however). Plus for all my complaints about the morphs, my main complaint is that their changes didn't go far enough, not that the changes were fundamentally bad(some balancing issues aside, but I know, balance can be tough). The morph aptitude boosts made a lot of sense but they made bookkeeping hell if you were resleeving often. I mean, scrap the 100 cap on skill+aptitude, reintroduce the old degrees of success, and I think it would be a clear upgrade based on what I've read so far. Because almost everything it does wrong is something it inherited from EP1, not a fresh mistake. It's like comparing 5E and 3.5E. 5E isn't bad because of the changes it made, it's bad because it didn't make enough of those changes, if that makes sense.
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Jul 30, 2019 21:27
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, I get this. Part of the problem is that we're also talking about both 1E and 2E EP at the same time, which, uh, does not help much for clarity of conversation. I'm sure that's not helping, but I, as someone with a passing familiarity with 1E Eclipse Phase, am entirely god drat lost in this conversation. It's probably a great discussion for those who can understand it, and I certainly don't want to shut it down, but could we wait until the thread can follow along or spin this off into another thread instead of the same few posters having really complex arguments that no one else appreciates?
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Jul 30, 2019 21:50
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PurpleXVI posted:It's often down to taste and priorities. There's no such thing as a perfect game, but if you know what matters to you, you can find the closest thing. Yeah, I'm not actually criticizing your complaints about EP because there sure are some problems in EP1 and 2. I'm talking about the general concept of FnF and that pen and paper rpgs are not generally well-oiled machines.
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Jul 30, 2019 21:52
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