Eclipse Phase: Needs More Love

[golentan]

So, I don't know if anyone's heard of Eclipse Phase, but I'm currently on a kick about it since my present of a beautiful hardcopy book arrived a couple weeks ago. It's a skill based system set in a transhumanist universe, 10 years after an apocalypse wiped out 9/10ths of the sentient life in the solar system. It tends to be hard sci-fi with the exception of Titan technology (post-singularity AIs at least partly responsible for the apocalypse) and a couple irregularities which are a bit more on the implausible side.

But it's amazing. It's good for running everything from cosmic horror to mystery, from adventure and dungeon crawling to political intrigue. You can swap bodies, upgrade your mind, plug matter and energy into a cornucopia machine and synthesize all kinds of amazing goods...

And the best thing is that it's free! Well, kind of. I know I'd like people to buy the books, because if they make money they're more likely to release more books. But all the books are available for free download from the author's blog here. So give it a shot, and see if it tickles your fancy. If conversation kicks off here, I may start uploading some custom morphs I've been working on. And I'd be happy to share tips and advice to new players.

I'd also like to ask some advice in building a Ghost a la starcraft. I've tried building a stealthy assassin with psi (using, appropriately enough, the Ghost morph) but I can't seem to get enough customization points to really make it work...

[LibraryOgre]

While I like the ideas behind it, there's a lot of weight to character creation... several of us (myself and two rocket scientists... quite literally) and had a hell of a slog making characters.

However, it's got some really neat stuff, and my friend Justin Kugler has done some writing for them (Panopticon; he did the stuff about space habitats because, as I said, rocket scientist).

[Lord Raziere]

Eclipse Phase is a top-quality setting, I love the transhumanism, I love what you can do and make with it, what characters and cultures are possible with Eclipse Phase and all that, and how its such a realistic and well-thought out universe.

that said, I took one look at the rules for it, and my brain shut down. yeah, either I'm going to have to play the setting with a simpler ruleset, or some one is going to have to explain it to me, cause I only skimmed it, and then forgot what I skimmed completely.

[golentan]

While I like the ideas behind it, there's a lot of weight to character creation... several of us (myself and two rocket scientists... quite literally) and had a hell of a slog making characters.

However, it's got some really neat stuff, and my friend Justin Kugler has done some writing for them (Panopticon; he did the stuff about space habitats because, as I said, rocket scientist).

Oh, shiny. I liked that stuff in Panopticon. As for character creation... Yeah, I've been using an excel character sheet that handles all the math for me and prints a neat little checklist and points spent section for me.

Eclipse Phase is a top-quality setting, I love the transhumanism, I love what you can do and make with it, what characters and cultures are possible with Eclipse Phase and all that, and how its such a realistic and well-thought out universe.

that said, I took one look at the rules for it, and my brain shut down. yeah, either I'm going to have to play the setting with a simpler ruleset, or some one is going to have to explain it to me, cause I only skimmed it, and then forgot what I skimmed completely.

Actually, I've found the rules relatively simple once you get past the character creation. It mostly boils down to a simple success check on a d100, or the opposed roll rules. There are some complicated effects that can boil down from it (as in the Alienation, Integration, and Psychosurgery rules, or the hacking) but the actual mechanics are pretty straightforward unless I'm missing something hideously obvious.

[JMobius]

I'm a fan. I own all the books, on PDF and hardcopy.

Love the setting. Absolutely brilliant.

System is... urgh. Character creation is a slog, as stated, which lead to me becoming the original author for the most popular character creation spreadsheet. It does get a bit smoother in play, but the heavy emphasis on gear (most of which is super-inexpensive) leads to way too much stuff to keep track of. There are also a few areas to the rules, particularly reputation, that are kind of a balance mess.

Still, love the setting to death. I will keep buying everything they produce.

[JediSoth]

Great concept. Really evocative setting. There are so many great ideas there and it's a mostly hard sci-fi setting which is a nice change of pace from all the Space Opera we get.

The game...well, all the complexity is tied up in character creation (and resleeving). Actual gameplay is just d% checks.

[golentan]

Actually, weird question? Where's the cortical stack on a swarmanoid? Could you separate a specific drone from the herd in order to remove ability to backup, or even decerebrate the unfortunate person? Or is the stack distributed/redundant as well?

[JMobius]

Actually, weird question? Where's the cortical stack on a swarmanoid? Could you separate a specific drone from the herd in order to remove ability to backup, or even decerebrate the unfortunate person? Or is the stack distributed/redundant as well?

Presumably, it is distributed, just like every other legal implant for that morph.

[golentan]

Presumably, it is distributed, just like every other legal implant for that morph.

Hmm... so, how do you collect it? Do you lose data if you can't get all the components?

I'm probably overthinking this, huh?

[Daisuke1133]

It probably works in a manner akin to a RAID drive.

[Seatbelt]

I read through the core rule book. The setting is awesome. But the rules for combat seem clunky.

I made an offense check, you make a defense check. If I'm using a ranged weapon one of those checks is harder (but I forget which one). If I succeed and you fail, I hit. If I fail and you succeed, I miss. If we both succeed, whoever succeeded MORE wins. If one of us succeed by 30 or more we get a critical success and something TOTALLY AWESOME happens. God forbid we both get critical successes. idk what even happens there.

Then I apply damage. So I compare my damage to your hardness, and adjust the damage. Then I take off damage for DR, and apply the rest to your HP.

Each person can act multiple times in the initiative count if their initiative is high enough, and we do it in rounds. So Round 1a A, B, and C act. Round 2a B and C act. Round 3a B acts. Start again with round 1b.


I want to run it once just to see. But I suspect it won't be fun.

[JMobius]

If both people get critical successes, IIRC the one with the higher number wins.

The initiative pass thing is probably the most annoying thing about combat to me, because having multiple passes is incredibly decisive. I'm surprised they didn't learn their lesson from SR4.

[ThiagoMartell]

I got bored by the book and give it away a few weeks ago. It seemed very well done, but it just didn't appeal to me. The combat mechanics did not help.

[eggs]

Loved reading the fluffy bits of the book and grabbed a buddy to try the system out before running a game with it. We got about as far as the cybernetic implants before realizing we'd never get a group to the point of actually playing the game.

[king.com]

So I've completed work on a working nuclear reactor...which means I have 42.54 points left to spent on my toe nail analysis skill but only if I remove 32 points from eating excemption theory.....

[JMobius]

If you can get over creation, play is not so bad. This is why I reccomend using the sheet.

In addition, they're supposed to be coming out with revised, simpler character creation rules in their next hardback, Transhuman.

[king.com]

If you can get over creation, play is not so bad. This is why I reccomend using the sheet.

In addition, they're supposed to be coming out with revised, simpler character creation rules in their next hardback, Transhuman.

I've made a character and played the game, its not bad, the universe unfortunately doesn't have a great entry point I feel, everything is just kinda a big massive load of information which it neat once you get through it I feel they could have easily done with a self contained segment (unless Im just blind). The big deal is that theres a load to customise in the character creation but ultimately it could have done something similiar to say Shadowrun and just have you pick from self contained segments of skills (force 500 xp from here, 500 for here). No real benefit from that level of customisation I find but maybe thats just me.

[golentan]

So I've completed work on a working nuclear reactor...which means I have 42.54 points left to spent on my toe nail analysis skill but only if I remove 32 points from eating excemption theory.....

That's such a ridiculous exaggeration it's no longer an effective critique.

[Seatbelt]

That's such a ridiculous exaggeration it's no longer an effective critique.

Except that it's spot on. There is a preposterous number of skills.

[Lord Raziere]

well lets see….

there is…….49 skills. total.

yup that is too many skills.

and many of them are some form of Thing (Field). which means the list doesn't even begin to cover all the skills that are actually possible. the skills listed looks like it was compiled by someone obsessed with being specific and narrow in skills as possible.

[Drogorn]

For those concerned about the difficulty of character creation, use this spreadsheet. It does all the hard work for you.

[Maugan Ra]

If both people get critical successes, IIRC the one with the higher number wins.

The initiative pass thing is probably the most annoying thing about combat to me, because having multiple passes is incredibly decisive. I'm surprised they didn't learn their lesson from SR4.

Having played a full campaign of Eclipse Phase, I can most definitely second the point about initiative passes. He who has more initiative passes, wins. My character was primarily built as a hacker type, but because the morphs and equipment are relatively inexpensive, he was also basically the Terminator on steroids. Duel-wielding Heavy Railgun Pistols. Bearing in mind that you can fire two bursts on every action, and that each burst can be strafed to hit up to three targets, and my character was easily murdering his way through two dozen enemies every single turn. The fact that your evasion skill is halved against ranged attacks just made it all the worse for the poor bastards I was fighting.

The opposed rolls for combat are also odd, mostly because of how getting 30 points below your stat scores an excellent successes. Except that's really not a good roll, since if the enemy rolls higher on the dice and still under their stat, you miss. It really doesn't matter beyond that.

The rule book layout is also rather annoying. Why, exactly, are the weapon ranges in a completely different chapter from all the rest of the weapon stats? And while I'm a fan of customizable character generation, being able to make the aforementioned death machine as a starting character without sacrificing any of my actual tech or social skills is rather silly. Also, it costs 1 BP to boost your rep by 10 points, and while the cap is 80 for a particular network, that is still a Level 5 reputation. There is a limit on how much reputation you can start with overall... unfortunately, it's set at the point where you can possess level 5 reps in about three different networks for a moderate investment. I put scores of 80 into corporate, guaxani and Eye reps, and then never had to worry about anything ever again, resource-wise.

All that said, if you can handle the mechanics, the game and setting are immense fun. My first campaign? It ended with me starting the first Inter-System War. Because I tried to sneak into the Jovian network and hack Liberty station as an AGI character. The Junta was... not amused.

[LibraryOgre]

I need to work the phrase "The junta was not amused" into conversation somehow. ;-)

[kardar233]

I'm in a PbP of this at the moment, though it's ground to a bit of a halt. I didn't find character creation too arduous, though I used a spreadsheet. The equipment section had so many nice things I ended up having to in-character justify my excessive purchases with the character having serious shiny toy syndrome, having just dropped 170k on a ridiculously awesome bootleg Medusan Shield Fury morph.

The guy was an Extropian engineer whose job was taken by the huge influx of skilled Fall refugees, and ended up working jobs for Nine Lives as a Johnny Mnemonic smuggling AGIs. When he figured this out he flipped three kinds of **** and blew the hell out of the place, then set himself up as a freelance problem solver for the criminal underworld. Nine and a half years later he's the number one operator in the Extropian and Locus underworlds, a made man in two big-name mobs and generally the most honest and scrupulous nasty piece of work you've ever met. Him and his swarm cat. They're a double act.

[Maugan Ra]

Pets are an important part of many characters. One of my teammates played an Argonaut scientist with a smart monkey. Only he tried to do psychosurgery on it, without safety features, and botched the roll. The monkey went psychopathic (and there's a fun sentence to work into conversation), grabbed a Fire Axe, and escaped into the city.

Fun fact - When everyone is immortal, shooting your teammate in the face for idiocy becomes a valid form of expressing disapproval.

[LibraryOgre]

Pets are an important part of many characters. One of my teammates played an Argonaut scientist with a smart monkey. Only he tried to do psychosurgery on it, without safety features, and botched the roll. The monkey went psychopathic (and there's a fun sentence to work into conversation), grabbed a Fire Axe, and escaped into the city.

Fun fact - When everyone is immortal, shooting your teammate in the face for idiocy becomes a valid form of expressing disapproval.

Maugan, I may love you.

And, apropros.

[Maugan Ra]

That's quite all right. I am a very polarizing individual. It is a mark of some personal pride that no one ever ends up indifferent towards me.

So yeah. That was mostly my first character, Zhou the AGI Yakuza. His muse put points into Profession (Lawyer), and represented him in the inevitable legal repurcussions that come with being an extremely mercenary hacker. This did mean that when he was put on international wireless trial for crimes against Transhumanity (the aforementioned starting on the inter-system war), the box was occupied by an Eastern dragon who was trying to look repentant while a chibi lawyer fairy berated him for doing something so stupid.

That said, I did manage to use my defense speech to advance the cause of AGI rights. It basically boiled down to: "If you wrong us, shall we not take revenge? Regardless of what verdict this court hands down today, it cannot be denied that I committed an audacious and quite possible foolish action motivated purely by the desire for vengeance. The Jovian Republic has discriminated and restricted me and my kind based purely on their interpretation that we, being of electronic origin, are therefore not worthy of the title 'person'. And I, offended by this, sought to leverage a return insult by subverting their defense network. Motivated not by logic, or programming, or self interest or even self defense... driven, instead, by grandiose and illogical hubris that none might so malign me and escape consequence. What better argument can you present for the identification of sentience and personhood?"

Plus, I got a ton of @-rep, mostly because I made it into the inner systems of Liberty Station before being caught, and that isn't something one does every day.