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2013-10-02, 08:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
So a while back a friend of mine tried to get me into Eclipse Phase; it didn't take at the time due to other stuff going on in my life, but I did give it a slightly-more-than-cursory glance back then. It seemed to me a little like Shadowrun meets Charles Stross (which is the best phrase to ever be uttered EVER), and since I've been on a tabletop kick lately, I was wondering if anyone here could give me a rundown on their experience with it.
Necessity is the mother of moral relativism.
Spoiler: I am a...
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2013-10-03, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I haven't played it, but a friend of mine has written for it and we've talked about a game for it.
The basic idea is that the Singularity happened, and we screwed it up. There was a brief fight with the AIs before they left... but that brief fight more or less destroyed Earth. Humanity now lives out in the solar system. Before the AIs (called the TITANS) left, we'd mastered uploading our brains into electronic forms, and also uplifting some creatures... apes, ravens, octopi, and a few others. The ability to digitize thought has lead to a few other things, like artificial bodies and body-switching.
Generally speaking, the character creation system in the main book is pretty poor... very unweildy, to the point where me and two rocket scientists (literally) sat down and took forever wading through. Transhuman, which comes out next month, has a better character creation system that I saw a bit of at GenCon.
I view Eclipse Phase as being primarily modern cyberpunk, similar to Richard K Morgan's books (they acknowledge him as a source). It looks like a neat system, nonetheless.The Cranky Gamer
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2013-10-03, 02:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I'll agree about the character creation system, from what I recall. I picked up a spreadsheet with macros and all and it still took me forever to understand.
A shame, really; the basic idea of the setting thrills me to the very core.Necessity is the mother of moral relativism.
Spoiler: I am a...
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2013-10-03, 05:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Make sure you read and understand the core book in its entirety. That goes for every game you play, really, but especially for this one. Things get a little weird when you don't.
I didn't find the adventure modules that useful.
If you can, read through every setting book you can find. When the players decide to farcast off-world, you need to know where they can go and what they might encounter there. This game lives and dies by its setting, and the solar system's a big place.
In particular:
- Sunward
- Rimward
- The Stars Our Destination
- Gatecrashing (optional)
Know your players. If one dumps a ton of CP into his morph, chances are that he won't want to farcast. If one buys up a lot of reputation, he won't burn it.
On that note, it might be useful if you sat down with the players and detailed a few of their contacts in the various networks. It lends a little more credibility to their efforts in that regard.
Transhuman's PDF version is already out, though.Last edited by Grinner; 2013-10-03 at 05:57 AM.
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2013-10-03, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Eclipse phase is creative commons. If you want a book, go download it with the creators' blessing.
In fact, one of said creators put some of the PDFs up on his blog:
Eclipse Phase PDFs
Rimward and Transhuman aren't there only because the post predates those books; they're also free to download.
Edit: You will also want the Excel character sheet. Without it, character creation is a very tedious experience. It doesn't include the content from Transhuman yet, though.Last edited by Drogorn; 2013-10-03 at 09:40 AM.
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2013-10-03, 04:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I'm currently running and Eclipse Phase game with a campaign journal and have played it quite a bit. So I'll break this down into a few areas.
Character Creation:
Both the Core and Transhuman character creation are pretty simple. Core's problem is that it's written in the wrong order so you end up jumping around your character a lot. If you want to build a character in Core you do it in 2 parts. First you build an Ego then you build a Morph.
Ego construction has the following steps:
- Choose your Background.
- Choose your Faction.
- Spend your Required Skill Points(400 Active 300 Knowledge).
- Buy your Positive/Negative Ego Traits(This may be above skills if you want to make a Psi Character) and any extra Moxie.
- Spend Free Points on skills(not all of them, but take any skills you feel you are missing/need to be higher).
- Write your 3 motivations.
Then use your remaining points on Morph construction. Ideally you want between 50 and 70 points for Morph building IMO.
- Buy your Morph
- Turn the rest of your CP into credits/rep
- Buy your software/blueprints(This is a bit more GM specific but I personally rule that these go with your character's Ego and not Morph)
- Buy the rest of your gear
- Write out your remaining credits/rep
Your done. The reason you do it this way is because Morph/Gear bonuses get added in AFTER all your Ego stuff is calculated. Also character's actually start with 3750 credits and Medichines and Tactical Network Software. Or 3000 and the Blueprints for Medichines and Tactical Network Software. But make sure you buy those two items.
Transhuman character creation is better written, but not actually any easier to do. The main problem is they never clearly explain that the points in each package aren't your skill level, but the amount of CP that package puts toward that skill.
Generally you want to burn most of your points on skills/traits and not gear.
Player Advice:
Your body is a piece of Gear. Your body is a piece of Gear. Your body is a piece of Gear. In case you were wondering, your body is a piece of Gear. You can lose your body. Your body can be stolen. It is no more valuable to you than a sword is to a swordsman. Valuable, but replaceable. It takes some getting to used to but once you understand that you can play an EP game. GM's remember this too. You don't need to go out of your way to make players switch bodies, it should naturally happen during game play.
You want Tactical Network and Medichines. Tactical Network is PC Hivemind++. You can make Perception checks through other people's noses. It's pretty sweet. Medichines is the best gear in the game in terms of price to effectiveness. It lets you ignore a wound and even rebuilds you as long as you don't hit your DR, all for the low price of 250 credits.
GM Advice:
Players are powerful. Relative to the non-Titan parts of the Solar System, the players are extremely skilled and powerful. That's without gear. Factoring in Gear, players can do almost whatever they want. So when running the game, remember, your players can handle it. Because, even if they die, they just come back. Aside from that just read the setting books, they are all oozing with ideas.
Personally I avoid the Space Whales, but that might just be me.
Finally some House Rules I have:
- Buying a Blueprint gives you a physical copy of the object. This is to encourage people to buy blueprints.
- To be part of a Tactical Network you need Tactical Network Software. This is a personal ruling, and you can rule it the other way(only one person needs it).
When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-03, 06:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Woo, thanks for the writeup! This has me itching to get back into EP and actually play, shame that that's probably not going to happen any time soon. I may well toss some character ideas around, though.
See, I always liked space-whales. I think my original flight-of-fancy character was a psionic dolphin uplift.Necessity is the mother of moral relativism.
Spoiler: I am a...
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2013-10-03, 06:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Most of the time when I say Space Whale I'm referring to a specific kind of Space Whale introduced in Sunward. They live in the Corona of the Sun and feed off its ambient energy. All the other lesser Space Whales I'm ok with.
I've always been somewhat tempted to run a new player friendly EP game off the Giants forum, either as a PbP or some other method but assumed their wouldn't be enough interest. Now I'm not so sure.When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-03, 06:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-03, 07:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-03, 07:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I would totally be all over playing EP.
Though I don't get what folks are saying about character creation being complicated. I can bang out a character for EP in far less time than most other systems.- Pick background and faction.
- Allocate Attributes.
- Pick 400 CP of active skills and 300 CP of knowledge skills.
- Pick qualities, Rep and Moxie.
- Buy your morph and gear.
- Go over your gear again and discard the huge pile of stuff that you don't actually need. Consider if you can't make do with a cheaper morph too whilst you're at it.
- Do you have points left? Buy more skills. Or have you spent more than your allocated amount, in which case you need to shave some off.
That's what, half an hour or so to draw up a character? Considering that I usually spend days tinkering with my character sheets in preparation for a game in other systems (rearranging numbers in a text editor should not bring me as much contentment as it does).Last edited by Tome; 2013-10-03 at 07:55 PM.
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2013-10-03, 08:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-04, 07:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but RPPR did a totally awesome EP campaign for their podcasts. I would recommend listening to a session or two to hear how it runs along if you need it (it's also just good anyways).
http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicr...-phase/page/7/Former Owner of GiTP's fanciest Bloodbowl Team: The Fancy Lads
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2013-10-04, 08:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-04, 12:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I have the Transhuman rules for creating things. the package system is awesome compared to the long complicated normal way
I want to play it myself, but I haven't yet.
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2013-10-05, 03:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2012
Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-09, 08:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I recently finished playing Eclipse Phase with a few friends of mine, and it left me pretty cold.
Don't get me wrong, the setting is amazing, and I would love to play in it more, but the mechanics are awful and no one should have to suffer it.
Firstly, the character creation options are clumsy and take far too long. You're forced to take skills for a good chunk of your points, and since there aren't any rules for actually using skills (as in, Simulspace design has no rules for making simulspaces, there's no rules for designing an AR environment, or even designing a new blueprint), allocating skills is a tedious and pointless chore that has no mechanical effects. Languages are completely useless as a universal translator is an easy to find tool. Why even include seperate languages in a world that has perfect translation?
Secondly, there are no rules for simulspace, nor what computers can run them (can you run a simulspace in a ghostrider module? In an ecto? Who knows.). Sure, it says you can use a simulspace to get 60 minutes for every 1, but what about hacking from a simulspace? The rules are regrettably silent. For that matter, there aren't many rules on how things work at all - no space travel (in an RPG SET MOSTLY IN SPACE - space craft are considered a setting, and not an object, thus piloting skills are completely useless), and no guides on how to quickly design opponents for the players to fight - there aren't any mooks or monsters, just other egos the GM has to craft himself.
And then you got the adventure scenarios. Don't get me started on those. My GM suffered so much trying to patch up the scenarios that he just upped and dropped the scenario he was running to make his own. There's no characters, no suggestions for rolls, and definitely no worldbuilding nuggets like user handles, or rep scores. (The book says that rep scores are easily looked up - and then fails to even supply rep scores for it's adventures). The enemies in the best scenarios my GM could find had NPCs with crappy gear that had values that was way better than the stuff in the book, and no background information to justify this.
Every action the players tried to take was undocumented in the rules, every situation had to be fiated (even with thorough looking through the rulebooks - my GM is no light reader). It was torture from beginning to end.
In short, it's an absolute mess. Even D&D 3.5 is playable to an extent. This isn't. Don't ever play Eclipse Phase with Eclipse Phase.
If you want to model Eclipse Phase properly, just use another, better system. I suggest using BRP, and having egos be INT & POW, and morphs be everything else. At least character creation in BRP doesn't take hours and you'll end up having to houserule enough in EP that changing the system wholesale doesn't seem that bad in comparison. At least you'll have proper rules for SOME situations.
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2013-10-10, 12:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I actually like the EP system and setting, considering that within 30 minutes I can turn out a character complete with backstory. Yes, there are some issues with the system. Yes, many rules require GM fiat, such as simulspace. Which, as somebody missed, you cannot use to speed up your hacking. In fact, in simulspace GM fiat rules. Why? Any set of laws of physics can be there, so it's all improvisation.
Yes, there are no "mooks and monsters". Just give em some appropriate skills for their role, with stats. EP is very story, psych, and RP heavy.
And yes, there aren't a lot of rules for everything. Most of the things that don't have explicit rules are storytelling devices (simulspace for meetups, as an example). Spacecraft are expensive, and as stated, more useful as a venue of a story than as a method of battle.
D&D grew out of fantasy wargaming. EP is transhuman cyberpunk horror.
Different strokes for different folks. Don't like the system or setting? Don't play it. Don't like the system, but like the setting? Do your best to port it over to a system you like. Like the system, but hate the setting? Tear it out and build a new one? Feel it needs some tweaks? Build the rules for it.
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2013-10-10, 08:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-10, 10:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
My mistake - I had forgotten about that. It says "A server". It doesn't say how big a server is, or how much it costs to buy one. (We just looked - searched for "server" in the entire book. Nothing.). And WHY just a server? Is it because you need to upload your ego to it? Then why can't a ghostrider have a personal simulspace processor attached to it? Ghostriders can run egos. There's so many questions about the relative power and size of the computer technology, which in a cyberpunk world is pretty damn important.
Though, when you're in simulspace, it's all just fluffy roleplaying, isn't it? No rules for reality warping or hacking into the simulspace, no rules for changing the environment or doing cool Matrixy things. Heck, D&D has Lucid Dreaming, and that's literally dreams you're working with. They may not be good rules, but they're something to go off of for reference. What if we want people in simulspace battling it out for control of the system?
Really if I have to houserule a system that much, I'd prefer just to use a system I'm familiar with.
Yes, there are no "mooks and monsters". Just give em some appropriate skills for their role, with stats. EP is very story, psych, and RP heavy.
And yes, there aren't a lot of rules for everything. Most of the things that don't have explicit rules are storytelling devices (simulspace for meetups, as an example). Spacecraft are expensive, and as stated, more useful as a venue of a story than as a method of battle.
D&D grew out of fantasy wargaming. EP is transhuman cyberpunk horror.
Heck, Call of Cthulhu, a game designed around unknowable and unending horror, has more resources and examples for monsters that could tear the party apart but could be overcome in it's example adventure than Eclipse Phase has in it's entire printing. Power is no excuse, CoC has stats for a lot of world ending creatures and what they do as a vague guideline, so that players, who are canny enough, can drive back their manifestation. It's very unlikely, and they have instant death moves, because, you know, gods. There's NOTHING in the book which says "This is an example TITAN creation, this is it's tactics. TITANs can add the following to a morph. TITAN head snatchers are statted like this. As the GM desires, TITANs can have other effects on morphs and be other creatures.". If you're just going to Fiat it anyway, why even have stats for body toughness, sanity or guns. Why not just go more rules light, instead of pretending you're rules heavy system? Chargen could take less time, and morphs could be generated pretty much instantly, which is what you want for "your body is gear". Going halfway like this is just lazy on the part of the developers. Without benchmarks, how on earth are you supposed to design new content?
I don't even know what you're supposed to do with these rules. If so much is "narrative" and "storytelling" and "GM Fiat", what's the point in all these detailed character generation rules?
Eclipse Phase is incredibly GM unfriendly, unfinished, and unfocused. It presents the players with a cool setting and lots of detailed skills and implants and stuff, but you won't ever get to do any cool things, because there's nothing behind the curtain. There's so much chaff you need to sweep out, so many traps and dead ends in character creation and so many options that mean nothing. I love the setting, but I'd never play with the crunch as is.
Oh, and for something so obviously modelled after Ghost in The Shell, why can't we do realtime hacking? Why does it take so damn long? That makes hacking so much less cool. And hacking not being cool in a cyberpunk setting? Not cool.
OP wanted experiences with the system, I'm giving my experience. And it's not a positive one.
If you like broken, unfinished mechanics that you have to fiat every five minutes, or you like the look of a rules heavy system but plan on ignoring the rules wholesale, Eclipse Phase is the system for you. If you want a robust system to play a transhuman post-cyberpunk setting, look elsewhere.
But the setting is great. Don't miss out on the setting.
Also, Neo Octopi before cool and useful animals like raccoons or pretty much any other mammal, really? Octopi don't even have the same kind of brains we do. And Dolphins on little stilts. Hilarious.
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2013-10-10, 10:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Mind providing some examples of something that needs more rules than 'make a test with the relevant skill to determine if you succeed or fail' and doesn't have them? I've yet to find anything like that in the rules myself and the examples you've stated are either quite obviously erroneous from just a brief look through the book or based on a lack of understanding of what hard scifi implies.
To wit, there are no rules for space dogfights because those are horribly unrealistic. Real space combat would be more along the lines of automated weapons platforms sniping each other from beyond visual range - kind of cool in it's own way, but not something you can do anything with on a personal scale.
Similarly, there are no rules for magicking up stuff in a simulspaces because things don't work that way. You can totally hack a simulspace if you want to, but it's just like hacking any other program. You don't need specialised rules for hacking spacefuture!WoW or messing up somebody's workspace. 'I want to hack the simulspace!' you say, rolling Infosec. You succeed, and the GM describes everyone else quitting because nobody feels like playing with some cheating noob - shortly followed by a notification from a mod about you breaching the terms of service and your ensuing ban. Because that's what hacking a simulspace is - it's hacking an online game, and it's not particularly significant what that actually lets you do in most cases.
You seem to be looking for Star Wars and the Matrix. Both great franchises and very entertaining, but the stuff they show is very much on the soft end of scifi. While Eclipse Phase is similarly very much towards the harder end of the scifi spectrum. You went in expecting this and this and were disappointed because the game is actually more about this and this.
Intuitive Cracking trait from Transhuman + Mental Speed/Multi-Tasking implants + Speed boosting implants. Use any combination of those and you can easily reduce the time for brute-force hacking down to 2 rounds.
So yes, you can in fact do combat hacking. Unless the other guy notices and turns off his mesh connection.Last edited by Tome; 2013-10-10 at 11:00 AM.
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2013-10-10, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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2013-10-10, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
I've actually voiced a similar opinion in the past.
Eclipse Phase has what is essentially a binary pass/fail mechanic used universally irrespective of the nature or time-frame of the action.
Let's say I want to make a synthmorph. Mechanically, that's just a simple roll with some hollow justification about how it takes you a few days to piece the thing together. To me, that doesn't feel right, though. The mechanics should attempt to emulate the fluff, and I should be making multiple rolls to represent the progress made on the synthmorph.
I think White Wolf has nailed it as far as rules-heavy, setting-focused games go. The Storyteller system has attributes and skills like many other games. What it also has is a bunch of skill usages, describing the nature of each action (simple, extended, or contested), the applicable attributes and skills, and a description of the possible outcomes.
In short, the rules, in spite of being extensive, fail to be comprehensive.Last edited by Grinner; 2013-10-10 at 08:42 PM.
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2013-10-11, 01:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
While (as you might notice from avatar and sig) I'm a huge fan of Eclipse Phase, it's mechanics aren't actually that good - but they're serviceable, and I've run several Eclipse Phase games, including an ongoing IRC game.
If the mechanics are frustrating, there's options. It's pretty easy to run Eclipse Phase as a setting for GURPS (stealing liberally from Transhuman Space, Horror, Space, Ultratech and Biotech) if you're looking for a more crunchy, tactical feel. If you're looking for something more narrative, and I'd suggest looking at the FATE hack (or wait for the official one to come out, which I think they're working on) or alternatively start looking at Nova Praxis (Strands of Fate) and porting the rules from that.
(Also, I think that people don't make use of simple success tests often enough - I think they're a neat idea, a way to make actions that don't carry enough risk to be dangerous worth putting dice on the table for and giving the GM a starting point for narrating things.)Deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the stars.
Eclipse Phase: Because transhuman post-apocalyptic conspiracy and horror goodness now comes in Creative Commons-licensed PDF form.
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2013-10-11, 11:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Having played a bit of GURPS I have to say that Eclipse Phase gets the crunchy tacticalness much better. In general I'm not sure where this myth about the complexity of the EP mechanics come from. It's mechanics are very simple, your roll d100 and compare it to a target number. That's quite a bit simpler than DnD or GURPS and its character creation is simpler than both of those systems.
Have they posted a release date for Eclipse FATE?When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-12, 01:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
GURPS, I think, does much better in actually being tactical - having more interesting options, especially if you start pulling in things like, well, Tactical Shooting. Facing is more important, and there are more ways to get more effective bonuses to hit and damage.
Nope!Deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the stars.
Eclipse Phase: Because transhuman post-apocalyptic conspiracy and horror goodness now comes in Creative Commons-licensed PDF form.
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2013-10-12, 03:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Really? I read through Tactical Shooting and the GURPS core rules and I don't see anything that Eclipse Phase doesn't have aside from the hexmap/facing rules and Eclipse Phase could easily support something like that and nearly already does with its Movement and Weapon Range rules.
When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-13, 07:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
Last edited by Acatalepsy; 2013-10-13 at 08:21 PM.
Deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the stars.
Eclipse Phase: Because transhuman post-apocalyptic conspiracy and horror goodness now comes in Creative Commons-licensed PDF form.
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2013-10-13, 07:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
When you are first born, the universe assigns you a secret luck value. The quality of your life, dice rolls, and how friendly your DM is are all influenced by the luck value. It is the universe's secret social experiment. So if you been rolling poor, it is only because you were assigned low luck value by the universe. You can raise your luck value only through proper dice rolling rituals.
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2013-10-13, 08:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2013
Re: Advice/Experience with Eclipse Phase
More that the way penalties and to-hit chances scale, and the way the action economy works, tactical puzzles emerge more readily, even with higher powered characters.
I do think you can make EP combat run faster with a group of new players than you can GURPs, though. EP's combat isn't tactical enough to satisfy the dedicated wargamers and simulationists, but it functions as a nice midway point for those who just want something playable that captures a lot of the feel of those types of systems.Deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the stars.
Eclipse Phase: Because transhuman post-apocalyptic conspiracy and horror goodness now comes in Creative Commons-licensed PDF form.