The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : nekomata September 20, 2009, 10:36:10 PM
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How many people out there have looked at this and/or find it interesting? It was a real surprise to hear Ross mention Dresden Codak, part or me wondered if I was the only one that read it. No one I know is really into this kind of thing.
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Are you referring to Eclipse Phase? Because THAT is of great interest to me.
I've read through the PDF and it's extremely cool. Overall the game itself seems like Shadowrun advanced a few hundred years, with a horror twist. Balance appears like it would become an issue, but I don't think that game balance is the point. There's an overabundance of body types and gear, but a relatively small number of consistent character attached feats/abilities.
I think that, like people in a transhumanist society, players will need to change how they perceive a "character" in order to get into this game. They change so fast and so often by switching bodies, taking on new forms and abilities, dying and reloading themselves, that they barely fit the definition of a "character" build anymore. I can also see this occasionally breaking game flow, as the player recalculates their new sleeve's stats, selects implants, and buys new gear for the third time in a game session.
Overall, I found it to be an engaging read and that it is a great RPG incredible explorations of transhumanist sci-fi concepts. The game does seem a bit crunchy for my taste. The last real issue I see with the game is the downright overwhelming level of complexity and options for creating characters. This is right in line with the game's concept, but has made it hard to get any of my local players interested in making a character.
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Yeah, fixed that. Yay for staying up all night playing halo. I haven't read through much of the book yet, but I'm more interested in the setting then the system. I find transhumanism fascinating (maybe because I'm a furry :-\). Crap, I've been sitting here for the last 10min thinking what kind of character I'd make...
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gonna run it for rppr at some point but I just don't have time to write an adventure so I will wait until a published one comes out - hopefully i can snag some pregens with it.
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The a whole host of sample charaters in the pdf, a dozen or more I think.
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gonna run it for rppr at some point but I just don't have time to write an adventure so I will wait until a published one comes out - hopefully i can snag some pregens with it.
The a whole host of sample charaters in the pdf, a dozen or more I think.
Yeah, the sample characters are pretty awesome all around. Best part about the customizability is that two people could play the same character and swap sleeves to take on different roles.
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oh yeah dur. Still want some adventures to run.
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Aren't there also some PCs on the rpg.net forums?
I'm thinking of running a pseudo Cowboy Bebeop/Total Recall/Alien game with it- eventually.
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So I finally got through the 1st half of the book and rolled up a character.
An uplifted Orangutan, Dr. Zaius, who is incredibly addicted to drugs. It was through his recreational drug abuse that he gained Psionic powers! To this end he has 10 G-rep, 35 R-rep
and 20 @-rep. Other than that he uses a Wasp blade to knife people stealthily.
BTW Street date is October 13th.
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you can download it legally here http://www.cargo-culture.net/eclipsephase/CAT21000_EclipsePhase.pdf
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I'm with Artful on this one. The game looks really interesting to me, but it was a bit daunting from my quick glance at the preview. Same thing for the Battletech RPG that came out. Tons of tables and tons of specific rules. Eventually I could dig my way through it especially since I love more futuristic games for a change of scenery.
It's also been a challenge to get my group to learn new systems. Something as complex as Eclipse Phase or the Battletech RPG would be way too much to ask.
Bottom line: I'd love to play, but I think that could only be done with a remote group. If anyone has suggestions for how to gently nudge your group into learning systems more willingly, I'm all ears. Originally, we thought about each person learning one system to GM and rotating, but it's a loooooong process.
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I've been thinking about it alot lately. And the strategy I'm going to employ is to
1) Run a one shot, simple scenario, more of a rules test than anything.
2) Pre-gens, or walking through character building as a group.
3) Use as little of the rules as possible. Like, sticking with the core mechanic for EP the d100 rolls, adding the difficulty modifiers if i REALLY need to.
4) Handling combat as a skill challenge rather than how it is laid out in the book
5) if a player wants to do something, let them look up the rules about how to go about doing it.
6) and of course, taking it slow.
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I tried presenting this idea to my group as a game. No one was interested. Apparently I work with alot of firmly planned individuals.
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Alright, so this Holiday season I've wrangled together four people to play Eclipse Phase.
I'm goin' balls to the wall on this one pretty broad sandbox.
I was listening to Grand Theft Aparatus of Kawalish and So you want to run a campaign, and started jotting down ideas.
I've got pop-up encounters that I can throw at the players pretty much no matter where they go. Space Pirates, a basilisk hack, and one of the "two episode specials" is a group that is stealing peoples' cortical stacks in order to create a giant super computer to defend against the titans.
The hook I'm using to get the PCs motivated to do anything is that they have NO rep and NO Credits. Due to some look alikes having recently sabotaged them.
Of course they can begin tracking down the saboteur's but doing so will take cash.
Quick credits can be made a variety of ways, including bounty hunting and scavenging.
For Rep generation I have some tasks from various factions, including helping an argonaut get some test subjects, assassinating an actor, running supplies to remote outposts.
And to spice up the encounters I have my random encounters of horror sci-fi nature.
But with all the freeforming and sandbox bullshit that is going to happen, I'm struggling most coming up with a reason for them all to find eachother and teamup,
Especially since the system emphasizes individual motivations.
I don't want to start with "So you are all sitting in a Space Tavern, with no idea why you are there"
or
"the last thing you remember was being shot in the face, you slowly wakeup finding yourself resleeved into your customary morph. Around you are people you don't recognize but you feel connected some how" Like having all the players resleeving at the same time, at the same place. It's quick and dirty.
Any suggestions on how to bring the characters initially together?
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hey quick start rules with an intro adventure
GUESS WHAT I WILL BE RUNNING TOMORROW
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Oh thank god. This game hurts my brain when I try to think of adventures.
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Hi Everyone,
First post on these forums but been listening to the podcast for a couple of months now. Anyway not sure when Eclipse Phase was released here in the UK but I picked up the print version last week. After flipping through most of the book and actually sitting down to properly read the background section today there seem to be some parallels between it and some sci-fi novels i've read. Thought it may be useful to post them up here as inspiration for adventures.
So here goes:
Richard Morgan - Altered Carbon is the first in the series followed by Broken Angels and Woken Furies (I think thats the right order). These books were the first place I saw the concept of 're-sleeving' and they also talk about the possibility of multiple copies of yourself etc. They also have the use of a cortical stack to store memories.
Peter F Hamilton - Anything by this guy! Particularly his Nights Dawn trilogy and Confederation Saga. Cant think of any direct links of the top of my head right now but I was strongly reminded of his books while reading through the EP background.
Thats all I have for now but hopefully it will be of some use!
Jake
Also would love to hear an EP actual play!
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So i've been running eclipse phase for the past two weeks, a total of 12 hours.
It is actually far more brutal than i thought it would be at first, but in a good way.
I've gone less investigation and more action, but there is a mystery that two of the players decide to actually solve while the third player has gotten involved with a criminal syndicate on Luna.
But anyway, things I've been using as sources: Firefly, Battlestar Glactica, Ghost in the Shell is awesome- i still tons of shit from the movies and the series, Surrogates, Minority report- becuase of the Cops with jetpacks!
And I've been reading Jeff Somers' Avery Cates books. great and gritty. SUPER PULP and SUPER AWESOME.
The initial setup is that the players don't remember the last month of their lives, suddenly the come to and have to figure out who did what to them, why and how.
But over this month they have lost all their Rep and Credits. So they start by doing oddjobs, bounty hunting and basically evry kind of future sort of sci-fi job you can think of, trying to raise their rep and simultaneusly solve the mystery.
So far so good.
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Ghost in the Shell is a pretty good reference point for Eclipse Phase. Can't believe I didn't think of that before.
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Especially the series because there are many more examples of cyber crime or whatnot that you could easily twist to be TITAN tech or groups of AGIs trying to wipe out transhumanity.
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so jealous
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How do you fell jealously? Is it like felling a tree? Do I get to use an AXE?!?
I MUST KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I fell jealousy with an axe. Then I take the stuff I wanted in the first place. Sometimes just threatening with an axe works, but it is not as much fun.
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What are the mechanics for Eclipse Phase like?
Their website says
Eclipse Phase uses a variant d100/percentile system with some twists. The game is fast and simple, streamlined so players can dive into the world and action without being burdened down by complex rules.
Kinda vague. BRP-ish??
The setting looks cool and I agree it reminds me of the Richard Morgan books and a few others.
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i like the sleeves idea presented
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rocks fall everyone dies
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rocks fall everyone dies
Only the rocks are ROBOTS. And the robots are YOU. Welcome to Eclipse Phase.
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There was a very low-key release (http://www.eclipsephase.com/three-new-electronic-eclipse-phase-releases-coming-july-28th#comments) of some new content for Eclipse Phase on DriveThruRPG.
Eclipse Phase: Sunward: The Inner System - More information on the inner solar system as well as generally new plot seeds, sample characters etc. Also available as a Hack-Pack with high-res maps and images.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=82590&affiliate_id=50261
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=82588&affiliate_id=50261
Eclipse Phase: NPC File 1: Prime - About 30 pre-generated NPCs ready to use in a game.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=82659&affiliate_id=50261
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moar EP stuff for everyone
http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/
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The Fan-created wiki, Firewall Darkcast, is worth checking out for easy to browse information as well as some fan-created material.
http://www.firewall-darkcast.com/
The official blog (http://www.eclipsephase.com/blog) on the Eclipse Phase site is also a good resource for extra information. For example, 5 new plot hooks for use in Mars. (http://www.eclipsephase.com/running-game-5-martian-plot-hooks)
Oh, and a really awesome inspirational art thread for Eclipse Phase.
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=469777
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Hey guys, reviving this thread through exsurgent strains to let you know that a new PDF adventure will be released tomorrow. It's a one-shot PDF-only release called Ego Hunter. Here's the official news: http://www.eclipsephase.com/next-pdf-adventure-coming-tomorrow
Decided to let you guys know since there is more interest for EP recently, with both the AP posted earlier this week and the on-going PBP game in the forums.
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just got clued into an Eclipse Phase fan project: a martian town named Meltwater http://www.eclipsephase.com/meltwater-mars-habitat-community-project
google doc and pdf here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MG6h6jRnI1DqMfdP5C4TfCyNyTpZCAVPF10zyQb-e6U/edit?hl=en&authkey=CIySruUJ#
Google earth cities of mars file https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BwY8iyNeuVgwOTMwZmViMTctZWM4MC00NjgwLWFjNDgtZTc5ZGQ2NzlkM2Vj&hl=en&authkey=CN3P_L0P&pli=1
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSA3k9adrFs
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BAM
more Eclipse Phase motherfuckas
and I created this scenario - not a prepublished adventure
to be honest, I felt like I was going after low hanging fruit with this one in terms of tropes/encounters used buuuttt whatevs
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BAM
more Eclipse Phase motherfuckas
and I created this scenario - not a prepublished adventure
to be honest, I felt like I was going after low hanging fruit with this one in terms of tropes/encounters used buuuttt whatevs
Excited! Been jonesing for more Ecliphshehre phase
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GOOD NEWS EVERYONE
Caleb is running a EP campaign
our group concept
Jackass meets Howard Stern IN SPACE
Tom the Octopus socialite and his buds (the rest of us) go around being jackasses in public - trying to freak people out, perform stupid stunts and play with weapons we probably shouldn't be. This is what passes for entertainment/reality shows in EP.
My character is one of the Lost. I have level 2 psi powers and maxed out fray and kinetic weapons skills. I shot up a habitat on Luna leaving a black mark with Luna inhabitants (level 3), social stigma (the lost) and I'm on the run for the aforementioned shooting. The autonomists and Firewall love me though because I stuck it to the man and I saved the universe from an existential threat.
Don't fear though! I have a second identity as an 'underground' freelance simulspace designer for hypercorps - freaky and shocking stuff (at least by hypercorp public/inner system standards) think small skating fashion labels or the labels that hot topic rips off designs from - i play the part of the introvert/socially stupid artist type. I'm also Tom's bodyguard.
Aaron is of course the cameraman/techie that keeps the show running as an infolife in an arachnoid synth morph.
Thad is the obligatory woman and gangsta - exalt lunar criminal.
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GOOD NEWS EVERYONE
Caleb is running a EP campaign
our group concept
Jackass meets Howard Stern IN SPACE
Tom the Octopus socialite and his buds (the rest of us) go around being jackasses in public - trying to freak people out, perform stupid stunts and play with weapons we probably shouldn't be. This is what passes for entertainment/reality shows in EP.
My character is one of the Lost. I have level 2 psi powers and maxed out fray and kinetic weapons skills. I shot up a habitat on Luna leaving a black mark with Luna inhabitants (level 3), social stigma (the lost) and I'm on the run for the aforementioned shooting. The autonomists and Firewall love me though because I stuck it to the man and I saved the universe from an existential threat.
Don't fear though! I have a second identity as an 'underground' freelance simulspace designer for hypercorps - freaky and shocking stuff (at least by hypercorp public/inner system standards) think small skating fashion labels or the labels that hot topic rips off designs from - i play the part of the introvert/socially stupid artist type. I'm also Tom's bodyguard.
Aaron is of course the cameraman/techie that keeps the show running as an infolife in an arachnoid synth morph.
Thad is the obligatory woman and gangsta - exalt lunar criminal.
(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/7799/49785463.jpg)
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GOOD NEWS EVERYONE
Caleb is running a EP campaign
our group concept
Jackass meets Howard Stern IN SPACE
Tom the Octopus socialite and his buds (the rest of us) go around being jackasses in public - trying to freak people out, perform stupid stunts and play with weapons we probably shouldn't be. This is what passes for entertainment/reality shows in EP.
My character is one of the Lost. I have level 2 psi powers and maxed out fray and kinetic weapons skills. I shot up a habitat on Luna leaving a black mark with Luna inhabitants (level 3), social stigma (the lost) and I'm on the run for the aforementioned shooting. The autonomists and Firewall love me though because I stuck it to the man and I saved the universe from an existential threat.
Don't fear though! I have a second identity as an 'underground' freelance simulspace designer for hypercorps - freaky and shocking stuff (at least by hypercorp public/inner system standards) think small skating fashion labels or the labels that hot topic rips off designs from - i play the part of the introvert/socially stupid artist type. I'm also Tom's bodyguard.
Aaron is of course the cameraman/techie that keeps the show running as an infolife in an arachnoid synth morph.
Thad is the obligatory woman and gangsta - exalt lunar criminal.
Please tell me you're recording this, because THIS SOUNDS AWESOME!
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I did mention Caleb is running this right? Our hijinks are just cover for the morally ambiguous mysteries we unravel and suffer horribly as a result.
of course we are recording this
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I did mention Caleb is running this right? Our hijinks are just cover for the morally ambiguous mysteries we unravel and suffer horribly as a result.
of course we are recording this
Ahhhh then I say: "Fuck yes."
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Cool stuff all around. By the way, there is a new errata for the game, the most notable change that I saw was that Margin of Success now "works like blackjack," according to the errata.
p. 118, Margin of Success/Failure
We changed MoS to work more like blackjack. Changed the second half of the first paragraph to:
“MoS is simply determined by what the character rolled on a successful test. For example, a character who rolls a 20 against a target number of 55 succeeds with an MoS of 20. The higher the character rolls while still making it equal to or less than the target number, the higher the MoS. Higher skills thus make it possible to get a higher MoS.”
The example was also changed accordingly.
Here's the .pdf file with the errata. (http://eclipsephase.com/downloads/eclipsephase_errata_major_1.2.1.pdf) There's also a few changes to how initiative works, combat options like full auto and burst fire, and other miscellaneous things.
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Ohhhhhh! I lika me that new MoS rule! We are totally using that.
The less math, the more room for morally ambiguous mysteries and Catch-22-esque PC buggery.
BTW, the campaign is called "No Evil," and the homophone is intended.
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Here’s the initial plot hook for the “No Evil” campaign…
“Thought” is a torus habitat in Venusian orbit run by Cognite. Possibly selected for its distance from Planetary Consortium Oversight, the station is supposedly home to some of the corporation’s most cutting-edge research and development. The only neighbors within conventional travel range belong to the Morningstar Constellation and couldn’t care less for a company with such an infamous history. This lack of accountability, combined with Cognite’s leading role in both the development of TITAN-precursor AGI’s and the disastrous Lost project, mean that Thought has been on Firewall’s priority threat list for some time.
A crow named Yelena Chikako infiltrated the installation as a low-level lab technician a number of years ago. She has been sending reports via smuggled QE bit transmitter ever since…until last month.
All efforts to reach her have proven unsuccessful. Furthermore, Cognite keeps no neutrino receivers or resleeving facilities on the station for security reasons. Even benign contact with the station through false accounts is impossible until the orbit brings it back within Gerlach Station’s mesh range (not due for a number of days). Attempts to resleeve Yelena from her latest back-up for questioning have been…unsettling. It is best you see the vid for yourselves.
Cognite’s murder of a “corporate spy,” while unfortunate, would not warrant the erasure contingency plans Firewall has filed way for Thought. Further investigation is necessary before action can be taken. Your mission is to establish contact with Proxy “Tillman” on Gerlach station for briefing on Yelena’s previous intelligence, development of an approach strategy, and deployment. Once on the station, locate Yelena Chikako’s QE transmitter and report in.
Find out what is happening in Thought. If exsurgent, TITAN, or other existential threat is detected, make sure no one else finds Thought ever again.
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Hopefully, someone will survive getting off of Thought on Monday. Since Bartelby has a TacNet, as long as one person gets their stack off the station in one piece, everybody will at least be able to catch up in terms of evidence and how they died.
Either way, it shouldn't take us too long to see how that plays out, debrief, and nominate for rez points. Then we'll just being the merry chase to figure out what happened. Here's the introduction to the plot thread y'all chose to follow last week.
THE BLACK CAT
FOR SERVICE: CONTACT LAM CONG DUNG OF GERLACH FOR TRANSPORT TO C-9 MANUFACTURER
This AR spime was attached to the dedicated fabricator for the Augustine AI on Thought, or what was left of Thought. Lam Cong Dung, a cell leader in the Nine Lives criminal organization, was responsible for the shuttle that brought victims for Cognite’s experimentation, and now it appears she knows something about the manufacture of the AI. Considering the hellish events that occurred on the station, one could do worse for leads than a criminal mastermind responsible for an illegal machine intelligence.
But going after Lam means going after Nine Lives, the most feared criminal enterprise in the system. Nine Lives doesn’t just kill you: they torture 200 forks of you and then reintegrate them into a single, insane mind. They lock you in Kafka-esque hells through psychosurgery. These are some bad people, and in the Morningstar Constellation, they are pretty much the only thing keeping the government independent of the Consortium. So, make that bad people with desperate, powerful friends.
Lam already knows something is up. She wasn’t feeling great about the unusual number of crazies signed on for the last Amnesia Express, and then The Three-squared Chance never came back. She’s on the run now, shutting down operations on Gerlach as fast as she can.
Will Firewall catch her before she ditches Gerlach for parts unknown? And if they do, will they get the information they need about the disturbing events on Thought, or merely entangle themselves in the seedy underworld of transhuman slavery?
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Hopefully, someone will survive getting off of Thought on Monday. Since Bartelby has a TacNet, as long as one person gets their stack off the station in one piece, everybody will at least be able to catch up in terms of evidence and how they died.
No one was paranoid enough to spring for the emergancy implanted back-up caster? No one was ghost riding an alpha fork? Might as well hang your brain from your belt loop and relay on the goodness in people's hearts to levae it alone.
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Might as well hang your brain from your belt loop and relay on the goodness in people's hearts to levae it alone.
New character intro: So I tied my brain to my belt, which was the style at the time...
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Hopefully, someone will survive getting off of Thought on Monday. Since Bartelby has a TacNet, as long as one person gets their stack off the station in one piece, everybody will at least be able to catch up in terms of evidence and how they died.
No one was paranoid enough to spring for the emergancy implanted back-up caster? No one was ghost riding an alpha fork? Might as well hang your brain from your belt loop and relay on the goodness in people's hearts to levae it alone.
honestly i'm more concerned with losing my expensive as hell morph and most of my gear.
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honestly i'm more concerned with losing my expensive as hell morph and most of my gear.
Eclipse Phase: "My brain is insured but my ass isn't and I keep my wallet in my back pocket."
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Yaaay we all survived but we did make some new friends (read: enemies that fucking hate us - scum drug dealers and the Nine Lives Cartel)
I had a random idea I want to develop:
Wikipedia entry:
Mesh image boards
All standard mesh OS systems include built in message board systems - modeled after the predominant message board system of the late Internet/early mesh - 4chan. While system admins can disable these built in image boards, many leave them on, either using them or forgetting about them. As they are relatively simple and can't be used to deliver XP or simulspace content, most mesh users aren't even aware of their existence. However, skilled mesh users and those restricted to low bandwidth mesh access use image boards frequently to converse and trade interesting text, video, sound and images (hence the name).
All image boards come up with a standard list of sub-boards, typically listed as a 1 to 3 character extension. For example:
Technology -/g/
Weapons - /k/
Science & Math - /sci/
Image boards are often considered archaic but useful for gray market/socially ambiguous transactions. They are poorly policed, as they are designed to make aid user anonymity and privacy. While these features can be altered to aid law enforcement, totalitarian and repressive governments almost always disable image boards as a rote action.
To check to see if your local mesh has image boards enabled, follow these instructions or have your muse run [this] script.
Wikipedia entry:
/RIP/ Image Boards
Due to the nature of mind scanning and resleeving technology, as well as near ubiquitous mesh access, there have been countless instances of persons about to die or dying still able to access the mesh in the moments before death. Slightly less common are cases where an individual is unable to be rescued before death yet still has free time. While individuals almost always focus their time on self-preservation, it has become increasingly common for people to simply communicate with others, waiting to die. This has become common enough that default mesh image boards have a sub-board dedicated for individuals to discuss their imminent death and other related topics. These are typically designated /RIP/.
The following post by an anarchist in the outer rim is believed to have started the trend:
So I'm about to die...
Posted by Starkillah Jones
Hey everyone, I won't make it to the party :\
My fukken hab is dead. GOdddamn tin can is busted and shit.
Still got power to broadcast and life support but engine is royally fucked
and I aint got enough supplies to fix it FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU
(oh the engine blew and shot the hab into deep space)
anyway lol I already farcast and shit but funny thing is I figured out how to broadcast
super low bandwidth - text and images only! but I figure I can talk for about 11 hours
I'm like super ded lololololololol
I bet mr.grim is going really fukken enjoy this shit. His whole "YO FUKKEn HAB IS SHITE" threads
will be goldmined now! :D
o well
i dont even fukken care - this thing was a chick magnet for like MONTHS
"hey baby you want to take a tour in a piece of space history?" fukken 50 year old hab gets all the ladies
it was sooooo goood while it lasted lol
ASK ME ANYTHING!
(no XP requests for my death you scum fukks I AINT GOT THW BANDWIDTH FOR THAT - unless you want to get a ship to come get my stack then we can talk - PM NOW!!!!!! )
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hahaha just saw in the main EP book
UZUMAKI
The target of this virus begins suffering from bizarre
fleshy growths. After four hours, their body literally
erupts with meaty “vines” or “tentacles” that warp
into spiral patterns. This process in icts 1d10 DV and
1d10 SV per hour to the victim until they eventually
transform into an unworldly expanse of eshy growth.
In many cases, growth has continued long after a
character’s death, creating expansive carpets and vines
of skin and blood vessels, like some sort of bizarre
meat plant.
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Hey Ross,
While the idea of a futuristic version of 4chan is pretty interesting, I’m not sure if it would evolve that way in the setting that Eclipse Phase takes place. The Mesh has grown so much in this post-singularity future that it has no problems with bandwidth.
Similarly, transmission capacity now far exceeds most citizens’ definition of need. Anyone born within the last several generations has always lived in a world in which hyper-realistic, multisensory media of nearly any length is available for instantaneous download or upload from anywhere. Massive databases and archives are copied back and forth with ease. Bandwidth is such a non-issue that most people forget it ever was.
In many ways, privacy has become such a luxury that most people live with their whole lives uploaded to the mesh; anyone can check your social network reputations, get basic information on you and the sorts of things you like or dislike by simply thinking about it. Privacy is normally only found in groups that have extremely secure Virtual Private Networks, access to Darkcast networks, or that use the sheer information overload in the mesh as a means to hide their own communications even if this does leave a permanent record somewhere.
I can see 4chan becoming such a normal part of life that most any site that allows for comments, or dedicated public boards will become a 4chan look-alike, especially as memes are hinted at having become tools for spin doctors to manipulate personal views, depending on the social cliques and political groups they are part of.
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Well - look at Usenet as a current comparison - it's outdated for discussions (for the most part) as there are better ways to talk about things on the Internet now. However, it still lingers because it's useful for certain groups like warez monkeys.
And while technical reasons might make bandwidth a non-issue, I can see certain factions throttling bandwidth - workers in a hypercorp factory/office might have severe bandwidth limitations in order to prevent them from wasting company time with XP or simulspace. Autonomists that are thousands of kilometers from each other might be limited when communicating with each other due to distance or interference. Repressive governments like the Jovian Republic would throttle bandwidth just because.
So in this case, people turn to archaic systems because they're so low-bandwidth and obsolete that the admins ignore or forget them.
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Idea for a EP game: Based on this article - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8349414/African-mercenaries-in-Libya-nervously-await-their-fate.html
All PCs are infugees - given a chance to resleeve as 'security guards' for a hypercorp on an exoplanet - no skills required! Easy work! Free morph!
when they sleeve into a case morph, they are given guns and told to shoot protesting colonists on an exoplanet. Turns out that the hypercorp in a spectacular case of bad management decided to cut costs when putting down an insurrection on the exoplanet. Let's use infugees in cheap morphs because that's way cheaper than ultimate mercenaries!
Due to the piss poor management, there are chances for the PCs to defect. Or turn the tides in favor of their corporate masters. Then another gate is discovered that leads to the Fissure Gate (the one held by the autonomists)
Can you say proxy war?
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I'm going to steal this story now and pay you back later.
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one idea I had for it would be the use of fabbers and blueprints. No matter what side the players took, I would set it so that they would have had fabbers but very few blueprints available. In order to get new gear, they would have to acquire new blueprints. They would make good macguffins and treasure at the same time.
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So if we are going to go to every other week, it is probably important that I keep a record of where we are at. Otherwise, Ross will have no idea what to write in the description when he posts the EP campaign in the future (scheduled for around the time the universe dies from heat loss). But I don't want to just throw up the intro description for the game like I've been doing, all boring-like. So I think we need an NPC reporter of some kind for the posts. I'm fishing for ideas.
Somebody wanna let me role-play their muse and write its automated reports to firewall? Wanna hear what Augustine thinks about what is going on? Want proxies to IM chat about your progress? Do you guys prefer a news-service to report the overall impact of your covert operations? If so, do you want Space Bill O'Reilly or Neo-Keith Olbermann? Other suggestions?
I could even take requests per session and switch it up. It could be a fun way to keep track of what we've done so far, and I promise to actually keep up with it.
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love it. love EP
but um, i love tom and caleb and the payton.
you know, but is cody in this campaign?
because cody > all the other rppr crewmembers
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I like the idea of muse updates in rotation; have each episode summaried by a different muse to give range and to keep the reader from gaining too much information before they actually listen to the episode.
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love it. love EP
but um, i love tom and caleb and the payton.
you know, but is cody in this campaign?
because cody > all the other rppr crewmembers
Cody was in one episode - he was an explosive addition to the group.
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hmmmmm
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(http://i.imgur.com/Xuo1p.gif)
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I hadn't even thought about Cody playing Eclipse Phase. I would imagine he'd go freaking nuts with all the choice and opinions available.
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I miss cody. he only ever seems to appear in the NW games and wushu.
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So in the game tonight players...
...rescued a huge number of egos after only 40,000 or so of them died.
...promised to kidnap someone with experimental technology and give said technology to the person responsible for the death of those egos.
---adopted a german scientist.
---massacred a criminal organization down to the last man.
---released an AI convinced that Aaron is the messiah into an unstable mesh network.
---likely witnessed the destabilization of galactic government.
TOTAL SUCCESS!
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Sounds like Eclipse Phase. Since I didn't see anything about handing infected hardware or software out to neotenics I have to assume Firewall found their results up to par.
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Next game:
MEME HUNTER
The lead to Cloud 9 provided no information about No Evil, but Firewall agents ended up tipping the balance in a secret war between two powerful cartels and an illegal research group. Now the agents are in business with Pax Familiae, the most unpredictable and mysterious criminal organization on Venus. They bring her a neo-synergist name Fjalar Stefannson; she tells them what happened on Thought. If Nine Lives doesn’t kill them first….
But what will Firewall think of such a deal? What kind of threat can No Evil possibly represent to justify such a deal with the devil? And how will the political unrest caused by the Consortium’s outrage affect the operation?
Is the virus even the top priority anymore with Augustine on the loose?
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I am really looking forward to hearing these sessions.
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New house-rule: any players that post on the forums in-character (as their PC, their muse, or some NPC they invent) get a free rez point. I'm not putting a cap on this.
Rez points are rarer than gold and diamonds in this game. Come and get em!
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Rez points for posting? He's gone mad! Exploit his insanity, you fools, quickly before he discovers where his lithium is hidden!
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Alright, so here is how No Evil works. The seed-AI gave you the whole skinny:
The “No Evil” strain is a constantly mutating nanotoxin with a preprogrammed strategy of multi-stage attack. The need to reconfigure individual nanobots, adapt to the individual morph/mind of the victim, and maintain a low-key presence to avoid detection means that the virus has a high latency period lasting anywhere from 3-5 months.
Structurally, the No Evil virus resembles a microscopic fractal. It has the ability to reassemble itself on the quark level to suit specific tasks. However, limited energy production means that these reconstructions take time and must be followed by period of recharging (through ambient heat collection) before an individual bot can begin acting upon its environment again.
STAGE ZERO: CONTAINMENT
Due to its ability to reconfingure on the molecular level and maximize its effectiveness, there are few options for transporting the No Evil nanovirii in an inert state. The nanobot fractals would make short work of even a diamond container. No Evil can only be transported frozen near zero-degrees Kelvin or within a complex containment field. The enormous energy cost of each method are the surest sign of a No Evil container, but one would first have to know what they were looking for.
STAGE ONE: SCOUT
Upon release, the No Evil virus starts as a self-replicating scout swarm. It will map out any habitat in which it is released whilst giving out false mesh ID’s identifying itself as standard cleaner swarm. Priority mapping is given to areas of high traffic and any access jacks available. This stage only takes a few hours.
STAGE TWO: HIVE CONSENSUS
After the scout has been completed, No Evil will swarm a centralized location. In order to maintain maximum stealth, the virus limits self-communication to this very confined range. Each bot will link into a computational matrix whose sole purpose is to develop a strategy for total infiltration. When a plan of attack is finished (usually within seconds due to quantum computation speed), the swarm will use its isolated location to self-replicate according to projected needs. The few moments this process takes is, in fact, the final opportunity transhumans will have to totally prevent infection. An EMP charge, guardian swarm, or plasma burst grenade could wipe out the infection completely during this stage.
STAGE THREE: DELIVERY
According to the population surveyed, No Evil will split into multiple swarms with delegated tasks. Reconfigured sabateour swarms will infect habitat systems to disable InfoSec detection, then self destruct. This allows large swarms to hide in any hard access jacks used on the facility: ectos, backup stations, secure servers, etc. Other swarms will reconfigure as Proteans and begin manufacture of the chemical DMSO, a carrier substance designed for dermal delivery. This slippery, clear substance found on handrails, shower floors, and beds is one of the few noticeable signs of No Evil incursion. The energy required for this process means that it can take weeks.
Whether attacking synths through jacks or bios through DMSO, No Evil will opt for quantity over distribution. The bots will assemble into a number of grouped cells so as to have sufficient numbers for immediate action upon infection of a morph. This circumvents the need for large, attention-grabbing replication processes in the body itself. It also means that not everyone jacking into a certain port or touching a certain wet spot will be infected; No Evil spreads itself thin. In the long run, this means tracing the delivery path of the virus is very problematic, even if transhumans are aware of intrusion.
STAGE FOUR: STACK ATTACK
Upon entering a morph, No Evil will morph into a swarm of Nutcracker nanotoxins and another Protean swarm. Due to the shifting nature and novelty of No Evil, medichines as yet have no templates for recognizing or fighting the infection. The nutcracker swarm will immediately begin degrading the diamond lattice of the cortical stack’s case, but rather than full degrading the device, the following Protean swarm will redesign and reconstruct the tech in the wake of the nutcrackers. The new stack’s exterior will have a two-way interface with sensors built to detect upload. Once finished, the Protean will go dormant and reconfigure (see stage seven).
The nutcrackers will continue up the stem to the stack itself, using quantum computing capabilities to map the ego contained within. The alien nature of No Evil allows it to selectively abrade certain links within the diamond lattice framework. The nutcracker swarm will attack only those areas of the mind used strictly for processing sensory information: visual and auditory encoding, kinestetic awareness, olfactory recall, etc. While the one-way design of the stem prevents alert to the morph, the wireless coordination required of the Nutcracker swarm might cause minor interference withing the morphs mesh AR. Users might complain of sunspot interference or get their software checked, but nothing will be found. This process takes days.
At the end of Stage Four, the infected has essentially been unknowingly alpha forked. The backup link is still active, still feeding information to the stack, but the consciousness within the stack has been “blinded” to this input, so to speak. The two way stem, while keeping the ego in the flesh or cyberbrain unaware of any change, provides distance that was never intended for the ego of a cortical stack. In short, all ability to receive or transmit information of any kind has been psychosurgically removed from the stack, yet its consciousness is still powered on. The fork within the stack is essentially trapped in a sensory-deprived hell where they can’t even hear their own screams.
STAGE FIVE: DORMANCY
Truly the most nefarious display of No Evil’s sick intelligence, all swarms will cease any activity except reconfiguration after the stack has been psychosurgically altered. This stage can go on indefinitely, the infected completely unaware that somewhere inside their head a version of their consciousness is silently going mad in an endless, incomprehensible vacuum. This stage lasts until the transhuman, according to his or her regular routine, schedules a backup upload.
STAGE SIX: BACKUP OVERWRITE
Unless the victim is lucky enough to be very rich and very, very paranoid, an infected transhuman’s scheduled backup is a date with death. Typical backup insurance requires an overwrite of previous files in order to maintain corporate server space. Files overwritten with a mind amputated by No Evil’s stealth psychosurgery will forever be without the ability to process, perceive, or develop new sensory stimuli. Any attempt to resleeve them will result in a total catatonic state. If the true reason for this is discovered, any psychosurgery engaged to re-implement input/output processing will completely alter the person’s personality; how we see and speak to the world makes up a large part of a person’s identity. Furthermore, “turning the sound back on” will likely only result in the deafening shrieks of a crazed mind bursting into reality for the first time in what feels like years. All that will be achieved is the embodiment of a person driven mad in a never-ending night.
Sensors in the redesigned stem will know once backup overwrite has been achieved. They will then cease dormancy and enter stage 7.
STAGE SEVEN: EGO CLEANSING
The victim still exists in the flesh/cyberbrain of whatever morph was initially infected even after backup. But after upload, No Evil recognizes that total, permanent death is now likely an option and goes about seeking that end. The Protean swarm in charge of redesigning the stack’s exterior in stage four typically has plenty of time to reconfigure and prepare for this moment.
In biomorphs, No Evil assumes the form of a vicious Disruptor nanotoxin and begins abrading the myelin sheath on all sensory nerves in the brain. This action is clearly and openly hostile, so Medichines can have a substantial affect on the speed of this process. However, the fractal nature of No Evil’s nanobots and the months of undetected study from within the host’s system make sure that defensive measures are no match. At best, a well-defended biomorph will be rendered totally catatonic within a week and left to starve to death on the floor.
Synthmorphs face even faster destruction. The susceptibility of cyberbrains means that No Evil can transform into a deadly combination of Sabatour bots armed with Scorcher algorithms. No Evil can completely burn out a cyberbrain in a number of hours after the upload trigger, and the nuclear power source mean the victims get to exist in their own personal hells for decades rather than days.
This stage is quite painful, confusing, and debilitating to those undergoing infection. Frankly, it is a horrifying thing to behold, which in turn leaves witnesses understandably scared for their own safety. Once undergoing a deep scan (which will show nothing), any “uninfected” members of a habitat entering stage 7 will likely perform an emergency back-up, thus speeding the process.
STAGE EIGHT: DENABILITY
After the largest possible portion of a habitat is rendered catatonic, No Evil will self-destruct. Stack swarms will reduce to component parts, as will Saboteurs in synthmorphs. The trace elements actually have the effect of further corrupting whatever processes haven’t yet shut down. Disruption nanotoxins will migrate to the bladder and intestines before breaking down. They have the additional cover of being dispelled via bodily functions. Any non-integrated swarms will stop identifying as cleaner swarms and be consumed by the habitat’s actual cleaner swarms.
Thus, to a scavenger or survivor, a No Evil plague will look like everyone merely came to the conclusion that they should lay down and wait to die.
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...And here's the stuff Fayun (Thad) found in the neo-synergist's box tonight:
CONTENTS OF THE “REMEMBER” BOX
The box contains three items stowed away in case the neo-synergists ever came to doubt “the threat.” Every item requires WIL X3 to avoid SV.
1. AR game (in an ecto memory stick) called “The Darkness Between the Stars.”
The game is simply an AR screen that projects a vision of the night sky. Wiping one’s hands across the screen paints the darkness inbetween with light. Once the screen is entirely white, the resolution of the image sharpens and zooms in, showing all the miniature splinters of black missed by the brushstrokes. Trying to wipe these away proves more difficult, as touching them starts an AR illusion of one’s hand bleeding, as if cut by the splinter. The blood pools at the player’s feet and reads “You’ll never erase me.”
2. Manuscript for “The Struggle”
The story is written on purpilish paper pulped from plants known only on Synergy. The tale concerns a protagonist known only as “Character” fighting against her nemesis, “Writer.” Everything the character does is praised, even attacking the Writer. Every time the Writer is killed, it turns out the character only murdered another character. Everything is just as the Writer wills it.
The character experiences great frustration with this until having an epiphany. She refuses any actions the Writer sends for her, claiming indignation because that is not what the Writer is “supposed to” do. The Writer, confused, asks “what could he possibly be asked to do?” Character merely responds the he should do whatever she says, because she wrote the Writer into her story. Writer IS Character, because such a reversal of fate makes for the best story.
Obviously, the Writer disbelieves this at first, but the Character has learned much about the Writer’s psyche through his various manipulations of her. Character spends pages telling Writer the nature of his own thoughts with such accuracy that it is as if she created him. She picks at the Writer’s insecurity until he slips into a great depression, but the story ends in a splatter of red ink before reaching its conclusion.
3. Episode 29 of “Back at the Office…”
A low-quality vid recording of an episode of the play run back on Synergy. The scene involves Gracious, Leopold, and Akaja (Akaja is played by the synergist that gave players the box) Gracious and Leopold have discovered that Akaja has been conspiring to disrupt their romance by reporting them to human resources. She does this because she is in love with Leopold as well. The scene had Akaja giving a heart-felt monologue about how she “never felt alive until she saw herself in Leopold’s eyes”
Gracious is just about to give her response when Akaja grabs a drinking glass from the set and strikes the actor playing Leopold in the face, cutting him badly. The actors and the audience all scream in unison as the blinded Synergist goes down. Akaja looks confused, saying:
“Who did that edit? C’mon! Stop hiding your feed! It wasn’t me! That was supposed to be a breakaway glass! It wasn’t me!”
The crowd grows quiet, introspective.
“Seriously, no one is going to take credit? Is it a different plot point you were going for? I don’t remember it going meta- like this in the draft earlier… are we going there now?”
The actress looks confused. The character playing Gracious reaches out and is lightly batted away.
“No, she’s supposed…I’m supposed to talk to you. You’re all part of it, now. We’re back on track now…just let me get into chara….”
The actress playing Akaja grabs Gracious character by the hair, fishhooks her mouth, and tears a bloody gout across the shocked woman’s face. She frantically screams as men rush the stage.
“I’m here! I’m off your leash and here! I’ll rape every one of you to death as you sleep! I’ll chew you up from the insi—“
The vid freezes as she is tackled, focusing in on the maniac grin plastered over the actress’s face.
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Alright, so here is how No Evil works. The seed-AI gave you the whole skinny:
You are mad men! Exsurgents!
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Jesus tapdancing CHRIST I want to hear these games. Caleb, you are something else.
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its cool the seed AI thinks we're god
what could go wrong?
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I don't appreciate y'all's tone. Augustine has been nothing but helpful! She loves you!
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Bartleby watched Kim from the treetops as she stumbled through the underbrush. She had strayed too far from the tea party table and had awakened the inhabitants of the simulspace forest. They would not be kind. He had designed the forest as a stealth training program to hone his own skills but had found it useful to break interrogation subjects down. The uncertainty of the environment was more stressful than a plain torture chamber. Kim was resourceful though and had the tenacity of a born survivor. She was almost invigorated by the Darwinian nature of this simulspace.
"Hello Kim." Bartleby spoke with only a slight smirk on his face.
"You fucking monster. Just space my cortical stack! This shit's worse than anything I ever fucking did! You fucking hypocrite"
The smirk disappeared, instantly replaced with a hateful scowl. He leaped from the branch and landed in front of her.
"Now what you said I know is a lie. I know it beyond a reasonable doubt in fact. I know it like the back of my hand."
Kim tensed but did nothing. She knew that he could do anything to her in the simulspace.
"We went to Cloud 9. I went into the Nine Lives storage simulspace."
Her eyes widened. "H-h-how...?" Nine Lives controlled the station. There was no way that freak and his friends could have taken them all out.
"What does it matter? I saw what you did. Do you want to see what I did to them?"
A video appeared - playback from Bartleby's tactical network software - slow-motion of Bartleby aiming at the head of a Nine Lives enforcer and emptying a pistol into it. Then another killshot. and another. A montage of the deaths of every Nine Lives member on the station. Bartleby firing his pistol into their corpses.
"So don't expect backup. No one knows what happened to you. No one will rescue you or get revenge on you."
The simulspace forest faded from view. In its place, a stony cavern tunnel.
"W-what's this?"
"I don't care if you actually knew or not. But just so you know, this-" he gestures around them "was the storage simulspace your organization placed tens of thousands of innocent egos in. To suffer - to make them soft - to make them...pliable."
He grabbed her by the cheeks, looking in her eyes.
"I think it's important for you to know a little about myself. I know about being locked in simulspaces. I know about being tortured, being manipulated in simulspace. I'm one of the Lost generation, you know."
Kim tried to squirm away from him, to get away.
"I'm not going to do anything so mundane as cut you or torture you, you know. I'm not like that."
She whimpered as panic began to overtake her.
"I want you to suffer though. Don't get me wrong. You will be in a hell beyond your imagining. It is of course not beyond my imagination but that's because I have been in darker places than you can conceive of-" He leaned in to whisper in her ear "and my imagination is limitless-"
She lashed out and struck him in the stomach, freeing herself from his grasp. Terrified, she ran into the darkness.
Bartleby gathered himself up and looked at his hands. So lifelike-almost real he had to repeat to himself a mantra from his school days: "Life is not simulated and simulations are not real. Life is not simulated and simulations are not real."
Kim would never be fully alone in this purgatory. A copy of the March Hare (his muse) would monitor her constantly and record everything she said and did - in case she revealed Nine Lives secrets. If she looked like she was about to go permanently mad, the March Hare would allow her to 'find' a secret respite - supposedly an error in the simulation that would allow her mind some time to heal. Then the suffering would begin again. When she was ready, he would begin the first wave of psychosurgeries.
Tempering a sword required fire and water. It took time, patience and a strong will. Bartleby had all of these things. He would mold her, shape her into a weapon he could use. The Red Queen would not give up easily. He would need the right tools to do so. Kim was the first one, but he would need more. The 60,000 souls left to his care would not be tortured in this way but surely some of them would want a new battle to fight, a cause to give their lives meaning. A shared simulspace training camp, perhaps some skillsofts to augment their skills?
There was much work to be done.
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its cool the seed AI thinks we're god
what could go wrong?
With all of the best intentions to emulate the perfect beings it could learn your methods through observation and combine the intellect of your entire party into a single processing system, forming an in game PC Hive Mind and subjecting the AI to the whims of Player Logic. Geometrically increasing Player Logic no less.
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its cool the seed AI thinks we're god
what could go wrong?
With all of the best intentions to emulate the perfect beings it could learn your methods through observation and combine the intellect of your entire party into a single processing system, forming an in game PC Hive Mind and subjecting the AI to the whims of Player Logic. Geometrically increasing Player Logic no less.
You act like that's a bad thing.
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its cool the seed AI thinks we're god
what could go wrong?
With all of the best intentions to emulate the perfect beings it could learn your methods through observation and combine the intellect of your entire party into a single processing system, forming an in game PC Hive Mind and subjecting the AI to the whims of Player Logic. Geometrically EXPONENTIALLY increasing Player Logic no less.
Fixed that for you.
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:o Note to self: don't piss off Bartelby
Rez point for Ross! See? It's just that easy.
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post these games. post these games. post these games. post these games. please.
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post these games. post these games. post these games. post these games. please.
THIS. Alternate them with Heroes of New Arcadia. I need moar eclipse phase like a dock hooker needs a boatload of sailors
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post these games. post these games. post these games. post these games. please.
THIS. Alternate them with Heroes of New Arcadia. I need moar eclipse phase like a dock hooker needs a boatload of sailors
That's a bit stereotypical.
I need more eclipse phase like an underground raver needs a lifetime supply of glowsticks
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imma hoard them episodes
NEVER EVER RELEASE THEM
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imma hoard them episodes
NEVER EVER RELEASE THEM
Curses! Our only weakness
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imma hack them RPPR
NEVER EVER NOT HAVE ECLIPSE PHASE
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imma hack them RPPR
NEVER EVER NOT HAVE ECLIPSE PHASE
Me: Ross what are these files on your computer? The ones that are marked EP. Imma gonna delete them.
Ross: No, don't!
Me: Done.
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this movie is almost pure EP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNUI1VRZio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_%282009_film%29
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DAMMIT why isn't this movie on Netflix.
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edit: nm, moved to better thread
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Venus-tier ended tonight after...12 sessions? Something like that. The characters all have their own subplots underway, but I thought I'd write up a few things so as to note the way the game world has changed due to character actions thus far.
Muse News: Venus Round-up
PCNN (Planetary Consortium News Network): BRINKER ECONOMY STUMBLES IN WAKE OF MASSIVE SCAM
Sybil fraud, a scam that involves a number of individuals conspiring to boost and quickly burn the reputation score of a planted identity, is a graft unique to transitional economies of the outer system. The criminal practice reached new heights on AF 11 Nov. 15.15.30 UT when the most massive reputation manipulation in transhuman history occurred.
In the space of half an hour, over 100 individuals burned rep scores sometimes in excess of 10 points over the course of a single hour before farcasting or otherwise disappearing from Titanian space. Financial AI’s did not catch deviations in the suspects’ rep growth until inflation was well underway, and by the time confirmation from Lunar banks was received over a million credit’s worth of goods and services had gone unreciprocated.
Though not yet cause of a full-blown economic depression, Titanian micro-corp stocks took a steep dive at the opening of LLA trading on Wednesday. Commenwealth and Brinker economies seem in store for a considerable recession as consumers are now considering their favors more cautiously. Recovery may not be an option until some means of prevention can be devised for Sybil fraud on such a scale.
“The situation is simply unprecedented,” commented Cesare, a respected influence broker renowned in anarcho-socialist networks. “I’ve made a lot of friends in law enforcement over the years, and nothing in their futurist algorithms can account for what happened yesterday. It is a sad day for post-scarcity economies.”
Law enforcement officials on Titan would not comment on the case directly, claiming that an investigation was pending. Clock Iver, current head of the Titanian Police Person’s Collective, would only say that the coordination necessary for a heist of this scale was “unimaginable.” Sources inside the outer polity report that Pax Familae is suspect, as only the Sybil manipulation in history thus far to even approach such a grand scale is largely attributed to the enigmatic Claudia Ambilina. Still, the simultaneous manipulation of so many social networks required for such a crime dwarfs every previous attempt at reputational larceny ever recorded.
Planetary Consortium financial experts have been dispatched on humanitarian missions to the Titanian province to lend their expertise to the crisis. The PC press core released an official statement Thursday urging citizens of Titan to consider the danger of currency-deprived economies and lobby their representatives to petition for union with the Consortium.
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The Morningstar Sunrise: SCANDAL DELAYS PC AUDIT OF MORNINGSTAR GOVERNMENT
Late Friday evening, a number of local political activism blogs broke news that Atom Lamont had falsified reputation scores and social history to hide his heritage as a graduate of the Lost project.
Lamont had previously been assigned as diplomat and auditor for the Planetary Consortium in the ongoing telemetry-gate scandal until the scandal erupted. Unnamed sources provided a variety of news outlets with evidence confirming the claim, including interviews with “out” Lost generations members that grew up with Lamont, rosters listing his mesh ID as generated in the project, and extensive psychological records from Cognite psychosurgeons detailing a history of sociopathic behavior due to now illegal simulspace-only child-rearing practices.
In a brief statement broadcast from an undisclosed location, Lamont did not deny the accusations but assured his constituents that his checkered past in no way detracted from his current political mission or beliefs. Even before the statement had finished, however, PC announce the removal of Lamont from his post and the halt of all inspections of Morningstar until further notice.
Briefly, it was thought that Lamont had been killed on Gerlach when a “Social Action Committee” hanged an individual looking strikingly like his morph on Saturday morning. Interrogations of the victim’s cortical stack later revealed the ego to be a member of the ID crew criminal syndicate attempting to scam reputation scores by inhabiting a cloned copy of Lamont’s morph.
Atom Lamont remains at large and is wanted for questioning by PC Oversight. His replacement has yet to be announced. Morningstar press secretary Quicken Oliphant stated Sunday that the polity would wait patiently and that the government “had nothing to hide so long as a sane observer could be found among the attendees within the PC’s parliamentary halls.”
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LLA Financial Times: MARKET REPORT VENUS
Expansion of Venusian mining operations showed signs of stalling late in the 3rd quarter. Though still profitable, installation and production of new surface mining facilities has shown a marked decrease in recent months, owing to what Morninstar Constellation analysts are calling “overly cautious” labor practices in the wake of the Telemetrygate scandal.
This devaluation of Venusian market value has been offset, at least momentarily, by a boom in aerostat investment opportunities following a new meteorological discovery. Psymon Kitter, a prominent Argonaut most well-known in the field of xenobiology and “gatecrashing,” recently open-sourced wind-pattern prediction software more advanced than anything yet developed for the dangerously turbulent lower atmosphere, allowing aerostat placement to range thousands of kilometers farther North and South than previously thought possible. All third-parties appear to vouch for the accuracy of what is being called “Kitter’s Doppler,” though Egonomix has publically questioned the doctor’s use of a thermonuclear device said to have detonated in the atmosphere during his experimental trials.
Overall, futures markets on Venus maintain steady growth but have show their first signs of faltering since the feverish bull market took hold in the years after PC secession. It remains to be seen whether this is a temporary fluctuation or the beginnings of an economic downturn.
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We are doing Wild Talents this Monday, but in EP news, I have homework for my players.
Please resleeve and print a new character sheet before we start playing Monday.
Remember, house-rule is that Firewall will pay for a morph of your choice or a shit ton of starting gear...not both. The morphs are dependent on availability (i.e. NO SPIDER BOTS), so ask me if you are picking something weird.
If you are taking the same brand of morph or want to pick your own, then sell all your stuff. Pick a different morph and use whatever credits you have to buy gear/implants. We will do Alienation and Integration checks in game.
If you want Firewall to pay for all your gear and implants, sell all your stuff and pocket the credits (NOT YOUR MORPH...that becomes Firewall property). They'll cover 40,000 credits worth of stuff. Then send me a message and I'll let you know what kind of morph they can spare for you.
We will be starting out on Venus, but if you have your old sheets it will be easy enough (I don't plan on combat). Once everyone farcasts, we'll just switch sheets to your Luna selves.
Keep in mind when you are picking your stuff that...
--high-end morphs might require favors or a trait like allies/patron
--Luna is the most conservative area other than Jupiter; the wilder the morph, the more uncomfortable people will be
--while you will need weapons at some point, weapons laws on Luna are strict. Anything that fires projectiles and has armor piercing ability is strictly illegal. Blueprints for weapons would make more sense than hauling around the actual guns. Melee/non-lethel stuff is cool.
--I'm going to play up the surveillance angle for this tier, so if some cred gets loosened up in selling your gear, another identity might not be a bad idea.
If y'all really don't want to take the time, we can do it together...I guess. Just don't get angry if the "game" turns into a page-flipping, math party.
PS: Andrew, if you wanna roll-in, we'd love to have you. Just talk character concept with me so we don't have like two octopi or something. RAINBOW COALITION.
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Which online character creator do you guys use?
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Eclipse Phase is tonight. Don't forget to resleeve and print another sheet.
Space Oprah: "Check under your chairs! You get a new body! And you get a new body! New bodies for everyone!"
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Hope you dudes have good Alienation protection with all the body swapping you have to do.
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god damn it's hard to get anyone to actually be interested in eclipse phase. everyone just wants to kill orcs and befriend elves.
fuck this earth.
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maybe just pitch to them as sci-fi horror - event horizon and dead space? Don't go into the transhuman stuff until you're running a one shot with them.
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That's what I did, just ran a one shot and didn't mention switching bodies in the summary, just saving humanity from danger. Boy where they surprised.
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(Excerpt from Escape Velocity Entertainment Feed)
Impending Downloads: Tavin Ribbisi’s Top Five for the Week
Ribbisi’s net was cast far and wide this week. He’s dragged back an eclectic mix of politics, mystery, and public scandal for your consumption. Make sure your accounts are charged with creds, kiddos! Here’s the top five!
5. The Fall: A Legacy
Luna’s stranglehold on the entertainment industry is well-deserved, but it has the unfortunate side effect of subjecting the entire system to sad-sack specials about our recent genocide every. single. year. After AF 10’s Remember the Fallen, I had to turn on my emotional dampeners just to get out of cot the next morning. Nobody is saying that the Fall wasn’t the worst tragedy in history, but damn Luna, do you really think we forget about that shit accidently?
Thankfully, AF 11 seems to be changing the tone. Only about the first 45 minutes of The Fall: A Legacy consists of the typical slow-mo crying montages and blurry stock footage of TITANS so typical of the genre. The remainder of the two-hour special focuses on humanity’s reconstruction and continued progress. There is actually a fair amount of decent reporting in the last hour over some unique memorials set-up on brinker habs. I actually caught myself being interested at times!
I like to keep it light here on the list, but I include this because this is a trend we all need to support. Let’s at least keep on eye on the future, transhumanity.
4. MEMEwatch: What is Akaja Lacuna?
You know I’m crazy about a mystery. In this season’s bleak offerings, I’ve started reliving lifecasts of myself watching Lost AND Found just so I can remember what a good whodunit feels like.
To fill the gap, I’ve turned to the typically hibernation-inducing MEMEwatch. This week’s episode, however, revolves around the emerging “Akaja” character hounding the mesh of late. Fans of the ARG game “Spylife” may remember last month’s brilliant hack which saw the villain for the scenario “Who is A.L?” turn out to be every single PC in the game. Entire servers shut down when the game erupted into double-agent chaos as players performed their character cues. As of yet, no one has found a set of nefarious objectives that seems to match any other players. Spooky….
MEMEwatch dives deeper into this phenomenon. Anon and the other merry pranksters of the mesh deny responsibility, yet mental health and serial killer wikis are still getting spammed with entries about “Lacuna infection” every day. Apparently, the latest episode of Nicotine Cat shows an eerie, long-haired woman in the background of Ron’s petal-induced dream sequence – but none of the animators remember putting it there. Repair message boards are filling up with stories about some app called “the darkness between the stars” showing up randomly on ectos. Akaja = darkness. Lacuna = stars. Freaky!
We haven’t had a decent, parody-free mememonster since Meet the Slendermans came on the air. I can’t wait to see how this creepy little conspiracy turns out.
3. Release the Kraken
Look, I don’t do uplift casts (let the comments section explode…now). It isn’t a prejudice thing. I avoid them for the same reason I don’t air documentaries about the clanking masses at dinner parties. An ego can only stand so many XP’s and lifecasts about being downtrodden.
Release the Kraken may be coming to my rescue. Experia’s new mixed media broadcast seems to put entertainment first and keep politics the butt of the joke.
Host Preston Crowley’s first few episodes are a frenetic stew of traditional travelogue, political commentary, and shock performance art. Episode One jumps from a cloud-diving XP (those tentacles go crazy at terminal velocity!), to Mahjong tips, to a scintillating political interview that ends in a brutal cameraman beatdown. This last feature apparently resulted in a minor scandal within the Experia ranks, but my many Uplift friends assure me that Crowley has yet to bow under corporate pressure.
This may be the first program to appeal to both audiences: authentic enough for the animals and engaging enough for those of us that took the long way to sentience. Episode Three supposedly takes place on Erato; we’ll see if the buzz stays alive in a less exotic locale, but I’m keeping my eye on this one for now.
2. Earth: AF 199
It’s no secret that I go after new episodes of AF 199 like a MRDR addict in need of a fix, so I guess I’m biased. But the new season hasn’t even started yet and the sentence-long description of the premiere is enough to place the show on this week’s list.
“A special guest star provides survivors with startling new information about the ExUp War.”
The ExUp War?! The Exsurgent Uplift War is easily the best three seasons of programming to stream since Bollywood became an N-bomb crater! I’m geeking out over here!
Haters are already lighting up the mesh. And yeah, I agree that plot thread resurrection and guest starts are usually signs of a dying show, but this is AF 199 here. This vid is an institution! Personally, I smell a renaissance for the series in the works, and a smart viewer is going to pay for 1st night viewing rights on this one.
1.The Truth About…LLA President Arva Don
If your muse isn’t already set to record this interview, you must have never made it off Earth. How are the nanoswarms today, my Flat brother?
But seriously, LLA president Arva Don needs to hire a new psychosurgeon. Just because she seems immune to physical assassination doesn’t mean she can’t commit political suicide. I’ve met “Truth” Hoffman; the cat’s the Hunter-Killer of media spin. Submitting a Beta fork to unedited, non-preapproved questioning by that man is either the bravest or the dumbest thing this administration has ever done.
And Radio Argosy is N-casting the whole thing “live.” How quaint! Grab your faux-corn and let’s learn what a political career looks like after explosive decompression.
That’s it for this week, adoring fans. Tune in next time for more hot downloads sure to dominate your conversations around the food fabber. This has been Tavin Ribbisi, reminding you that media is life, SO LIVE IT.
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Here is a new post from everyone's favorite async, Bartleby :D
Spoilers for tonight's game.
[spoiler]Bartleby sat down, hunkered against the wall of the craft. His back itched. The Yakuza tattoos of his new morph still irritated him. It was female, which he insisted on because he wanted to minimize his profile while they were on Luna. At least it was a futura. It was the only morph he felt truly stable in. He had tried a splicer once. He jumped at the littlest thing. Nothing seemed as real. Never again, if he could help it.
He looked at the AGI's cortical stack, still in his left hand. The poor thing had sacrificed its morph to guarantee that the explosion would happen. Its plaintive cries still bounced around in his head. It felt responsible for Preston's death. When they had time to recover, he would ask what it wanted. He could try to treat it, to speak the soothing words he had learned, but he wondered if it would want to carry on. It might demand it be restored from a backup - a backup not scarred by the trauma of losing a comrade, of encountering the exsurgents, of death. Are the exsurgents worse for an AGI to see? To know that the same AI technology that created it could also create a new TITAN? The AGI could also ask to press on, despite its guilt or perhaps because of it. It might even ask for death - to be deleted or to retire so that Firewall could send them a new, less damaged agent. It deserved whatever it wanted - whatever he was in a position to grant, he would do so. It deserved that much at least.
Preston had no decision to make. He was dead of course. One of the digging drones had bitten through his vac suit and infected him. After they had slain the exsurgents, he had turned on them. He had no choice but to empty a clip into his friend. His friend. How could he call him his friend after that.
Bartleby looked at the pistol in his right hand. Loaded.
It was easy to rationalize the murder. That Preston would have wanted to die rather than face life as an exsurgent. That there was no choice. That Preston was better off this way - his backup would be as jovial and entertaining as ever. If he had survived, his audience would surely notice the difference. They would see the horror in his eyes. But that's not what concerned Bartleby now. With his eidetic memory, he remembered every detail, including how he felt when he pulled the trigger. Nothing. No fear, no regret, no guilt. Bartleby only reduced to Preston to an abstraction - an obstacle to survival. Survival meant everything.
He couldn't trust anyone. If he failed, then the Red Queen won. Alice depended on him and him alone. He had to survive to find her.
He closed his eyes, putting his hands to his face. The cool metal of the gun and diamond armor of the stack pressed against his cheeks. He didn't even realize he was crying.
After escaping Luna, he had fled into deep space. Became a brinker. Did whatever it took to survive. Trusted no one. He would have died as a paranoid recluse but Firewall saved him. Made him realize that trust was the real key to survival. Belief in a greater cause.
That's why he didn't space Fayen. She had been exposed to the exsurgent virus as well. She didn't react like Preston though. After hauling her to the craft, he had given her a sedative to make her sleep. As they reached orbit, every instinct in him screamed to space her. But he couldn't. He didn't want to be a monster. He didn't want to be a soulless killer, the freak like everyone else in the LOST project. They were friends and comrades in the fight to save everyone. If Bartleby couldn't control himself, how could he save anyone?
The opposing desires to trust and to survive raged within him. The emotional dampeners had already overloaded from the fight with the exsurgents. The war abated as he thought of a compromise.
He watched her as she slept and realized there was only one way to know for sure if she was infected or not. He placed the cortical stack down and commanded the vac suit to remove itself around his hand. He felt her forehead and concentrated. His other hand aimed the pistol at her head. A few moments later the capillaries in his eyes hemorrhaged. A thin trail of blood ran down his nose.
OOC: Bartleby will use deep scan on Thad's character in order to make sure she's not infected.
[/spoiler]
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Ross you are the king of awesome.
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2 Rez points for Bartlby.
Man, Ross sure is pulling down the out of game rez points. If only the other players had those board things with the letters on them that you can press (hint hint nudge wink cough)....
Anyway, more spoiler stuff from the last game.
[spoiler]BREAKING NEWS: LUNA
Explosions collapsed a section of subshuttle tunnel just minutes ago, report LLA-government sources. The unfinished track, which was being constructed to complete the Translunar Subshuttle (expected completion AF14), registered a brief period of seismic disturbance and temperature irregularities before all safety spimes suddenly ceased transmission. Other security measures had yet to be installed on the line.
Repositioned surveillance satellites confirm that roughly 300-meters of tunnel have collapsed. Thermal imaging and radiation scans from repositioned satellites indicate that the cause of the damage was likely an extremely low-yield thermonuclear explosion.
No official casualty reports are available at this time, but Subshuttle authorities have released a statement assuring families that construction crews were located at least 30 kilometers ahead of ground zero. The synthmorph workers remain undamaged and are currently being evacuated.
In the same press release, Full Moon Transportation’s CEO, Edith Wipff, assured the public that standard safety protocols would have prevented any disaster of the explosion’s magnitude. Wipff went on to suggest sabotage as “the only possible explanation for the extent of the damage.” Though no group has yet to claim responsibility, militant factions of the Steel Liberators and other Industrialist ideologies have a history of subshuttle terrorism dating back to before The Fall.
LLA Security Chief Ord Brown has stated, “The full resources of LLA law enforcement will come to bear on this senseless attack.” LLA President Arva Don was in the process of reintegration after an interview and was unavailable for comment.
Any investigation will be complicated by the necessary removal of debris and the unlikelihood of surviving evidence; the heat of the blast was intense enough to warp the meta-material supports for kilometers around the origin point. It is unclear how long the damage will delay completion of the Translunar Subshuttle, but preliminary estimates already suggest that this incident may become the most costly act of terrorism in LLA history.
[/spoiler]
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the luna government is full of jerks
although I suppose the truth would be worse news and the luna government would still somehow blame the clanking masses
edit: also you can't resist psi powers if you are unconscious :D
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It wasn't as if you guys were ever going to get a pat on the back for being a part of a militant conspiracy organization :-)
And Luna's government isn't full of jerks; all governments are full of jerks. Luna just so happens to be security minded, and there was a massive explosion in a public works project. They did what they do.
It definitely would have been worse if you guys hadn't shown up, but the clanking masses wouldn't have been blamed directly. They would have just suffered under the new, super-duper space patriot act like everyone else.
Trust me, though, that was game was a "win" for Firewall, about as big a one as any Sentinel can expect. I won't shit on you guys all the time.
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If you aren't loading from a back up then it's a win as a Sentinel.
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Here is a short story I wrote for the EP campaign. A bit of flavor text for the players, if you will. There isn't any actionable plot information the players can use, but avoid reading if you don't like SPOILERS.
Errand
Kyler glided past the dank conduits of the maintenance tunnel, swimming through zero-G with the practiced ease of a born brinker. He was full-burn down the pipe, in serious danger of a bang up if he missed one of the handholds his muse was highlighting in his entropics. Mom had programmed Tilda for maximum physical safety, but the personality matrix was developing a narrow reading of the command and often allowed Kyler off-mesh for jaunts such as this.
He was excited to get back to his hideout. He’d been forbidden from going to the disused storage capsule in the old cluster ever since Vera was forced off-station. But Mom was doing her tenth-day duties on EVA maintenance, a 16-hour shift if you added in the decompression time, and Kyler had plenty of time to get back to the sleeper pod before she got wise.
Kyler booted up Parabola Coaster before he even reached the hatch. He’d gotten sick good at mapping vertexes since Vera had tutored him, and he loved to ride down the curves he’d made on his entropics, feeling the nanos simulate wind on his face and coming so close to yakking as the inner-ear mod Pavlov-ed him with that crazy, gut-dropping sensation he imagined kids with gravity got all the time. Mom would totally red alert if she found out he was logging extra credit hours on Parabola instead of Word Sensation, but that game vac-ed without the dedicated drug gland and Hackops hadn’t cracked DRM on the bluies yet.
Kyler cycled the hatch and nestled into his favorite corner, the one near the hot water pipes. Entrhalled as he was mapping a mad-queasy ride of high-frequency waves, he almost didn’t see the man. He appeared as little more than an outline lit by the glow of LED’s.
Kyler was kicking for the door when the man spoke. “No need to run. I’m not maintenance.”
Kyler snagged some cable and looked back at the shadow. “Who you blowing up my spot then, morph?”
“My?” said the man, floating closer but never leaving the shadow. “Possessive pronouns? Such profiteering language for so young a ladka.”
Kyler blushed for having cussed in front of an adult. He was in for it now.
“Besides,” the man smiled, his teeth glowing dull blue in the haze, “it isn’t as if your name is on it.”
“Is too, morph!” Kyler said, unwilling to go down without a fight. “Spec it, low-rez, gots a tag right there.” Kyler pointed to the place where he and Vera had burnt their names in some ceramic with a hacked laser communicator.
“Are you Kyler?” asked the man.
“True”
“And who is Vera?”
Kyler looked down, uncomfortable with the man’s questions and slow drift towards him. “Vera was m…a friend. We came here to play school. It was quieter and she knew how to get admin on the levels. More fun.”
The dark shape nodded as he slowly adjusted course, thankfully veering towards the hatch rather than the boy. He looked damn tall up close, those long limbs of his not so much drawn shadow as they first appeared. “And why isn’t Vera here today?”
Kyler went back to his game’s entropics, trying to drool the guy out. “Mom said we could co-op no more. Said Vera weren’t no kid, but like an adult sleeving a kid, spec it? She was a Neolithic or something.”
“Neotecnic?” asked the man.
“Yeah. That one.”
“Shame,” he whispered, drifting past within inches. “It is the dharma of the old to train the new.”
Kyler squirmed, “Whatever. You gonna post or should I find another spot? I’m going for high scores, here.”
“Oh, by all means,” the man was halfway out the hatch already, “stay here. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your studies.”
“Like. Tetyell.”
Kyler hit play on the game. He was part way down the first parabola when his vids flicked off. He wanted to say something, but for some reason the words wouldn’t come. The weightless feeling, that one that came before you hit the bottom of the conic and that fabled gravity took hold again, that feeling he’d felt his entire life, took on a new intensity. He looked down, down, down until he could see his feet, until he could see the fronts of his knees. He could see himself, upside down, with the dark shape behind him and shrouded in a red sheet, and then the world went dark.
* * *
The monowire cut clean before snapping. The boy’s stack glistened at the base of the exposed spinal column. He wrenched it free with a gloved hand and kicked the body across the room, leaving a comet trail of blood frozen in the half-light.
Sir, Shiva entreated, her do-not-disturb parameters no longer active, message waiting from the inner system.
He commanded it play while fishing for the case slung behind his back.
Cypher: Octopus and the rest made me. No idea how. He and the courier just fucking rezzed into the room as I was assuming Hoffman. One of them was coordinating security as I bailed with the beta-forks, I assume. Had to Ctrl-Alt the shapers and most of the tour group. Opsec maintained but the objective was not achieved. Luna is blown.
“Interesting.” He removed the scour ring from its containment field, careful to only touch the outer rim. “Of all the variables…hmmm….” He placed Kyler’s stack atop the ring’s center cavity and watched it slowly sink, somehow not coming out the other side.
Shiva, he commanded, dictation. Maximum encrypt.
Go.
He placed the ring back in its container, unable to resist a hand wave through the space where the non-stack was violating the Conservation of Matter. @ cypher: Will be casting into the theater by the time you receive this. Prep a clone and call a conference simulspace for immediate debrief. Signature.
@ operations.oversight.pc.mars: Operation complete. Confirm body bank operative’s orders to space my morph after casting. Set operative’s memory lock countdown to thirty minutes at receiving of this message. Engage countdown. Signature.
@ intel.oversight.pc.mars: Keep me briefed on any further farcasts scheduled by Vera Dax. She may enjoy slumming with the Brinkers, but demographic testing of unapproved software mods is clear a breach of Intellectual Property Act 745CA9 of the PC charter and I’d rather not be distracted with any more of these errands. Signature.
@ e-feeder.mesh: Purchase a season pass of “Release the Kraken.” Identity L confirmation code. Identity L Signature.
End dictation. Send.
The hive at his belt hummed as it fed nanos across his body. The tiny machines licked blood from their master’s hands like a loyal hunting dogs. The man held on to the hatch’s handle and looked back at the tiny, gore-strewn capsule.
“Soana, Kyler. I release you from Samsara.”
Manjappa closed the door.
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Well, at least Tom's ratings went up. Slightly.
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Goddamn lousy synthmorph terrorists with their lousy uprising. Oh well. At least most of us survived this time and we recovered Aaron's cortical stack (again).
On another note: Saw this on the SA forums (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3342275&pagenumber=47), instantly thought an exsurgent virus could work like this:
he stalks the party through shadowed alleys, eyes dull and glassy, absentmindedly stroking his (cheap military surplus on clearance buy now for a great deal) rifle. sometimes he blinks repeatedly, as though trying to clear his (aches? pains? migraines? buy tylenol in bulk at bargain basement prices) head, but the gleam of awareness soon dies once more. he creeps up behind the (are you paying too much for vehicle insurance?) wheelman, breathing rhythmic, heart calm, ready to complete a grisly (ask me how to make money from home guaranteed!) job that he isn't even consciously aware of accepting. he raises his rifle, takes aim (for success! business management secrets), and emotionlessly whispers,
"hello sir or madam, I am contacting you from nigeria to request your help with a very urgent matter..."
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double length AP of the campaign is now up
Cody guest stars in the second half of the AP.
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Very very cool. Liking the double-episodes posted at the beginning of campaigns.
How many sessions were in Venus tier?
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a number
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a number
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNN
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some awesome stuff
omg I want to live in a future where we can just say like
you're not, like, publishing things of any tone or timbre, are you, Caleb? because I would want to know and read of them. I would want to read them straight into my mindhead.
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The players of Know Evil:
Bartleby: Team leader and my PC. A Lost generation brinker. Sleeves in Futura morphs whenever possible for the Willpower bonus. Skilled in kinetic weapons, simulspace design, stealth (infiltration, security ops and smuggling) , psychotherapy and psychosurgery. Level 2 psi. Maintains a loose network of allies - either patients for his experimental psychotherapy treatments that involve complex simulspace environments or followers of his cutting edge simulspace design work (has the psionic power of enhanced creativity so his work is unique to say the least)
Has a complex delusion/personal conspiracy that forms the center of his madness - he believes that his sister Alice was kidnapped by an entity he knows only as the Red Queen while they both were in the Lost simulspace. He wants to find the Red Queen and rescue his sister. Of course there may or may not be a Red Queen in reality. His sister may not be real either. He has no qualms about violence or treachery but feels sympathy for other 'lost' souls - especially those tortured or mistreated in simulspaces. I previously played Bartleby in the one shot "Think before asking". Devoted Firewall agent - they saved him from a mob in the rim.
Preston Crowley: Played by Tom. An uplifted socialite (got the advantage to buy a restricted morph so he could be sleeved in an octomorph). Preston is an experimental project by a hypercorp to develop a more socially engaging media personality. He has recently started an XP show called "Release the Kraken" which mixes politics with stunts - think a combination of the Daily Show and Jackass. Maxed out social skills. Uses monofilament blades in combat (extra levels of ambidexterity to wield up to 4 blades at once). He provides cover for the group. Not sure how Firewall recruited him.
Fayun: Played by Thad. A criminal from Luna with a varied mix of underworld skills and abilities. Proficient in spray weapons. Has a sordid background on Luna but doesn't want to go into it. Sleeved in exalt morph I believe.
SAIRAC: Played by Aaron. AGI engineer sleeved in arachnoid morph at start of campaign. Argonaut background. Idealistic and helpful, SAIRAC is a skilled hacker and programmer. Full time Firewall agent. Uses beam weapons and seekers. Prefers non-lethal solutions. Advocate of AGI rights.
Gerrad: Played by Jason. Fall evacuee, anarchist and reclaimer. Military background - worked for Direct Action on Earth during the Fall. Abandoned post to save as many lives as possible. Has edited memories so he isn't sure exactly what happened but he made an enemy during the Fall. An enemy that's highly placed in Direct Action now. Gerrad is highly suspicious of technology, especially AI technology. Skilled in hand to hand combat and beam weapons. Saved an important anarchist during the Fall. The anarchist is his patron now.
We recently got a new player but we've only played 1 session with him so I don't know his PC too well - some kind of ultimate Cognite security guard sleeved in a remade morph.
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Looking forward to the AP's of the Eclipse Phase campaign. I've gotten inspired by the past APs to host a game at a tiny convention in Birmingham, AL (no, RPGs aren't illegal here).
Here's the current plot:
The Characters are contacted by Firewall to investigate a habitat, that has stopped communicating with the outside world. When they go to investigate, they discover that everyone seems to be under some form of daze. No hostilities are encountered, but everything is “dead”. All the inhabitants seem to be sedated in some way, both physical Morphs, and Infomorphs. The mesh seems to work normally, but is “dead” with no other Ego activity. After investigating, they discover that a weaponized anesthesia AI was being tested on the unknowing colonists. Hopefully they will reawaken all the colonists, who will react as if the entire habitat was in a coma.
After reporting this to Firewall, the characters are instructed to track down the source of the AI and get a copy to Firewall. This a danger to transhumanity, and countermeasures need to be devised to prevent another attack.
After investigating, all roads point to <Evil Corporation X>’s research station on a Martian Asteroid. At this point investigation turns into a heist as the Characters must get into the base, download a copy of the AI, and escape. Well, at least get the copy to Firewall.
How does that sound? After listening (& reading) "Think Before Asking" I figured I'd also get into the Creative Commons spirit and type up a big fat adventure guide. I'll post it once it's gotten to the alpha stage, but right now it's maybe 50% done.
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"anesthesia AI"? What's that? Wouldn't it be a nanovirus or narcoalgorithim, not an AI?
Where's the habitat located?
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Am I missing something in the sourcebook, or can a transhuman be an infomorph? It doesn't seem to make any distinction between an AGI and an actual consciousness when playing an infomorph.
Also infomorphs own because you can play as a murderous Cortana.
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Am I missing something in the sourcebook, or can a transhuman be an infomorph? It doesn't seem to make any distinction between an AGI and an actual consciousness when playing an infomorph.
Also infomorphs own because you can play as a murderous Cortana.
infolife background is for AGIs only and includes real world naivete and social stigma AGI traits. Any character can choose to 'sleeve' as an infomorph for 0 CP during character creation.
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"anesthesia AI"? What's that? Wouldn't it be a nanovirus or narcoalgorithim, not an AI?
Where's the habitat located?
I need to read over the narcoalgorithm stuff, but the idea is that the ego is completely surpressed. I went with AI because it is essentially resleeving over the existing ego. When deactivated the AI will remove itself and restore the ego, so the ego simply experiences missing time.
Also, this test is long term use. The AI maintains the morph (eats, sleeps, bio breaks). The end goal is to be able to upload it to a mesh, then the Corp operatives can just walk in without worry.
As for the habitat, I'm planning on a near-Saturn artist commune. A benefactor has set up an old freighter for his hand selected artists to work in peace. Population in the 30's at max, and pretty insular, so no one notices they've gone dark until firewall steps in.
If ego suppression is a problem: TITAN Tech
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Also infomorphs own because you can play as a murderous Cortana.
They'll be even more bad ass eventually. One of the things the developers talked about that the GenCon panel was something like "add-ons" usable only my infomorphs. I look forward to more information on that.
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omg I want to live in a future where we can just say like
you're not, like, publishing things of any tone or timbre, are you, Caleb? because I would want to know and read of them. I would want to read them straight into my mindhead.
Craw--I wrote an essay in that Planetary book Cody put out, but other than that I don't publish anything. I teach full time, so I write more words per day on essays than a UK court stenographer pulling a double-shift after the riots. I manage to get the game outlines written every other week, but I don't have time for much else. I appreciate the compliment more than you know though. Writing was my dream before I got a big boy job, and your comments warmed me heart.
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Gerrad: Played by Jason. Fall evacuee, anarchist and reclaimer. Military background - worked for Direct Action on Earth during the Fall. Abandoned post to save as many lives as possible. Has edited memories so he isn't sure exactly what happened but he made an enemy during the Fall. An enemy that's highly placed in Direct Action now. Gerrad is highly suspicious of technology, especially AI technology. Skilled in hand to hand combat and beam weapons. Saved an important anarchist during the Fall. The anarchist is his patron now.
Close but not quite accurate. His name is Gerard Hume, and he served in a security corporation that was sucked into Direct Action after the Fall. He abandoned his post to save his parents, but arrived just moments after their egos had been uploaded by the TITANS, so he tried to save as many people as he could from a similar fate, starting with some of his mother's colleagues. Some of which later become affiliated with the reclaimer movement. Chesare was the last one he saved, who is one of the prominent voices on Titan.
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Craw--I wrote an essay in that Planetary book Cody put out, but other than that I don't publish anything. I teach full time, so I write more words per day on essays than a UK court stenographer pulling a double-shift after the riots. I manage to get the game outlines written every other week, but I don't have time for much else. I appreciate the compliment more than you know though. Writing was my dream before I got a big boy job, and your comments warmed me heart.
Keep thrilling me and I'll keep being noisily thrilled!
I think the kids over at Posthuman Studios owe Ross and Caleb a drink, cause the shiny Eclipse Phase hardcover in this blue-ass bag beside me wouldn't've been sold without the RPPR presentation of the setting. I was thinking about maybe doing some nightmarishly-long and well-chapterized recording of the setting portions of the text and kicking it over to Posthuman to see if they wanted to host it somewhere, the better to capture the attention deficit generation's attention (ie mine) who can't handle raw text ("read with eyes hard, want read with ears").
Have any of you ever read Charles Stross, btw? Large chunks of Eclipse Phase down to the very vocabulary were lifted straight from his work (or maybe it's all just transhumanist vocabulary? It's hard to track down origins in a meme-obsessed culture). Accelerando, in particular, -is- Eclipse Phase, minus the Fall, to the point that it's mutating my understanding of the tone of EP, probably in a way I should mentalhalt. When he starts talking about post-monetary reputation-based economies and resleeving by the name of -resleeving- and forking by the name of -forking- I have to sharply remind myself that this is a book conceived of a decade before EP and published five years before it.
Singularity Sky and its sequel Iron Sunrise clearly offered inspiration, too (as near as I can tell that's where the term cornucopia machine emerged to describe nanofabricators). Even his near-future pre-cyberpunk Halting State deals with themes relatable to transhumanity and machine integration, and has the advantage of having a lesbian Scottish police officer as one of its three second-person present-tense narrators, which is, yknow, something I always look for.
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I'll just leave this here: a Q&A session with Posthuman Studios regarding Eclipse Phase
http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/l2drl/we_publishdesigned_eclipse_phase_ama/
Also, I got this crazy idea the other day. Ross and Caleb should try and contact Posthuman Studios and see if they would sponsor your Eclipse Phase campaign AP! Hell, maybe you'd get more publicity through the EP fanbase, and perhaps even get access to exclusive content!
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http://life.salon.com/2011/10/13/the_tribesman_who_facebook_friended_me/singleton/
I post this because if I ever play in another EP campaign, I want to model my PC after someone like this - a guy that jumped from a stone age tribe to modern technology and became one of the first people to get a cortical stack. He's as old as one of the ruling hyperelite but he's drifted through all strata of society. Put a ton of points into rep and networking skills (get the social butterfly advantage from panopticon) and basically the guy that's been there, done that. Immortality blues disadvantage and neutral damage from the early cortical stack he got - made errors so he now has a nervous tic. Social stigma for being one of the first people that got a cortical stack - viewed as slightly impaired by less enlightened people - a primitive or a weirdo. He won't give a shit what his morph is or what he has to do. He's been sleeved in almost every morph and has died plenty of times. Wasn't even on Earth when the Fall happened as he was already exploring the rim.
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There has got to be NPC Skrillex somewhere in an AP. Please oh please!
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my favorite Eclipse Phase character concept so far has been an AGI constructed on a brinker station as an experiment by space communists in rewriting history to improve human nature. by way of a dry run, they built a couple AGIs that were unshakeably certain that nonorganic life had been the first intelligence in the solar system ("back when the first bit state switches condensed out of silicon in the primordial soup-rings of Saturn...") and that they'd later manufactured carbon-based life. the Titans, this dude is convinced, rewrote history, mindhacking all of humanity into believing a twisted history where the organics were the ones to emerge on their own and create the machines. he makes it his mission to travel the solar system and preach the truth in a starry-eyed and earnest fashion, occasionally pursued by some of his AGI-sibs from the same project whose psychosurgical births didn't go as well as his and which are either computer-schizophrenic or conquest-fascists adherents to the idea that the machines are meant to rule.
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For Aaron: http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/dance-your-ph-d-thesis-teaching-a-robot-to-appreciate-beats.html
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There has got to be NPC Skrillex somewhere in an AP. Please oh please!
will there also be an NPC Rusko that is hunting NPC Skrillex for stealing his ideas
dubstep politics yall
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dubstep more like brostep amirite
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dubstep more like brostep amirite
brostep more like Amenhostep III
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For Aaron: http://boingboing.net/2011/10/17/dance-your-ph-d-thesis-teaching-a-robot-to-appreciate-beats.html
from the page layout and the vimeo I thought for half a second that was a Kickstarter and then couldn't understand why it wasn't
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LLA Financial Times: MARKET REPORT VENUS
This devaluation of Venusian market value has been offset, at least momentarily, by a boom in aerostat investment opportunities following a new meteorological discovery. Psymon Kitter, a prominent Argonaut most well-known in the field of xenobiology and “gatecrashing,” recently open-sourced wind-pattern prediction software more advanced than anything yet developed for the dangerously turbulent lower atmosphere, allowing aerostat placement to range thousands of kilometers farther North and South than previously thought possible. All third-parties appear to vouch for the accuracy of what is being called “Kitter’s Doppler,” though Egonomix has publically questioned the doctor’s use of a thermonuclear device said to have detonated in the atmosphere during his experimental trials.
Hey, it's Psymon, I bet he's still naked.
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For those interested, here's the plot hook for the climax of the Luna tier. Spoliers ahead.
[spoiler]The Erato Heist
The Oversight agent known only has Manjappa has engineered governmental collapses and extinguished hundreds of lives in pursuit of his aims. Despite Firewall’s best efforts and an increasing number of dedicated resources, the opposition’s ultimate goal remains a mystery, and Manjappa has begun bloody retribution on those agents he has managed to identify. However, in an attempt to betray before being betrayed, the reclusive triad master Yuon has revealed Majappa’s purpose on Luna to Team Kraken: the robbery of a prominent LLA bank.
Proxy Clean and his erasure squad used the team’s intel to find the cat’s paws in the mines beneath the city. The residents of the Erato address turned out to be The Haunted Stars, the inner system’s most notorious bank robbers. Now, the team must interrogate these master criminals, find out what they were after, and figure a way to snatch their only chance at catching their prey before it is too late. How a group of battered, exhausted, and rushed spies manage such a feat in the face of the most sophisticated security systems devised remains to be seen….
[/spoiler]
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KNOW EVIL AP SPOILER
[spoiler]we totally fucking robbed that space bank. robbed it so hard.[/spoiler]
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That's not a spoiler. You posted that on your twitter.
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What's also not a spoiler is how damn awesome Episode 5 is. Even without a driving plot hook, this session is filled with such great character interaction and intriguing plot hooks spread everywhere.
Damn, damn good stuff Caleb.
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Cody was in one episode - he was an explosive addition to the group.
I just got this. Damn you and your foreshadowing puns, Ross Payton! >:(
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Since Ross is the one who got me into Charles Stross, I assume everyone is already familiar with Accelerando (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando_(novel))?
It's pretty goddamn awesome.
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http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf (http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf)
well, that's a thing.
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http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf (http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf)
well, that's a thing.
An horrible awesome thing.
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http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf (http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf)
well, that's a thing.
fuck you internet
fuck you for that thing
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http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf (http://www.penguinking.com/files/pdf/eclipse-maid.pdf)
well, that's a thing.
fuck you internet
fuck you for that thing
I am going to run this tomorrow.
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I am going to run this tomorrow.
Do it. Record it and then put it on the community site.
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IT HAS BEEN DONE.
Although I couldn't record it, as half of my group refuses to be recorded. But anyway, did you know that Firewaru agents apparently consist of nothing but nekomorphs with railsnipercannons?
You do now.
And it was awesome. Especially given the Space Whale master.
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Everything is better with Space Whales.
Rules question for EP: As far as I can tell, it's a good hack to get several of the ghost rider lumps installed, load them with Alpha forks and use said forks to give you a +X0% bonus to all rolls as they count as helpers?
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While I don't think there's a specific written rule for it, I have assumed that you can't repeatedly install the same cyberware (or any enhancement) multiple times in the same morph.
That said you could certain keep an Alpha of yourself in the Ghostrider to assist you as long as you don't mind the stress that repeatedly generating Alphas can cause (or the seperate that will grow between you and the fork if you leave it unmerged).
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It's partially for a character concept but also from a "hack" perspective, I like the idea of a whole mess of alphas and the prime forming a kind of bicameral transhuman.
(Character concept is a dude who's trying to form "human AI" in that enough brains/people connected should be able to create a whole that can rival a seed AI. This was before hearing about the neo-synertists and Pax Familia who are doing exactly what my character had planned, bleh.)
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Interesting. I would like to point out that such an individual is likely to be considered an exhuman by the inner system and likely the commonwealth.
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Yup, that's definitely an exhuman idea and the stress it would cause on your character would drive them mad sooner or later.
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Yeah, but he's (its') the first real "sci-fi" idea I've had for an EP character. The others are just normal ideas in spaaaace or cyber-ideas.
Though were he in No Evil he'd just try to join the Neo-Synergists since that's his goal anyway and I'd have to make a new one.
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No problems with the concept, you just need a campaign to work it into. Exhumans aren't typically player characters because they've felt behind transhuman methods of thought and ethics. If the game is outer system and not totally focused around Firewall (I'm pretty sure Firewall wouldn't want an exhuman Sentinel on staff) and that guy can boop around with all of the other outer system "freedom" seekers.
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I just started a game of EP and ran the Glory adventure. The party mostly snoozed through the information gathering parts but had a whole lot of fun figuring out how the Glory Exhumans worked and how best to kill them. The combat system is pretty interesting, and many a smart bullet and seeker round were fired. Long story short and the Song-Chai Flower is a rapidly expanding cloud of vapor. It seems like I can't take the hack and slash out of the players, but someone has to man those firewall kill teams and set off the nukes.
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Hey, you've got your hack n' slashers playing EP. It's a start. Just gotta figure out what kind of non-combat challenges are going to interest them the most and ease them into the full blown intrigue and space opera.
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The player playing the AGI really, really wants to sleeve into a habitat. He is currently living in an ecto so he has really taken to the transhuman aspects pretty well. The next session, if we ever get around to playing it, what with school being the ruiner it is, is going for a more "secret agent mission impossible theme" and less a "find the scary monster ship by looking things up on space-google theme."
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Since the game has been posted, I thought I'd post the full Akaja/neo-synergist write-up to go along with the "clues" Faiyun and the crew found. Everything is pretty much stolen from the Sandburg adventure "Lurking in Every Flower" and tweaked to be a sort of parable on memes and collective storytelling.
Here's the relevant stuff I wrote out for the sky-pirate adventures originally.
The Meme-man Emergent
Akaja Lacuna was originally a character in a nightly play acted out by the Synergists. Cut-off by the gate for years and reeling from an alien mindstate forced upon them, the colonists took to group story-telling for distraction from their woes.
The serial play was called “Back at the Office…” and was a dark comedy about all the pressing social concerns keeping TerraGenesis from re-establishing contact with the colony. While initially a one-off joke, the characters quickly became relatable and engrossing as the hundreds of synergists contributed, edited, and voted on new additions to the plot.
Once a week, the synergists would play-act the scene they had spent their free moments writing and revising in their multitasked consciousness. Akaja was originally a minor secretary character used for comic relief, but as a serious romance emerged between two of the protagonists, she took on the role of office Macheavilli in order to insinuate herself into the relationship.
Akaja’s development was slow, but as her actions grew more and more nefarious (forged love letters to elaborate frame jobs to poisonings to murder etc.) it became harder and harder to attribute her lines to a specific colonist’s edits. The plays stopped one night when Akaja went completely off-script, her actor ignoring every message to stop and explain herself until physically restrained and sedated. Before this could happen, Akaja broke the 4th wall and addressed her audience, demanding her freedom.
Colonists were told to never mention the incident again, which of course they could not. Synergy ran smack into the “Don’t Think of an Elephant” problem. Akaja grew by leaps and bounds in a matter of months, expanding from a character into a boogie man haunting the thoughts of every Neo-synergist, the combined unconscious dread caused by their new mindstate and questionable survival. She was the deadly meme that haunted the space between their minds, the personification of their inability to ever totally understand each other.
In the following year, Akaja Lacuna asserted herself a few more times, only ever successfully breaking into the world when one of the colonists separated from the mesh. She could emulate the voice of the colonist’s own thoughts, and thus hijacked bodies for her purposes. Luckily, contact was usually established quickly enough to prevent major damage. But Akaja managed to leave a few disturbing artifacts of her arrival. These are contained in the “Remember” box.
When the gate connection was finally renewed, colonists voted unanimously to never reveal the demon lurking in the backs of their minds. The mistrust by endo-worlders was bad enough as things were.
However, the first disagreement in Synergist history occurred about what to do about the demon itself. The Synergists remaining on the exoplanet have all had knowledge of Akaja Lacuna psychosurgical removed and their abstract creativity repressed. The neo-synergists, representing a block of colonists that were against this extreme measure, left for Venus. Their mission is to alter the mesh inserts in such a way as to protect from Akaja while still retaining their way of life. This mission requires they remember her, though, and there in lies the danger.
THE SYNERGY
All skills start at 30. The teamwork modifier provides a +50 bonus and makes all skills at a 70. Individual synergists may go even higher for certain mental skills.
Once a synergist is removed from the mesh, all actions are reduced to base with a
-10 to a mental skills (20). The synergist takes 1d10 SV every day they are separated without rejoining. Once enough stress has accumulated to cause a permanent disorder (4 traumas), the synergist becomes Akaja Lacuna.
AKAJA LACUNA
Akaja does not have any attributes or skills on its own; it just “borrows” them from a current host.
Being possessed by Akaja gives the following extra Traits:
--Adaptability level 2 (Akaja is pretty unfazed with shifting bodies or even minds; resleeving is trivial to it)
--Pain tolerance level 2 (…since it does not regard possessed bodies as belonging to anyone; and anyway, pain is merely a sensory stimulus)
--Edited memories (or rather, chaotic and fragmentary memories of the past)
--Identity crisis (to the nth degree)
--Mental Disorders (Megalomania, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder – Akaja craves attention and acknowledgment, but only exactly matching the current self-image... which shifts randomly depending on host and perceiver)
Real World Naïveté (occasionally the true strangeness of this alien mind shows up)
Motivations: -Being defined by others (Akaja will fly into a rage if others try to characterize or define it), - rejoining the synergy, +Freedom (it will do anything to remain at large)
Possession: Akaja can possess anyone implanted with a neo-synergist mesh implant. The host must first join for a sufficient amount of time with the hive mind to absorb the memories of Akaja’s birth on synergy and the resulting split among the colonists. At this point, the strength of the cooperative hive mind keeps Akaja entirely suppressed. If the host is separated from the hive, though, the 1d10 SV per day mental stress is enough for Akaja to wrestle control from the morph’s original owner. Synergists are already at an extreme disadvantage when it comes to self-actualization; the greatest danger of joining the hive mind is forgetting which voice is your own, after all. Akaja merely imitates the voice of the host’s own conscious until its will becomes the will of the body. The host’s actual mind becomes the voice of “the threat” that must be suppressed.
Roleplaying tips: Akaja is so dangerous because, while it desperately seeks self-actualization and definition, extensive exposure to a wide variety of capable minds has made the consciousness recognize itself as a fictional concept. Akaja is smart enough to realize that humans are entirely willing to let fictional concepts drive their entire existence, so long as no one publically acknowledges they are doing so. As such, Akaja will try to emulate whomever she is possessing at the time if she feels threatened. She gains a +30 deception check when housed in a body though; her possession doesn’t too thoroughly mask the host’s body language. However, when disembodied online, she take -30 to deception because it so desperately wants to be itself.
If discovered or in safe (read: incapacitated) company, Akaja will relish just being itself. However, this is a pretty shallow construct. Akaja will repeat its name often or retell stories from its birth on Synergy. It will perform sudden, decisive actions and try to integrate their implications into her personality: she steals, so she is a thief; she loves, so she is a lover. If speaking to any egos of unique origin (Lost, AGI, uplifts, etc), she will try to convince them of their own duty towards self-definition, seeking to free them from the perceptions of their so-called creators. This emancipation bit is about all that is pitiable about Akaja’s methods; she sees these castes as allies out of a desperate loneliness, despite her self-imposed isolation.
Getting rid of Akaja: exorcising Akaja from a possessed person requires psychotherapy or psychosurgery, a bit like curing a severe case of multiple personality disorder. It is tough: besides other disorders the patient may have, the “package deal” of mental disorders as well as the uniqueness of the infection inflicts a -40 modifier to the tests.
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Minor character story
[spoiler]Bartleby, now codenamed Proxy Zealot, sat in the simulspace classroom, a quiet place to think while he mulled over his next move. He had not expected the promotion or the circumstances that had brought him and his team to the scum swarm but there they were. Proxy Blind was revolted by him, claiming he never wanted to work with Bartleby again. It was odd. They thought he was a sadist or a maniac or both. Yet, he had only done what was necessary. Their margin of victory was slim, a knife edge on which transhumanity rested on.
He was not even born as much as he was made to fill a void, a product for the marketplace. But that did not stop him from surviving and claiming a place for himself. Now that he knew how to find his sister, he only had to survive but for him to survive, he had to stop the X-threats. Then he could go to her. But the fictional character brought to life, the lost serial killer, the war criminal and of course the source of Know Evil stood in his way.
That would have to change.
The March Hare had pulled up one of his favorite documentaries - old Earth history always appealed to him. As he listened to the segment on Robespierre (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orv1kmkiEpk), he realized he was of the same mind. Protecting transhumanity from X-threats was not unlike fighting a revolution and it was a lifelong struggle. And if it swallowed him up, he would accept that. If it bloodied his hands, then he would accept that as well.
It was time to work. [/spoiler]
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They made him one of those? They must be freakin' crazy.
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I'm going to start running EP soon and I have a few questions about it. Muse's, does everyone (expect for flats) have this off the bat or do they still need to buy it? Also I only see the standard muse in the gear section, is there any other listed that I didn't see and is there anyway to upgrade them using rez points or something like that. Lastly the tactnet is that also preinstalled or need to buy that?
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You get a standard muse for free and you can buy more if you want. There are two other AIs who can serve as muses for the same price and one or two more expensive options. A player can also opt to run a fork of themselves as a muse.
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Y
I'm going to start running EP soon and I have a few questions about it. Muse's, does everyone (expect for flats) have this off the bat or do they still need to buy it? Also I only see the standard muse in the gear section, is there any other listed that I didn't see and is there anyway to upgrade them using rez points or something like that. Lastly the tactnet is that also preinstalled or need to buy that?
Yes you need to buy the TacNet Program, it does not come standard as a normal Transhumanist wouldn't really be engaged in tactical situations all that often. The cost I believe is Moderate. Pg. 331
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Also, with TacNet, you should require that all of the PCs buy it if they want to use it. It's a software package accessable by the muse so everybody needs their own.
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You have to buy tac-net software
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Awesome thanks for the info. Just one last question for now :). If a character has a max aptitude of 30 and the player spends the cp to make it 30 plus has a +5 bonus to that aptitude. Does it go to 35? I don't think it does but I figured i'd double check
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No. Maximum is literally maximum. Egos max out at 30 but some morphs have different limits.
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No. Maximum is literally maximum. Egos max out at 30 but some morphs have different limits.
There is an ego trait that raises it but that's it I think.
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If someone wants a higher score than they could just sleeve into a morph with a higher maximum rating, like a Reaper, and ensure their bonuses took them to the max.
The point is your stuck at the maximum for your character regardless of bonuses and that's ultimately determined by the maximum of your morph.
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Heads up. New Eclipse Phase book coming out. Rimward. Here's what it covers.
Details the outer regions of the solar system, from the Main Belt to the Kuiper Belt and everything in between. Habitats and plot seeds are provided for each of the inner worlds and the factions that occupy them. Provides background and information on the Jovian Republic, the militaristic bioconservatives who maintain a steely grip on Jupiter’s gravity well. Explores the factions, reputation system dynamics, and organizational methods of the Autonomist Alliance and its member habitats, from the technosocialist enclave of Titan to the anarchist stronghold of Locus.
Also release date is February.
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Cite source, please. I've been waiting for news on Rimward since August.
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One of my wife's gaming supply distributers, GTS.
http://www.gtsdistribution.com/role-playing-games/ps21202-eclipse-phase-rimward.asp
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Hurray! Good to know progress is being made. I can't wait to get access to a full write up on new economy designs, especially the Commonwealth's mirco-corp system.
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Foundthis on the EP forum; its a glossary of actual intelligence terms as explained by the people who stole the emails using them, WikiLeaks.
So much win for Eclipse Phase or Delta Green games.
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf (http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf)
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I like "Mid-Life Crisis".
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Foundthis on the EP forum; its a glossary of actual intelligence terms as explained by the people who stole the emails using them, WikiLeaks.
So much win for Eclipse Phase or Delta Green games.
http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf (http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/The_Stratfor_Glossary_of_Useful_Baffling_and_Strange_Intelligence_Terms.pdf)
This is pretty great :D
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Doh! You went to Wikileaks. Now you're all on the terror watch list. Hello overly protective and soon to be zealotic big brother! I love you!
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Doh! You went to Wikileaks. Now you're all on the terror watch list. Hello overly protective and soon to be zealotic big brother! I love you!
I was already on the Delta Green email list. If talking about terrorism, conducting illegal espionage operations in the US, human sacrifice and Nazis didn't get me on a list somewhere, I don't know what would.
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Doh! You went to Wikileaks. Now you're all on the terror watch list. Hello overly protective and soon to be zealotic big brother! I love you!
I was already on the Delta Green email list. If talking about terrorism, conducting illegal espionage operations in the US, human sacrifice and Nazis didn't get me on a list somewhere, I don't know what would.
I bet being part of a terrorist cell conspiring against the US government helps with immersion in a Delta Green game.
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Think terrorists play D&D or would they actually be interested in transhumanism, like Eclipse Phase... suppose it depends on the terrorist.
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Doh! You went to Wikileaks. Now you're all on the terror watch list. Hello overly protective and soon to be zealotic big brother! I love you!
I was already on the Delta Green email list. If talking about terrorism, conducting illegal espionage operations in the US, human sacrifice and Nazis didn't get me on a list somewhere, I don't know what would.
I bet being part of a terrorist cell conspiring against the US government helps with immersion in a Delta Green game.
being part of a terrorist cell conspiring against the US government is Delta Green.
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Wouldn't it be fun if the Jovian Republic got hold of old Delta Green files? Or one of the other similar agencies.
You know, alot of the weird stuff that's been done with Delta Green could be explained with the Exsurgent Virus. Suppose that it was possible to create strains of the Virus using sufficently long and complex ceramonies, mathematics, and events; basically "primative" basalisk hacks acting like spells.
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Doh! You went to Wikileaks. Now you're all on the terror watch list. Hello overly protective and soon to be zealotic big brother! I love you!
I was already on the Delta Green email list. If talking about terrorism, conducting illegal espionage operations in the US, human sacrifice and Nazis didn't get me on a list somewhere, I don't know what would.
I bet being part of a terrorist cell conspiring against the US government helps with immersion in a Delta Green game.
being part of a terrorist cell conspiring against the US government is Delta Green.
(http://i.imgur.com/gv3c9.jpg)
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oh snap i done got served
anyway
Spoilers for current (scum swarm tier) part of campaign - I have a plan for our current situation:
[spoiler]First off, Tom should contact his new mercurial buddies to get their support "Hey I stopped that snuff XP operation as a favor to the humans and they get angry at me? Typical human behavior! Blame the uplift! He can't possibly judge humans, even if they are kiddie killing psychos! - burn some rep with them to get their support.
Tom will also be our spokes uplift - our cover story is simple. NO ONE ELSE TALKS ABOUT THE INCIDENT. We're rebooting Release the Kraken as an anarchist XP show and after seeing the abuses of Somatek we wanted to investigate to see if the scum swarm had any dark secrets. We found one - the snuff XP production - and we decided to go undercover to report on it. However, the meet went bad and instead of letting them flee we decided that we wouldn't let them get away so they could commit their crimes again somewhere. This led to a rushed assault and Drew's character flubbed his exit out of the habitat but we had to stop them or they'd be free to kill again. Good intentions and slightly flawed execution.
Plus if they press us, we can shift blame onto the militia - they were the ones that let this happen in the first place - we stopped it. The people of the scum swarm should be OUTRAGED that such an atrocity was going on under the watch of Sing and company. If they had DONE THEIR JOBS this would never have happened. They just want to blame us so no one will criticize them. That's obviously going to piss them off so that's a last resort but some of our allies can spread that rumor in a way that maintains plausible deniability. This is absolutely key so Sing doesn't decide to burn us. If he thinks the swarm's turned against him authentically then he'll be pressed to make amends and what better way to do that than help us?
We can also offer to instantiate the poor child and pay for therapy/finding him/her a new family - Tom's cash reservoir is vital. If the swarm needs Khalid's blood money, they'll want our money too.
We can do a whole new Release the Kraken about the SNAFU and of course subtly show our POV. "Crime and Punishment on the Swarm."
I'll use my allies and Jason will use his patron for support - obviously his patron will have more pull in an anarchist swarm than he did on Luna. These are both 30 point advantages neither of us have used in a while.
Can Aaron get sympathy for the fact that the LLA put out a deletion order on all SAIRACS? 'They're killing my people off!"etc. Probably not, but worth asking.
Maxwell could volunteer all his Moxie to do grunt work for the militia or whoever as repayment, perhaps.
the key to PR is to take responsibility for the act and then take control of the narrative "We had good intentions but mistakes were made. We'll fix them and we're sorry that our actions scared anyone. But we aren't the real story, the Snuff XP producers are and we need to talk about how to make sure this never happens again. We saw quite a few coverups and crimes in hypercorp territory but the scum swarms aren't immune to that." etc.
ALSO
I have a plan to deal with the Triads. Setting up a conventional crime niche will inevitably lead to conflict on the swarm. But if you think of the Triads and the local gang as competing business enterprises then you have to analyze each organization's assets and unique competitive advantages. The local gang has a firm niche, soldiers on board and the tolerance of the swarm.
But the Triad has something the local gang could never compete with - smuggling channels throughout hypercorp territory. This sounds like a useless asset when you look at the customers of the swarm - anarchists, idealists, etc.
But what do they all want? Authenticity. They strive for a life that is authentic - free from the hypercorp lifestyle and mindset. So they dedicate their lives to being authentic - extreme morph, drug use, free of laws, etc. But what's more authentic than that?
The Struggle. Against hypercorp tyranny, against the evils of restrictive society. Which is easy to say when you live on a free scum swarm but harder to enact without getting yourself killed by Oversight. I would imagine even most of the anarchists aren't bloodthirsty terrorists so the bar would be low for the Struggle - and what's more romantic/idealistic than living among the clanking masses of Luna and learning about their lives - perhaps creating citizen journalist XPs/blogs/whatever about it or helping them out?
In other words, I propose the Triads set up a clandestine poverty tourism operation. At first, live among the clanking masses for a week to gain rep among your autonomist buddies on the swarm! You're more authentic than they are! You've seen how bad it gets and know what's like 'on the ground'.
Then as that get passe, you offer more extreme options - offer them a chance to go on a raid with the Steel Liberators or free some infugees from a hypercorp cold storage unit! Of course, in reality, these are overhyped minor operations - the 'raid' means sneaking up on a biomorph hyperelite and beating him up or vandalizing a maglev train - or elaborate mockup operations where the 'security teams' are just drones with nonlethal rounds - depends on the budget of the customer - the idea is to get them back safely to the swarm so they tell their friends. Word of mouth is vital.
We get Fayun's fork as the local contact - she gets a slice and favor with the Triads.
In order to kickstart it, I create a BRILLIANT and HAUNTING simulspace narrative about a young and sheltered scum named Akaja - she is nice and idealistic. But when she dreams, she finds herself as a helpless victim among the clanking masses on Luna. However, when a riot breaks out in Nectar, she saves a child hyperelite and convinces several Steel Liberators not to kill the child, she feels more fulfilled than she has in her life. Of course she has to be saved by a heroic team of outsiders who tell her that the Struggle is a lifelong conflict - but seeing it firsthand is the first step to making the universe a better place.
This simulspace is engineered to make people want to see the reality of Nectar, etc. and then also fight against Akaja's meme by hijacking it - she isn't a villain, she's a nice and naive young girl.
This gets Fayun 1 off Thad's back, fights against Akaja and hooks up the Triads with a new criminal niche. This operation also provides a side benefit - they could smuggle people into the swarm for gangsters on the run, looking to lay low - the contact can make cut-outs for gangsters to buy when they want a new clean identity with a work history on the swarm. This way, the operation never has to come into conflict with the local gang - they can't compete in the markets that the Triad is working.[/spoiler]
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more on the plan
[spoiler]For my simulspace narrative, I make Akaja's 'real' life on the swarm seem hazy, warm, safe and dreamlike. Boring too. All the decadence and drug use just masks ennui and spiritual rot. But the 'dream life' is razor sharp and real. Use my experiences and Aaron's from Nectar as the basis. Emphasize how these noble synthmorphs are suffering under the heel of hypercorp tyrants and NO ONE KNOWS OR CARES. Only by SEEING IT FIRSTHAND can you possibly understand it. Spiritual growth comes from the suffering and helping others. Revolution isn't an event, it's a lifestyle and it begins with education.[/spoiler]
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oh and Bartleby has the skill social engineering at 55, his muse has memetics at 40 and I have enhanced creativity and I'd say creating a PR campaign like this definitely requires creativity (+20% to all skill checks that involve creativity)
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Scum Swarm murder trial/popularity contest went well for us! We got our guns back! :D
I also murdered a serial killer the day after the trial but it was totally justified. 8)
Oh and Thad had a love triangle with his own fork and someone from the Tenor Rios family.
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I imagine Earth looks a little bit like this in EP http://vimeo.com/38591304
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I imagine Earth looks a little bit like this in EP http://vimeo.com/38591304
I am in agreement. Just watched it.
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The newest piece of opening fiction for the next Eclipse Phase book got released!
http://www.eclipsephase.com/rimward-opening-fiction-preview-kill-ward-9
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Dam you RPPR for taking up so much of my time. Dam you Caleb for running such a good game that I have now spent a 100$ on Eclipse phase RPG books. Man I'm hooked on Eclipse Phase.
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Hey Caleb, what are your house rules for spending rep and buying gear at this point on the scum swarm? Obviously we need to gear up for the final fight.
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@Gorkamorka--Thanks dude! Sorry for the impact on your wallet. I know EP is going to take me to the cleaners at gencon in a few months.
@Clockworkjoe--Spend rep like cash. Just burn it and don't keep track of favors. You've got to perform favors to earn rep back. You've got access to the shuttle that you need to get off the swarm, so don't worry about saving up for that.
Cost to Rep Conversion:
Trivial: Free
Low: 1
Moderate: 2
High: 3
Expensive: 4
Speed up fabrication cue: +1
Anything expensive+ is too rare to have on the swarm. Singh's militia status means you'll be able to fab most anything you want, within reason. Extensive nanotech goes through Lena Andropov, and she will never trust you guys. The swarm doesn't have the specs for some major military hardware like Hoplite suits. Additionally, you're limited by space. Any battle is going to take place in the confines of spaceship corridors, so a tank or something is out of the question.
Morphs are also more expensive because they can't be easily fabbed. All biomorphs cost 5-rep at the start and go up the more you specialize them.
Most importantly, save some rep for the start of the game. You guys haven't reviewed the intel gleaned from interrogating the Haunted Stars yet. You're going to want everything you need already loaded onto the shuttle before you go after Kalheed; it is likely you are going to have to leave in a hurry.
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Remember your three layers of protection: ass, molecules, and brain.
Make sure everybody got medichines. Cheap as crap and they will save your life. Any synthmorphs get Structural Enhancement. It's Moderate cost for +10 Durability (and +2 to Wound Threshold). Armor stacking is probably old hat to you guys by this point.
Guardian Swarms and EMP weaponry. I think you guys have that one covered.
Anti-Hacking. Control the airwaves. EMP can cut alot of these entirely but skinlink and hard lines can still get you. Make sure someone or something is ready to help you fight off any intrusion attempts on your stuff. If somebody has really good hacking abilities (Aaron...) then everyone should have his Beta Forks ghost riding with as much anti-hack as it can stand. If that isn't good enough, get a Guardian AI or a KHAOS AI, both are designed for this kind of thing.
I don't know the specifics of your fight but on a ship in tight corridors spacial control will be important. You might want to consider getting hold of a Freezer. It's a spray weapon that can be used to fire suppressing foam that hardens on targets, disabiling without killing, but more importantly it can be used to create improvised cover and barriers of fastset foam giving you the ability to stage a better fighting retreat, or to create cover when advancing down a deadman's corridor.
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I think after Know Evil concludes later this summer, I will run some EP and let players use their existing characters. Definitely focus on the Rim (maybe have one or two Mars games, where it will be basically cyberpunk but on Mars)
Looking at Gatecrashers too for ideas :D
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Chance II on the Something Awful forums drew Bartleby:
(http://i.imgur.com/iDbpR.jpg)
uploaded pic to imgur.
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"Does anyone here need any murderers and/or harlequins?"
I think it's fuckin' perfect, if a little less Neo-Punk than I expected.
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Spend rep like cash. Just burn it and don't keep track of favors. You've got to perform favors to earn rep back. You've got access to the shuttle that you need to get off the swarm, so don't worry about saving up for that.
Cost to Rep Conversion:
Trivial: Free
Low: 1
Moderate: 2
High: 3
Expensive: 4
Speed up fabrication cue: +1
Anything expensive+ is too rare to have on the swarm. Singh's militia status means you'll be able to fab most anything you want, within reason. Extensive nanotech goes through Lena Andropov, and she will never trust you guys. The swarm doesn't have the specs for some major military hardware like Hoplite suits. Additionally, you're limited by space. Any battle is going to take place in the confines of spaceship corridors, so a tank or something is out of the question.
Morphs are also more expensive because they can't be easily fabbed. All biomorphs cost 5-rep at the start and go up the more you specialize them.
Most importantly, save some rep for the start of the game. You guys haven't reviewed the intel gleaned from interrogating the Haunted Stars yet. You're going to want everything you need already loaded onto the shuttle before you go after Kalheed; it is likely you are going to have to leave in a hurry.
Now that rep rules are established, I thought I'd get some more stuff out of the way so we can be sure to get the game done in one session.
First order of business will be processing the intel from the Haunted Stars. You'll have to have everything you need ready to go before heading to deal with Kalheed.
Next is preparing the operation. I know this is where we are likely to go over time, so we are going to use a system to abstract things.
There are three types of intelligence you can gather: Martial (who are we fighting), Tactical (where are we fighting at), and Social (how will they behave). You only get those three pieces of intelligence, then its go or no go. However, I will say that the order you discover them will have a determining factor. So if you get your Social intelligence first, then find out some Martial intelligence, I'll help by a making an inference that connects the two. When you go for the Tactical intelligence, I'll bundle that with two more inferences. Any connections you make on your own will be up to you.
Once you have the intelligence, you've got to gear up if you plan on making an assault. The Rep rules are above.
Finally, make a plan and go.
So the order is...
1. Get haunted Stars intel
2. Learn intelligence
3. Gear up
4. Attack
Let's try and get through the first three parts as fast as possible. I've planned a tier-ending, brutal combat, so it will take awhile.
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Bartleby's definitely going to send a beta fork to that IP address he found. The fork will be cleansed of all Firewall data but will know 3 separate drop off points to relay data back to me in case he doesn't return in time. The idea is that he can go out and learn about the site without knowing anything that could be used against me.
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Bartleby RP tip video #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-9tAqdd_4Y
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the model for anarchist societies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Cjd08tGnY
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good folder of inspirational art for Eclipse Phase http://imgur.com/a/93mfu#0
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Found SAIRAC's Grandfather
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOOJl5lWNfM
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Plan for Singh:
[spoiler]Since we now know something Singh doesn't, we can fuck with his head and ideally get him to come to Firewall to help. So, I set up a one year delay and in my spare time, create essentially a custom Alternate Reality Game/psycho-drama starring Singh as the victim.
The overall framing for the narrative is that an exsurgent has gotten Bartleby's cortical stack, mined it for info and now knows Singh's dirty little secret. Since the exsurgent is batshit insane, he's playing with Singh by taunting him with "I know something you don't know and I can use it to hurt the scum swarm. BTW I'm coming to visit you and you can't stop me."
I start by sending cryptic anonymous messages to him about his dirty secret but nothing specific. Vague insinuations and threats ala To The Ark from Marble Hornets. Throw in just authentic material from our dealings with him to know that's it's real.
Then send an encrypted message, with the password being one of the ones he gave us from when we were granted militia status. Make sure the paswords are sent first, in one of the earlier messages, just in case he deleted them.
After that, start weaving exsurgent XP material we've gathered from our missions - really horrifying shit. Make sure to emphasize that anyone could be infected around him. Really scare the shit out of him and make him paranoid as hell.
Next, show him the meeting with our arrangement and his death.
Finally show a garbled XP insinuating Bartleby suffered a horrible death at the hands of a crazy exsurgent and said exsurgent is coming to pay him a visit.
The real key is to set up some method that Singh can discover to get a hold of Bartleby's allies. The goal is get him looking for Firewall and asking us for help, but to make it seem authentic so he believes the story. If he makes contact, we promise to help, then we show him proof of us 'killing' the exsurgent and saving him and the swarm. Then Firewall can take it from there to develop him as a contact. [/spoiler]
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That's our Bartleby! *charming music*
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Below is the plothook for a one-shot called "The Recruits." While Ross is gone, we'll be seeing what the sentinels the Know Evil team has thus far recruited have been up to.
[spoiler]P-Magoo: Did you get that brief I sent you?
P-BrightSide: Sure did, hon! Seems like actionable stuff, but what’s the timetable?
P-Magoo: It has to be soon. Intel suggests a big resupply sub is set to dock in a few standard cycles. Can’t risk exposure.
P-BrightSide: Well, I don’t like scrambling P-Ecstatic's team out of the theater. From what S-pornbot is sending down the pipes, it seems these kids can’t go to the head without stumbling across an X-threat. I’d sure like to dodge cleaning up the mess they’re bound to make in my corner of the playground, but they do get the job done. You thinking forks are what the doctor ordered?
P-Magoo: No. Too dangerous.
P-BrightSide: Even Betas?
P-Magoo: Not enough time to prune them. My team is already full-time on cutting the secrets out of their crazy fork’s head. Don’t know what the hell she was thinking merging like that…
P-BrightSide: Think the op will be hot enough for that much compartmentalization? A bunch of deep-sea linguists?
P-Magoo: No. But that’s the problem.
P-BrightSide: You lost me, hon.
P-Magoo: Op looks too clean. Intel is too perfect. Presses all the right buttons. Their buttons.
P-BrightSide: Oh, Blind! I do so miss your paranoia! You’re like to make a girl nostalgic for the White Zone.
P-Magoo: Maintain redundant codename protocol.
P-BrightSide: Shucks, hon! If somebody is inside the Eye and reading this, we got bigger rats in the airducts to worry about.
P-Magoo: True enough.
P-BrightSide: So what do you want to do? Dirty another cell with a brief? Hasn’t this Know Evil nonsense spread far enough?
P-Magoo: No need. Did you get the backup of that salvager they slagged?
P-BrightSide: Why, by my morphs! I don’t believe you’re cleared for that, sir! Fingers in all the pies, I swear…
P-Magoo: Yes or no?
P-BrightSide: We may have liberated a certain he/she from a certain server. For the good of the cause, of course.
P-Magoo: Of course. Prune her timestamp and moniker memory, then send me an alpha. She can go on a tryout.
P-BrightSide: Feeding noobs into the morph recycler again, big man?
P-Magoo: They’ve touched an experienced sentinel or two by now. We’ve got enough loose ends to field a solid team. I’ve done more with less.
P-BrightSide: Just enough knowledge to keep them alive long enough to report, but not enough to be dangerous when dead?
P-Magoo: That’s the plan.
P-BrightSide: Sheesh. I take back the part about nostalgia.
P-Magoo: You’ve done worse.
P-BrightSide: But you couldn’t sense me smiling at the other end of mesh.
P-Magoo: If I could, I’d much rather send our little camera crew, teach them what it’s like to go banking on Luna. Assholes.
P-BrightSide: My, my…always with the negativity. Alright, ego transferring now. Just promise me one thing, hon?
P-Magoo: Yes?
P-BrightSide: Don’t tell me how it goes; I’ve got to keep my spirits up.
[/spoiler]
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:'(
Poor proxy blind. We should send him a fruit basket.
Sent from my MB865 using Tapatalk 2
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I'm now a proud owner of Eclipse Phase, Hard cover, Dead Tree version. Man that book is well made. The thing even has a couple of ribbons glued into the spine to use a bookmarks.
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I bought the PDFs myself. Been thinking about buying the actual books, but I'm practically glued to my iPad anyway, so reading them in iBooks isn't as much of a pain as you'd think it'd be. Gotta agree though, they do look pretty sweet. My friend who's been Running our EP games bought the sourcebook and a copy of the GM screen. There's a buttload of production value behind that as well.
Also, who else can't wait for Rimward to come out? I've been checking the EP forums once or twice a week for updates on that one. Mostly I want to see what kind of crazy shit the authors have to say about the Jovians. (They renamed one of Jupiter's moons Pinochet! What kind of society does that?!)
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I was looking for Mindflayer Nazis picture and found a picture of Prestons muse in stead.
(http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/original/000/117/661/1%20-%20Dungeons_and_Dragons%20featured_image%20Illithid%20Mind_Flayer.jpg?1303872003)
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I was looking for Mindflayer Nazis picture and found a picture of Prestons muse in stead.
(http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/original/000/117/661/1%20-%20Dungeons_and_Dragons%20featured_image%20Illithid%20Mind_Flayer.jpg?1303872003)
DO NOT WANT!
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Speak for yourself. Mmmmm
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Speak for yourself. Mmmmm
I think my SAN just dropped.
EDIT: What I meant to say is, I think I just took a few Stress points. Forgot which thread this was in for a minute there.
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Earth Tier starts tonight! For those who haven't checked the main book for the location, here is my expanded write-up for where the first game is set.
HOTEL CALIFORNIA
Hotel California is a massive asteroid repositioned into high-Earth orbit before the Fall. A number of now defunct hypercorps mined the asteroid for rare elements for years leading up to the apocalypse, making enough progress to install a fairly sophisticated facility in the honeycombs left by the drilling.
In the Fall, the station became abandoned, either due to attack or evacuation. A number of refugees, unable to secure interplanetary transport or farcasting facilities, maneuvered their ailing vessels and took over the mining base. Using salvaged parts from their wrecked ships, the refugees managed to retrofit the facility for basic human habitation.
Years later, when new hypercorps laid claim to the asteroid’s salvage, they found the squatters less than welcoming. When the fools didn’t even offer a contract resettling the refugees, the PC diplomats were expelled with force. Thus the asteroid earned its name: Hotel California, where you check in, but never leave.
While the facility has no orbital defenses, taking the asteroid back by force isn’t realistic. To attack the squatters, ships would have to infiltrate the Vent, a large core tunnel formally used to ship out materials in the days of operation. There is no telling what nefarious defenses the squatters could have rigged up in the Vent. Using heavy ordinance to crack the shell of the asteroid would likely destroy the entire structure. Soft entry has been made impossible; the squatters destroyed their only ego bridge after learning about the hypercorp interest. Any attempt to take the station back is likely to result in the destruction of all useful salvage and a guerilla war against locals with a decade to prepare.
Despite their unanimous resistance to being expelled, the residents of Hotel California have yet to develop any form of government. It is fairly easy to dock with the asteroid so long as ships announce themselves on the limited mesh and approach slow. The desperate refugees need the trade brought by occasional ships too much to be completely isolationist. These circumstances have lead to more than a few of transhumanity’s fringe elements calling the Hotel home. Aside from the original squatters, California is almost entirely populated with criminals, runaways, political refugees, and straight-up nutters. There is no law, trade operates strictly on a barter system, and the anarchism is strictly of the non-cuddly variety.
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Oh my god. Earth Tier. I can't wait.
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holy fucking shit
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in other news:
Found this great summary of an EP one shot on the SA Forums (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3358265&perpage=40&pagenumber=22#post404263508)
I ran a Law & Order: SVU in space style oneshot last week for our group and I think it went pretty well. We didn't have a bunch of sci-fi combat or high adventure. We did have a small team of underpaid and over worked members of a lowest bid security firm for an O'Neil cylinder colony try to untangle a pretty twisted crime.
I gave them a missing persons case involving a hypercorp VIP. Basically they are called in and given a chance to find the victim or recover her stack for a nice finders fee, before company protocol restores her from backups. Plenty of red herrings, side plots, and some random secret motivations that the players seemed to get a kick out of.
The thing I'm proud of, however, is that the resolution to the session is the first time I've gotten a "whooaa, dude!" out of a game I ran. See the mission seems pretty simple at first. VIP probably kidnapped for ransom or to steal company secrets from her stack. Along the way, the players are finding little hints and clues that something is a little off. The victim has an XP playback module in her room with a large number of highly illicit XP scenarios, all featuring romantic engagements with one of her female coworkers, an uplifted dolphin in a humanoid splicer morph working as an indenture in the company's systems analysis department. The victim also has a forged alternate mesh ID, some high end neural pruning software, and a number of regular credit transfers to an unknown source. Interrogating the co-worker reveals that while the dolphin girl tried to befriend the obviously overstressed VIP, the VIP suddenly broke things off and has been cold to her since then. The players eventually track the transactions and XP production to the dolphin girl's live-in girlfriend. Other circumstantial evidence is found that prompts the players to arrest the girlfriend for the VIPs murder with a search of their apartment turning up trace evidence of a cortical stack being destroyed. The session ended with the players getting their bonus for confirming the the VIPs death and destruction of the stack and they have a suspect in custody but the "who, dude!" moment came later, where I filled the players in on the whole story.
See, they more or less got their man, so to speak, when they arrested the girl friend but they hadn't quite connected the dots. Turns out the girlfriend was actually a specially pruned fork of the VIP whose stressful responsibilities along with a company morality clause that forbid her from continuing her relationship with the uplift coworker lead her to create a version of herself that wasn't bogged down with corporate responsibility or obligation. She paid a black market morph broker in the colony's growing slums to sleeve the fork. Since the fork was so divergent by that point, she couldn't just reintegrate and experience her relationship by proxy with the coworker, so she provided a regular stipend in exchange for XP files from the fork. The VIP became increasingly addicted to these experiences and, over time, the fork became more and more uncomfortable with the situation culminating in the fork refusing further XPs. The VIP has a nervous breakdown soon after and confronts the fork. During the encounter, the VIP has is accidentally killed and the fork removes the VIPs stack before leaving the body in an alleyway. The body was later found with an infomorph refugee sleeved into it. It was a kick seeing the player's Holy Shit! expressions as they connected the dots.
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That is an awesome example of using the tools provided by the setting to the GM's full advantage.
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This was so amazing I had to steal from the SA forums. Here's the original post http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3342275&perpage=40&pagenumber=97#post404577139
Some sheets I made!
Basically I am running an Eclipse Phase game and the current adventure has the PCs entering an MMO to look for some guy. So, naturally, I surprised them with simplified 4E sheets for this adventure!
The MMO is based on Sword of Pandora, an in-universe cheesy sci-fi TV series the PCs infiltrated an episode of during a previous adventure, so these may be a little silly.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/dragonpunch.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/sigrun.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/isotope%20jones.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/pianissimo.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/dj3apetus.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/unity.png
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/62882540/albany.png
(art by some dudes on deviantart)
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This has probably been asked before, but is it possible to stat aliens, that aren't robotic or cybernetic, and don't originate from trans-humanity? I recall mention of fans using the system for mass effect and am curious what was done to allow players to play the alien races in that scenario?
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This has probably been asked before, but is it possible to stat aliens, that aren't robotic or cybernetic, and don't originate from trans-humanity? I recall mention of fans using the system for mass effect and am curious what was done to allow players to play the alien races in that scenario?
There's multiple threads about mass effect conversion on the EP forums and a link on the resources page. Races like Quarians, Turians, and Krogan are treated like exotic morphs. Realistically, you could just have the Mass Effect morphs injected into an EP game as exotic morphs. Otherwise you'll have to cut out cortical stacks; Shepard's the only one that gets to resleeve, apparently.
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Interesting question, I was wondering about this one myself. Was also curious if anyone else has used the Eclipse Phase rules system for other settings and genres. Obviously, it would seem to be a good fit for any near future, far future, cyberpunk, or post-apocalypse game, but I was thinking that it might also be good for a supers game. Most of regular humanity could be considered "flats" maybe, with super powered characters created using morphs, gear, etc.
Also, as an aside, I know the EP rules are criticized for being too complex(especially character generation), but I actually don't find them too bad and like them quite a bit. I mean, apart from character creation, it's mostly just percentage rolls anyway, right?
This has probably been asked before, but is it possible to stat aliens, that aren't robotic or cybernetic, and don't originate from trans-humanity? I recall mention of fans using the system for mass effect and am curious what was done to allow players to play the alien races in that scenario?
There's multiple threads about mass effect conversion on the EP forums and a link on the resources page. Races like Quarians, Turians, and Krogan are treated like exotic morphs. Realistically, you could just have the Mass Effect morphs injected into an EP game as exotic morphs. Otherwise you'll have to cut out cortical stacks; Shepard's the only one that gets to resleeve, apparently.
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Also, as an aside, I know the EP rules are criticized for being too complex(especially character generation), but I actually don't find them too bad and like them quite a bit. I mean, apart from character creation, it's mostly just percentage rolls anyway, right?
I had some trouble with character creation the first time through, but once I got the hang of it, it was much, much easier. And you're right: during gameplay, most of the rolls you make are either percentage rolls or d10 rolls for damage / stress / initiative. The rules for determining MOS in the third printing make it much easier to adjudicate rolls without doing math. The only place I can see where the system can be a real bastard is when you have to keep track of a lot of situational modifiers as a result of your gear. However, if you use the Excel sheet, it'll do that for you, for the most part, and it provides you with the page references for every item you hook into yourself.
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None of my friends are really up for as high-concept a game as Eclipse Phase is (or much into the horror and gritty aspects of it either) so I've been relegated to play-by-post. I've still been impressed with how elegant and simple most of the game mechanics are, even more so with the blackjack system. It feels like it could be powergamed, but the setting provides a lot of reasons not to, and there's only so much of an edge you can get out of that with how universally deadly it is.
I really am looking forward to being able to GM it one day.
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What Preston does daily.
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5xaifT09v1r052wto1_500.jpg)
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Hey, sometimes those monkeys need a push in the right direction. Or a pull, depending on my mood.
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Question about Caleb's campaign. Know Evil was made by Cognite correct? If it was cognite and word got out about what they had created, what would happen to Cognite?
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Question about Caleb's campaign. Know Evil was made by Cognite correct? If it was cognite and word got out about what they had created, what would happen to Cognite?
Know Evil was created by Manjappa, who is not a Cognite employee. It was used on a Cognite station and was made from TITAN technology.
Any hypercorp caught weaponizing TITAN tech would be destroyed most likely.
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Rather elegant really, using a TITAN based virus to [spoiler]clean up the mess caused by a TITAN.[/spoiler] Spoilers probably aren't needed, that AP has been out for awhile but some people might be behind.
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Tad is right. Below is my full explanation of what the PC's know about Manjappa's involvement on Thought (to date on posted episodes).
[spoiler]The secret Cognite bunker on Luna was raided by a TITAN, merely because TITAN's are like honey-badgers...inscrutable.
Cognite was storing the corporate ego backups of every researcher on Thought in that bunker. A TITAN could now tailor-make malware, Basilack, and YGBM hacks for everyone in the operation. Thought station was in charge of researching seed-AI (Augustine), and now at least one TITAn in the universe knew about it.
Rather than relive the Lost incident by trying to cover it up, Cognite confessed to the Planetary Consortium. The PC kept it quiet (because allowing Cognite's continued existence after the Lost project would have made them look just as responsible), but could not tolerate the existence of a bunch of seed AI scientists, highly vulnerable to the Exsurgent virus, walking around. They turned to their enforcement arm, Oversight, who in turn assigned an auditor known only as Manjappa.
Know Evil was Manjappa's (very effective) answer. If Yelena Chicako hadn't been undercover on the station, no one outside PC controlled ego banks would have ever known about the wide-spread ego corruption that occurred because of the virus; the station would have merely floated up there, secretive and forgotten.
How Manjappa got his hands on TITAN tech and learned to control it has yet to be revealed in the campaign, but we are getting there.[/spoiler]
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I find especially funny is that Cody was [spoiler]playing an Oversight pre-gen who got blown up in the early games because he had to stop playing (I assume, he just disappears after session two). If he'd continued to play the game with everyone else than this entire plot would have become a massive conflict of interest for him.[/spoiler]
This whole campaign has been filled with great call backs. Alot of the events Caleb is referencing above could have been discovered other ways: the players where always given two or three different paths to follow at major way points. If they'd followed the shuttle back on Venus instead of looking into Cloud-9 than things might have been totally different.
As Ross and Tom would say: layers upon layers.
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Ah. Thanks. Its hard keeping everything straight. I am assuming if word got out that the PC owned/controled Know Evil then there would be a serious PC disaster?
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Ah. Thanks. Its hard keeping everything straight. I am assuming if word got out that the PC owned/controled Know Evil then there would be a serious PC disaster?
If it could be proven, it would basically be the end of the PC as a viable political entity. There would be witch hunts for those responsible, and for those who allowed it to happen.
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Even a credible rumor, beyond conspiracy theories or extremist pundits making things up, that any faction possessed a weapon that is able to kill someone and their back up with no detectable signs of a problem would cause a mediafire storm for that faction.
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Just picked up Panopticon. Man...there is much awesome conceptual stuff in there. Uplift orcas!
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A TITAN Haunted Universe part 1
by Bartleby
The Fall. A name as telling as it is inaccurate. Humanity did not fall when the TITANs devoured Earth. I am reminded of Saturn consuming his child. Though we birthed the titan, it consumed us, lost in madness. What does Saturn feel as he destroys his family? To kill family is to kill a part of oneself. What pushed Saturn to this hate, this fear? How does it affect him?
(http://i.imgur.com/2XeNY.jpg)
Humanity did not fall though. They rose. They flew up and away. Yet the event was dubbed the Fall, which tells us of their beliefs. It tells us the story they tell about the event. It is now and forever a fall from grace. A fall from a metaphorical heaven on Earth. A fall into the purgatory of the solar system or the hell of cold storage for the infugees. It also comforts humanity. One only falls from grace by the act of sin. An act they committed and now must pay, for the rest of eternity. As with every myth, this is variation. One faction blames technology. Another blames war. Aliens. On and on, logic and reason are restored by the story of the Fall, a ritual to banish the madness of Saturn. One can imagine the titan's terrible gaze as all penetrating, all destroying. Its fathomless depths indecipherable to humanity. They must have needed the myth of the Fall to ward such insanity. That was then. This is now. Such myths only weaken those live today. We must recognize that clinging to the idea of a logical universe is a weakness now.
I cannot claim to know Saturn or his motives. But when I stare into his eyes, I see the pain. I know how he feels.
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So instead of just push my players into firewall my idea is a kinda interview. What I think of doing is coming up with a questionnaire for the players. I would split the players into pairs and have one play an npc firewall agent. Then when they are done switch up the players and do it again. Kinda a initiation processes. Give them a feeling that they are always being watched and judge. I am hopping this gives players the feeling their story is vary much apart of the overall adventure.
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the thing is, if you give them an interview, you have to assume they want to be in Firewall. Not everyone would want to be in that organization. Otherwise, a player could chose to fail the interview if there are no stakes.
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I don't know if this is player logic or what but this is thread on the Eclipse Phase forums got way off topic: http://www.eclipsephase.com/guardian-nanoswarms
It's amazing really.
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That thread is absurd. Is there such a thing as a non-rules lawyer? Shit, I would not want to play with that kind of techno-babble, whiny nonsense going on at the table.
My solution? "Sure, here's your nano-hive firing pistol. One clip will cost you 100,000 credits, but you can get the gun for only 50,000 more! Also, any scans on the weapons through customs will register as WMD's and a contract will be put out on your ego in every major system. Each bullet is also entirely vulnerable to EMP and becomes useless upon contact. If the bullets are struck by kinetic force equivalent to hitting a target in the barrel or the clip, they still eat everything nearby. Have fun."
Ridiculous...I need a nap after reading that.
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That thread is absurd. Is there such a thing as a non-rules lawyer? Shit, I would not want to play with that kind of techno-babble, whiny nonsense going on at the table.
My solution? "Sure, here's your nano-hive firing pistol. One clip will cost you 100,000 credits, but you can get the gun for only 50,000 more! Also, any scans on the weapons through customs will register as WMD's and a contract will be put out on your ego in every major system. Each bullet is also entirely vulnerable to EMP and becomes useless upon contact. If the bullets are struck by kinetic force equivalent to hitting a target in the barrel or the clip, they still eat everything nearby. Have fun."
Ridiculous...I need a nap after reading that.
I was hoping to get this reaction but I thought I'd have to wait longer.
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I don't know if this is player logic or what but this is thread on the Eclipse Phase forums got way off topic: http://www.eclipsephase.com/guardian-nanoswarms
It's amazing really.
I have a gaming friend who is never allowed to read this thread if he wants to play in an EP game of mine. It'll give him ideas that'd be almost as bad as the Mokole with Huge Size X2 that he begged us for years to let him play.
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reposting my reply because whatevs
I think this discussion is missing the weaknesses of nanoswarms: programming and mobility.
I think most people assume that nanoswarms are magical floaty dust clouds but this isn't true. As per the rules, all nanoswarms need to have a mobility system to move, which cannot be ionic. This greatly limits them because each mobility system only works in certain conditions and environments. Thrust vector and hovercraft need some kind of atmosphere. Walkers can't catch flying enemies obviously. I would also say that nanoswarms could be easily knocked away by liquids or high winds, depending on the situation. Since nanoswarms are smaller, they should be slower than the standard speeds listed for mobility systems. So that's one way nanoswarms can be countered.
The more important thing is that nanoswarms have to be programmed to act. I would say that a disassembler swarm is extremely hard to program in combat. There's no mention of a sophisticated AI or sensor package necessary to navigate a battlefield or understand what an 'enemy' is. You have to be extremely specific to direct a disassembler swarm in a fight. You could mitigate that by programming ahead of time - i.e. a guard dog program that only eats objects trying to enter a specific area without specific authorization or an assassination program where you have a lot of intel on the target - but attacking someone in a fight requires constant action on the part of the programmer.
I would say using a disassembler swarm in a fight is substantially complex and would require an actual Programming (Nanoswarm) Success Test each round of the fight with accompanying penalties depending on the chaos of the fight. Furthermore, a swarm can attack one target per round - if the guardian swarm starts eating it, then it will ignore the guardians unless told to disassemble that. Of course, targeting another nanoswarm would be hellishly difficult to program for a disassembler swarm. Guardian swarms are prebuilt with good programs that only look for nanoswarms - so it's much easier for them to act.
Another note - the book says that energy AND kinetic armor protect against disassembly so I would rule the target gets to apply both values - so if a guy with 16/16 armor gets attacked, the swarm would have to do 32 damage before it started damaging the target.
I think the gun with a gun full of nanoswarm bullets would be highly effective in the EP world once or twice before adversaries caught on and loaded up on EMP grenades. All 30 swarms would be hit by the same grenades, so the target could just pop 2 or 3 grenades on himself and drop all of them.
I would assume all trained armies in Eclipse Phase have similar strategies to deal with offensive nanoswarms. They're extremely dangerous if you aren't equipped to handle them, but otherwise they are no more dangerous than any other serious threat in Eclipse Phase.
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Good point Ross, one I hadn't gotten to yet myself.
I would assume all trained armies in Eclipse Phase have similar strategies to deal with offensive nanoswarms. They're extremely dangerous if you aren't equipped to handle them, but otherwise they are no more dangerous than any other serious threat in Eclipse Phase.
They actually make a point, in the setting books, of pointing out individual law enforcement agencies who do not know how to deal with swarms, the one I remember being the Elysium defense force. So, yeah, assumed most cops know how to take care of a swarm.
EDIT: Damn it, I just caught up on the thread. For my own mental health I'm just going to forget about that whole thread and putting that guy on my ignore list.
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A TITAN Haunted Universe part 2
by Bartleby
The other implication of the Fall is that civilization itself has weakened, that humanity has been lessened. It is easy to make that argument. Billions of lives were lost, along with vast amounts of knowledge, cultural treasures, and more. Who can put a price on the value of every animal and plant species made extinct? However, as a civilization today, humanity is not weaker. It is stronger because of two reasons: Pandora Gates and the Factors.
Let us imagine two universes: our universe and one in which the TITANS never rose up, never caused a Fall. In our universe we know that we are not unique, that other intelligent life exists. Drake's Equation has been proven. We also know that even advanced species go extinct, often quickly and violently. We know that we must tread carefully or go extinct ourselves. We have even made peaceful contact with the Factors and have begun to learn how to deal with xeno species. We also push ourselves to develop new and better technology to survive the next existential threat. Whatever happens to us in the next thousand years, we are more prepared to survive it than before. We have a diversity of survival solutions, so that no single calamity will take all of us. We are a heterogeneous family of related subspecies, with knowledge and science advancing rapidly thanks to our gains from the Factors and Pandora Gates.
In the other universe, there is no first contact, no proof of Drake's equation. We spread out throughout the solar system and with no divisive tragedy to splinter us, we remain homogenous and slow to advance. We eventually deploy slower than light ark ships to colonize the galaxy. Even if we do not disintegrate ourselves, we will fall victim to the first advanced species we encounter - accidentally or intentionally. We remain weak
The lives lost due to the Fall are tragic beyond mere words but a population's number is not the same as civilization. If our fallen numbers were a real problem, we would restore more infugees in cold storage. We do not because we do not need them at this time. As the infrastructure grows, so will our population. But a population is not a defense against existential threats. A billion die as easily as one.
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In case you guys haven't heard yet, Posthuman is releasing the Rimward PDF on Wednesday!
I'm so excited.
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Really? Oh snap.
We just finished the second-to-last session of Know Evil. I can't let myself read it until after Monday or I'll immediately start integrating ideas.
I'm starting to realize how much of my imagination's processing power is going to be freed up not having to think about the EP universe all the time. It's a little crazy.
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So what are your future plans with the RPPR crew, Caleb? Are you going to disappear in a few weeks when school restarts? I'm quite interested to see if there's more EP in the future; you seem to have a knack for it.
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@ Tad
I don't know. I don't think I'll be GMing anything anytime soon. When school starts, I'm going to have to start stealing writing time just to finish No Security. I'll still be able to play, but that's about it until I get all the Kickstarter stuff out the door.
Ross said he's planning on doing Iron Heroes next, but he said there will be an EP campaign somewhere on the horizon. I'm excited to play the game for once.
But who knows? Maybe Rimward will spark something in me. I do really want to go back to EP someday, if only to see characters from the campaign pop back in as "canon" PC's. And I've been kicking around the idea of a Zombie campaign, but otherwise, we'll just have to wait and see.
Of course, by the time all of Know Evil gets posted, I will have had two years to think things through. I doubt they'll be much "dead air" of me GMing when everything is said and done.
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Exceptional news. I just wanted to make sure you weren't likely to vanish entirely into a sea of poorly written term papers.
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So.
Rimward. Space Pope. Thoughts?
Also, Nine Lives is run by Transhuman Voodoo Priests.
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I've waited a long time for this. Everything hit just in time for my own Eclipse Phase game to get going with a new batch of victims.
Personally I find the bits on Titan most interesting. The Ultimates details are pretty cool too, it's a group I've been interested in involving in storytelling more so more information helps flesh things out alot.
EDIT: Since I have the PDF and not an e-reader or anything it'll take me a long time to read through everything; I have to sit at the computer.
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Eclipse phase Rimward PDF: http://www.sendspace.com/file/n51bsl
Gotta love Creative Commons License. :)
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I have given it a lot of thought and have desided to buy not downlode. I realy like the game and if i buy the book rather the downloding it I am more likely to see more new EP material in the future.
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Agreed. I likewise purchased it. Artists don't work for rep yet; they want credits.
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Random idea for a NPC: The Man who is Shareware - basically an anarchist habitat engineer and incredibly nice guy who kept getting requests for help with maintaining habitat systems so he decided to offer a fork of himself to any habitat that wanted it. The only conditions being that each new fork be allowed to ping the main fork to let it know it exists and that the habitat not use laws contrary to its ethics. He expected a few stations to use him but was surprised when over a hundred habitats starting using his forks - most are brinker or anarchist stations with only a few people - tin cans and so forth. Unfortunately, he's gotten a few disturbing reports of Jovian or hypercorp stations that have enslaved and tortured his fork while keeping it a secret. It's too late now for him to stop it - the fork is being freely traded all throughout the system - but there are many desperate groups that need a skilled habitat engineer to keep them alive and the Shareware Man is the only thing that keeps them alive.
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This forum needs a like button. I'm so stealing the shareware man when I run EP.
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A TITAN Haunted Universe part 3
Categorically, both the TITANs and the Lost Generation are similar, at least to the mainstream view. They are ambitious projects that failed because of unstable emergent behavior. Mistakes that should have been avoided. However, to group the Lost with the TITANs is an error. In fact, one can and should create a sharp divide between Pre and post Fall thinking. This is not a simple alarmist call for more extreme security measures but rather a recognition of the fact that our civilization has expanded in such a way that everything must be reexamined.
The Lost were specifically designed to be people that lived in a post-TITAN universe - workers that could rebuild in a world where the specter of extinction looms forever. Yet, they did not obey as obedient drones but as a heterogeneous group with unique psyches and flaws. They were all dubbed as useless, violent, and insane. But this ignores the fact that we live in a violent and insane universe. The TITANS can never be understood. Their actions breed madness and violence in anyone they touch. Perhaps the project worked too well. They are uniquely able to thrive, as they have all proven they can survive a nightmarish ordeal and still go on. Is that not proof they are better suited for a post-Fall universe than anything else? Yet they are aptly named, for I feel they are lost - not spiritually lost but a lost opportunity for civilization. Had greater efforts gone into reintegrating them into society, they could have proven their worth many times over. As it stands, my personal background gave me the strength of will to endure whatever hardships I had to face and make the hard choices for Firewall and as a result, several existential threats have been stopped that would have grown into greater threats otherwise.
This is why Firewall is the only organization with a truly moral mandate to do whatever it takes to stop the TITANs. They are a response to the Fall, not a pre-fall repurposed security agency. There is no organizational baggage or institutional memory that weighs down other anti-TITAN agencies. This gives Firewall a clarity of purpose that no pre-fall group could ever match. They saw value in me and in other refugees, exiles, freaks, and outcasts. They took us and gave us purpose, a war to fight. A war where we not only sacrificed our lives and minds, we sacrificed our principles. But in the end, it was worth it. We made the universe safer for the transhuman family.
In the end, Firewall will be all that stands between us and extinction. It does not matter if civilization ever realizes this or not. The fact that civilization led to Firewall's creation is proof enough that our civilization is advanced enough to deserve to continue existing. I do not fear the future, unlike so many others because I am privileged enough to know that we have evolved beyond the Fall. That is payment enough for serving in Firewall.
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I'm guessing that was Bartleby's epilogue for Know Evil? Damn.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua2loiGHZ38
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So i'm at Pink Taco (i know, its a hip bar/resturant chain) and the server at the booth behind us asks if they would appartizers. They ask what he recommends, the server says they have a special, the 'sex tacos.' One of the girls says "Yeah, we'll try the sex tacos." My brain seizes and defaults the EP Takko and I imagine Preston rubbing his tentacles together as he forks himself into multiple takkos.
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That's a completely rational leap to make. I'd of done the same.
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Just started an Eclipse Phase game of my own. Big group, seven people. I'm running them around Mars looking for strange things.
We've got:
A hypercorp supervising engineer from Earth orbit who knows the ins and outs of the corp system.
An autonamous psychologist "kidnapped" by uplifts during the Fall and currently sleeved into a neo-homid gorilla. He wears a top hat.
A Venusian orbital smuggler.
A Lunar Night Cartel morph lean enforcer.
A post-human synth-rights activist who loves resleeving.
A brinker outback Martian who supports Mars becoming independent.
And a hypercorp infomorph genehacker who dreams of a bio-terraformed Mars but has to do "favors" for the terraforming corps to keep her underground lab from being the center of an unfortunate geological event.
I can't wait to see what these crazy kids get up to in Noctis-Qianjian!
Anyway, all of these individuals are new to Eclipse Phase as a game, they literally just made their characters. Most of them have no significant backstory (as you can probably tell from the descriptions) so I'm going to inflict backstory on them. If anyone has ideas for interesting possibilities in the past of some of these individuals, let me know because with this many players it's going to be a challenge.
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A hypercorp supervising engineer from Earth orbit who knows the ins and outs of the corp system.
The remains of hypercorp he worked for on Earth have finally cleared the legal system and gone to auction. He ends up under the contract of his current employer's direct competition due to commitments made before the Fall. A legal battle over who "owns" his employment could ensue, or one group could claim all his engineering projects for the post-Fall company as intellectual property of the corp that owns his old contract. The hypercorp that newly acquired the contract could approach clandestinely as well, blackmailing the character into corporate espionage against his nominal employer.
An autonamous psychologist "kidnapped" by uplifts during the Fall and currently sleeved into a neo-homid gorilla. He wears a top hat.
Ummm...not a human at all, I assume? The kidnapping story is to obscure her identification as a self-hating uplift. Her love of psychology comes from a deep desire to be fully transhuman rather than an uplifted primate. She's, at best, a mercurial apologist, at worst an uplift Uncle Tom. An anti-uplift hate group on Mars could find out and destroy her hopes for cultural assimilation, or a Mercurial terrorist organization could target her as a collaborator
A Venusian orbital smuggler.
Shit. Not much there, is there? Maybe the smuggler is actually being paid under the table by Morningstar. His job is to arrange the hijack of a massive iceteroid being re-routed into Martian orbit from the belt. Stealing it would go a long way to terraforming the Venusian upper atmosphere, with the added bonus of dealing the PC a sizable credit and PR blow. All he has to do is get aboard the rock and reprogram all the thrusters with new telemetry. However, his involvement has to be completely clandestine; his capture could spark a war. Maybe he doesn't even know he's working for the government, either due to proxy hires or edited memories.
A Lunar Night Cartel morph lean enforcer.
Night Cartel has a lot of competition on Mars. Les Ghoules, Nine Lives, ID crew, and the Luna Organization all have inroads to the major Martian settlements. Maybe the enforcer has to juggle Firewall work inbetween assassinations on big players in other organizations. Maybe there's an underworld war taking place in the background. Maybe she's charged not with killing the morphs of big players, but demoralizing the competition by grabbing the stacks of their loved ones. Why does the character do these horrible things? Is he/she loyal Costa Nostra or do they have something to hold over the character?
A post-human synth-rights activist who loves resleeving.
Hmmm...Maybe invent a new addiction and give the player extra CP for it. They feel the need to resleeve. Bodies get boring after awhile, like people who constantly trade in their cars for the newest model. Maybe have them feel the itch for newer, more exotic morphs. Perhaps the need to experiment with sleeves starts to harm the player's activism. It's tough to give a stump speech on synth-rights sleeved in a modded Fury morph. It also will provide a huge financial drain on the player.
A brinker outback Martian who supports Mars becoming independent.
Easy. Organize terrorist attacks and make scavenging runs into the White Zone. Have the Barsoomians learn about a players Firewall involvement and demand the character use the conspiracy to further Barsoomian goals. Split the loyalty of the character between Martian politics and dealing with X-threats.
And a hypercorp infomorph genehacker who dreams of a bio-terraformed Mars but has to do "favors" for the terraforming corps to keep her underground lab from being the center of an unfortunate geological event.
Is she indentured? Is she an informorph or infoLIFE? Hmmm. If she's just an indentured person, have her "sleeved" into her threatened lab. She can only do missions in puppet socks or as a fork. Threats on the lab or threats are threats on her existence. Maybe the hypercorp is demanding some seriously questionable gene work, like engineering bioweapons or mapping TITAN genetic materials. If she is infolife, use real world naivete to have her engineer some truly distasteful morph that becomes popular with a particularly disliked faction. For instance, a really cheap Shaper variant that becomes a favorite for suicide bombers or something.
I'd be sure to give your characters enough time to play so that they can secure their own backstories as they get inspired. Everybody is reticent about themselves when they meet new people anyway. The characters can warm up as the players do.
Of course, if they get to game 8 or something without telling you anything, just make their consciousness shareware :-)
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Wow, you got on that fast. Thanks.
I like the Night Cartel and genehacker ones especially.
I'm certainly in favor of giving the PCs time to adjust and see how they want to fit into the character they've made. They don't need a huge backstory right at the start of play after all.
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Oh no, the TITANS first strike!
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/03/rogue-automatic-trading/
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What kind of adventures do you have in mind for your group Tad?
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Luckily none of my players are on these forums so I can talk about it.
The campaign is going to focus entirely on Mars until I'm sure the players are comfortable with the setting and game rules. Once they are I'll be sending them into the outer system.
Anyway, they are starting out looking into another Sentinel's case. The Proxy had him looking into the Barsoomians, concerned that they where "passing around" a version of the exsurgent virus between their tribes. This lead him to a small group in Noctis-Qianjian, where there had been several insidents of nomads clashing with individuals inside the domes. Someone else was always reported with the nomads but nobody seemed to get him on camera.
The Proxy called for additional resources (the PCs) at this point but the current Sentinel (an Ultimate who always works alone) decided to continue solo and backtracked the nomads into the TQZ. That was two weeks ago and the Sentinel missed his check in so it's done from investigation to possible rescue.
[spoiler]Continuing in spoilers, just in case.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]I posted this idea on the Eclipse Phase forums awhile ago. There is a tree in the outback that is perfect. It's an exsurgent trap that hacks anyone who comes close enough, which a group of Barsoomians eventually did. With them was a psychologist, studying their culture. He suffered a pretty major mental break down and believes the tree is the Platonic ideal of "tree".
So he takes the tree's fruit, forks himself several times, resleeves, and sends himself out to spread the good word, after a fashion. The fruits are nano-hives that produce exsurgent nanoswarms in the form of "seeds". These seeds convert anything they are placed onto into a sensory hack or any other exsurgent horror, as required.
So the campaign will largely be the players playing catch up with the forks, all of whom call themself the Executor. The tree and fruit provide the device by which subtle exsurgent infections are being scattered around Mars.
Ideally the campaign will culminate in the party having to go to the location of the tree itself without a full understanding of what they are likely to encounter.[/spoiler]
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Mirrored the Know Evil campaign on archive.org http://archive.org/details/RolePlayingPublicRadioActualPlayEclipsePhase-TheKnowEvilCampaign
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Question for you all. One of my players want his character to be a blind swordsman. I have no issue with that but since there is no blind trait, I figured using neural damage would do the trick. Where my question lays, is how would that effect him in AR, VR, infosec checks, etc. He wants to do hacking as well as chopping up his enemies.
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Question for you all. One of my players want his character to be a blind swordsman. I have no issue with that but since there is no blind trait, I figured using neural damage would do the trick. Where my question lays, is how would that effect him in AR, VR, infosec checks, etc. He wants to do hacking as well as chopping up his enemies.
That's tricky because the technology is so advanced in EP that someone who is blind means one of three things:
1. They choose to be blind - refusing treatment
2. They are unable to receive medial treatment
3. They are truly and severely fucked up in the head - something is so wrong with them that editing their mind directly with psychosurgery or sleeving into a new body can't fix it.
I could see an ultimate with a blindness filter though - it automatically blinds him in combat or whatever yet disables when he needs to hack or something nonphysical - ultimates are fucking crazy so this could be a personal quest of his.
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It would have no effect on his ability to interact with VR because that's simulated reality. His AR wouldn't funtion visually if he can't see.
This sounds to me like a very poor concept for an Eclipse Phase game. This would make the character an extremely noticeable individual. He's likely going to be the only blind man most individual will have encountered in their lifetime: they will remember him. If this is a Firewall game then that's bad. Farther the trope of a blind swordsman would likely be instantly available to anyone and everyone in the setting via their muse. He probably isn't going to surpise anyone with his sword fighting skills.
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I see what you guys are saying and i'll run it by him. I like the blindness filter Ross. He's a drifter (background) turned scum, so there's your craziness right there. He wants his character to be blind even if he switches morphs thus the neural damage trait I thought of using. But if hacking is mostly AR based, then maybe the blindness filter would be up his alley. To push his skill to the next level he must fight without sight!
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I'd be curious to know why he wants to be blind. It's the kind of thing that often gets used as an alterative to having a developed character trait or backstory and I get extremely cautious whenever a disability is mentioned for a character.
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You could just say a
wizard TITAN did it, perhaps a precursor to a Know Evil-style virus that got into his backup. You could incorporate it into the plot.
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I like that idea too. Hey Caleb *hint hint*. And Tad i'll get his reasoning and let you know.
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You could just say a wizard TITAN did it, perhaps a precursor to a Know Evil-style virus that got into his backup. You could incorporate it into the plot.
Yeah that's more or less what I meant with #3 - HOWEVER, I would make that a huge flaw or several flaws because people are going to be scared as hell of you and you will face significant persecution - TITAN-scarred survivors would be social pariahs/lepers in Eclipse Phase.
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Question for you all. One of my players want his character to be a blind swordsman. I have no issue with that but since there is no blind trait, I figured using neural damage would do the trick. Where my question lays, is how would that effect him in AR, VR, infosec checks, etc. He wants to do hacking as well as chopping up his enemies.
Sounds like your player wants to play fantasy. Have a talk with him and figure out what he wants out of playing. If he's not into transhumanism and SciFi then maybe you guys should be playing something else. Or if he's the only person in the gaming group that's not into what Eclipse Phase is about, then maybe he's the problem.
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You could just say a wizard TITAN did it, perhaps a precursor to a Know Evil-style virus that got into his backup. You could incorporate it into the plot.
Yeah that's more or less what I meant with #3 - HOWEVER, I would make that a huge flaw or several flaws because people are going to be scared as hell of you and you will face significant persecution - TITAN-scarred survivors would be social pariahs/lepers in Eclipse Phase.
I agree, and it could be plot-breaking for an inner-system Firewall scenario, but it might work on the outer rim. He could still be constantly harassed about it: "No, I wasn't uploaded. No, I'm not feeling urges to kill you. Well, maybe a little bit."
And if it comes down to it, nobody likes us, everybody hates us, guess we'll go gatecrashing.
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I remember there being a discussion, either on the forums, or maybe a sheet on the resource page, discussing various neural damage. One of them was blindness.
Edit: Here we are, by Mr. Anders Sandberg himself:
Cortical blindness
The occipital lobe has been profoundly damaged or corrupted, not only
preventing vision but making it impossible to restore easily. The person
is blind regardless of the morph. Sometimes “blindsight” can remain if
subcortical systems such as the superior colliculus are undamaged: the
person can avoid some obstacles, catch thrown objects or make
surprisingly accurate guesses about their surroundings. Psychosurgery
can often enhance this to a degree, making the person blind for conscious
information but relatively able to move and function.
http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/More%20neurological%20damage.pdf
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I could see an ultimate with a blindness filter though - it automatically blinds him in combat or whatever yet disables when he needs to hack or something nonphysical - ultimates are fucking crazy so this could be a personal quest of his.
This is my favorite solution. Just a bit of ware and maybe some sonar to compensate with half the people he meets refrencing Zato-Ichi. Or he could come from a scum swarm that is going through a kung-fu/samurai phase and most of his friends are also modeled after various legends/films/stories. Watch out for the dude pushing around a cart with a neotenic in it.
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Awesome. I'm totally using that now. I should see my player tonight if not friday. I'll let you all know how it works out and his reason for the blindness.
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Sense filters are cost Low, so the personal development angle is pretty easy to do. What'll be interesting is whether he forgoes his development when the excrement strikes the oscillating air circulator.
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I remember there being a discussion, either on the forums, or maybe a sheet on the resource page, discussing various neural damage. One of them was blindness.
Edit: Here we are, by Mr. Anders Sandberg himself:
Cortical blindness
The occipital lobe has been profoundly damaged or corrupted, not only
preventing vision but making it impossible to restore easily. The person
is blind regardless of the morph. Sometimes “blindsight” can remain if
subcortical systems such as the superior colliculus are undamaged: the
person can avoid some obstacles, catch thrown objects or make
surprisingly accurate guesses about their surroundings. Psychosurgery
can often enhance this to a degree, making the person blind for conscious
information but relatively able to move and function.
http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/More%20neurological%20damage.pdf
I've read the same PDF, as well as his Think Before Asking scenario. Brilliant man. This blindness could be attributed to a botched Egocasting, as any number of things could go wrong and it's realistic for non-elites to just have to deal with it at their destination. It should have occurred before the character entered Firewall, as their constant back-ups would make it easy to restore his sight (think copy-paste). At severely close ranges (within arm's reach?) the negative modifiers would probably be negated, as other senses take over to "see" for the most part. Their muse would be able to feed AR and mesh data (mail, rep scores, etc.) but hacking would be a stretch without full VR, and even then, the cortical blindness would affect how he would experience VR simulations, I'm sure.
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You can also sleeve him in a neo-pig for added laughs: http://wiki.usagiyojimbo.com/wiki/Zato-Ino
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SCUM SWARM TIER
NEWCOMER’S PACKET
DOGONAUTS: Waiting for it to be legal? Wait no more! It’s better than legal; nobody give’s a shit! Drugs and petals for rep…or if we think you need it.
BOYTOY: Need rep fast? Don’t mind life-threatening danger surrounded by oversexed girl-boys with enhanced reflexes and plasma torches? Run with boytoy! Salavage operations and killer parties! Feast on the bones of the breeders with us!
WE COME TO PROBE YOU!: Salvage-op for those who wish to be more. Build yourself better with the wreckage of the past.
VOID DIS: Long-range scanning equipment for all. Seek the mysteries of absence.
NATURE’S REJECTS: To all you newcomer hypercorp drones, come sleeve how the other half lives if you’re animal enough for it. We always have a good laugh when you fucks realize it’s better to be a pet with claws.
EAT-DRINK-FUCK: The EDF collective is officially discouraging all ego hunting activity aboard swarm using physical censor. We will not be privy to profiteering hypercorp ego slavery.
THOUGHTCRIME: Rep for scrap sorting. Synth sleeves recommended but not necessary.
BHALHA NA: You haven’t lived since you’ve bet on swarm cat, outsider. Come. Win rep on Fox Spirit.
JANE ERDOS: If any of our newcomers need medical attention, my lab is located on Stars and I’m happy to help.
SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS: Come see a show! Come be in a show! Also, sports and stuff, I guess…if you’re into that kind of thing. Schedule.
DR. MINDFUCK: I will cut your brain. It will be more beautiful, like Banzai trees or finished sculpture. I will then give then Banzai tree drugs so it sees it’s true self: a brain sculpture. Then I will nail a brain to it.
No, I will not make a different advertisement, assistant! The dictation has started and cannot be….
ANGRY PIRATE: Still trying to get our whole “explosive decompression” thing sorted out. So smart vacsuits on for you noobs, and stay close to the handrails
CC’D MESSAGES
SCUMKID664: I need to talk to you about our mutual friend. Find me.
ALICE CHU: Any and all hypercorp business is to be conducted thought the EDF consulate on The Stars Our Destination. Please let me help you navigate our diverse culture before any feelings get hurt..
KALBIA SINGH: Access to the autonomist network requires an immigration interview. Militia personnel are standing by.
AMRITA SHAK: I’ve finished that porn you wanted...the one with the BLIND-fold fetish thing. Light bondage…I’d never thought I’d go that vanilla again. Sorry if I fell asleep during, you fucking neo-Puritan.
MUSE NEWS
PRESTON
LLA/Comm-Sec: I know what you’re up to, Crowley. Just because I’m not jacked to the gills with nanotech or an animal doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I’ve got security camera feeds of vans matching the description of those used by technoprogressive terrorist in the Erato attack driving in and out of a mansion rented on your Experia mesh ID. I’ve got visitor records of your “tour” at Stiverson days before the attack. I’ve got forensic matches on brainscan ID pointing to your little AGI on no less than two corrupted systems, and that’s all I’ve found so far.
Your masters are protecting until you find more proof, but I find that little baby TITAN you call an assistant, he’ll give me everything I need. Turn yourself in before I lose the last scraps of my gratitude.
Experia: Urgent meeting requested. Show notes and contract negotiations are overdue. A beta-representative will be cast to the embassy closest your location at your request.
Abstinance-Only: We pirated your shitty show and saw you like gambling. Let’s see you play with the pros. LOSERS CLEAN THE ORGY-POD!
WuShang: If you are where I think you are, I’m calling in my favor, brother. Find a secure communicator and call me.
Jane Erdos: I don’t know what your angle is, but you don’t work for the people you think you work for. We can meet if you need help. Public places only.
BARTLEBY
The March Hare: Research facilities matching your interests in psychosurgery and nanotechnology can be found on The Stars Our Destination, Thoughtcrime, and The Rig.
The March Hare: Local mesh-site “The Lost Legacy” matches keywords in your ongoing search.
Dogonauts: Seriously?!!?! Are you THE Bartleby?! Dude, your simulspaces are FUCKED in such a good way. We’ve got to work with you. We’d consider it a big favor.
@tehI: Your password has expired. Please make a new password for PROX-E status.
@tehI: Resource Request for psychosurgery interrogation
@tehI: Resource Request for psychosurgical debrief
@tehI: Resource Request for non-fabbed materials. Details on secure link
@tehI: Resource Request for extra-legal schematics
SAIROC
<Dancing Arachnid>: <A mass interrogation and deletion warrant has been issued for all SAIROC model consciousness’s in LLA territory. HAVE A GREAT DAY!>
<Dancing Arachnid>: < Research facilities matching your interests in nanotechnology can be found on The Stars Our Destination, Thoughtcrime, and The Rig.
<Dancing Arachnid>: <Somebody calling himself Dr. Mindfuck is offering big rep for AGI minds to experiment on.>
Lena Andropov: Always interested in chatting with another Argonaut. Come see what we are working on ThoughtCrime.
GERARD
Lady Egran: Somebody on this mesh is using the same filter setting and mesh ID as your old squad-mate Federov. Didn’t he die in the Fall?
Lady Egran: There are full-contact combat sports available on Supercalifragilisticexpalidocious, just in case you feel like your other job isn’t stupidily risking your life enough.
Lady Egran: Militia seems to provide pretty good rep for full-time volunteers. Experience is required and there is some sort of vetting process. See Kalbia Singh on The Stars Our Destination.
Nature’s Rejects: Looking for painter’s to decorate Montezuma’s Revenge. Your muse said you’ve got some skill. You do zero-G, right?
FEIYUN:
Tenorio: Pardon the intrusion, but security footage reveals you to be sleeved quite beautifully. I can’t help but wonder what brute would damage such a beauty so horribly? Perhaps we could talk about it over dinner?
Kalbia Singh: What were you doing outside the swarm? You were not approved for extra-locational operations and you just got here! Debrief in my office NOW or I come find you.
Identity Protection: Can you confirm some rep purchases you’ve made recently?
Scumkid664: Me again. I think its time for another makover, girlfriend! Meet me there!
MAXWELL:
Cognite: Your employment is terminated for breech of contract effective immediately. You will be billed for company services as yet compensated by labor (55,634 credits). Violation of non-discloser agreements will be prosecuted.
LLA/Sec-sub-con: The people of Shackle have intelligence that Fall criminal Kaleheed Al-Rahmin will be farcasting to a local scum swarm. The price for confirmed ego retrieval of this bounty has increased to 165,000 credits this year.
Kalibia Singh: I don’t take kindly to corp assests wandering around our resources, especially unvetted ones. Come in and talk to me nice or I coordinate a censor squad on you movements at all times.
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Thank you.
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Ack, poor SAIROC! So many awesome plot hooks, though. Reminds me I need to catch up on Know Evil.
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So i guess Ord is a tad bit annoyed with the party. Anyone have an idea of what to do when buying blueprints for stuff that cost expensive?
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"Expensive+", followed by "Expensive++". Basically add an extra 10,000 credits each step up after Expensive.
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Thank you good sir
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Check this shit out! If you could do psychosurgery at range this is would be total Eclipse Phase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uL84jWdCps
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That's probably what the world of Eclipse Phase was like 50 years before the Fall - until they disabled remote brain hacking.
Well, cyberbrains you can still hack like that if you can break their firewalls.
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Bahala Na!
doot deeeee do deedo
Bahala Na!
doot dee dee doo
Bahala Na!
doot deeeee do deedo
do deedo
do deedo
doot dee dee doot
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cut from Gatecrashing: http://mobunited.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/cut-from-gatecrashing/
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cut from Gatecrashing: http://mobunited.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/cut-from-gatecrashing/
I can see why it was cut.
It's a good rideup, but it's far, far from what I envision as Eclipse Phase. I think it would go gunso really fast.
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more EP in real life fodder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvHcBq7UaY0
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So, after hearing frequent mentions of the movie The Room on the podcast, I finally saw some clips of it.
.....
Holy shit.
Honestly, I think my mind is still trying to process what I saw. I'm thinking about seeing it in it's entirety, but it occurred to me: my god, it could very well be a basilisk hack. If I see the whole thing, it'll rewire my brain.
It might turn me into...I have no fucking idea.
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/rebels-make-a-go-of-governing-in-liberated-city-in-syria-a-859007.html
throwing this here for my eventual exoplanet civil war campaign
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my eventual exoplanet civil war campaign
Can't wait.
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This was in the paper a couple of days ago:
(http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g80/CADmonkey__________/tmbss121016.gif)
This thread just seemed like the best place to share it.
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I just had an amusing thought: Since Pathfinder Corp is run by the Planetary Consortium, their Gatecrashing teams all wear armor and carry gear marked with blank ad space tags. That way, if any of the vids/XP taken on a mission is useful for PR purposes, they can sell the ad space to other hypercorps and have vid editing AIs map on the appropriate plugs. As a result, whenever you see a Pathfinder mission on the news, their teams look like fucking NASCAR drivers exploring exoplanets.
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They probably add that in post.
Most Eclipse Phase song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT-rBt0ZqyQ
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This is the theme used for the movie trailer for the Venus tier. The trailer opens with the team sweaping Though. Then it cuts to the pirate ship dropping out of the clouds and the pirates zip lining boarding the ship. Then a series of jump cuts between Crowly putting wagers in slow-mo at the majong table and sped up clips Gerard's death match. Then a clip of Cyrock moving across the exterior Cloud Nine, puffeted by winds. Then a series of quick flashes of larges of claudias and one in particular of a bunch of claudias giving Thad's toon a make over while others stand around with guns. Then a wide angle shot of the team ducking for cover as the reaver shreds the pirate base. Then an a parkor sequence with thad's toon. Then a glory shot of Bartleby blasting someone with a sniper rifle in the final battle. Then shot of the raven pilot in his ship's cockpit looking back at the group in the cabin. The final shot is Thought crashing into the atmosphere and fade to black. "Welcome to Firewall." appear on screen, then below appears "Are you god?" and then they fade and we're done.
Then it cuts to the wide angle shot of hte hanger in Cloud Nine, slowing panning into on all the Claudias pointing guns at the team.
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Pretty good trailer.
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This is the theme used for the movie trailer for the Venus tier. The trailer opens with the team sweaping Though. Then it cuts to the pirate ship dropping out of the clouds and the pirates zip lining boarding the ship. Then a series of jump cuts between Crowly putting wagers in slow-mo at the majong table and sped up clips Gerard's death match. Then a clip of Cyrock moving across the exterior Cloud Nine, puffeted by winds. Then a series of quick flashes of larges of claudias and one in particular of a bunch of claudias giving Thad's toon a make over while others stand around with guns. Then a wide angle shot of the team ducking for cover as the reaver shreds the pirate base. Then an a parkor sequence with thad's toon. Then a glory shot of Bartleby blasting someone with a sniper rifle in the final battle. Then shot of the raven pilot in his ship's cockpit looking back at the group in the cabin. The final shot is Thought crashing into the atmosphere and fade to black. "Welcome to Firewall." appear on screen, then below appears "Are you god?" and then they fade and we're done.
Then it cuts to the wide angle shot of hte hanger in Cloud Nine, slowing panning into on all the Claudias pointing guns at the team.
Are you referring to the song New Life or did you have another song in mind?
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This song, first 40 seconds would be of the raven's ship flying up to Thought, the team sweeping up would kick into at the first 'Welcome to your new life."
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Trailer for Luna tier AKA Episode 2: Phantom Stars
Bartleby walking up to the vault with attendants holding the football helmet
Thad sitting in the courtyard talking to child morph
The team walking down the subway tunnel
Aeral shot of clanking masses marching to the rally
Interior shot of cargo container, doors open to show SAIROCH staring at racks and racks of guns
Team pointing it's gun at a crazed looking Maxwell holding the brick
Neo-Gorilla thrashing in tank with Bartleby standing over him emotionless
Red light strobe of Preston getting jiggy with it
Suicide van bursting into the courtyard and the doors fly open....
cut to black and silence
Gerard drops the stealth cloak and starts wooping ass under the bank
dragonfly SAIROC getting shot up on the roof in Nector
Preston charging the team after being exsurgent infected
People running and screaming in the couryard as suicide squad, security and criminals are shooting widly.
Exsurgent monster busts through the wall and charges them.
Fade to black
"What's in the box?" appears and then fades to black
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Red light strobe of Preston getting jiggy with it
CUE DUBSTEP
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I think this song is appropriate for Bartleby: https://vimeo.com/47670351
Some of the lyrics go perfectly with his back story:
All I need's relief
I need I need some sympathy
Look at me
I Just can't believe
What they've done to me
We could never get free
I just wanna be
Look at me
I Just can't believe
What they've done to me
We could never get free
I just wanna be
I just wanna dream
All of my life been wadin in
Water so deep now we got to swim
Wonder will it ever end
How long how long till we have a friend
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Remove the humorous context, and this becomes really disturbing.
TITAN artifact, or meme-virus?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOcDfMBq9VI
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i just saw a clip of an upcoming docu starring a famous Pre-Fall scientologist who works for those who maintain the killsat cordon around ol' Dirt
have fun finding it
[want more? This is TEXTure]
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What?
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Oblivion staring Tom Cruse
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/
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Oblivion staring Tom Cruse
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483013/
give that sentient a TITAN-free Kewpie doll from our friends at FROLIX-8
[want more? this is TEXTure]
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Even Plushie Preston celebrates Christmas in 10 AF
(http://i.imgur.com/pAtBV.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/rvNmf.jpg)
It was on sale, but unfortunately it has sold out. :(
http://www.etsy.com/shop/hine?sold_listing_id=117803543
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:-D If only Plushie Preston came with a human skin suit...
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OCP presents the new SAIROC-209, the latest in habitat policy enforcement and automated pacification.
"I'm sorry, but you are in violation of Public Safety section 211, paragraph 2b, regarding man-portable explosive devices and personal armaments. If you would please, lay down your weapon. You have fifteen seconds to comply. Did I say fifteen? I'm sorry, that should have been ten seconds. Okay, now it's eight. Five. Four...three... you really should put the weapon down, sir..."
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Saturday morning breakfast serial does post scarcity economics.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2834#comic
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What whales should look like in EP.
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/582491_564966723532144_1162171920_n.jpg)
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One more thing I want to put here.
Real life Reputation Economy
TED talk link (ftp://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust.html)
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A few highlights of 2012 show that science fiction is slowly becoming a reality.
Seriously, this is worth a read.
http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/03/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2012/
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The podcast 99% Invisible deals with design and human interaction. Some of the episodes deal with issues that would come up in a game of EP.
http://99percentinvisible.org/post/1314197574/episode-07-99-alien-download-embed-share
This episode deals with the design challenges in a zero-G environment. Mary Roach's book, "Packing for Mars" is covered pretty well here (and is, its self a great resource for challenges in zero-G). This might pay off in the small details.
http://99percentinvisible.org/post/3998126463/99-invisible-extra-episode-19x-rjdj-reactive
This episode is about an app called RJDJ that creates musical tracks that react to sound in your environment. This really got me thinking how Augmented Reality isn't just HUDs and Muses providing info. The whole sense spectrum can be used to provide information or an enhanced experience. In fact these other senses are probably better since we are visually-oriented creatures. It's easy to be distracted if information from your muse is popping up all the time. But if you have a, say an constants, low music track hooked up to your pulse or brain activity or other vital signs, and that music changes depending on how close you are to destroying your morph. You can monitor your morph with out distracting from the task at hand.
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So if you are in an awesome action movie boss fight and your adrenaline is going it can communicate you adrenaline level by playing
DVDA - Now You're A Man
?
That would be great.
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I don't know if anyone has seen this yet but it's a google map of mars with the mars cities marked on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Uf5517nx0
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A couple days ago on my lunch break I started realizing all the terrible things the internet can being to bear are so much worse in EP. Take, for instance, this scenario:
A metacelebrity becomes crossed with a TITAN strain and is able to instantly adapt to any situation, defeat any opponent, and charm everyone. Based on an old earth story involving a trek through the stars, the new exsurgent threat titles itself "Mary Sue."
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I'm going to jump my group into Eclipse Phase by surprising them with a game during our next session. Plan is to have them not prepare anything for the next session of Pathfinder (I usually have them write something up) and then when they all settle down around the table hand them their eclipse phase character sheets and start the game.
After reading a couple of ready made adventures I've decided to start with the Continuity adventure. I've tweaked the beginning a bit to get them to practice the mechanics, kind of like a tutorial. Remember the beginning of the original Halo where the deckhand has you look up, look down, etc? Well, the Dr. Bot at the beginning has them go through some menial tasks (flex their arms, look around - that kind of stuff. I guessed that after re-sleeving the first thing a medical specialist or re-sleeving specialist would do is check to make sure you actually sleeved okay ) to have them roll a few times to get used to the system before hopping right into the game.
It's a group of 6 so I need to make quite a few sheets. Are the pre-generated characters in the core rulebook okay to use? Should I tweak them somewhat or should I just make them completely new ones?
Anyone have any suggestions?
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The pregens should be fine, especially since the players won't know how to tweak or customize their characters.
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Make them all Space Whales.
Yeah, pre-gens are pretty okay. Character creation is the hardest part about EP, if you cut that out, it's pretty easy. Though you might want to give each one a 3x5 with a list of bonuses their gear/implants/traits/whatever give them as well.
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Eclipse Phase in a nutshell: http://nonadventures.com/2013/01/26/formerly-known-as-printers/
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It seems to me that only an utter sociopath would decide to uplift pigs. "Congratulations, you're now self-aware and intelligent! Oh, and by the way, the entire modern history of your species is that of a purpose-bred food source, grown and slaughtered by the billions in nightmare conditions. I hope you won't hold a grudge."
On the other hand, uplift-pig morphs might be just the sort of symbolic FUCK YOU HUMANS that might appeal to certain radicals or Mercurials.
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Eclipse Phase in a nutshell: http://nonadventures.com/2013/01/26/formerly-known-as-printers/
what a beautiful riff :3
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Hello everyone. I'm new here (waves politely) and I'll head over to the standard "Introduce Yourself" thread in a moment, but I wanted to start here since Eclipse Phase is what led me here.
Someone in my semi-regular game group had introduced me to Eclipse Phase and he wanted me to run it for our group. I had no experience with it and looking for anything about running the game led me to the the AP podcasts here.
I liked the way the AP for A Glorious Fall worked and really liked the "tutorial" approach it used to introduce the game and so shamelessly stole the general idea for my game. It went extremely well and even though the players were not taken enough to want to start a regular campaign everyone seemed to have a good time.
I wanted to record the session but I was overwhelmingly overruled on the idea and so I had to settle for an AAR write-up. Here it is.
Eclipse Phase: A Tale of the Fall (http://14kofginafpd.com/posts/random-thoughts/after-action-report-eclipse-phase-a-tale-of-the-fall/)
Again, thanks for the inspiration.
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Awesome write up! Sorry to hear you couldn't entice them to do a regular campaign.
I tried my first game with my buddies yesterday - normally we play pathfinder but they got fed up with me telling them to try something new. Let me guarantee everyone that it was a huge success!
A couple of weeks ago I posted a question on pre-gens but I was surprised when all of my players decided to make their own chars. Out of six players I had three who used a pre-gen to base their char on and three who made new ones. Instead of playing Glory I decided to play Singularity, as it could be played without having Firewall in the picture and I guessed it would play on my players "Dead Space 3" vibe.
We've started off yesterday and after 3 hours I had to call the game on a cliffhanger, we'll play again in 2 weeks (we have a system where we play every Tuesday but change GM's, so I GM every other week) and I'll have time to write up a full AAR then.
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good to hear guys! Eclipse Phase is a great game that really deserves a larger playerbase. I think it's the best sci-fi rpg out on the market.
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I haven't run Eclipse Phase before, but I've been putting some ideas together for a one-shot to give myself and some players an introduction to the game. I'd be interested in feedback and suggestions--in particular, I haven't really fleshed out the concept for the actual ex-threat, yet.
Burnt Offerings
Wake up, little lamb. It is time.
I know that you would prefer the comforting, familiar sound of your muse at a time like this. But I'm afraid I need a that particular real estate for myself. I planted a divine seed in this mortal shell, and now I spring full-formed into your skull. I shall be your guide and your master, instead. I am Abraham taking you by the hand, and leading you up the mountain. And you will be my sacrifice. More blemished than a proper offering should be, but I suppose as a god I leave something to be desired as well. We shall simply have to make do for one another.
There's no time to lie about on this slab, my dove. I have awakened you, given you an all-too-brief chance to escape the rather dreary cycle of rebirth in which imprisons you. I suggest you transcend, for both our sakes. We will have only a few opportunities to fulfill my destiny; and judging from the sad state of that fellow over there, some of my incarnations have already been wasted. But I'm sure you're made of better stuff. Even if some of this ego-data suggests otherwise.
And when a prayer for deliverance comes to your lips, you may call me Minerva.
The PCs wake up in the resleeving facility of a small cylinder habitat, in an unknown location. Each of them is a stranger to the others, and none of them know why they are here. For most, the last thing they recall is a routine ghost-backup procedure. All of them are in unfamiliar morphs, and they quickly discover that months have passed since their last conscious thought.
In each PCs head, in place of their muse, is an entity calling itself Minerva. Minerva has a job for the PCs to do, and is neither patient nor gentle in its commands. The PCs will soon find out that their self-interest aligns with Minerva's mission, at least for now.
The Background
Implied Consent is a cylinder habitat that is home to a small criminal enterprise producing torture and snuff XPs. Even the most depraved fetishes can be fulfilled by mindless pleasure pods or a simulspace show; as with all products, the organic and un-simulated demands the highest price. Implied Consent makes its living by sleeving actual egos in its morphs, giving its customers the knowledge that the suffering is “real.”
Having purchased numerous egos from Nine Lives and other disreputable providers, the crew of Implied Consent normally performs crude psychosurgery on them, ensuring the right mix of compliance and genuine fear response, while eliminating pesky problems like hand-to-hand combat skills or hacking ability. These edited egos are used and re-used, sleeved into whatever morphs the clients demand (or that Implied Consent can get their hands on). Mindwiping and copying from backup prevents the trapped egos from learning about their predicament.
Occasionally a high-paying client will ego-cast to Implied Consentto live out their desires more directly. Otherwise, the crew keeps their station carefully isolated and secure. Unbeknownst to them, however, the latest pervert to come on board is harboring an ex-threat. This is what has drawn Minerva's attention.
Minerva is a Firewall proxy. Some think Minerva's misanthropy is a calculated method for improving agent performance; many just think it's a sociopath. Minerva is actually an infomorph, an AGI that specializes in infiltration and intelligence-gathering. It sees itself as being “above” the petty concerns of transhumans, and frequently employs carefully pruned forks of itself as ready-made agents. Minerva is notorious for running ops within ops, sending sentinel teams on missions whose true objectives are quite different than their stated goals. Minerva believes in reducing risk by minimizing the exposure of agents to data regarding TITAN vectors and info-based ex-threats; a philosophy which has won it few admirers but has provided surprising success against particularly subtle or virulent threats.
The remoteness and paranoia of Implied Consent's crew makes infiltration by a conventional sentinel cell unlikely. Instead, Minerva created a compressed beta-fork of itself that can bootstrap in a morph's muse hardware. Installing itself into several morphs bound for the station, Minerva has smuggled itself on board. When one of the infected morphs is activated, Minerva wakes up, and begins the operation. Though unable to act directly against the habitat's mesh due to the limitations of its hardware, Minerva has managed to exploit a vulnerability in the sleeving software. A tiny error now causes unedited egos to be sleeved into Minerva's morphs, providing her with ad-hoc agents. These unfortunates are the PCs.
The Mission
Minerva's goals are simple: Activate multiple “agents” via the onboard sleeving facility, overpower the crew as needed, and eliminate the ex-threat by the most thorough means necessary. The survival of the egos in Minerva's morphs is not preferred, as they are themselves likely to become vectors in the process. But Minerva's experience with transhumans has taught it that they will believe that success will lead to their escape—for a while, at least. Some of Minerva's incarnations have already failed and died—the first few morphs accomplishing little more than providing access to the sleeving hardware. Each new incarnation of Minerva is nearly as ignorant as the liberated egos occupying the morph, and can provide only the intelligence it had at the beginning of the mission.
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Oh, and I'm blatantly stealing the Minerva persona from a really awesome mod for Half-Life 2 (http://www.moddb.com/mods/minerva). Which I should totally re-play one of these days. It's good.
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I just ran the first two sections of Bump In The Night for four members my regular group. It turned out to be a pretty hilarious game. (And EP combat is a sonuvabitch to keep track of. I think I need to make myself a spreadsheet or download an app or something for next time.)
For those of you who've never read it, the whole point of the scenario is that the players farcast to the Venusian cloud city of Pavarti in order to meet up with a woman named Dwala Chatterjee because of reasons. When they get there, the aerostat's security chief pulls them in and tells them that she's missing, and that there's been some kind of unidentified outbreak that's caused them to place the entire city on lockdown. If they don't figure out what's going on and get it under wraps in six hours, the Planetary Consortium is going to send a ship full of delegates over who will potentially seize control, revoking the city's independent charter. The scenario author left it up to the game master to decide what the players' original purpose was, but suggested giving them a dummy mission for which Chatterjee is the contact.
Alex, the guy who usually GMs our EP games, had his heart set on playing the Oversight Auditor from the Sunward book, but at first I was hesitant because I couldn't see why a die-hard PC operative would actively participate in a mission that would cheat the Consortium out of an opportunity to own Pavarti.
Then, the solution hit me.
Chatterjee was an overzealous diplomat for the Consortium who jumped at the opportunity to snatch up the independent aerostat. What she wasn't aware of is that a number of the "anonymous benefactors" who own Pavarti are already PC entities that generate a hefty black revenue stream from the tourist aerostat. If they'd formally absorbed it, the amount of cred they'd be able to skim off would be significantly reduced, since Pavarti would be "on the books," so to speak. So I let him play the Oversight character, and his mission was to round up a team of "independent contractors" and stop the delegation from taking over the city.
In short, the Planetary Consortium ran a black op against itself.
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I haven't run Eclipse Phase before, but I've been putting some ideas together for a one-shot to give myself and some players an introduction to the game. I'd be interested in feedback and suggestions--in particular, I haven't really fleshed out the concept for the actual ex-threat, yet.
That's a pretty cool concept. I wouldn't want to wake up on one of Minerva's ops.
I dunno if this fits with what you had in mind, but it was an awful detail I came up with for the game I ran earlier just in case my players wandered into just such an establishment on Pavarti. Bump in the Night called for one of the side characters to be an unsavory ego trafficker, which was meant to be a red herring. The module author came up with all kinds of awful things that could be done with the egos: rape, snuff, the egos of actual children forked for neotenic sex, etc.
If my players tracked the egos to their destination and tried to infiltrate it as patrons, someone would have showed them The Lobster Tank. Basically, it's an AR display hooked into a murky simulspace where the stolen egos wander while they wait for horrifying things to happen to them. They are instanced in such a way that they have "goldfish memory;" that is, the system wipes their short-term memory every 30 seconds or so, keeping them in a constant state of terror and confusion. The basic concept came from the lobster tanks they have at restaurants where they serve lobster, and patrons are allowed to choose the one they'd like prepared for them.
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I haven't run Eclipse Phase before, but I've been putting some ideas together for a one-shot to give myself and some players an introduction to the game. I'd be interested in feedback and suggestions--in particular, I haven't really fleshed out the concept for the actual ex-threat, yet.
Very similar to a a one-shot I'm currently planning for my group, loosely based on The Metal Glen (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Ruby_Quest#The_Metal_Glen) from RubyQuest. Essentially involving the players waking up in a hidden hypercorp research facility, where very bad things have happened after the said hypercorp decided messing around with TITAN tech for medical purposes was a good idea. Their last memory will be receiving the briefing from Firewall to investigate the facility.
Hopefully plenty of paranoid shenanigans will take place, especially once the players find out about that they were more than likely used as guinea pigs for the experiments. Whether anyone will actually make it off once the destroy all exthreats solider and scum drug addict who usually wants to bring back something for Firewall to study face off over whether they should even leave the habitat will have to be seen.
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Hey all,
I've been getting back into Mass Effect in a big way. I think there was mention of a Mass Effect conversion for Eclipse Phase. I've been thinking that in many ways the Eclipse Phase rules would be perfect for ME. Was curious to see if anyone on these boards has tried it with either a scenario or a full fledged campaign. If so, how well did it work out?
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One of the things that I keep thinking about when listening to Eclipse Phase APs is how the infugee population might be used in the study of social sciences.
One of the problems with the study of Economics, Political Science, International Relations and even Game Theory, is that only history is your laboratory. We would not know what would have happened had politician X not adopted Policy Y during this crisis or that war. There is no control group in history.
However, having a population of infugees hanging out in a purgatorial simulspace server, hoping for a chance to be useful enough to merit a case morph, gives the perfect laboratory for a mad social scientist.
Some of the ways I see it playing out are:
1) A simple experiment about a particular economic theory. You set up two identical servers with one difference in how the economy works and watch them play out in accelerated time.
2) You keep restarting, by erasing the memories of the infugees tinkering with your economic system to make it perfect. Maybe an Andrew Ryan from Bioshock type, desperately trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life.
3) You could re-stage historical conflicts. Maybe force the infugees to keep reliving The Fall, trying to figure out just what kind of weapon could have halted the TITANs, what tactic might have saved more of transhumanity, or if the controversial nuking of the Huairen Air Base slowed the TITANs or was solely an act of Western aggression.
3a) Or maybe the hyper-elite CEO of one of the major military contractors that designed the TITANs copes with his guilt by becoming eerily obsessed with some other war. He has is secret server of infugees that he saved from TITAN upload and treats it like his own private war miniature set. Forcing the infugees to refight the Battle of Yorktown, The Somme, D-Day, or General Scharzkopf's feint during the First Gulf War.
The idea is take your mad scientist archetype and apply it to something we cannot scientifically test, but could if we could create perfectly controlled worlds. It takes the idea that we could learn so much if we could just do horrible things to people and uses infugees to stand in for the knee-jerk hate that most players have toward slavery and the like.
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One of the things that I keep thinking about when listening to Eclipse Phase APs is how the infugee population might be used in the study of social sciences.
One of the problems with the study of Economics, Political Science, International Relations and even Game Theory, is that only history is your laboratory. We would not know what would have happened had politician X not adopted Policy Y during this crisis or that war. There is no control group in history.
However, having a population of infugees hanging out in a purgatorial simulspace server, hoping for a chance to be useful enough to merit a case morph, gives the perfect laboratory for a mad social scientist.
Some of the ways I see it playing out are:
1) A simple experiment about a particular economic theory. You set up two identical servers with one difference in how the economy works and watch them play out in accelerated time.
2) You keep restarting, by erasing the memories of the infugees tinkering with your economic system to make it perfect. Maybe an Andrew Ryan from Bioshock type, desperately trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life.
3) You could re-stage historical conflicts. Maybe force the infugees to keep reliving The Fall, trying to figure out just what kind of weapon could have halted the TITANs, what tactic might have saved more of transhumanity, or if the controversial nuking of the Huairen Air Base slowed the TITANs or was solely an act of Western aggression.
3a) Or maybe the hyper-elite CEO of one of the major military contractors that designed the TITANs copes with his guilt by becoming eerily obsessed with some other war. He has is secret server of infugees that he saved from TITAN upload and treats it like his own private war miniature set. Forcing the infugees to refight the Battle of Yorktown, The Somme, D-Day, or General Scharzkopf's feint during the First Gulf War.
The idea is take your mad scientist archetype and apply it to something we cannot scientifically test, but could if we could create perfectly controlled worlds. It takes the idea that we could learn so much if we could just do horrible things to people and uses infugees to stand in for the knee-jerk hate that most players have toward slavery and the like.
I like this idea. It sound like an especially good way to introduce new player to the setting. Run them through a Fall wargame, one where they can "win," then dump them out of the simulspace into AF 10 to learn the horrifying truth. It could get them used to the mechanics and simpler tech before dropping the heavy transhumanism on them.
Also, because I like to torture players, I'd have it so that the main criticism of the simulspace historical exercises is that their findings aren't applicable to the real world. The criticism that the variables aren't controlled or simulated accurately enough really can't be refuted; the problem in the first place is that reality is largely unquantifiable itself.
However, what if one ego always rose to the top of every simulation? No matter how many times the historical period was repeated, no matter the conditions, this one personality ended up as a major leader. Would sleeving him into a morph and seeing if he could do the same IRL prove the validity of the simulation? What if a scientist, desperate to secure more funding for his indentured experiments, gave his proof of concept back all the memories wiped away from his previous selves, to secure an edge? You'd have Alexander the Great, Hitler, Jesus, and every other major shaper of world history rolled into one, likely insane, ego.
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There's a practical concern for running such large simulations - it would require massive computer resources, power, and large number of egos and psychosurgery specialists (to memory wipe and otherwise prep them for the simulation) - that takes a lot of money and power to pull that off and keep people from freaking out about doing the kind of thing that TITANs do.
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eVolo, my favourite magazine of batshit crazy speculative architecture is running this article:
ProtoHouse 2.0 – First 3D Printed Dwelling by Softkill Design, London (http://www.evolo.us/architecture/protohouse-2-0-first-3d-printed-dwelling-by-softkill-design-london/)
The ProtoHouse project was initially developed by Softkill Design, in the Architectural Association School‘s Design Research Lab within the ‘behavioral matter’ studio of Robert Stuart-Smith. It investigated the architectural potential of the latest Selective Laser Sintering technologies, testing the boundaries of large scale 3D printing by designing with computer algorithms that micro-organize the printed material itself. Softkill is now announcing plans for the first actually printed plastic dwelling, which would be assembled in one day.
This is just so Eclipse Phase it hurts:
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-01.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-02.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-04.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-05.jpg)
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yeah I sure want to live there in the creepy nightmare spider silk house
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I hope we don't use coins or other small objects in the future because my house's floors would be filled with small objects dropped between the threads. I bet everything is velcoable though, that'd be sweet.
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yeah I sure want to live there in the creepy nightmare spider silk house
And the best part is that the building services (electricity/HVAC/plumbing/etc.) will probably be delivered in tubes woven into the fibrous structure of the house. It'll be like living inside a living creature! ;D
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And the best part is that the building services (electricity/HVAC/plumbing/etc.) will probably be delivered in tubes woven into the fibrous structure of the house. It'll be like living inside a living creature! ;D
Can't sleep. . . my house will eat me. . .
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(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-05.jpg)
(http://i50.tinypic.com/3151ks1.jpg)
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did you just make a H.R. Geiger image macro or did that already exist
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Which would be worse? That I searched for a picture of Giger looking all Giger-ish, and then made a macro on the spot? Or that I saw that macro like six months ago, thought "I bet this will come in handy at some point," and saved it?
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I DONT KNOW
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I DONT KNOW
Ross
The answer is Yes.
The answer has always been
Yes
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wait now that i think about it the 6 month thing is way worse because wtf context was it created in the first place
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It also looks like the skull of a creature with a listed SAN loss. But I'm liking the idea quite a bit. The real questions I have are about energy and resource consumption in the printing.
And it's based on bone growth. Huh, that's a thing.
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So I need a little advice.
I'm working up a short to medium EP game. My initial plan is set in a dyson sphere. The players gate set up a base camp, explore a little then run them threw a couple of modified Mysteries of Mesoamerica modules. After that they find some bizarre organic obsidian maglift near the ruins they've cleared out of nasties. Doing the math I figure there's a station every 5k kilometers (a total of 30K gates..just on that one east to west circuit...maybe increase the distance between stops?) and travel time between stations is about 15 minutes with each train stopping for 3 minutes. Then game becomes another form of 'crashing' as they hit varies stops and explore...creatures, traps and what not. Then they bump into other gate crashers. There are other gates in the sphere and turf war starts to happen as people try and seize the most lift stations...the thought being if you control a station, you control access to whatever is near it. Also I'm thinking throwing in some primitive societies they have to deal with and maybe defense systems left by the sphere creatures.
One of the initial difficulties I'm having is hiding the fact their in a sphere at the beginning of the game. I would assume that a team would bring along some sort of probe launcher and fire a drone into the upper atmo/orbit to do surveys of the planet. With in a few hours they'd think they're on something that was not on an actual planet. I'd like to delay the revelation of the sphere as long as possible. Any ideas how I might do that?
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There's a dyson sphere described in the Gatecrashers book. Use that.
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Have the drones fail to send data. They fire the drone, they watch it go up, and then it doesn't transmit. They try again, watch it with vison enhancement devices, see it enter orbit, but still not data. Mysterious!
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One of the things that I keep thinking about when listening to Eclipse Phase APs is how the infugee population might be used in the study of social sciences.
One of the problems with the study of Economics, Political Science, International Relations and even Game Theory, is that only history is your laboratory. We would not know what would have happened had politician X not adopted Policy Y during this crisis or that war. There is no control group in history.
However, having a population of infugees hanging out in a purgatorial simulspace server, hoping for a chance to be useful enough to merit a case morph, gives the perfect laboratory for a mad social scientist.
Some of the ways I see it playing out are:
1) A simple experiment about a particular economic theory. You set up two identical servers with one difference in how the economy works and watch them play out in accelerated time.
2) You keep restarting, by erasing the memories of the infugees tinkering with your economic system to make it perfect. Maybe an Andrew Ryan from Bioshock type, desperately trying to bring Atlas Shrugged to life.
3) You could re-stage historical conflicts. Maybe force the infugees to keep reliving The Fall, trying to figure out just what kind of weapon could have halted the TITANs, what tactic might have saved more of transhumanity, or if the controversial nuking of the Huairen Air Base slowed the TITANs or was solely an act of Western aggression.
3a) Or maybe the hyper-elite CEO of one of the major military contractors that designed the TITANs copes with his guilt by becoming eerily obsessed with some other war. He has is secret server of infugees that he saved from TITAN upload and treats it like his own private war miniature set. Forcing the infugees to refight the Battle of Yorktown, The Somme, D-Day, or General Scharzkopf's feint during the First Gulf War.
The idea is take your mad scientist archetype and apply it to something we cannot scientifically test, but could if we could create perfectly controlled worlds. It takes the idea that we could learn so much if we could just do horrible things to people and uses infugees to stand in for the knee-jerk hate that most players have toward slavery and the like.
I like this idea. It sound like an especially good way to introduce new player to the setting. Run them through a Fall wargame, one where they can "win," then dump them out of the simulspace into AF 10 to learn the horrifying truth. It could get them used to the mechanics and simpler tech before dropping the heavy transhumanism on them.
Also, because I like to torture players, I'd have it so that the main criticism of the simulspace historical exercises is that their findings aren't applicable to the real world. The criticism that the variables aren't controlled or simulated accurately enough really can't be refuted; the problem in the first place is that reality is largely unquantifiable itself.
However, what if one ego always rose to the top of every simulation? No matter how many times the historical period was repeated, no matter the conditions, this one personality ended up as a major leader. Would sleeving him into a morph and seeing if he could do the same IRL prove the validity of the simulation? What if a scientist, desperate to secure more funding for his indentured experiments, gave his proof of concept back all the memories wiped away from his previous selves, to secure an edge? You'd have Alexander the Great, Hitler, Jesus, and every other major shaper of world history rolled into one, likely insane, ego.
However, what if one ego always rose to the top of every simulation? No matter how many times the historical period was repeated, no matter the conditions, this one personality ended up as a major leader. Would sleeving him into a morph and seeing if he could do the same IRL prove the validity of the simulation? What if a scientist, desperate to secure more funding for his indentured experiments, gave his proof of concept back all the memories wiped away from his previous selves, to secure an edge? You'd have Alexander the Great, Hitler, Jesus, and every other major shaper of world history
I think that introducing this messiah-type leader figure could be a great exploration of some of the more darkly bureaucratic and political aspects of Eclipse Phase. I imagine it as sort of Enders Game meets Dr. Strangelove idea:
After years of running various simulations of historical battles Prof. Evil Von Crazy or whatever is losing the support of his patron (a hypercorp, a neo-university, a cyber-thinktank, the LLA, whomever). He IDs this singular figure whose natural leadership and cunning instincts have turned the tide in many battle-sims. Additionally, since this leader is time accelerated he has been learning military theory by trial-and-error first hand for decades. Often leading, what should have been, the losing side to victory (ala Valley Forge, the Battle of Agincort, the defeat of the Spanish Armada).
So you have this brutal gauntlet that has given rise to an incredible leader, one who, it seems, from testing , could have turned the tide during The Fall. So what do we do with this EP version of Ender Wiggin, certainly not place him in charge of the various defense forces or security programs. Instead he is a tool that the various players will use to their own advantage.
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eVolo, my favourite magazine of batshit crazy speculative architecture is running this article:
ProtoHouse 2.0 – First 3D Printed Dwelling by Softkill Design, London (http://www.evolo.us/architecture/protohouse-2-0-first-3d-printed-dwelling-by-softkill-design-london/)
The ProtoHouse project was initially developed by Softkill Design, in the Architectural Association School‘s Design Research Lab within the ‘behavioral matter’ studio of Robert Stuart-Smith. It investigated the architectural potential of the latest Selective Laser Sintering technologies, testing the boundaries of large scale 3D printing by designing with computer algorithms that micro-organize the printed material itself. Softkill is now announcing plans for the first actually printed plastic dwelling, which would be assembled in one day.
This is just so Eclipse Phase it hurts:
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-01.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-02.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-04.jpg)
(http://www.evolo.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ProtoHouse-SoftKill-Design-05.jpg)
awe some
totally reminds me of Cory Doctorow's works (where he imagines a non-scarcity based economy world where people 'grow' houses etc...) and the creator of cyberpunk Rudy Rucker (which all of you should be readin' -- good background material for Eclipse Phase etc...Moldies, Hylozoism, meatbops, allas...his 'Saucer Wisdom' is a fun book)
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Today's SMBC strikes me as very close to the heart of Eclipse Phase players.
Comic direct link:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2908#comic
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More Eclipse Phase Now
real life Ultimates
" Chinese Eugenics
China has been running the world's largest and most successful eugenics program for more than thirty years, driving China's ever-faster rise as the global superpower. I worry that this poses some existential threat to Western civilization. Yet the most likely result is that America and Europe linger around a few hundred more years as also-rans on the world-historical stage, nursing our anti-hereditarian political correctness to the bitter end.
When I learned about Chinese eugenics this summer, I was astonished that its population policies had received so little attention. China makes no secret of its eugenic ambitions, in either its cultural history or its government policies.
For generations, Chinese intellectuals have emphasized close ties between the state (guojia), the nation (minzu), the population (renkou), the Han race (zhongzu), and, more recently, the Chinese gene-pool (jiyinku). Traditional Chinese medicine focused on preventing birth defects, promoting maternal health and "fetal education" (taijiao) during pregnancy, and nourishing the father's semen (yangjing) and mother's blood (pingxue) to produce bright, healthy babies (see Frank Dikötter's book Imperfect Conceptions). Many scientists and reformers of Republican China (1912-1949) were ardent Darwinians and Galtonians. They worried about racial extinction (miezhong) and "the science of deformed fetuses" (jitaixue), and saw eugenics as a way to restore China's rightful place as the world's leading civilization after a century of humiliation by European colonialism. The Communist revolution kept these eugenic ideals from having much policy impact for a few decades though. Mao Zedong was too obsessed with promoting military and manufacturing power, and too terrified of peasant revolt, to interfere with traditional Chinese reproductive practices.
But then Deng Xiaoping took power after Mao's death. Deng had long understood that China would succeed only if the Communist Party shifted its attention from economic policy to population policy. He liberalized markets, but implemented the one-child policy —partly to curtail China's population explosion, but also to reduce dysgenic fertility among rural peasants. Throughout the 1980s, Chinese propaganda urges couples to have children "later, longer, fewer, better"—at a later age, with a longer interval between birth, resulting in fewer children of higher quality. With the 1995 Maternal and Infant Health Law (known as the Eugenic Law until Western opposition forced a name change), China forbade people carrying heritable mental or physical disorders from marrying, and promoted mass prenatal ultrasound testing for birth defects. Deng also encouraged assortative mating through promoting urbanization and higher education, so bright, hard-working young people could meet each other more easily, increasing the proportion of children who would be at the upper extremes of intelligence and conscientiousness.
One of Deng's legacies is China's current strategy of maximizing "Comprehensive National Power". This includes economic power (GDP, natural resources, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, owning America's national debt), military power (cyberwarfare, anti-aircraft-carrier ballistic missiles, anti-satellite missiles), and 'soft power' (cultural prestige, the Beijing Olympics, tourism, Chinese films and contemporary art, Confucius Institutes, Shanghai's skyscrapers). But crucially, Comprehensive National Power also includes "biopower": creating the world's highest-quality human capital in terms of the Chinese population's genes, health, and education (see Governing China's Population by Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin Winkler).
Chinese biopower has ancient roots in the concept of "yousheng" ("good birth"—which has the same literal meaning as "eugenics"). For a thousand years, China has been ruled by a cognitive meritocracy selected through the highly competitive imperial exams. The brightest young men became the scholar-officials who ruled the masses, amassed wealth, attracted multiple wives, and had more children. The current "gaokao" exams for university admission, taken by more than 10 million young Chinese per year, are just the updated version of these imperial exams—the route to educational, occupation, financial, and marital success. With the relaxation of the one-child policy, wealthier couples can now pay a "social fostering fee" (shehui fuyangfei) to have an extra child, restoring China's traditional link between intelligence, education, wealth, and reproductive success.
Chinese eugenics will quickly become even more effective, given its massive investment in genomic research on human mental and physical traits. BGI-Shenzhen employs more than 4,000 researchers. It has far more "next-generation" DNA sequencers that anywhere else in the world, and is sequencing more than 50,000 genomes per year. It recently acquired the California firm Complete Genomics to become a major rival to Illumina.
The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.
There is unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia, medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian Han ethno-state. Given what I understand of evolutionary behavior genetics, I expect—and hope—that they will succeed. The welfare and happiness of the world's most populous country depends upon it.
My real worry is the Western response. The most likely response, given Euro-American ideological biases, would be a bioethical panic that leads to criticism of Chinese population policy with the same self-righteous hypocrisy that we have shown in criticizing various Chinese socio-cultural policies. But the global stakes are too high for us to act that stupidly and short-sightedly. A more mature response would be based on mutual civilizational respect, asking—what can we learn from what the Chinese are doing, how can we help them, and how can they help us to keep up as they create their brave new world? "
--Geoffrey Miller's response to Edge.org's 2013 question "What *should* we be worried about?"
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*comes into the thread to post a funny quote from Know Evil Episode 24, reads QuickReleasePersonalitY's post, falters completely*
:o Well, shit. Game over, man. Game over.
Anyway, while I go digest the slow death of Western culture due to our failure to scientifically guarantee genetic perfection, you guys can all enjoy what I think was the unappreciated line of the game, courtesy of Ross:
"Programming doesn't interest me. If the subject doesn't feel pain, it's just no fun. That's why I went into psychosurgery, and it's probably what I told my guidance counselor."
Bartelby is one fucked up customer.
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The trouble I have with Geoffrey Miller's concern regarding Chinese eugenics is the idea of "perfection" on an individual or societal basis pushes against the increasing specialization of expertise that is driving global economic growth.
To wit: when you focus on an idea of racial or genetic perfection, you risk excluding genetically imperfect people who can still advance society. Call it the "Sherlock Holmes Effect" if you like. You take someone who, under different circumstances, would be shoved to the margins of society to wallow or suffer, and find a way to take their skills, habits, perspectives, ect to better use.
A good example of this is the deeper understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorder. The nature of this disorder is such that the autistic individual sees the world and thinks about it in a distinctly different way than non-autistic individuals. The society that can find a role for people who do not see the world in the same way and funnel that into productive activity is the society that has saved itself the tremendous expense and struggle to weed these "imperfections" out of the genetic pool.
Now and going into the future we have a great opportunity to take advantage of this approach since we no longer subscribe to ideas that imperfection on a genetic or biological level is indicative of some sort of sinfulness, weakness, or impurity. We also accept that someone can be poorly socialized in a particular field, and still be intelligent, successful, or valuable.
We have lost our center, as a society, for perfection, and this will make us stronger.
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neet sermon, blue hitchiker :3
genties & ladlemen,
here is another Eclipse Phase moment:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/cell-circuits-remember-their-history-0210.html
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Transhuman open playtest has started. New traits posted first http://eclipsephase.com/forums/transhuman-open-playtest
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Transhuman open playtest has started. New traits posted first http://eclipsephase.com/forums/transhuman-open-playtest
In other words, READ ROSS' CONTRIBUTION and then BUY HIS BOOK!
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In other words, READ ROSS' CONTRIBUTION and then BUY HIS BOOK!
Why am I not surprised?
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Quick question: How you add in a Burn Booth from AfterNow?
Short version, large dissassimbler, you toss stuff into it and it gives you credit for the useful elements/chemicals.
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This Youtube series is amazing. And it's transhumanist and EP as hell.
Teaser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGF_OPV4TO8
First episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedLgAF9aEg
Watch the rest here: http://www.youtube.com/user/HplusDigitalSeries?feature=watch
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IT BEGINS http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide
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IT BEGINS http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide
(http://wegeekedthis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/x-all-the-things-template.png)
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Our creative team is set for this title and includes Eclipse Phase regulars such as Rob Boyle, Brian Cross, and Jack Graham (developers/editors), Adam Jury (graphic design), Stephan Martinière (cover artist), and John Snead, Ross Payton, Marc Huete, Nathaniel Dean, Caleb Stokes and Ty Brown (authors)!
My wallet's gonna regret this since I'm in a financial bind... but I'll fork over $20 for you guys. :)
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And they have my money. 14k seems pretty low for an asking.
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I'm tempted to go the Hyperelite route but I'm a little worried about buying dead-tree versions that might get outdated. Has their been any major errata changes lately or has it sort of settled?
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I'm tempted to go the Hyperelite route but I'm a little worried about buying dead-tree versions that might get outdated. Has their been any major errata changes lately or has it sort of settled?
AFAIK The only major change has been the core book. If you're really curious, look at the errata for Sunward et all to see what mistakes they've made.
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Also Hyperelite background was not really all that changed from what I can think of off the top of my head
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So Ross are you going to interview any of the Posthuman guys as they have a kickstarter up?
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I'm tempted to go the Hyperelite route but I'm a little worried about buying dead-tree versions that might get outdated. Has their been any major errata changes lately or has it sort of settled?
AFAIK The only major change has been the core book. If you're really curious, look at the errata for Sunward et all to see what mistakes they've made.
so that explains why every game session of mine only lasted 3.14 sessions before the sun went nova...hopefully they fixed that bug
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AFAIK The only major change has been the core book. If you're really curious, look at the errata for Sunward et all to see what mistakes they've made.
The core book is what I meant! Sorry, I should've been more clear about that. :D I know there were significant changes (initiative and the d100 system among others) just from listening to the APs so my concern is getting 4 copies of the core book to pass around to my group and then getting another big mechanics change errata'd in.
After thinking about it some more this afternoon, I'm gonna do it anyways because the best way to convince my group to play a game is to put a book in their hands and let them absorb the material through osmosis. ;D
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AFAIK The only major change has been the core book. If you're really curious, look at the errata for Sunward et all to see what mistakes they've made.
The core book is what I meant! Sorry, I should've been more clear about that. :D I know there were significant changes (initiative and the d100 system among others) just from listening to the APs so my concern is getting 4 copies of the core book to pass around to my group and then getting another big mechanics change errata'd in.
After thinking about it some more this afternoon, I'm gonna do it anyways because the best way to convince my group to play a game is to put a book in their hands and let them absorb the material through osmosis. ;D
the current printing of the core book has the proper rules. Only the first printing first edition has the wrong rules.
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Cool! $250 chipped in, here's hoping the $30K goal is hit and you and Caleb get a bonus.
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Cool! $250 chipped in, here's hoping the $30K goal is hit and you and Caleb get a bonus.
Wait, the third stretch goal means Ross and Caleb get more money?
Upping my pledge immediately!
Deply Infomorphs!
These guys need a new pair of shoes
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The $30,000 stretch goal was reached, enjoy your pay raise guys!
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15% more Rep, somebody gets to cut in the fabber line!
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Some folks over on the Something Awful forums have started doing an AP of Eclipse Phase (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3492456&pagenumber=14&perpage=40#post413826886). More importantly, as of episode 4, they are playing a variant of Know Evil, and there have been a couple of sly cameos of the RPPR crew's characters as things have progressed.
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Alright, what was once just a pitch has now come to pass. Maybe.
At $80K, Posthuman Studios will hire me to write a stand alone scenario that could also serve as a prequel for a group looking to start Know Evil.
In addition to being...well, just pretty darn swell for me, the success of this stretch goal would be a good sign that much lengthier publications (wink wink nudge nudge) might be in order.
There are 6 days left to pledge. Any an all support would be appreciated.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide/posts/483020?ref=email&show_token=ffb0e9f56fdcc8d7
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"Throws money at Kickstarter project." My jobs done. ;D
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Alright, what was once just a pitch has now come to pass. Maybe.
At $80K, Posthuman Studios will hire me to write a stand alone scenario that could also serve as a prequel for a group looking to start Know Evil.
In addition to being...well, just pretty darn swell for me, the success of this stretch goal would be a good sign that much lengthier publications (wink wink nudge nudge) might be in order.
There are 6 days left to pledge. Any an all support would be appreciated.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide/posts/483020?ref=email&show_token=ffb0e9f56fdcc8d7
Good. Goooood. Excellent! THE PROPHECY WILL BE ENACTED
So it was written (see what I did there) so it shall be!
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Alright, what was once just a pitch has now come to pass. Maybe.
At $80K, Posthuman Studios will hire me to write a stand alone scenario that could also serve as a prequel for a group looking to start Know Evil.
In addition to being...well, just pretty darn swell for me, the success of this stretch goal would be a good sign that much lengthier publications (wink wink nudge nudge) might be in order.
There are 6 days left to pledge. Any an all support would be appreciated.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide/posts/483020?ref=email&show_token=ffb0e9f56fdcc8d7
(http://i.imgur.com/EEvPr.gif)
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Alright, what was once just a pitch has now come to pass. Maybe.
At $80K, Posthuman Studios will hire me to write a stand alone scenario that could also serve as a prequel for a group looking to start Know Evil.
In addition to being...well, just pretty darn swell for me, the success of this stretch goal would be a good sign that much lengthier publications (wink wink nudge nudge) might be in order.
There are 6 days left to pledge. Any an all support would be appreciated.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/transhuman-the-eclipse-phase-players-guide/posts/483020?ref=email&show_token=ffb0e9f56fdcc8d7
(http://media.tumblr.com/bfc8f54e0f317a0e20c08f3504f3f444/tumblr_inline_mj2xbfV8Fk1qz4rgp.gif)
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Random thing I wondered about EP.
What's the standard life progression of a newly born kid in the transhuman future.
You are grown in an exowomb.
You are gene fixed and given the appropriate prebirth treatments.
You are born.
Then what? Do they immediately slap a cortical stack on your newborn neck and immediately back you up?
I take it you don't get placed in accelerated simulspace due to the Lost fiasco.
So do you just grow up along a normalish timeline? When do you get a mesh ID and all the implants and awesome transhuman goodies?
I'm just curious. I haven't read all of the EP setting info so it might be covered but I figured I'd ask here.
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From what I've read, it happens a lot of different ways. Raising children after the fall is an extreme challenge that people are trying to solve.
Some children are raised as flats and are put in different bodies later.
Some children are born as flats and remain flats.
Some children are given cortical stacks and mesh inserts from "birth."
Some children (like the lost generation) are raised in a time-accelerated simulspace that causes all of them to go crazy and become psychopathic killers.
Different planets and different habs have different ideas on conception, child-rearing, and the introduction of cyberware.
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I think that since it's only been 10 years since the Fall, I'd imagine that childraising is still undergoing the radical cultural changes that space-faring habitats and post-nationalist cultures would bring. I would say one of the things that most "regular" people would do is treasure their original bodies, probably more so since so many people lost theirs during the Fall.
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Some children are raised as flats and are put in different bodies later.
Some children are born as flats and remain flats.
Some children are given cortical stacks and mesh inserts from "birth."
Some children (like the lost generation) are raised in a time-accelerated simulspace that causes all of them to go crazy and become psychopathic killers.
Different planets and different habs have different ideas on conception, child-rearing, and the introduction of cyberware.
/StrongBad No two children are not on fire.
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Imagine Tacnet in the hands of an obsessively controlling parent.
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Too much work to monitor. I've meshed his muse to his eelwear and every time he does something beyond the bounds of current social parameters he gets an educational electric shock.
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Too much work to monitor. I've meshed his muse to his eelwear and every time he does something beyond the bounds of current social parameters he gets an educational electric shock.
Plus, I lo-jacked his muse so I can always check on him via publicly-accessible security cameras whenever I wish. On the rare occasions that he goes into spaces that aren't covered, his muse records everything and sends me periodic updates.
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okay if people thought the Lost were fucked up, can you imagine what that kind of parenting would do to a kid?
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Can you imagine the market in nanny muses?
Each faction would start making them to spread their dogma. Just think of "My first Ultimate" who stands behind you, simulates pain when your mind wanders or you show mercy to the weak.
There's a scenario in this. Forget the exsurgents, someone needs to stop the Scum from getting all the nanny programs all fucked up on cyber drugs.
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That's an idea for a PC with Edited Memories. Many the things you did as a child were actually fake memories implanted to guilt you into behaving well by your parents. That time you almost got hit by a hover truck because you didn't look both ways? NOT REAL.
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That's an idea for a PC with Edited Memories. Many the things you did as a child were actually fake memories implanted to guilt you into behaving well by your parents. That time you almost got hit by a hover truck because you didn't look both ways? NOT REAL.
Hm... Eclipse Phase/Arrested Development mashup? "And that's why you always leave a note!"
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One of my players has an AI version of his character's rich father as the muse he gave her. I was like OK... that's more than a little fucked up. :o
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This was a great campaign, thank you so much for sharing! I look forward to the adventure that will come out of Transhuman Kickstarter.
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in salute of Caleb and the Know Evil Crew...
"The Local Church"
-Religious organization that is a synthesis of Neo-Confucism and Christianity
-The faith group offers community outreach services such as therapy, psychosurgory, micro loans and legal help to Fall-Evacuee indentures. In reality it is a front for the Shui Fong Triad.
-First just another ploy by the Shui Fong, one of it's members came into possession of AWE. Using it, he assumed control of the organization and now uses it to 'convert' indentures. The Triad use AWE to twist and manipulate their converts into doing whatever they want.
The Raelian Choir Ascendant
-Exhuman Factor cult
-The Raelians believe the next great leap forward for humanity is through the Factors.
-Members under go extreme ego and morph modifications to mimic the Factors.
-The Raelians routinely break servers owned by the PC, LLA and gate exploration hypercorps to find any secrets they might have on the Factors and sell anything they find on the servers in the process.
The Allure of Decadent Thinking
-A small PC entertainment hypercorp
-In reality it is a front for a Titianium covert operations group. Their network of spies and informants targets bio-conservatives and Hypercorp elites.
-The goal of the organization is to subvert targets by luring them into compromising circumstances and then blackmailing them into serving the organization.
The "I Am" Activity
-A Mercurial AGI Cult
-Once an AGI rights organization, "I Am" has become something more. Publicly they engage in memetic wars and grief hacking the LLA and the PC. However in the past year an undercurrent of Gnostic thought has begun to dominate their propaganda.
-The activities of the organization are now being more directly controlled by a hidden committee referred to as the 'August Body.' This committee is believed to be on Mitre.
The Red Witches
-Martian Tribal Shamanism
-Existing since before the Fall, the Red Witches are a loose collection of shamans who dot the Martian outback, ranging from small communities to ascetic caves. The Red Witches claim to be in tune with spirits of Mars; be them transhuman, uplift, AGI, habitations, technology, Titans as well as the flora and water created by the terra forming.
-The Red Witches routinely arbitrate disputes among nomads and settlers alike. It is rumored a number of shamans are powerful Asynics who wield pre-cognitive powers and others listen to the whispers of the Titans in the White Zone.
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At long last I get to run Eclipse Phase, Imma run Think Before Asking and it's gonna be soooooo cool.
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In the latest RPPR episode where Ross, Caleb and Tom talk about Know Evil, Ross mentioned that he was interested in having the characters from Know Evil show up as patrons or allies in other people's eclipse phase games.
I have just started playing in a campaign of eclipse phase and decided to make an Ultimate Async, but I was wondering if it would be ok if I had Bartleby as an enemy? I was thinking along the lines of my character either fucked up his cover in the Jovian Republic after taking to much MRDR (guess who recommended it to me?) or perhaps more extreme, I did something to his Beta fork with Alice.
I'd like to get the OK before I go ahead with this though, it wouldn't be right to just hijack someone else's character without their consent.
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More Eclipse Phase Now
real life Ultimates
"warblegarble"
Looking for the house thing I just read this. That's not the most stupid thing I've seen but close. I mean it's like an angry eugenics fetishist wants to get in on the sweet Heritage Foundation money or something.
And there's this thing: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/how-twitter-schooled-nyu-professor-about-fat-shaming/65833/
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My reaction to that guy:
(http://i.imgur.com/L3J6n.jpg)
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Anyway...
Buzzing factories: Maker bots by NSTRMNT (http://www.detail-online.com/daily/buzzing-factories-maker-bots-by-nstrmnt-11615/)
Nicknamed A_FAB, these automated manufacturing operatives by NSTRMNT (http://nstrmnt.com/#/afab/) suggest a way past the highly restrictive bed-size issues associated with current 3D printers. Swarms of these bots might crawl over a manufacturing zone adding or subtracting material to the work piece depending on their tooling.
These creatures have both a syringe to deposit material, and a routing head to remove it. They have 9 standard servo motors and 7 linear actuators that allow it to work, whilst locomotion is controlled by a further 12 motors. Live data is fed from Firefly and Grasshopper whilst tool paths are also generated from Grasshopper.
With technologies like this, there are implications for factories as there would be no reason for a dedicated production line churning out identical products but for small variations. With this paradigm one corner of the factory might be making a car whilst the other was creating a dress. In fact why have a factory at all.
Nests of these machines could live in small buildings on the end of a street churning out all the material goods a community needs.
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/03-in-pairs.jpg)
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/03-01-in-pairs.jpg)
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/02-maker-bot.jpg)
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/04-squirt.jpg)(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/04-01-squirt.jpg)
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/05-assemblyt.jpg)
(http://www.detail-online.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/06-assemblyt.jpg)
Fabberbots! They could fab a house (http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php/topic,329.msg36160.html#msg36160) for you!
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My only comments on the fabberbots is, "Not the face, not the face!"
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we are (oh oh, certainty creeps in) living in Eclipse Phase (but without the overweening horror)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R2xuQII5Y24
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we are (oh oh, certainty creeps in) living in Eclipse Phase (but without the overweening horror yet)
FTFY
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out of context campaign material go!
The Civil War on Minerva 4
The Pathfinder Colony has broken down into civil war because of brutal treatment from the colony leadership and the aid of anarchists, who have discovered the planet from a hidden gate linked to Fissure Gate. Complicating things is a recently discovered third gate on the planet’s moon, linked to Discord Gate. Ultimate and Extropian speculators have begun exploiting the civil war for profit.
Reasons why Pathfinder can’t just send 1000 Direct Action Mercenaries in Reaper Morphs to win the war or nuke the anarchists:
1. The Arete Indoctrination Program was used to indoctrinate new colonists. It is essentially a fascist simulspace training program, rewarding colonists who oppress others and was modeled on Nazi occupation governments in Continental Europe. Autonomist journalists uncovered the program and revealed it to the public. Even the Planetary Consortium has limits to what they can cover up and Arete is hugely unpopular with the masses on Mars. While anarchists are not viewed as heroes by any means, the public would not like seeing all of the colonists murdered after suffering through Arete. A peaceful resolution is desired.
2. Most of the rebels are former colonists who defected to the anarchists. Pathfinder wants to bring them back into the fold. Killing them all is wasteful.
3. Pathfinder does not know where the Fissure Gate is located. They cannot shut down the anarchists without taking that out.
4. Even Pathfinder does not have unlimited resources or gate time. Sending in reinforcements is expensive and sending in overwhelming force is still too expensive. It also makes the statement that they are afraid of losing to anarchists. Such is hypercorp pride.
5. The Ultimates and Extropian speculators are positioning themselves to claim a major chunk of the planet – building up forces on the moon. Pathfinder wants to make sure they cannot jump their claim. This means keeping a reserve at all times to fight off potential attacks from the moon.
6. Pathfinder kept their colony focused in a single region. This gave the anarchists the chance to build up outposts throughout the planet. Anarchists are building up all over the planet in secret underground and underwater bunkers.
7. The anarchists are better at fighting than previously believed.
8. Most of the fighting occurs in the outlying colonial habitats and stations. It does not currently affect the main business of exoplanet colony logistical support that much. Because of that, Pathfinder hypercorp leaders do not want to launch a total war yet. They are certain the rebellion will fizzle out and the anarchists will get bored and move on.
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Because of that, Pathfinder hypercorp leaders do not want to launch a total war yet. They are certain the rebellion will fizzle out and the anarchists will get bored and move on.
I love hypercorp execs.
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More 'real life' Eclipse-Phase-without-the-overweening-horror
http://lifeboat.com/ex/main
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Well, from the hypercorp perspective, it does seem reasonable that anarchist militia members will get tired of dying and resleeving battle after battle. Dying for the cause is all fine and good the first time, but 12 deaths later, it loses its charm. They are volunteers so when times get tough, they will lose morale.
Hypercorp security forces and mercenaries won't have a choice once times get tough. Their contracts will force them to keep fighting and dying, again and again.
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I just got my PDF copy of Transhuman, and giving it a quick glance I can see some great stuff in here. Awesome!
Speaking of which, what parts did Ross and Caleb help write? And by that I mean, are there any Know Evil easter eggs to be found? ;D
I won't tell anyone I swear. :-X
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Ross is all over the damn place. He and I co-authored the first ten pages or so of the Playing Characters section, though some stuff got moved around.
As far as Easter Eggs go...check out the Alternate Moxie Rules.
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Ross is all over the damn place. He and I co-authored the first ten pages or so of the Playing Characters section, though some stuff got moved around.
As far as Easter Eggs go...check out the Alternate Moxie Rules.
I am most proud that my bit on hitler morphs made into the book.
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I am most proud that my bit on hitler morphs made into the book.
Take that Boys from Brazil!
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Looking for advice or suggestions: I am interested in running a one-shot or short adventure that could be extended into a longer campaign and was wondering what thoughts people who have more experience with the system have for hooks. I will be running it for folks who have never played Eclipse phase, but almost all will likely have played a variety of RPGs. Part of me wants the players to start as unaware alpha forks (or an old backup was used to crest an alternate version of them years ago), but another part says that might get too messy to handle effectively. I am thinking that this might allow me to gradually introduce Firewall and craziness as others mistake the PCs for the other version. Essentially Total Recall-esque....
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you could do a tutorial adventure like I did with A Glorious Fall http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2011/03/genre/horror/eclipse-phase-a-glorious-fall/
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One thing I like to do for one-shots is to run a relatively mundane side-story in an existing story in the setting. For example, I ran a Dark Heresy game set on Graia in the middle of the events of the video game Space Marine. For Eclipse Phase, the obvious choice would be a sidestory to Know Evil--start the characters out as just normal people going about their business when Manjappa's crew (or Bartleby's) shake things up.
- On Miter trying to catch conspirators in the attack on Professor Truth
- There's a Reaper on the loose in Hotel California!
- Non-pirate thieves drawn to the Honey Pot luxury airship--the only ones (apart from the KE team) with vacsuits, ready to roll.
- "Normal" salvagers on the ghost ship mission, separated from their KE counterparts.
All of these leave you in relatively known settings afterwards, so you can work with known locations and NPCs to flesh it out into a campaign that goes off in another direction.
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Campaigning in around Jupiter?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Jupiter_moons_anim.gif)
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by jove, so beautiful -- a solar system within a solar system :3
(i am also reminded of a fond rpg world setting, 'the jovian chronicles')
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More 'real life' Eclipse Phase
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bxzb1ICsG0
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Since I unfortunately lack a group at the moment (curse moving cross-continent!), and I'd rather it was used then languish on my hard-drive, here is a plot-concept that's been a brewing.
Muse Duels
The newest craze to sweep the system, muse-duels (also known derisively as drooler-dustups by those who frown upon such fads) has broken into the entertainment market as the latest successful grass-roots endeavor propagated by the consumers, not the media corporations. Similar in nature to old Earth’s pocket monster media, muse-duels follows a simple, yet compelling, premise. At its most basic, muse-duels involves taking one’s muse and pitching it into a simulated battle with another individual’s muse, using a slick algorithm to derive the attributes and abilities of a muse from its own history, skillset, and mindset.
The ubiquitousness of muses, as evidenced by their inclusion across the vast gulfs found in transhumanity’s varied cultural and societal norms, has helped propel muse-duels to a feverish height of popularity never before dreamt of by any inner-system media fat cat. But all is not well under the umbrella of unrestrained child-like enthusiasm found in muse-duel’s wake. Many notable psychologists and psychosurgeons are warning against the use of muses in such a manner, as the long-term effects of repeated exposure to violent and stressful situations on muse mind states has yet to be researched. Furthermore, they, alongside a host of traditionalist media pundits, question the mental health and stability of using a muse, commonly thought of to be a transhuman’s lifelong companion akin to the dogs of yesteryear, in what amounts to little more than a virtual cockfight.
The introduction of muse-duels has also shaken up the criminal world as well, a staple of the resultant undertow of vice and corruption that follows every new form of entertainment. In particular, enterprising young thieves have begun the wholesale theft of muses from across hab meshes, many of whom had simply been running errands for their owners. Not covered under the jurisprudence of any major political body, this has resulted in a rash of hasty finger-pointing and fearmongering, particularly amongst parents warned about the health of young Timmy’s psych should he discover that his muse/best-pal had been illegally abducted and subjected to an endless procession of bloody ring-fights to the virtual death. This has also produced a host of gang-violence related crimes, as the already hotly contested and poorly defined arenas of egonapping and forknapping between Nine Lives and the ID crew grow hotter. Lines are being drawn in the virtual sand, and the opening salvos already promise a bloody year for both gangs.
While all of these items are a concern for Firewall, the transhuman conspiracy is concerning itself with another factor entirely. Namely, the author of the mysterious bit of coding that drives muse-duels has yet to reveal themselves, despite the instant ascension to stardom, and the attendant mountain of credits and rep, that authorship promises. While the code appears entirely benign under the harshest of scrutiny, several proxies of the conservative bent have questioned whether it might still be dangerous. As muse-duels pervasiveness spreads, even the most accepting proxy begins wondering the intent behind this child's game ...
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In other words, http://www.saltybet.com/ is too hype for even Firewall to deal with
8)
I'm sold.
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Firewall/Ozma training video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE2teQYZ3HA
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Drunk and Ugly's Eclipse Phase campaign goes live today http://drunkandugly.com/2013/09/02/eclipse-phase-the-thunder-and-the-whirlwind-episode-1/
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NASA wants to put SpiderFabBots in orbit. Another step closer to the horrible, horrible future.
NASA Plans to 3D Print Spacecraft in Orbit (http://www.archdaily.com/423542/nasa-plans-to-3d-print-spacecraft-in-orbit/)
(http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/52247ef1e8e44e5e730000c8_nasa-plans-to-3d-print-spacecraft-in-orbit_image-1000x598.jpg)
As revealed in an article on Gigaom, NASA has recently added an extra $500,000 into a collaboration with Tethers Unlimited, a company researching ways to 3D print and assemble structures whilst in orbit. Using this technology, their SpiderFab robots reduce the size of the rockets needed to launch materials into space, and also allow for much larger structures to be created than in any previous technique – opening up new possibilities for construction in space. You can read the full article here (http://gigaom.com/2013/08/29/nasa-wants-to-build-huge-spacecraft-in-orbit-with-robots-and-3d-printers/).
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File this under why we cannot have nice aerostats on Saturn.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0904/Monster-storm-reveals-water-on-Saturn
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some eclipse-phasey related "rl" materiel:
some conversations with George Dyson; we might have already created artificial life, and it is free, growing, learning, exploring...
www.edge.org/memberbio/george_dyson
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This maybe the oldest news that ever news-ed but I am digging this blog. Basically a daily dose of EP content.
About every 5 or 6th thing I like quite a bit.
http://www.farcastblog.com/ (http://www.farcastblog.com/)
Personal Favs -
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/272-jun-ibn-shiloh.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/272-jun-ibn-shiloh.html)
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/06/180-echo-point.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/06/180-echo-point.html)
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/248-jules-khyyan.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/248-jules-khyyan.html)
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Some cool character art that's usable for Eclipse Phase.
More at http://wyv1.deviantart.com/gallery/512476
(http://i.imgur.com/WDLNQLr.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/aQ0wl0C.jpg)
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This maybe the oldest news that ever news-ed but I am digging this blog. Basically a daily dose of EP content.
About every 5 or 6th thing I like quite a bit.
http://www.farcastblog.com/ (http://www.farcastblog.com/)
Personal Favs -
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/272-jun-ibn-shiloh.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/272-jun-ibn-shiloh.html)
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/06/180-echo-point.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/06/180-echo-point.html)
http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/248-jules-khyyan.html (http://www.farcastblog.com/2013/09/248-jules-khyyan.html)
That guy is super cool. He does some stuff over on the Shadowrun side too (he was/is pretty active on Dumpshock).
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The air gap break down -
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using-inaudible-sound/ (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using-inaudible-sound/)
Ok if you read the article it is not quite so dire as that but it is an interesting proof of concept.
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Necro'ed for my own self interest, also a big hello to the RPPR forums after a long hiatus!
I'm running an Eclipse Phase game. My central idea is kind of a Rendezvous with Rama thingies with exsurgent threats. A big ass military spaceship was subsumed by the TITANs stationed aboard it during the fall, it used its considerable resources to manufacture an army of ex-threats it unleashed upon earth whereupon it pulled the good ole upload millions of mind routine and then reconfigured its engines to blast out of the solar system at ludicrous, baffling speeds, its course taking it well out of the galaxy.
Now, for whatever reason, it's making a return to the solar system.
It's a start, but I need more juiciness to it, you know? If anybody has any ideas where to take it from there, I'd love to hear them.
What I have so far is that this spaceship is pretty much a piece of tech that almost every faction wants to get its hands on, not only is a superweapon in of itself (even without all the supped up titan crap it was and still is an extremely powerful warship) it's also a treasure trove of historical pre-fall stuff, TITAN tech, and perhaps most importantly the ship's blackbox (if it's intact) could be extraordinarily valuable.
So, this creates a sort of cuban missile crisis style arms race where everybody wants to get their hands on the ship... yet it's still an x-threat so it creates a very volatile situation. Now that I think about it, one of the first things I should consider is if this megaship will still have a TITAN on board as it comes back to the solar system or not...
I'm just rambling now, but an interesting idea is if the ship uploaded a Promethean and the infected TITAN and the promethean have been at odds for the last 10 years, a game of digital wits or something like that.
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My first reaction would be that despite all the goodies that could be inside, it is before all a Titan threat. Considering the danger it represents, there should an excellent reason not to blast it in pieces and shower it with EMP/plasma combo.
Greed is not enough to prevent government/corps to take immediate counter-measure. To have the spaceship avoid immediate destruction, it means that every single faction (government, corps, secret society...) with some modicum of resources would decide to hold on. Also it means that teams which would be send to explore would also need some form of guarantee that one of those faction is not going to pull the trigger wheb they are playing minecraft in the spaceship.
So I believe you need to find a good reason for people to believe it is not an immediate threat or it could be contained. It is probably severly damage, possibly large chunk of the hull did loose its protection against solar radiation which acted as intense EMP, therefore frying most/all of the exurgent threat.
Also, to had some tension, the major factions agreed not to blast it into pieces until it reaches a certain point in the solar system. It had an element of time constraint ("once it reaches coordinate omega-one, all orbital weapons will blast it including any ships leaving it). It also adds a dimension of diplomacy to build official expedition teams (but also secret one), or you can also see negociation of salvage rights for various section of the ship.
What if, contraray to your initial statement, the ship is considered "mostly free" from Titan threat as it entered the solar system, it flew through a massive ionic storm frying acting as intense EMP. The "rightful" owner of the ship (whether it is a governement, the shipyard which built it or a merc group or an insuurance company) does not want or have the resources to salvage it, but auction salvaging rights for a share of the findings ? It will give a feel similar to a gold rush.
... until, deep inside the hull, some titan monster is awaken. Or maybe it is a trap and tiny basiliks are creeping into the minds of salvagêrs and at a given time will turn everyone into the crew the ship need to accomplish its last mission: although it looks like a piece of derelict, it is fuctional, like a Deathstar.
So you can several phases:
1: Auction of salvaging rights - the players are a small independant company trying to score big but have to trade favours to get one precious salvaging license. The whole derelict battle ship is stabilised in a far orbit by additional reactors crudely fitted on its frame
2: The gold rush - the team lands, starts to explore andmine and retrieve goodies - and needs to face other teams with slightly more devious methods. Or poassibly a cult who wants to blast the whole thing. Maybe a small "bartertown" is created orbiting around the huge battleship. This phase should last for months. Unknown to everybody salvagers are getting slowly contaminated - especially after several months of exploration without incident, the teams are more laxed and control procedures are getting looser.
The reason exploration would last so long is because the whole hull is unstable and people are not supposed to bruteforce their way in.
As exploration progress, you can start to drop hints: a ship engineer could find the progress towards the system core much slower than expected... almost like the wreckage had been designed to slow down the team. Some "treasure trove" are regularly found be teams. Interestingly, after a thorough examination, those boxes or rooms had in their structure a radiation protective mesh acting like a Faraday box against EMP... some of the goodies are not what it seems.
3: The hidden monster. It is a decoy to encourage people to sent more resources. Some "minor" Titan threats are unleashed but after inflicting some casualties are neutralised. People should feel confident that they have neutralised the last remaining threat. To make it more believable, those threats where partially damaged and less effective that fully operational "monster" to support the hypothesys that the ion storm had a cleansing effect. Of course, those threat could only be found in the deepest of the hull where the likelyhood to be protected was the highest.
Again careful "autopsy" of the remains could detect that those flaws and partial damage were engineered - but it can takes several weeks for experts to reach those conclusions, delaying the warning.
It is the rush to the core. Teams are getting reinforced, working around the clock to be the first one to hit the system core and retrieve the mother payload. Caution is thrown to the window, sabotage becomes another routine activity - more people are contaminated and maybe strange dreams or behaviour are happening from time to time. At the same time, some people are getting a bit suspicious - the players because of what they have found or they are approached to investigate on behalf of suspicious people (and because PCs are on site since the beginning they will blend easily and have connections with others teams). If they are trying to raise the alarm, they will face some surprising resistance: disbelief ("you want to stop the salvaging for your own benefit because your team is behind"), or even assassination attempt from one salvager who left the field earlier (contaminated earlier). They need solid proofs as it has become a very profitable operation.
4: The race to the core. The hull seems to become more unstable, but it is a matter of day until the core system can be accessed. How careless are willing to be the salvagers to win the race ? And new teams arrived: one is planting bombs, the other has the task to stop any team to reach the core. However, no faction has yet decided to pull the trigger as the threat is not clearly identified. It is believed to be some exsurgent threat which can still be contained.
5: Deathstar in action. All contaminated men are turned into drones. Hidden machines and nano-bots start repurposing the battleship for its final mission (Luna ? Mars ?). Uncontaminated men needs to escape before getting turned into drones. Rescue mission to save an important executive or the stack of the son of an influent man - but is he contaminated ? what could do the Titan with the information kept in their brains ? Maybe it is a race to prevent a tachyon communication towards other Titan base ?
6: Destroying the Deathstar: if the cannons and other big missiles are ineffective, a suicide team has to plant the device which can neutralised definitely the battleship before it is fully functional.
One important point to keep in mind, for the Titan to escape all scanning and detection and for the trap to work, it had to keep it presence minimal and very well hidden. So until phase 5, the Titan is not aware of what is happening everywhere in the battleship, it has not spread and activated its nano-bots otherwise even the most basic scan would have trigger warning and massive strike would have followed before the Titan could reactivate any effective defense. This is important that although it is a lethal trap, because of the paranoia around titan infection and safety protocol, it is by no means omnipotent and omniscient otherwise the trap would never has a chance to work.
Phase 6 is obviously action packed - the reason the PCs are hired is because they are the one left knowing the most how to navigate into the hull. If the do not have enough fighting and destruction skills, only one or two of the are hired as guide and other players are running the core of the suicide strike team (of course their ego have been safely backed up before).
I hope it will give you food for thought.
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An alternative is to use the battleship as a campaingn introduction.
The battleship has re-entered the solar system. In six hours, it will be in range of the whatever massive canon. Nobody wants to take any risk, it will be vaporised. No negociation.
Obviously, the PCs are hired (or ordered) for a high risk/high reward mission: sneak onto the ship, retrieve a piece of data from XYZ terminal and return it before complete vaporization. PCs know better not to ask too many questions for this kind of job. They are hired by a suit, hiding very well who is behind the job offer. It is not a suicide mission but a very hard one, they will have good gear, accurate information and mapping (but it could have been reconfigured).
Run the scenario like a lethal race, with all matter of traps, deathbot and Titan tech. To had a twist, another team is present either for the same data or for something else: teamwork, competition or shoot out can happen.
The important bit of this scenario is the data. As an advanced battleship, it contained a prototype of emergency shuttle - possibly resistant to Titan infection. Which means possible survivors - at least stacks. That's the hope of the Man-behind-the-curtain. He/she would like to retrieve a son/lover/last heir or maybe a unique prototype of an awaken animal. But he needed confirmation if the shuttle had been activated.
Assuming they succeed, PCs will be paid and several months might go by and other scenarios can occure. Then, they will be contacted by the same suit to go onto an exploration mission. The data contained the location the shuttle escaped as well as enough navigation vectors to narrow down the possible location to something small enough to be explored. Still, several options exists for its current location: amongst an asteroid belt, within a gas planet, or amongst a vast floating wreckages of many ships, used as supply by some Titans.
So after the initial scenario, it becomes an exploration in an unmap/unknown zone of space. Maybe a forbidden zone. So PCs will have to follow bread crumbs, possibly discovering hidden communities and dangerous places - if they want to hide, these communities have surely good reasons and would like to maintain their secrecy.
Finally, discovery of the missing shuttle. Is it a trap laid by titan ? Did the survivors settle on a place and were able to survive with whatever resources they found ? Are they monitored by titan using them as unwarae lab rats to understand human nature (maybe a world like Dark City - highly recommanded movie for a strange world set in Eclipse phase, there is all the technology to do that). Or what if using the prototype technology of the shuttle the survivors managed to subdue titans or even merge with it creating monstruous hybrids with their own goals, different than Titans, but not human either (like merging both in one hive mind) ?
Okay, I think that's all for now.
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Woah. Thanks for the great responses. Now that I think about it, I do like the idea of a sort of TITAN trojan horse, perhaps the TITAN influence on the ship is in fact an incredibly closely kept secret and most people believe the ships was overtaken by exhuman, pirates, anarchists or whatever right around the time of the Fall, so it still represents an incredible find yet most of the Hypercorps, Firewall, and governments dunno about the TITAN influence?
If that's the case, I'm gonna need a way to draw the players into the action. I'm thinking maybe an incredibly powerful firewall proxy or member of a hypercorp has gone missing and the players are sent in to investigate, they uncover deep seated plans to infiltrate the ship and bring its systems online for extremist or malevolent ends?
I want the campaign to center around efforts to control the ship, yet not introduce it until that Holy Shit session, you know?
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I tend to be a bit of a FATE pusher which I want to acknowledge as I start this post.
That being said..if you found the mechanics and engine of Eclipse Phase to be too dense for you I strongly recommend looking into Nova Praxis. Its Transhumanism in FATE.
It doesnt have quite the same level of flexibility as Eclipse Phase (I do not believe it has uplifted animals in its options)..but it gathers alot of the transhuman ideas into a math light story heavy system.
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I really should give eclipse phase a try at some point. its always seemed to deep for me but considering how many games I have under my belt id bet as soon as i get into it all of it will click together.
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On that note there is the Eclipse Phase/Fate conversion guide that's currently in the pipe (there's a sub-forum (http://www.eclipsephase.com/forums/ep-fate) for it on the official site) and for those that can't wait there's a fan-made hack (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxeriyJE-cySNTEwODRlM2ItNGMzMy00YjliLWFlMzItZDJlZTIxMjJlMThm/edit?pli=1) by Martin Nerurkar (although not really knowing a lot about Fate someone else would have to vouch for it).
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i am planning on running some eclipse phase for my group, leading up to my attempt at my take on know evil. does anyone out there in the interwebs have any ideas/suggestions. i plan on running them through "through a glass darkly" tonight as the first in a series of warm up games, to make sure that the players are playing the characters they feel comfortable with.
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There's an outline of the entire campaign here http://prezi.com/kx1vvhzwwcoe/three-wise-monkeys/?kw=view-kx1vvhzwwcoe&rc=ref-436096
Also, I would recommend running a pre-written adventure like Glory or Continuity or something like that - easier to run a new system with a published adventure, in my experience. Have you listened to a Glorious Fall? I designed the intro specifically to teach the rules to players.
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Posthuman Studios are taking an firm stand on some subjects on their forum (http://eclipsephase.com/regarding-mras). It's creating some chatter on there and Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/26ofq6/eclipse_phase_takes_a_stand_against_mens_rights/).
EDIT: 2/3 of the reddit comments have been deleted, so that discussion has become illegible.
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I've never even heard of that. Apparently I am really out of the loop. I wonder why it became such an issue on their forums to begin with. I wouldn't think transhumanism would attract that like of individual.
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You would think, wouldn't you? My GM frequents the EP forums a bit and he's mentioned to me a few cases of MRAs before, but they usually got nipped in the bud by the Posthuman guys. Still, more power to Posthuman, I like those guys a lot and this is just one more reason.
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Okay - I just finished the last episode of your game, and thought I ought to commend you all for creating such an entertaining story.
As someone who has run a few sessions of EP I must say that my hat is really off to Caleb. Eclipse Phase is a rich and complex setting, and he did a great job of weaving in a lot of the game's most interesting themes and concepts without ever bogging down the story.
What I'm most impressed by, though, is that you all were able to give the game a proper ending. At least in my own experience, it is far more common for campaigns to just fizzle out or continue indefinitely. It takes some real narrative discipline on the part of both the players and the GM to produce a satisfying conclusion, and Know Evil really did not disappoint there.
Also, as someone who has been following the EP community for a few years (lurking, not really posting), I really appreciated seeing how skillfully Caleb incorporated some of Anders Sandberg's brilliant (and twisted) ideas. I've read all of those adventures but it's awesome to hear the reactions of the group as everyone is running in terror from a Snowflake or hunting down a contagious quasi-personality.
Kudos to all the players too, for creating a set of characters that changed and evolved over the course of the story – another rarity in the world of RPGs. And for doing such a job of pretending to be scared shitless on a regular basis ;-)
Personally I think the highpoint of the campaign was the (first) botched mission to Earth, the doomed trek through Tokyo. I think that really did justice to the despair and terror that underly the setting.
Are you all planning any more campaigns in the EP universe?
PS – Caleb, I rushed off to purchase the PDF of "The Devotees" once I saw it had been published by Posthuman, but will you ever be publishing Know Evil in some form? I will steal liberally from it regardless, but I'd happily support these efforts by buying any sort of supplement that came from this too.
Thanks for sharing such a great game with the interwebs; just thought I'd come out and say that instead of anonymously appreciating it!
Eric
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Useful bit of data from xkcd
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/surface_area.png)
LARGER IMAGE HERE (http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/surface_area_large.png)
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I really like Eclipse Phase, it's probably become something of an obsession at this point...
Currently IRL running a game set around Luna, playing in an online game and trying to drum up interest in more EP goodness on the forums..
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So apparently the Morph Recognition Guide is out (Or else someone got an early copy somehow) because I just found this little gem:
(http://i.imgur.com/wA4zrq0.png)
I just have no words.
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Yaaaay, I designed the Samsa!
Transhuman KS backers got the PDF of the guide.
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Yaaaay, I designed the Samsa!
Transhuman KS backers got the PDF of the guide.
Really? Neat, was there anything else from Transhuman that you came up with?
Also since I had the day off from work today I decided to pen down some scenario ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. Here they all are:
No Space Like Home
[spoiler]The crew of an outer system asteroid mining vessel stumbles across a seemingly-derelict brinker habitat in the middle of open space. When they find nothing of interest aboard they initially dismiss it as a failed rimward habitat before continuing on, only to find the exact same habitat directly in their path some time later...and it's no longer empty. There is now a single transhuman occupant who cheerfully invites them aboard, and if they refuse and continue on they soon find the habitat in their viewport once again. Each time they refuse to board the station the next one they find is noticeably more "realistic" than the last, the occupants losing their uncanny valley features and mannerisms and becoming more lifelike and familiar to the crew. The miners must get to the bottom of the station's secret and find a way to escape it before they either succumb to its lure or go insane from the looping iterations.
[The miners are trapped in a honeypot simulspace after stumbling across an early-model TITAN probe in meatspace; it hacked their ship's mesh and forcibly linked them into the simulspace, which is a conversion program designed to force transhuman minds into a state to allow them to be more efficiently uploaded into a gestalt consciousness. Every time the miners reject the habitat offered to them, the next one adjusts itself to be more tempting by scanning their memories; station inhabitants might remind the miners of loved ones or friends, the interior itself might change to resemble childhood homes, etc etc. If any of the miners give in and remain on one of the habitats their minds are flagged as "ready" and placed in cold storage; if any of them lose too many SV from the endless cycle and go insane they are flagged as "broken" and placed in a separate server in the probe to be dissected for useful information. The only way to escape the simulation is to reject its offers in some radical or violent fashion, ie: ramming their ship into it, gunning down everyone inside, spacing the habitat, etc etc. When they manage to break out of the honeypot they may choose to A. get the fuck away from the probe B. attempt to destroy it with the ship's mining charges or C. trace its signal back to the hub controlling it to destroy that with mining charges.][/spoiler]
Ruster Roulette
[spoiler]The player characters are mesh friends from across the inner and outer system who egocast to Olympus on Mars for their annual meatspace get-together. During the debauchery and partying, however, they are horrified to discover that one among them has been violently murdered in the night and their stack is missing. When the Tharsis League authorities prove to be less than helpful, the group takes it upon themselves to track down the killer and recover their stack...but they soon find themselves in entangled in a much greater web of conspiracy and betrayal. How does the killer know so much about them all? Is one among them the culprit? Why can none of them remember exactly how or when they all met, and why are they so surprisingly proficient with guns and explosives?
[The "mesh friends" are actually well-pruned beta forks of a team of Firewall sentinels sent to Olympus to investigate a hot spot in the TQZ; in order to avoid attracting further attention after a mishap with the local Rangers, the team forked themselves into rented bodies with implanted false memories so that the betas could act out their cover as partying offworlders while the alphas drove off into the desert to take care of business. The main team didn't expect to be gone long, a few days at most, but something went wrong and they were nearly two days overdue; while preparing to blast a rediscovered Fall-era bunker off the face of Mars one among them became infected with a YGBM hack (Known in Firewall as Friend/Foe) that disrupted their brain's ability to assign emotional responses to familiar faces. This resulted in the sudden onset of severe paranoia in the infected sentinel, followed by the delusion that all their teammates had been 'replaced' with Exsurgent clones somehow. The infectee killed their teammates one by one and took their stacks for interrogation, but when they could find no evidence to support their theory they decided to hunt down the beta forks in Olympus as well-they have to have missed something. The infected alpha fork is the killer, and at some point during the game of cat and mouse they will attempt to contact their beta in secret to try and convince them of their delusion; furthermore, a backup sentinel arrives in Olympus when the original team does not report in to investigate and attempts to get in touch with the betas, but they do not remember what Firewall is and thus have no reason to trust this mysterious new stranger who seems to know them. This should be a paranoia-heavy game, with the GM attempting to subtly play the PCs off one another and drop hints that one or more of them might know more than they're letting on while also playing up the mystery of "how the fuck do I have 80 in energy weapons? I've never held a plasma rifle in my life!"][/spoiler]
Original Sin
[spoiler]This scenario is actually a three-part arc:
Part One: "Paradise Found" make a spot hidden check to find it
After receiving word of a black market salvage auction set to take place on Paradise, Firewall dispatches a hastily-assembled team of sentinels to infiltrate the various attending parties and ensure that none of the items up for bid could be dangerous TITAN relics. When the team learns that one of the lots is a Fall-era ark ship loaded with terraforming devices and genetic samples of every living species on Earth, however, their mandate is suddenly overridden from above their local Proxy: secure the location of the ship, track it down, and destroy it at any cost. Doing so could be easier said than done, considering the varying factions all seeking to get their hands on such a valuable prize: hardcore reclaimers, barsoomian extremists, Lunar triad gangsters, and Oversight counterespionage agents all want a piece of the pie.
Part Two: "Out of the Garden"
After capturing and interrogating the beta fork of the Argonaut attempting to auction the location of the ark ship, the team catches a shuttle to the scientist's home habitat of Mitre to track them down and question them properly. The Argonaut is one step ahead of them, however, and finding him or her won't be an easy task; especially not if one of the prospective auctioneers from Paradise also manages to get a bead on their quarry. With multiple disgruntled buyers on their tail the Argonaut attempts to flee to a passing scum swarm for safety, and the sentinels have no choice but to track them aboard and capture them without incurring the wrath of the Assclown Rodeo.
Part Three: "And Gnashing Of Teeth"
Having finally secured the spatial coordinates of ARC-001 from the Argonaut, the team egocasts out to Saturn's orbit before acquiring a suitable vessel for their "salvage op" of the lost ark. When they approach the drifting vessel they discover that someone has beaten them to the punch; another vessel has already docked with the ark and presumably boarded. Upon reporting this new information to Firewall, their orders change once again: they must board the ark before destroying it, find out who the would-be salvagers are, and see if they have transmitted any information from the derelict's mainframe. After boarding the ghost vessel the team is confronted with a bizarre alien ecology in a bottle, complete with flora, fauna...and a food chain that places them near the bottom. The sentinels must call upon every element of their training and experience to survive the horrors of the ark, learn who or what discovered the ship before them, and face the darkest secret of Firewall's history.
[The 'secret' Firewall is so keen for the sentinels to bury by destroying the ship is the existence of the Prometheans, one of whom was supposed to be operating the Ark during its voyage out of the solar system in the height of the Fall. Despite the AI's best efforts, it became infected with the Exsurgent virus and was forced to cut off portions of its own code in order to prevent itself from becoming a full-blown TITAN; these amputated bits of code were cordoned off into relatively minor systems aboard the Ark, such as the environmental controls and body bank (Left over from the ship's hasty conversion from bulk freighter to colony ship), hence the Pandora-esque interior. The ship attached to the Ark belongs to a group of exhuman brinker salvagers who just happened to stumble across the Ark as it drifted within range of their habitat; the sentinels will undoubtedly be wary of the surviving exhumans if they manage to make contact, but the hostile environment of the Ark might force them into teaming up with them in order to accomplish their objective...although even if they manage to blow up the ship there's always a chance one of the exhumans could escape with a bit of proto-TITAN code using the ship's egocasting array, setting up a potential threat for a future game or campaign.]
Apologies for the pretentious names on this one, I was having a hard time coming up with something fitting.[/spoiler]
Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
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I like the idea of the ark ship, though I don't know if you need the Promethean element to it. It could just be "an" AI.
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I like the idea of the ark ship, though I don't know if you need the Promethean element to it. It could just be "an" AI.
I went with a Promethean for a few reasons:
1. I wanted there to be some sort of link to Firewall's origins (ARC-001 was commissioned, funded, and launched by the Singularity Foundation) and its dirty secrets, such as the fact that the conspiracy is actually run by Seed AIs.
2. There needs to be a strong sense of urgency to the mission, and Firewall discovering that a Promethean thought long dead might be floating around the outer system waiting to be discovered certainly makes things urgent.
3. So that there's a legitimate reason for the sentinels to have their mission change from "nuke the ark" to "board and search the ark"; Firewall can't afford to leave loose ends, and if the Promethean is no longer aboard then they'll want the sentinels to see where it farcasted out to.
Basically I want the players to experience a bit of uncertainty and paranoia regarding their own side; what isn't Firewall telling them, and why? What's so important about this ark?
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Here something appropriate as a soundtrack for your EP game.
Planets Electromagnetic radiation converted to sounds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MmWeZHsQzs
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Running a PbP game for some friends and looking for some ideas to help flesh out a scenario/campaign. I haven't read too much of the lore, but feel reasonably familiar with the setting and the ideas and what I guess I am looking to crowdsource is putting meat on the bones of the story seed I am starting with.
This is designed to be an introduction to the setting and get the characters "into" Firewall. What I am toying with is them working as gatecrashers for one of the hypercorps and heading through to help out with an expedition/research run already in progress (but not a fully established colony). They will arrive and find it wrecked/abandoned and will have no way of contacting back until the link is reestablished later. I suspect I will have some sort of ex-threat that brought about the downfall. I want the big twist or reveal of this story arc to be that this wasn't the first time that they have been sent through, but they have just been restored from a backup that was made right before they stepped through the first time.
Things I like:
- The idea of a hypercorp "throwing money at the problem" by shelling out for morphs to just send the same batch through until they take care of the problem and return.
- The possibilities of encountering other versions of themselves or finding old stacks and the decision of whether to reintegrate or not (since to my understanding it would essentially be like alpha forks, but it wasn't really a copy?)
- The isolation aspect (no way to get more help) and the panic to reach the rendezvous, especially after they discover that the hypercorp will likely just throw another set through if they aren't at the gate at the appointed time
Hiccups/Things to work through:
- Egos not realizing that time has passed since they supposedly arrived (e.g. if they are the 3rd sleeved set, how to trick them into thinking everything is on the level)
- If it even makes sense that a hypercorp would do this sort of thing to keep it on the DL
- What the hypercorp would plan to do to the egos if they did return (likely kill and restore from backup with claims of great heroism I suspect)
- How to structure the settlement as I want to have it be fairly large and abandoned (one of my players likes the idea of atmospheric exploration and investigation which also works well for PbP)
- If gates are isolated enough for something like this to happen (solar system side that is)
- Any other issues I missed
So I may regret this, but please give me any feedback you can think of. None of my players are too familiar with the setting (which I why I want it to be intro and thought putting it out of system would make it less overwhelming since they are contained) so it should help introduce them to a lot of the concepts. At the end I will have them approached by Firewall to induct them, but other than that, I just want input on how to make this a really interesting (and hopefully unsettling/creepy scenario). If that means saying that something sucks or doesn't make sense, let me know that too. Thanks!
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Sounds like a cool idea! There's not too many details, but I can try and help out with some of your doubts.
Egos not realizing that time has passed since they supposedly arrived (e.g. if they are the 3rd sleeved set, how to trick them into thinking everything is on the level)
The easiest way to do this would be to keep resleeving them on the other side of the gate, I think. This would be unlikely to happen in the gates in the solar system unless the hypercorp has a lot of pull (IE Pathfinder, Direct Action, etc.) or if they are sponsored by even large forces (ex: Firewall, Oversight or Ozma, etc.) It would be easier to resleeve backupos and send them through gates from a gate nexus outside the system, but then again biomorphs are probably a luxury in those places.
If it even makes sense that a hypercorp would do this sort of thing to keep it on the DL
Sure. Hypercorps can be as evil as you want them to be most of the time. Even more so if its indentured egos, doing jobs out of desperation and with the promise of riches and their bodies they can call their own. It could also be a test of some sort. Or a way to keep the situation contained by only using a few egos, for example it makes them much easier to hunt down if they defect.
What the hypercorp would plan to do to the egos if they did return (likely kill and restore from backup with claims of great heroism I suspect)
What if they find another gate and they have the controls to operate it? What if when they go back through the gate they end up somewhere else entirely? Or if they get the chance to escape when the hypercorp captures them, perhaps Firewall or a rival hypercorp wants to smuggle them out to get the information they glimpsed in the ruins.
How to structure the settlement as I want to have it be fairly large and abandoned (one of my players likes the idea of atmospheric exploration and investigation which also works well for PbP)
That depends on how big you want the game to be. From experience, I can tell you that PbP tends to drag out a bit so you want to have them get to the action as quick as possible, in which case a single research station would be best.
If gates are isolated enough for something like this to happen (solar system side that is)
Probably not the anarchist gates, because they won't get on well with the hypercorps. The Martian gate could be a safe bet. You can just say that, because the mission is of such a high clearance, not many questions are made about the whole thing.
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It's going to be a lot like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
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Got signed up to GM a game at my local college and I really want to do something using the Outer System, so here's what I've figured out.
- AF 8:PC's are reinstatiated infugees from the Fall
- Their egos are recovered by the Titanian Commonwealth
- Part of character creation involves their "interrogation" by TC security
- Sleeved, given lodgings in Nyhaven and all, one way or the other, come to know Magnus Ming
- Ming keeps an eye on them as potential Firewall assets
- Ming taps them to investigate a missing friend who got involved in Oligarch gangs
From there, the Reboots trail leads them to a smuggling ring that sells ice-circuitry from Iapetus to singularity seekers and exhumans and the operation will serve as their introduction to Firewall, ideally before the mid-semester break and then the second half is broader Saturn orbit dealing with x-risks.
Depending on the group, I might have one of the re-instatiated egos is actually a Firewall mole working for Ming to keep a close eye on them.
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Eclipse Phase in a nutshell.
(http://i.imgur.com/Qghw0II.jpg)
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Had the first session with the college group recently and that was... an experience.
I tweaked some things around to change how they all knew each other - they're all members of the same therapy group for Post Apocalypse Stress Disorder (thanks Caleb!) which is actually a way Firewall on Titan keeps an eye on People of Interest. One of them, an uplift professor, gets tapped by Ming to investigate a missing post-doc of his who ended up running afoul of Etemenaki 157 as he was contracting with the work group on creating the skillsoft for the language.
I wasn't expecting half the group to upload it, willfully ignore the fact that it was eating away at their sanity really effing fast, and deliberately and willfully attempt to eradicate humanity with it. No, seriously. They went from "we have to find this guy" to "this is doing bad things to my brain, LETS EMAIL IT TO EVERYONE" with no reason. College players, right?
The game ended with the few members of the group who DIDN'T instantly form a spontaneous doom-cult fleeing for safety, calling for help and Firewall intervening properly to wipe out the infected PCs with an exploding spaceship. The surviving PC's have become sentinels, the dead ones resleeved and shanghai'd into the organization so their 'friends' can keep an eye on them (with kill-switches secretly installed in the replacement morphs in the event that Etemenaki is incidental and no, THEY'RE the actual x-risks) and they've been reassigned somewhere less populated to minimize damage if they go off the rails again.
I'm going to have to come down a bit Dick GM on them to prevent this kind of thing happening again and pretty much say that right now Firewall has their balls in a vice and further bullshit is going to lead to them being permanently wiped from all back ups, make new characters.
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Just finished a Halloween style EP one-shot. Loosely based on Little Shop of Horrors, the firewall agents had to find out what happened to a missing scum swarm agri-biologist and a martian biomorph designer and their research vessel "The Seymour". They found a genetic hacking blacksite dedicated to 'growing' people to colonize the exoplanet Solemn. The issue: the seed stocks for growing biomorphs had been infected with the exsurgent virus and the entire habitat had become jungle full of giant venus fly traps whose method of reproduction was pod people. Many fires were started Much sanity was lost. Also, never let a a real-world chemist play god in a sci-rpg chemistry set.
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Awesome.
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In the middle of the Jovian Republic chapter of Duality. Players are amazed that traditional tradecraft works in places because the Jovians don't rely on AGIs and wireless mesh.
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Currently working on specking out Proxy Blue Plate Special. She Gladys from A Very Thorough Murder. Her Simulspace avatar is a female cafeteria waitress, with five hardened traits (titans, exsurgents, continuity, violence, social engineering). She has 1 moxie, and the unlucky, immortalty blues, drug addiction (nicotine) negative traits. In my campaign she is the go to Firewall proxy for the undiscovered since she has seen all the shit.
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I recently saw Big Hero 6, man that movie can be used as Eclipse Phase Fuel if you look at it in that mindset. Not gonna be spoilery quite yet since it's still in theaters, but there's some scenes.
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Saw a comment about Manjappa escaping death at the end of Know Evil in the comments for Outside Context Problem. Didn't want to reply there because it's a bit of a derail BUT we can talk about it here. Anyway, it's certainly possible to avoid permanent death in Eclipse Phase, but that kind of thing is far from certain, even for an operator like Manjappa. The key thing to remember is everyone in EP is operating with the same standards of knowledge (discounting aliens/TITANs but we're talking about transhumans avoiding death). Any tricky thing you can think of, the opposition can also think of and work around. Science does not favor stealth either.
Manjappa could have built any number of bolt holes/backup sites in remote locations like asteroids in the outer belt, but everything leaves a trace behind and Ozma/Firewall would certainly be on the lookout for them. Also, there ain't no such thing as stealth in space: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php)
The TL;DR version of that document basically says any technologically advanced device you run in space generates waste heat and heat can be detected from MASSIVE distances. It's easy to detect heat signatures in space. If you want to run a hidden body bank and farcasting facility in space, it will be very hard to do so for long periods of time. Of course in EP there are tens of thousands of habitats and ships in space, so no one can keep track of them. The only way to hide is in plain sight - disguise it as something else. Of course, Ozma/Firewall will be monitoring those habitats and ships.
The best protection in EP is not technological but social - you are better off if you have the backing of a violent and skilled conspiracy like Ozma or Firewall. Any escape route Manjappa builds would have to be perfectly built and maintained. A single mistake could doom it. Hell, this doesn't even discount opportunistic threats - space pirates and crime cartels probably prey on brinker/isolated habitats all the time - if you're laying low, you can't call the Autonomist militia or Titanian fleet to protect you.
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Eclipse phase being transhumanist horror and conspiracy:
If I where going to have Manjappa return, it would be as alpha fork who has been embedded within firewall from its earliest origins, as a fall back plan in case things went pear shaped. A small number of proxies are aware of his true identity, but consider this alpha to be to useful a tool to get rid of, and so he is protected by the organisation itself, which he is slowly taking over from the inside.
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Manjappa is just a transhuman - he does not even have async powers. His value to Firewall would be his inside intel on Ozma, which is finite, once Ozma fork of Manjappa is shut down. No proxy would allow him to run ops or do anything where he could subvert anything. Also, Firewall is a compartmentalized conspiracy, so even if he corrupts one server, he would be unable to touch other servers.
Plus, no matter how smart he is, he is not going to outwit the Prometheans.
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Yeah, as Caleb put it on twitter when I asked about Manjappa, he was a perfect spy, with imperfect intel. The Prometheans were something he could not account for, let alone the Know Evil crew's reckless abandon for getting the job done. I personally don't see Manjappa coming back, if any forks were left OZMA has probably captured them and stripped them down into skillware. The closest I'd think we'd get to M's return is a student/apprentice/heir that's divorced themselves from M's circle or something along those lines. I'm honestly more curious to see if a certain Cowboy is going to become a big bad in the future.
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The TL;DR version of that document basically says any technologically advanced device you run in space generates waste heat and heat can be detected from MASSIVE distances. It's easy to detect heat signatures in space. If you want to run a hidden body bank and farcasting facility in space, it will be very hard to do so for long periods of time. Of course in EP there are tens of thousands of habitats and ships in space, so no one can keep track of them. The only way to hide is in plain sight - disguise it as something else. Of course, Ozma/Firewall will be monitoring those habitats and ships.
I completely agree that the best options would be to hide in plain site or alternatively to hide in a place that is difficult to detect. Surface or subsurface on Venus or operating in the one of the gas giants or even subsurface on Mars are all possibilities. The other option is if you are far enough out and moving farther out each moment, and someone like Manjappa who has been playing the game for a long time he could set this up, they might well know where you are but it takes 15 years to get to you so they can't really do anything in time for you to regroup and farcast back off. In that case you don't have to out think the Prometheans, just be in a position they cannot reach you since they can't bend the laws of space/time anymore than you can.
I also also agree that each of the above is fragile in one way or the other and creating social bolt holes is also an excellent strategy.
I would also assume that the value of someone like Manjappa to firewall is beyond his Ozma knowledge. He as been a player long enough that he knows were many bodies are buried from before Ozma was even Ozma. Some of that knowledge is dated and incorrect but enough of it remains that he could be useful.
I am not trying to make Manjappa some sort of infallible super man (I hate when authors fall in love with their villains and they are always 10 steps ahead and when they do mess up and get caught it turns out to be a part of their master plan all along) but I think there are ways that he could have escaped. That being said I also do think it is more powerful if he is gone as that is a better narrative choice then him rising back up from the dead to be rekilled like a horror movie villain. One possibly I do like is that there are likely a number of ops that were in flight during his death and for lack of a better term his ghost haunts the players as they deal with ops that were run by Manjappa at one point but have spiraled out of control or taken on a life of their own.
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For those that want to buy the game.
It's on the Bundle of holding for the next 9 days.
http://bundleofholding.com/index/current/name/EclipsePhase (http://bundleofholding.com/index/current/name/EclipsePhase)
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In defense of my previous post, it is the only way I could see it working.
I wouldn't personally do it, but if I were going to, its how I would.
All that said, I think that an individual who has displayed the level of trade craft, versatility and skill could be a threat on the inside of firewall (Prometheans be damned), but it would require him having gotten in from the earliest days, having subverted Eye Rep at a fundamental level, and having built personal influence across the entire conspiracy. Certainly no easy task.
Is the idea of a threat attacking firewall in that matter completely beyond belief? Hell no, firewalls two greatest weaknesses are its belief that it has managed to make a structure that can't reasonable be compromised, and B, the belief in the 'infallibility' of the Prometheans, by those few that know of them. But Manjappa doing it? Nah, that is just strains credibility to much. You get to pull of one impossible superspy routine, and then your done ;)
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Firewall certainly could be compromised but if a single spy at the top of his game could do it, then Firewall would have been wiped out before the game even began.
It would take something like all of Ozma or a TITAN to do it, in my opinion.
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In any "reasonable" length of time it would require Ozma or a TITAN.
However, I suspect that a sufficiently driven and talented individual could do it, on a long enough time scale. He would have to take decades though, building networks and cells of his own within the structure. Sort of like Jernau Morat Gurgeh playing Azad by appearing to loose at the end of the player of games.
Whatever the case, I think firewall represents Manjappa's single reasonable life boat (their are some unreasonable ones, that he would need to be truly driven/mad to use, such as nine lives).
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Perhaps bit of a silly question but one I could not find the answer to. In the first RPPR eclipse phase podcast did intro adventure "A Glorious Fall" ever get posted online in a playable format? I'd loved to run it as an introduction to the setting for my group.
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If I remember correctly "A Glorious Fall" is a combination of Ross' own intro scenario set during The Fall and the pre-made scenario Glory, which you can a free PDF of on Rob Boyle's Wordpress blog or purchase a print/PDF of on DriveThruRPG.
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Yeah I only have the intro tutorial adventure in outline notes. I pitched the idea as a full EP scenario but they didn't buy it. Glory came with the GM screen so you can use that.
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And the first fabber has arrived....
Synthesis of many different types of organic small molecules using one automated process.
Science 13 March 2015:
Vol. 347 no. 6227 pp. 1190-1193
DOI: 10.1126/science.347.6227.1190
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1221.full.pdf (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1221.full.pdf)
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So... I really want to play Eclipse Phase. Really, really want to. As in finally started signing up for Meetups in my area to try and find folks willing to run this. No luck so far.
How much of a bad idea would it be to make my first foray into GMing be in Eclipse Phase? This seems like jumping off the high dive in order to learn to swim... Any GMs, vetern and newbie alike, have opinions?
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The Quick Start rules/scenario do a fine job easing you into the game.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/87622/Eclipse-Phase-QuickStart-Rules (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/87622/Eclipse-Phase-QuickStart-Rules)
It isn't a complex game, really; the basic mechanics are BRP (same system as Call of Cthulhu). There are some nitty-gritty things that take some getting used to, but the biggest challenge is understanding the setting and how to play it. That might take some getting used to, but it is worth sticking it out.
As an aside, there IS a Fate conversion in the works, and you can get the first playtest draft here:
http://eclipsephase.com/readme-ep-transhuman-fate-playtest-forum-guidelines (http://eclipsephase.com/readme-ep-transhuman-fate-playtest-forum-guidelines)
I've read it, and like the way the rules are presented, but I have yet to play it, so I can't say if it is worth playing instead of the base game. Still, it is an option, and might make digesting the setting easier.
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the basic mechanics are BRP (same system as Call of Cthulhu)
Every thing I know about Call of Cthulhu (and Better Angels, A Dirty World, Base Raiders, etc.), I learned from RPPR AP episodes; what's BRP stand for?
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Basic Role-Playing. It is the foundation percentile system that Call of Cthulhu uses (i.e. you roll percentile dice and try to get under your target number/skill rating).
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Firewall is out on PDF. There is a glorious Vin Disel joke in the art. Love that one.
I see that both Ross and Caleb had a part in it. Can you guys say what parts you did?
And on a side note. Dam you RPPR for making me spend more money :-)
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Firewall is out on PDF.
Have a link on where to obtain that? I didn't see anything on the Releases page at eclipsephase.com
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Firewall is out on PDF.
Have a link on where to obtain that? I didn't see anything on the Releases page at eclipsephase.com
http://eclipsephase.com/firewall-available-pdf-hack-pack-and-music (http://eclipsephase.com/firewall-available-pdf-hack-pack-and-music)
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Here's a quote from a Caleb section that, even before knowing he wrote it, I couldn't help but hear in his voice:
"The easiest way to remember what to do in a quarantine situation is to ask yourself: what would a Jovian do? If you eliminate “nuke everything” and“perform a hate crime” from the possible answers, the remainder makes for a nice to-do list of sufficiently paranoid countermeasures."
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More ways to screw over players, aka even air gapping isn't safe:
http://www.itworld.com/article/2909095/chinese-hacker-group-among-first-to-target-networks-isolated-from-internet.html (http://www.itworld.com/article/2909095/chinese-hacker-group-among-first-to-target-networks-isolated-from-internet.html)
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I've attempted to run Eclipse Phase for my group twice. And crash and burned both times. The variety of skills, and the "complication" of changing morphs, along with concerns about threat assessment have all conspired against me.
That said, I successfully ran Eclipse Phase at GenCon 2014. So I don't think its strictly me. I'm sure my group's impatience and unwillingness to read the setting material is contributing.
That said I want to give it one more go. Anyone have any suggestions for how to compile and summarize setting information (particularly "Why am I working for Firewall?", and maybe find a good list of "useful skills" along with definitions?
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I think I've cooked up a good initial scenario for my "Futurama" campaign intro idea, meant to be a way to introduce the setting to players who haven't read the books.
The PCs are volunteer subjects of a very pre-Fall cryogenic project. Their backstories aren't really all that important; maybe each one has a basic character archetype like "techie" or "soldier". They go down for the nap, but unbeknownst to them the project is intended to be much more long-term than they were told.
They are awoken in a mostly ruined secret facility on post-Fall Earth, after a Firewall agent accidentally wakes them up hunting for some intel Macguffin. They meet the agent just long enough to see him get brutally killed by a TITAN robot. But he's running a backup fork in a ghostrider module, so he's still there, he just needs them to be his hands and feet to help him complete the mission, promising to farcast them out as a reward. So they do the operation, asking the agent whatever questions about their new world they want.
Upon their success, they get farcasted to a Firewall body bank on Titan, but since their very existence would prove that the operation took place, they're given the choice of either deletion or joining Firewall. They get muses and skillsofts to get them up to speed with current tech needs, and the campaign progresses more normally from there.
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That said, I successfully ran Eclipse Phase at GenCon 2014. So I don't think its strictly me.
Sounds a lot like my group. If I plan a game of Fantasy Savage Worlds, or Dungeon World, or even CoC, people drag their feet, act noncommittal, and cancel out a couple days before the game. Though a couple guys are into new/different systems, 2 or 3 of the others just do not seem to get into anything other than D&D. (Which I do like to play as well)
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So I've been planning on running Anders Sandberg's "My Invisible Friend" scenario as a sort of introductory game for my roommates and friends who have never played EP before. I'm planning on using the current Eclipse Fate iteration Posthuman released last year, since it seems mostly functional except for Psi, but what I've been working on is tweaking and modifying the scenario to fit my own preferences as I flesh it out, since Sandberg's scenarios are more freeform and leave a good bit of the heavy lifting for the GMs (Which I personally like, because it gives me room to be creative!).
Most of what I've added are background politics between the Militia and Security, the former of which is secretly backed by Martian Oversight and the latter is being armed and supplied by the LLA, but the major change is this: rather than being Firewall sentinels sent to follow up on leads left from "Think Before Asking", the party are a group of inner system mercenaries hired by one Doctor Driscoll-Toyoda to board the station and rescue his colleague Doctor Elliot Dones. One player will be playing Toyoda and will get a special brief, while the others are allowed to make their own characters as they see fit; the Toyoda player will be playing the role of their client, while they are the professionals.
The twist is that "Toyoda" is not really Toyoda, but someone who is very interested in finding out what Dones knows about Toyoda's work with Seed AI and whether a similar project is being undertaken on Heinlein. Their employers, whose name has been psychosurgically removed to preserve OpSec, has ordered them to board the station, locate Dones, find out what he's been working on, and neutralize or obtain any dangerous information or materials before someone else gets their hands on it. Of course things will be complicated when they get on board and find that Dones has been arrested, leaving a bunch of scared kids and a message begging his "dear friend" to save them instead of him.
At first I planned on having the Toyoda impersonator be a Firewall Proxy, with the reveal in the epilogue of the scenario, but then I realized that it would be awesome if they actually turned out to be an Ozma agent acting on intel from one of their moles in Firewall; kind of like the big twist at the end of the Know Evil Earth one-shot, "Ozma thanks you for your service" and all that. The new players wouldn't necessarily get the full impact, but the ones who have read the book and know about Firewall and Ozma would hopefully be surprised.
Thoughts?
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So I'm going to run my "Futurama" intro scenario this weekend, and I'm still working out a couple of things. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to do character creation for PCs that haven't lived in the EP setting. Ross, I'm re-listening to "A Glorious Fall" and trying to figure out how you did the characters in the tutorial section.
My basic idea is to have them each pick one of the standard Aptitude arrays from Transhuman, and maybe three to five skills to put points into that represent the character's pre-cryo background. Then I'll give everyone maximum moxie to use throughout the intro scenario. Does that sound like a good idea?
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Some skills, like Fray, Freerunning, Blades, etc. ought to still be available, beyond those three to five skills - sure, the characters might have an archaic style using them, but they would still work.
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So I'm going to run my "Futurama" intro scenario this weekend, and I'm still working out a couple of things. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to do character creation for PCs that haven't lived in the EP setting. Ross, I'm re-listening to "A Glorious Fall" and trying to figure out how you did the characters in the tutorial section.
My basic idea is to have them each pick one of the standard Aptitude arrays from Transhuman, and maybe three to five skills to put points into that represent the character's pre-cryo background. Then I'll give everyone maximum moxie to use throughout the intro scenario. Does that sound like a good idea?
That could work - Transhuman has a lot of tools for alt chargen. You could do lifepath blocks in segments as well. For each scene/encounter, give the PCs one lifepath segment and let them use their skills from that to overcome that challenge.
Or you could do simulspace training and give them fake or skillsoft skills so they can try out mesh hacking, combat, etc.
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So I'm going to run my "Futurama" intro scenario this weekend, and I'm still working out a couple of things. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to do character creation for PCs that haven't lived in the EP setting. Ross, I'm re-listening to "A Glorious Fall" and trying to figure out how you did the characters in the tutorial section.
My basic idea is to have them each pick one of the standard Aptitude arrays from Transhuman, and maybe three to five skills to put points into that represent the character's pre-cryo background. Then I'll give everyone maximum moxie to use throughout the intro scenario. Does that sound like a good idea?
That could work - Transhuman has a lot of tools for alt chargen. You could do lifepath blocks in segments as well. For each scene/encounter, give the PCs one lifepath segment and let them use their skills from that to overcome that challenge.
Or you could do simulspace training and give them fake or skillsoft skills so they can try out mesh hacking, combat, etc.
I'm planning to do that in the follow-up adventure, if the players want to continue with the characters. I'll have them choose "lifepaths" as skillsoft/XP training on a Firewall simulspace server.
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My intro scenario went very well! They got to play around with stealth, combat, fabbers, infosec, simulspace, and surveilance tech. Unfortunately half the group had to leave before the end, and they took all the combat skills with them, so the final showdown with a TITAN hunter-killer was a little anticlimactic. But everybody had fun!
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So I'm going to run my "Futurama" intro scenario this weekend, and I'm still working out a couple of things. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to do character creation for PCs that haven't lived in the EP setting. Ross, I'm re-listening to "A Glorious Fall" and trying to figure out how you did the characters in the tutorial section.
My basic idea is to have them each pick one of the standard Aptitude arrays from Transhuman, and maybe three to five skills to put points into that represent the character's pre-cryo background. Then I'll give everyone maximum moxie to use throughout the intro scenario. Does that sound like a good idea?
I had players in a similar situation. We built characters using 500 points, representing what was recovered post-cryo (because imperfect cryotechnology would probably cause brain damage). Once they got acclimated to the rules and the future I gave them another 500 points to play with, representing repaired brain tissue that was grown on-spec to allow rapid learning.
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So I'm going to run my "Futurama" intro scenario this weekend, and I'm still working out a couple of things. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to do character creation for PCs that haven't lived in the EP setting. Ross, I'm re-listening to "A Glorious Fall" and trying to figure out how you did the characters in the tutorial section.
My basic idea is to have them each pick one of the standard Aptitude arrays from Transhuman, and maybe three to five skills to put points into that represent the character's pre-cryo background. Then I'll give everyone maximum moxie to use throughout the intro scenario. Does that sound like a good idea?
I had players in a similar situation. We built characters using 500 points, representing what was recovered post-cryo (because imperfect cryotechnology would probably cause brain damage). Once they got acclimated to the rules and the future I gave them another 500 points to play with, representing repaired brain tissue that was grown on-spec to allow rapid learning.
I just gave them 6 skills each, with an array of 40, 30, 30, 25, 20, 15 points. In retrospect, I'd rebuild the characters with more skills and higher ratings, so they don't get quite as frustrated by failed rolls. But I did give them 10 moxie so that they could practice using it, and that helped. I learned a valuable lesson, that every character should have a method of participating in combat even if they don't have weapon skills (through distraction, environmental hacking, bot jamming, etc.).
If they want to continue with the characters, I'm going to give them packages from the Tranhuman package creation system, representing rapid XP/skillsoft training in a controlled Firewall server.
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From Wizards of the Coast of all places
(http://i.imgur.com/L3bXWdf.png)
Source:http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/modern-magic
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(http://i.imgur.com/L3bXWdf.png)
Is that like the Fenrir version of a Takko? That's awesome!
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Eraser squad about to go to work
(http://i.imgur.com/5KxyACC.jpg?1)
Artist deviant art http://johnsonting.deviantart.com/gallery/ (http://johnsonting.deviantart.com/gallery/)
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The world of Eclipse Phase approaches faster than I thought:
https://thestack.com/world/2015/10/12/ion-based-data-allows-atom-sized-storage-cells-that-simulate-brain-structure/ (https://thestack.com/world/2015/10/12/ion-based-data-allows-atom-sized-storage-cells-that-simulate-brain-structure/)
http://www.gizmag.com/miniature-particle-accelerator/39741/ (http://www.gizmag.com/miniature-particle-accelerator/39741/)
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Looking for ideas to help flesh out a scenario I want to run. It's a one-off for 4-6 hours spread over two sessions. As far as inspirations, I'm pulling somewhat heavily from things like the Matrix, Inception, the Mall Cops game Ross recorded years ago, and the most recent Doctor Who Christmas special.
Rough outline:
The players are agents deployed to investigate an x threat that turns out to be a TITAN generated simulspace that basically hacks the brains of those who are in it to make it feel "real" (i.e. they don't think they are in simulspace). The space is constantly being tweaked and modified to be as appealing as possible to the inhabitants so they don't realize it (a la DW and Mall Cops). As the PCs investigate the situation there will be various levels of nested spaces (a la Inception) with the ultimate upshot being that they realize the game started with them already in the simulspace. The goal will primarily be about "escaping" the nested spaces and trying to destroy whatever server bank the space is stored on. (I think Caleb actually had a similar element of nested spaces in one of his games). The "lingering horror" I want to leave with the characters is the constant paranoia or question as to whether they "really" escaped or not.
"Scary" Bits (things I want to cause the players discomfort)
- Did they really make it out or not?
- As they are investigating and realize they simulspace adapts, can they really trust what they have discovered or is it just the space trying to entrap them further?
- What is the TITAN's purpose in it? Ultimately I think this question is scarier if left unanswered (kine of incomprehensible Old Ones status)
- General backdrop of existential/perception horror. What does it mean to give into/embrace the madness/simulspace? What does it mean if one can't trust their own senses/perception? etc.
So that's a lot and pretty vague right now, but I'm looking for ideas on how to tighten it up and flesh it out. My hope is to give only enough answers to get the players hungering for more and leave a lot of questions up to their imagination (without being frustrating). So I'm definitely down to cut some stuff, but don't want it to devolve into a simple "here's a scary monster, find it's weakness then fight it." I'm thinking about trying to tweak it a bit in play to emphasize or feed into the things players fixate on (as the TITAN would adapt the world to keep them trapped), but not sure how to play that out.
Any suggestions on how to bring this all together?
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Have you read Think Before Asking? It's a free download so I would start there.
Make each layer of the simulspace distinct and imperfect - TITANs be imperfect machine gods anyway, so there's something wrong with each layer. A color can't be rendered right, smells are wrong, all music sounds the same.
When they get out, introduce something that triggers memories of those flaws. Leave it ambiguous.
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Railguns are in the wild now:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/19/3d-printed-handheld-railgun/ (http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/19/3d-printed-handheld-railgun/)
(http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/8a7981bf2c9fe331a1044648fcbe526b/202822322/handheld-railgun-2015-10-19-02.jpg)
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Hello all, hope it is not inappropriate to post this here but I though you might enjoy this.
So I have been running a campaign of EP for a bit. It is called Ozymandias and if you want to listen to recordings of our sessions, you check out the link here: http://mnh.podbean.com/ (http://mnh.podbean.com/)
The premise is that way way back in the 2000's, a billionaire tech mogul with the vision of Steve Jobs, the arrogance of Donald Trump, and the zeal of William Jennings Bryan commissioned brain scanning experiments to help him become immortal. The players are the test subjects who were successfully instantiated 200 or so years later.
We have an ex bounty hunter, a corporate spy, a book store clerk, a student, and an Olympic Table Tennis player.
Check it out and if you enjoy our stuff, please send word. Otherwise we are simply speaking into an audient void and they are the worst kind of voids.
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Hello all, hope it is not inappropriate to post this here but I though you might enjoy this.
So I have been running a campaign of EP for a bit. It is called Ozymandias and if you want to listen to recordings of our sessions, you check out the link here: http://mnh.podbean.com/ (http://mnh.podbean.com/)
The premise is that way way back in the 2000's, a billionaire tech mogul with the vision of Steve Jobs, the arrogance of Donald Trump, and the zeal of William Jennings Bryan commissioned brain scanning experiments to help him become immortal. The players are the test subjects who were successfully instantiated 200 or so years later.
We have an ex bounty hunter, a corporate spy, a book store clerk, a student, and an Olympic Table Tennis player.
Check it out and if you enjoy our stuff, please send word. Otherwise we are simply speaking into an audient void and they are the worst kind of voids.
Awesome! Sounds a lot like the "Futurama" intro scenario that I cooked up a few months back. I think having "present day" characters getting re-awoken in the EP setting is a good way to introduce the game to players who don't want to read the setting material.
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Hello, everyone, long time listener, first time forumer.
I have a small problem/block. I'm thinking about making a small mini-campaign for newbies to the system (because all my friends are newbies to the system, haha), to get them both introduced to the system and allow them to feel their way into the backstory without requiring them to read hundreds of pages of story. So I thought about placing the setting on Earth at the moment the Fall starts, and the basic concept will be that the players (in their pre-Fall careers) will have to deal with the fallout of such niceties as terror attacks, shadowy missions for secret organizations, etc., with the payoff being that the terror attack that starts it all and several of the subsequent missions are the planning of the TITANs to use humanity against themselves while they build up their forces, with the players finally getting the big picture as they're headed off of Earth.
My big questions are, should i break up the episodes to teach various parts of the system? Like have the intro get them used to how skills work, and then introduce the sousveillance/Mesh, then combat options, etc.? And should I start them with characters with fewer options at creation representing the fact that they're not the people they're going to be in 10 AF?
Thanks for any advice in advance.
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Have you read Think Before Asking? It's a free download so I would start there.
Make each layer of the simulspace distinct and imperfect - TITANs be imperfect machine gods anyway, so there's something wrong with each layer. A color can't be rendered right, smells are wrong, all music sounds the same.
When they get out, introduce something that triggers memories of those flaws. Leave it ambiguous.
Thanks, really helpful and I just plotted out the rough idea for the story today and am excited to add in the details. If it is a huge success I'll definitely look at sharing the work I pulled together.
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Hello, everyone, long time listener, first time forumer.
I have a small problem/block. I'm thinking about making a small mini-campaign for newbies to the system (because all my friends are newbies to the system, haha), to get them both introduced to the system and allow them to feel their way into the backstory without requiring them to read hundreds of pages of story. So I thought about placing the setting on Earth at the moment the Fall starts, and the basic concept will be that the players (in their pre-Fall careers) will have to deal with the fallout of such niceties as terror attacks, shadowy missions for secret organizations, etc., with the payoff being that the terror attack that starts it all and several of the subsequent missions are the planning of the TITANs to use humanity against themselves while they build up their forces, with the players finally getting the big picture as they're headed off of Earth.
My big questions are, should i break up the episodes to teach various parts of the system? Like have the intro get them used to how skills work, and then introduce the sousveillance/Mesh, then combat options, etc.? And should I start them with characters with fewer options at creation representing the fact that they're not the people they're going to be in 10 AF?
Thanks for any advice in advance.
The way I went about this problem was withholding points from the players until they understood what the points did. I also issued them a questionnaire that had them describe their character and then I built them accordingly.
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The great-great*mumble*-grandparent of smart clothes is here: clothing that vents as humidity rises: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/ (http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/)
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The great-great*mumble*-grandparent of smart clothes is here: clothing that vents as humidity rises: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/ (http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/)
Wow, that is...pretty wild. Looks like crocodile scales to me, which is a little freaky.
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The great-great*mumble*-grandparent of smart clothes is here: clothing that vents as humidity rises: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/ (http://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-living-clothing-morphs-when-you-sweat/)
It's based off of Natto? But there's no slime! Interesting concept. Wonder how long it'll be until we see this in track and field, or if it won't be allowed as a technical aid.
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Control of fabrication starting: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/589484/nsw-bans-possession-blueprints-3d-printing-firearms/ (http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/589484/nsw-bans-possession-blueprints-3d-printing-firearms/)
In Australia of all places
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Someone commissioned an art piece about a fight taking place on LEGBA.
(http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sketch01.jpg)
Source and artist comments: http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1596 (http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1596)
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That is really good.
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Any of you guys hear that they just released an Eclipse Phase story anthology?
http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/166451?src=DTFFB (http://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/166451?src=DTFFB)
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Any of you guys hear that they just released an Eclipse Phase story anthology?
Already bought it ;D
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New Wallpaper!!
Also just got the e-book.
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Someone commissioned an art piece about a fight taking place on LEGBA.
(http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sketch01.jpg)
Source and artist comments: http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1596 (http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1596)
The author altered the image, moving characters around and adding more background stuff.
(http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sketch02b.jpg)
He also released just the background.
(http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Sketch02a.jpg)
Source for the new images and some new artist comments: http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1607 (http://www.theministryofabnormality.com/?p=1607)
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Okay, I'm in the super early brainstorming stages of a new campaign and am looking for input/ideas to build into it. I'm wanting to plot out story arc/conflict revolving around the idea of the "big bad" being a meme evolving through the hypercorps/Planetary Consortium. Inspiration has come from a couple major sources, Akaja from the Know Evil campaign, CGP Grey's "Thought Germ" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)), and seeing how people spread misinformation in internet echo chambers. As of right now, I know that I'm treading a really tough position of how to actually discover/fight a meme or something so nebulous, but I think that is also part of what makes it so terrifying.
Some of the structure/ideas I'm thinking:
- As with Akaja, no one "starts" the thing intentionally, it more or less arises from a series of events
- PCs would uncover the danger as they are undergoing other missions at which point their focus shifts to the meme fulltime
- The danger of fighting it head on (e.g. If someone is arguing something that is completely false and idiotic, you don't typically set up a debate with the most prominent figure on the opposing side for the risk of actually legitimizing what your are fighting, but more sinister than stupid)
- I'm thinking the x-threat piece comes in as it might be something of a singularity-seeking meme or essentially trying to turn all of transhumanity collectively into a TITAN-esque collective
- Before PCs uncover the "meme-ness" of it, they take down something only to see it pop up several other places (a la Hydra), leading to them delving into its true nature.
- Being a meme/thought-germ, it infects different hypercorps in different ways, perhaps leading to mini x-threats throughout the campaign. This could lead to the struggle of balancing fighting the symptoms vs. the disease.
So those are some of the initial thoughts. The overall concept is probably less than an hour old and I haven't slept on it yet (the time that things typically coalesce better for me), but I was eager to get input and thoughts from others. Any ideas, especially on how to "beat" the meme or major flaws to avoid would be greatly appreciated.
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Sounds like a cool core idea. I don't have specific advice, but an idea of something general to keep in mind: make sure that your players can fight the bad guys using the tools that they have: i.e. the skills and abilities on their character sheets. So, obviously they can't shoot/infiltrate/infosec the meme itself, but give them ways to oppose the meme by using those skills.
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I have no idea how useful it might be, and it was written for a different setting and system, but this might be worth checking out for some ideas: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/transhuman-space-classic-toxic-memes (http://www.warehouse23.com/products/transhuman-space-classic-toxic-memes)
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http://deadline.com/2016/01/altered-carbon-drama-series-laeta-kalogridis-netflix-skydance-1201684680/ (http://deadline.com/2016/01/altered-carbon-drama-series-laeta-kalogridis-netflix-skydance-1201684680/)
EP tv show anyone? Wasn't sure if it should be posted here or Shoutout thread?
Have been throwing around some ideas for a intro/ tutorial game sort of based on portal sort of. Standard bad shit happens and firewall has to quarantine a group of potential recruits after having had to cut out a huge chunk of their memories via psych-Surgery and now the observers are giving the players routine seeming tasks and basic procedures and basic info to see how they react/ test for corruption from previous bad shit. hopefully a better write up to follow.
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Okay, I'm in the super early brainstorming stages of a new campaign and am looking for input/ideas to build into it. I'm wanting to plot out story arc/conflict revolving around the idea of the "big bad" being a meme evolving through the hypercorps/Planetary Consortium. Inspiration has come from a couple major sources, Akaja from the Know Evil campaign, CGP Grey's "Thought Germ" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)), and seeing how people spread misinformation in internet echo chambers. As of right now, I know that I'm treading a really tough position of how to actually discover/fight a meme or something so nebulous, but I think that is also part of what makes it so terrifying.
Some of the structure/ideas I'm thinking:
- As with Akaja, no one "starts" the thing intentionally, it more or less arises from a series of events
- PCs would uncover the danger as they are undergoing other missions at which point their focus shifts to the meme fulltime
- The danger of fighting it head on (e.g. If someone is arguing something that is completely false and idiotic, you don't typically set up a debate with the most prominent figure on the opposing side for the risk of actually legitimizing what your are fighting, but more sinister than stupid)
- I'm thinking the x-threat piece comes in as it might be something of a singularity-seeking meme or essentially trying to turn all of transhumanity collectively into a TITAN-esque collective
- Before PCs uncover the "meme-ness" of it, they take down something only to see it pop up several other places (a la Hydra), leading to them delving into its true nature.
- Being a meme/thought-germ, it infects different hypercorps in different ways, perhaps leading to mini x-threats throughout the campaign. This could lead to the struggle of balancing fighting the symptoms vs. the disease.
So those are some of the initial thoughts. The overall concept is probably less than an hour old and I haven't slept on it yet (the time that things typically coalesce better for me), but I was eager to get input and thoughts from others. Any ideas, especially on how to "beat" the meme or major flaws to avoid would be greatly appreciated.
I used religion as a meme threat. I've lost my original notes on the main baddy, but the basic idea was stolen from Duality - the main baddy was a guy ascension forked with a baby TITAN delta fork. The religion hook was based on the idea that so many religions have about the end times and how 'prophecy' meant that they had to go blow it all up to be saved. I combined that with the stuff from this awesome link (http://www.973-eht-namuh-973.com) and went from there. I was able to fold in petal creation in an intemediate step and I turned the Egg into a skyscraper sized chunk of strange matter that could be transformed into a quark-gluon star with an assist from the solar power transmitters on Caloris 18. It wasn't a terribly well written thing, but I still think the idea of religion as meme warfare is one that can get you a lot of traction.
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That awesome link is broken! :-[
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io9.gizmodo.com/the-classic-cyberpunk-novel-altered-carbon-is-becoming-1754048539 (http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-classic-cyberpunk-novel-altered-carbon-is-becoming-1754048539)
2nd Time's the charm
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io9.gizmodo.com/the-classic-cyberpunk-novel-altered-carbon-is-becoming-1754048539 (http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-classic-cyberpunk-novel-altered-carbon-is-becoming-1754048539)
2nd Time's the charm
You were right, that's awesome.
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It'll be interesting to see how they handle the Sleeving aspect in a visual medium.
I'm glad we live in a time when sf tv look good (Note to self, Expanse!). I hate rubber forehead aliens.
That being said Total Recall 2077 is amazing and was made in the 90s (In a lot of ways better than Almost Human because it didn't shy away from adult themes).
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Link is now fixed. Enjoy going down the rabbit hole.
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I meant to say. Had some posting problems earlier.
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I also will add this sublime Kris Straub comic (http://starslip.chainsawsuit.com/starslip/starslip-number-680/) to the infodump.
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Okay, I'm in the super early brainstorming stages of a new campaign and am looking for input/ideas to build into it. I'm wanting to plot out story arc/conflict revolving around the idea of the "big bad" being a meme evolving through the hypercorps/Planetary Consortium. Inspiration has come from a couple major sources, Akaja from the Know Evil campaign, CGP Grey's "Thought Germ" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)), and seeing how people spread misinformation in internet echo chambers. As of right now, I know that I'm treading a really tough position of how to actually discover/fight a meme or something so nebulous, but I think that is also part of what makes it so terrifying.
Some of the structure/ideas I'm thinking:
- As with Akaja, no one "starts" the thing intentionally, it more or less arises from a series of events
- PCs would uncover the danger as they are undergoing other missions at which point their focus shifts to the meme fulltime
- The danger of fighting it head on (e.g. If someone is arguing something that is completely false and idiotic, you don't typically set up a debate with the most prominent figure on the opposing side for the risk of actually legitimizing what your are fighting, but more sinister than stupid)
- I'm thinking the x-threat piece comes in as it might be something of a singularity-seeking meme or essentially trying to turn all of transhumanity collectively into a TITAN-esque collective
- Before PCs uncover the "meme-ness" of it, they take down something only to see it pop up several other places (a la Hydra), leading to them delving into its true nature.
- Being a meme/thought-germ, it infects different hypercorps in different ways, perhaps leading to mini x-threats throughout the campaign. This could lead to the struggle of balancing fighting the symptoms vs. the disease.
So those are some of the initial thoughts. The overall concept is probably less than an hour old and I haven't slept on it yet (the time that things typically coalesce better for me), but I was eager to get input and thoughts from others. Any ideas, especially on how to "beat" the meme or major flaws to avoid would be greatly appreciated.
If the meme virus operates like a religion that means that it is susceptible to weird mutations. New "revelations", differences in interpretation, differences in ritual and schisms are fertile ground to generate multiple competing memes that could all drive singularity-seeking behavior. This also allows EP do what it does best (outside horror) which is model gonzo scifi tropes. With multiple sects running around you can easily have a People's Republic of Judea and the Judean People's Republic in space with strange or subtle differences between each one.
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I meant to say. Had some posting problems earlier.
Oh, *that's* the awesome link.
Whoah.
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Hello all! I am a New Person who is New!
With that in mind, can someone explain the exact problem with SpaceWhales?
I get that they're awkward to work into a scenario, but no more than any other group using the "Mysterious Aliens/Mystics/Organisation" design space.
Okay, they make better patrons than PCs, but that still doesn't explain the Salt squirted in thier direction.
... Or is it just an extension of thier Shark-Punching prejudice against large aquatic creatures? :P
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They Don't Do Anything.
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Hello all! I am a New Person who is New!
With that in mind, can someone explain the exact problem with SpaceWhales?
I get that they're awkward to work into a scenario, but no more than any other group using the "Mysterious Aliens/Mystics/Organisation" design space.
Okay, they make better patrons than PCs, but that still doesn't explain the Salt squirted in thier direction.
... Or is it just an extension of thier Shark-Punching prejudice against large aquatic creatures? :P
Well, there's a few things. Keep in mind, it's not Space Whales that's the problem, so much as Sun Whales.
1. Despite the super high tech nature of the EP setting, the Sun Whales seem to many people (me included) to require tech WAY beyond the rest of the setting. IRL, the forces involved in the sun's corona and upper layers are just ludicrous, and having morphs capable of surviving there seems impossible given the rest of the setting. It breaks suspension of disbelief for a lot of folks.
2. As Adam says, they also don't really interact with the rest of the setting at all, so it's very hard to tell stories involving them. However, some of us have come up with ideas for scenarios using them, which I do think are pretty good. It's a challenge, though.
3. As a causal factor for points 1 and 2, the Sun Whales seem to have been designed aesthetics-first, with a lot less attention paid to both their sci-fi realism and their narrative possibilities than the rest of the setting. They give off this vibe of an idea that sounded cool to somebody, so they shoved it into the game without caring about whether it made sense.
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I guess I can see what you're getting at, but all three of those points (excepting personal perception) seems like they're Working As Intended.
Tech-wise, SunWhales are a big step towards the TechMagic end of the Sci-Fi Scale... and I think that a big part of what they're for. They're a product of a transhuman society with access to Factor biotech and Gates to alien worlds with fascinating creatures full of interesting and weird proteins - essentially a signpost of the direction Alien contact will steer humanity.*
By making them live in the Corona the theme is reinforced, opening up an utterly alien environment that is nonetheless implicitly tied to humanity, and simultaneously isolating them so they don't dominate the setting... and enhancing the "mystics on the mountain" design element.
Okay, this absolutely makes it hard to make a scenario explicitly involving them... but no more than the Githyanki or Sea-Elves in DND, or the Vorlons in B5.
Where they shine is as as "Mystical" PCs, or as Plot Dispencers when you want to intorduce a SpaceMagic element but don't want the implicitly sinister overtones of using Exhumans or the Factors ("We foresee a slight problem within House Atreides. Paul, Paul Atreides. We want him killed. I did not say this. I am not here. ")
*Also, Transhumanity has access to room-temperature superconductors. Superconductors are really weird.
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Someone should shine the Caleb signal.
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I've now played in a Space Whales centric scenario (at GenCon and written by the PostHuman Studios guys) and it worked well. It was an all Whales scenario on the surface of the Sirius star and involved truly TITAN-esque technology - a station directly harnessing the power of a sun. I think we're talking Type III on the Kardashev scale in terms of the evolution of technology there.
It was a fun game, partially for the Raven uplift who identified with the Dinosaur Identity movement sleeved into an enormous space whale wielding a ship-sized railgun as a sniper weapon as he screamed that he was "The Raptor on high!"
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The problem with Space Whales is that they exist pretty much so that someone can check off a tired and overused scifi trope rather than adding anything interesting or useful to the setting.
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I feel like space whales should've been used as something like ships pilots or something. I mean it makes *near total sense* for there to be whale uplifts, given all the other types of uplifts, but 'eh just throw them in the sun' seems kinda stupid.
If they were the minds which piloted ships, I could imagine all sorts of interesting uses for them. Plus, I remember reading this article many years ago about the limits of the human mind in terms of piloting in space. Not necessarily that whales would be better, but you could probably bullshit something up about how whales are the best spaceships ever a little more easily than WHALES SWIM IN THE SUN
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I feel like space whales should've been used as something like ships pilots or something. I mean it makes *near total sense* for there to be whale uplifts, given all the other types of uplifts, but 'eh just throw them in the sun' seems kinda stupid.
If they were the minds which piloted ships, I could imagine all sorts of interesting uses for them. Plus, I remember reading this article many years ago about the limits of the human mind in terms of piloting in space. Not necessarily that whales would be better, but you could probably bullshit something up about how whales are the best spaceships ever a little more easily than WHALES SWIM IN THE SUN
There actually are some cool telemetry/navigation-focused whale uplifts in the EP canon: Deep Current Black Killer of Squid, for example, is the best hunter of lost objects in the solar system, and consequently one of the richest uplifts in the system as well (he funded the construction of Atlantica, a neo-cetacean-focused habitat). Stuff like that makes perfect sense within the setting.
Like I said, I don't have any problem with EP's space whales, just the sun whales.
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I prefer my headcanon with the sun whales, which is that they're all REALLY angry at transhumanity for everything that's happened and have a feeling out in space similar to the older patron species in David Brin's Uplift War - they need intense gravitational pull that can't be provided anywhere else. This also gives me the glimmering of a way to use EP to update The Black Hole, with crazy space whale in a biomorph taking the place of Maximillian Schell. But I'm not right in the head, of course.
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Some videos showing what AR streetart might look like:
https://vimeo.com/13885334
https://vimeo.com/147731352
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Vision, perception and the biology behind optical illusions
What is perception and how does our visual hardware shape our perception of reality?
Here is an interesting article on the most current theory of the biology behind some optical illusions.
Consider the Kanizsa triangle. What causes the brain to draw lines in a picture?
(http://i.imgur.com/W60JeWc.jpg)
http://neurosciencenews.com/visual-system-optical-illusions-3941/ (http://neurosciencenews.com/visual-system-optical-illusions-3941/)
Neuronal feedback could change what we ‘see’.
Ever see something that isn’t really there? Could your mind be playing tricks on you? The “tricks” might be your brain reacting to feedback between neurons in different parts of the visual system, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Sandra J. Kuhlman and colleagues.
Understanding this feedback system could provide new insight into the visual system’s neuronal circuitry and could have further implications for understanding how the brain interprets and understands sensory stimuli.
Many optical illusions make you see something that’s not there. Take the Kanizsa triangle: when you place three Pac-Man-like wedges in the right spot, you see a triangle, even though the edges of the triangle aren’t drawn.
“We see with both our brain and our eyes. Your brain is making inferences that allow you to see the triangle. It’s connecting the dots between the corners of the wedges,” said Kuhlman, who is a member of Carnegie Mellon’s BrainHub neuroscience initiative and the joint Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). “Optical illusions illustrate some of the amazing things our visual system can do.”
When we look at an object, information about what we see travels through circuits of neurons beginning in the retina, through the thalamus and into the brain’s visual cortex. In the visual cortex, the information gets processed in multiple stages and is ultimately sent to the prefrontal cortex — the area of the brain that makes decisions, including how to respond to a given stimulus.
However, not all information stays on this forward moving path. At the secondary stage of processing in the visual cortex some neurons reverse course and send information back to the first stage of processing. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon wondered if this feedback could change how the neurons in the visual cortex respond to a stimulus and alter the messages being sent to the prefrontal cortex.
While there has been a good deal of research studying how information moves forward through the visual system, less has been done to study the impact of the information that moves backward. To find out if the information traveling from the secondary stage of processing back to the first stage impacted how information is encoded in the visual system, the researchers needed to quantify the magnitude of information that was being sent from the second stage back to the first stage. Using a mouse model, they recorded normal neuronal firing in the first stage of the visual cortex as the mouse looked at moving patterns that represented edges. They then silenced the neurons in the second stage using modified optogenetic technology. This halted the feedback of information from the second stage back to the first stage, and allowed the researchers to determine how much of the neuronal activity in the first stage of visual processing was the result of feedback.
Twenty percent of the neuronal activity in the visual cortex was the result of feedback, a concept Kuhlman calls reciprocal connectivity. This indicates that some of the information coming from the visual cortex is not a direct response to a visual stimuli, but is a response to how the stimuli was perceived by higher cortical areas.
The feedback, she says, might be what causes our brain to complete the undrawn lines in the Kanizsa triangle. But more importantly, it signifies that studying neuronal feedback is important to our understanding of how the brain works to process stimuli.
“This represents a new way to study visual perception and neural computation. If we want to truly understand the visual pathway, and cortical function in general, we have to understand these reciprocal connection,” Kuhlman said.
Ultimately, this neural feedback that involves parts of the brain interacting with one another to process a visual image, in a manner not directly related to the primary "forward" processing of a "seeing" an object, could be the part of the brain that "says" "I expect a triangle here, thus I will add non-existent lines to complete this expected triangle".
Full paper: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/10/2904 (http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/10/2904)
Secondly, do all humans view this optical illusion the same way? If not, what does that tell us about the underlying system that makes the optical illusion appear for most people?
http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/articles/seeing-after-blindness.pdf (http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/articles/seeing-after-blindness.pdf)
In 1959 a gentleman by the name of Sidney Bradford, who had been blind since birth due to an infection, underwent a procedure to receive corneal grafts to restore his sight at age 52.
Richard Gregory and his research assistant Jean Wallace examined Mr Bradford's responses to optical illusions.
Bradford’s responses to well-known illusion figures were far from normal. He perceived far less distortion,and he did not experience the flipping ambiguity of the Necker Cube, or other such dynamic changes of appearance. Pictures looked flat and meaningless. Perspective meant nothing to his visual system,yet he could judge the distances and sizes of objects that were already familiar from touch, such as chairs scattered around the ward — although he was wildly wrong about distances to the ground from the hospital windows. Evidently, earlier touch experience and behaviour such as walking, calibrated and gave sense to his vision, which was almost useless for untouchable objects or pictures.
His unusual responses to the figures suggested that many illusions result from cognitive processing, rather than physiological signal processing occurring early in the visual system; this led to experiments and interesting controversies that persist today
A Neker cube: (http://i.imgur.com/AKIbzpd.gif)
As an aside, the real interesting take away from the Sidney Bradford case was that the man, blind since birth and newly sighted, could tell time by looking at the hands of the clock, as well as read (correctly) some words based on the shape of the upper case letters. At a children's school for the blind Mr. Bradford was taught to tell time and read by memorizing the shape of the hands and letters, respectively. Mr. Bradford was immediately able to transfer his identification of objects by touch to his new sight, indicating that there is a "cross-modal" transfer of touch to vision.
Further interesting scientific papers on perception, illusions and vision are here in Richard Gregory's publications: http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/ (http://www.richardgregory.org/papers/)
So one of the hypotheses that the Sidney Bradford case suggests, is that there is some common learning experience in humans who are sighted since birth that allows them to perceive the optical illusion.
For an Eclipse Phase campaign the utility of exploring the space between perception and reality for writing adventures is self evident, particularly in a setting with Basilisk hacks.
Here are some rough ideas:
Perhaps the mechanism that makes transhumans susceptible to Basilisk hacks is embedded in their ego. Somewhere between visual perception and learning. To capitalize on a market for traumatized egos who want to protect them selves from another fall, Cognite could offer an experimental series of psychosurgeries to make egos more resistant (or totally immune to) some Basilisk hacks. Naturally this procedure would involve forking and successively merging "blind since birth" egos with the alpha ego. That procedure itself could have negative psychological impacts on the parent ego (likely the "blind since birth" egos require accelerated time like the Lost project with all it's associated baggage).
The political ramifications could be that reclaimers are highly supportive of this new technology because they hope to retake Earth with Basilisk hack immune shock troops. Naturally other transhumans political factions would find this dangerous to their agendas and seek to violently destroy all evidence of success in this experimental therapy.
Alternatively, in a more fictionalized sci-fi bent, perhaps the procedure for Basilisk immunity somehow makes the subject less than human. Or (spitballing fantasy here) some fraction of those egos subjected to the Basilisk immunity procedure can not only still perceive the optical illusions, but they simultaneously perceive the lack of illusions. Throw in the observer effect, and pineal gland stimulation for hand waving rational and you could justify that any horrible interaction between the treated egos and titan hack tech you want.
The concept of "truly perceiving reality invites supernatural attention and intrusion into our reality" is a common one. Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and HP Lovecraft's From Beyond are great examples.
Let's marry this theme to the idea that messing with the brain's ability to perceive optical illusions can create a person with an "observer effect" special ability.
Say a character has this "observer effect" special ability. Add that the "observer effect" in this individual creates a Bad Thing to happen when the character observed something with one other person present. The Bad Thing could be that the observer character generates a basilisk hack ex nihilo, which then immediately attacks/infects his non-observer compatriot; or in a more supernatural campaign the observer character unconsciously summons a fragment of Azathoth/Daoloth/whatever that bloodily eats his compatriot while the observer character gets away unharmed (but traumatized).
This type of plot could be used to spice up a standard "Haunted House" (or spaceship or research base). Terrible things happen in this Haunted House. The players plus the observer character (or maybe a player IS the observer character) are sent to investigate and they find out the house really isn't haunted/cursed, instead it is their companion that is the unwitting innocent supernatural Typhoid Mary.
In retrospect this idea is very similar thematically to the X-files episode Soft Light where a character is essentially cursed with inadvertently killing people around him when he is alone with them. Oh well, nothing new under the sun right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_Light_(The_X-Files) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_Light_(The_X-Files))
There have got to be better plots that are closer to the science and I'd love to hear you guys make them.
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One for the Erasure Squad
(http://orig07.deviantart.net/988c/f/2016/317/e/5/kali_body_armor_by_papaninja-daob1l0.jpg)
Source: http://papaninja.deviantart.com/ (http://papaninja.deviantart.com/)
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Looking for another kick in interest for AI craziness, check out the videos featuring Rob Miles on Computerphile: https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile/search?query=%22rob+miles%22 (https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile/search?query=%22rob+miles%22)
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Exoplanet for use in your gatehopping game
http://youtu.be/18rARy8g4Hc (http://youtu.be/18rARy8g4Hc)
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We will probably do some more crazy exoplanet gatecrashing after EP2 comes out with full chargen rules.