Eclipse Phase Campaign Idea

[TMayesing78]

I'm starting an EP campaign in the next two weeks.  I'll have 4 to 6 players and I want to use Firewall as a unifying force for the group.  This is also going to be a first EP game for most of the group, though all but one are familiar with most of the concepts involved. 

I usually start with an antagonist. My initial idea is a rogue Firewall agent auctioning off secrets to the highest bidders, or gathering resources for some kind of coup.

A few ideas I'm certain I want to touch on include;red markets, the Martian quarantine zone, lunar banks, the ultimates, uplifts, exhumans and the titianian commonwealth. (I know it could be a lot to cover.). I'm just not sure about how to tie it all together.  I thought to start by having the PCs sent to interrupt an auction at a main belt red market station.  And tie the rest of the ideas together as information that had already been compromised/sold.  I'm sure my idea is full of holes.  For example if they interrupt the auction is the seller the rogue firewall agent?  Or just a proxy he's using for the sale?  For another what is the rogue's goals? Just get enough rep/cred to buy a personal station and drift off into space?  I considered the rogue having been a router or proxy, maybe even one using his/a firewall team in his plans. 

[Mckma]

Recommendation based on me starting my first thing and what I think would work best in this circumstance:

Start with just one of those ideas from that last paragraph and build a short adventure/scenario out of that where the players are essentially just random people off the street.  Then from that, they catch Firewall's attention and are brought in.  The reason I suggest this, is it gives you an opportunity to get started and test the waters as to what your players are really interested in.  If, for example they become super fixated on switching morphs at the drop of a hat, then make that the unifying thread for the main campaign (and build things around that).

Example from my campaign:

The idea of illegal/unknown forking fascinates me.  So I built an intro adventure around a hypercorp just throwing the PCs through a gate over and over again until a problem is solved.  So the game picks up after 3-4 instances have already gone through (the PCs don't know this yet), so they will enter and eventually find themselves already there.  Eventually when they escape, Firewall will contact them and vet them.  Then based on whatever they liked best in exploring this abandoned facility, I'll build the main campaign around.

[TMayesing78]

I had an idea after I made my previous post.  What if the "rogue" firewall operative was one of the PC's?  I mean as in Firewall took their top suspects and put older back ups, from before the betrayal began, and sent those "suspects" to undo the damage and neutralize the traitor?  Using your idea, maybe pull a total recall-ish idea and have them be restored from backups dating from before they even joined firewall.

[Mckma]

I had an idea after I made my previous post.  What if the "rogue" firewall operative was one of the PC's?  I mean as in Firewall took their top suspects and put older back ups, from before the betrayal began, and sent those "suspects" to undo the damage and neutralize the traitor?  Using your idea, maybe pull a total recall-ish idea and have them be restored from backups dating from before they even joined firewall.

It's a neat idea, the only "worry" might be if that burns the players from wanting to join Firewall.  Maybe an alternative is that one of the things the rogue agent stole were backups of people, instated them and then sends them on jobs that turn out to be against Firewall's interest.  That way even if they fail and get caught, they might be reintegrated or something and resume old posts.....

[TMayesing78]

Oh.  I like that even better.  The rogue could be a proxy, highly placed in the PC who's decided to turn for Project O.  A conspiracy investigating itself due to an internal conspiracy prompted by an external group.  I like it.

[RadioactiveBeer]

I would recommend.. care with this concept because I ran a similar idea a few months back (players are a cell assembled to reinforce Firewall in Lunar orbit following a breach of their security) and one of the players just became super-paranoid and simply REFUSED to do anything because 'it might be a trap'. I mean, refusing to even receive mission briefings in case the file contained a virus etc. Obviously dude has his own problems, but I think the mistake on my part was introducing the possibility of double agents and so on too early. It meant that the early sessions were a real struggle against the paranoids who literally didn't want to do anything that might pose a risk.

What I would recommend is starting off a bit vanilla - you are Firewall, go place, stop threat, hurray good job - and introduce the idea of a possible mole in the second session or even later. The realization that you might have already been given bad info is unsettling,  but you have to keep going to find out what's going on, whereas the Player Logic if you START OFF with "someone might give you bad info" is often to distrust EVERYTHING and not do ANYTHING.

Which is a shame, because I was actually kind of pleased with how the double agent thing I'd written out had ended up even though the game petered out before they could unravel who it was; using the ideas of forking/merging and psychosurgery, I realized the best double agents are those who don't KNOW they're double agents and had a Firewall agent who was two modified beta forks. Individually, neither fork was aware of their own betrayal and thought they were doing internal security for Firewall.

[TMayesing78]

That seems like sound advise to me.  How about this.  Start by clearing out an exsurgent infected ship moving from the rim towards the inner system.  The interfere with the auction.  Then they're informed of the security breach at a firewall backup server.  Their primary mission then becomes tracking down the party responsible for the breech and checking high priority targets who's secrecy might have been compromised by the security breach.  Their proxy may not even inform that their more advanced iterations may have been either behind the problem, or have been stolen and be among their oppositions.