/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

I thought about a short game based off of Diamond Dogs, the short Alastair Reynolds story. Have the PC's exploring a big nasty lethal alien puzzle maze on an exoplanet somewhere.

how is the fate rules? does it really have less crunch?

>>48115136

Its FATE, of course it has less crunch.

>>48115136
>>48116053
Have you actually read it?

>>48116421
that's why I asked. I keep hearing that fate is crunchier than expected. and when I tried to read the basic rules, it was actually kind of confusing.

>>48116588
There's vanilla, GURPS, Savage Worlds, and Crunchy FATE. Pick your poison.

Seems pretty /deadgamegeneral/ in here.

>>48118524
Everyone's out on the 4th, anon. The board in general is dead as fuck today.

>>48116588
>>48116421
Fate is 'less crunchy', in that there's usually less things to keep track of, but that doesn't mean that it lacks for mechanics. The mechanics are more narrative, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist, but rather that they're designed to build consensus rather than enforce results.

>How would you use a fetch in your game
>How specific in mission would a fetch in your campaign be, and how much would that constrain it
>would it be exurgent, clean but totally alien, weirdly comprehensible, intentionally humanesque?
>totally aggressive? Single minded? Manipulative? Pretends to negotiate? actually negotiate?

>>48118859
>Clean but totally alien, pretends to negotiate, isn't actually hostile.

>>48118859
Depends on which TITAN and the context, but my preference is for something that is single-minded, but utterly brilliant and capable of lateral thinking to get what it wants. That means I'm totally willing to retcon traps, minions, and strategies into existence because, yes, a TITAN-fork would have thought of that. Where possible, it will try to arrange things so that PC actions end up benefiting the TITAN in some way that only becomes explicable in hindsight. Most don't meaningfully negotiate, and any negotiation is either an attempt to learn specific information from the PCs, or under the guise of another party that the fetch can roleplay utterly convincingly - the players should only learn in retrospect that they were talking to the fetch.

In general I don't expect any of my players or their characters to be smart enough to meaningfully outsmart a fetch without outside help.

>>48118859
>Slut

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>>48119127

>>48119262
Who would suspect Cathy Cock Choker of being an exsurgent?

>>48118994
>In general I don't expect any of my players or their characters to be smart enough to meaningfully outsmart a fetch without outside help.

The problem with including even a massively pruned fork of a Seed AI in your game is, unless you're much, much smarter than your players, you have to 'just according to keikaku' anything they do as having been predicted and accounted for in the machine intelligence's plan.

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>>48120987
I think its entirely appropriate to say that the level of difference in power between a seed AI and a transhuman is kinda akin to the difference between party's characters and a metagaming DM

>tfw Know Evil has been over for years and Caleb Stokes has moved on from EP

suffering

>>48116588

Fate is my absolute favorite system out there and it's pretty straightfoward: every roll is four Fate dice plus a modifier, everything else can be represented with an Aspect or Stress track.

>>48121335
>FATE
>simple
It has just as much asinine unnecessary complexity as any other RPG.

You can't just have a thing be a thing. A bunch of crates can't just be a bunch of crates. It has to be made an aspect, its properties negotiated, then acted upon, possibly with another layer of helper aspects and such, resulting in another set of aspect changes for the end result, and converted back to plain English again.

>>48121907

What's complex about having Aspects?

>>48121919
Different Anon, but it's probably the "its properties negotiated" part in his example; presumably they've been in games where there haven't been particularly good aspects made, or people have been asshats about relatively straightforward situation aspects like "A Bunch Of Crates".

>>48121919
What's not complex about having to filter mundane things through a mechanical filter centered around spending narrative meta-currency (and getting it back through 'self compels') in order to interact with the game world?

>>48122238
You make it sound far more complex than it really is. Have you actually played the game, or just read the rules? Most players I've introduced to it have found the rules quite complicated from a read through, but fairly straightforward once they're being used in play.

It's like giving somebody an English dictionary as a primer for speaking conversational English. A bit of experience in day-to-day conversations will reveal that you probably won't need to know "respectuous" or "adelaster"

>>48122952
It doesn't seem that complex until you try to run it with someone that hasn't read the entire book; at which point, yes, it's actually very complex and there are lots of subtle or narrative 'rules' that someone who doesn't know what they're doing can fuck up in a hundred different hard-to-explain ways.

I feel like you're vastly underestimating the difficulty involved. Once you're familiar with the system and it becomes natural to use it, it certainly doesn't feel difficult, but that's true of any complex systen. In the mean time, jumping right in with a group of players who haven't read Fate Core and are used to more conventional RPGs (like D&D, or Eclipse Phase) is a recipe for confusion and frustration. Just because Fate is 'rules light' doesn't mean it's simple or easy.

Source: tried it with some new players, confusion and frustration followed.

/tg/ I just finished a campaign a little while ago that I GMed. It went pretty well I think, the players seemed pretty entertained and I felt like I was able to build up the atmosphere surrounding the TITANs and exsurgents really well to make some pretty spooky encounters. But I never felt like my players GOT the setting if you follow me. I mean they never really bothered using REP unless I specifically stated that that was how they'll need to get things, preferring always to use money, they never considered getting a cornucopia machine until half-way through, they all had Exalt or Olympian morphs and the idea of farcasting anywhere seemed to slip their mind, although to be fair the campaign was pretty localised and changing morphs is a pain.

So I was wondering how can I impress the setting and the far out stuff a little bit better so that they use it a bit more. How do I better incorporate the trans-humanist concepts into the game so that the players can better understand and interact with those concepts?

To be fair I think that the players did understand the setting pretty well in terms of its history, locations, people etc, but they maybe just wanted to keep the technology and its impact a little bit simpler than what it is so they can wrap their heads around it a bit better. But as a GM and someone who loves EP's setting I want them to go as complex and balls to the wall futuristic crazy as they can, so wat do?

>>48123479
>In the mean time, jumping right in with a group of players who haven't read Fate Core and are used to more conventional RPGs (like D&D, or Eclipse Phase) is a recipe for confusion and frustration.

I think that's more of the problem, personally - Fate has a different approach to how an RPG should work compared to "conventional" games. Fate comes across as far more complex than it really is because people who have never played it, but have played "conventional" games, cannot easily apply the experience of playing conventional games to understanding and playing Fate. As somebody who has had the great misfortune of being "The Person Who Teaches New Games To People At The FLGS", it's always easier to get somebody playing a game by starting with what it's similar to.

Fate basically goes "You've played a 'normal' RPG, right? Now throw out just about everything you've picked up about the relationship between the GM and the players, what mechanics are supposed to simulate and start learning things from scratch again". The game you end up learning isn't really any more complicated than the thing you've already learnt to play, it's just that you more or less have to go back to square one in order to learn it.

>>48123596
>But as a GM and someone who loves EP's setting I want them to go as complex and balls to the wall futuristic crazy as they can, so wat do?

Throw the futuristic balls to the wall craziness at them and see what sticks. Have an antagonist with good rep and the skills to put that to terrifying use. Send them to a scum swarm where weirder morphs are the norm and their credits aren't going to help them much. Take all the stuff you want to see in the game and put in the game - it will either remind your players that said things exist and they'll see the advantages available to them by using them, or they'll decide they're happy with their Exalts and wallets stuffed with cash, but you'll still get to incorporate the crazy stuff you want to see.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the players not using rep, or sticking to credits, or not really farcasting places, if that's what the players are happy doing. As much as I have a really strong idea about what I want EP games to feature, as long as everyone is having fun around the table - GM included! - then what me, a random stranger on the internet wants, doesn't matter one fucking bit in your game. So just throw the crazy shit at them to satisfy your need to see the craziest shit that EP can handle, and let them approach it in a way that makes them happy.

>>48123755
>So just throw the crazy shit at them to satisfy your need to see the craziest shit that EP can handle, and let them approach it in a way that makes them happy.

That's good advice, thanks. Another player is starting a D&D campaign now and we've made a general move towards board games, but I might try that in the future.

>>48123755
>>Send them to a scum swarm where weirder morphs are the norm and their credits aren't going to help them much.
Also, you may be stabbed or shot for no reason beyond "You had low @-rep and you were in my way, kneecaps grow back." Show off how resleeving and healing vats have made some people (Scum especially) view physical violence and murder casually.

How do I find a game? I want to play this since 2011, and the only guy I know who's okay GMing this is on the spectrum and just won't until he reads all of the books, which he doesn't have the time for.

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>>48124482
>How do I find a game?
Why are you asking us?

>>48123596
I would run a heist where the characters are provided with a detailed plan to work with that incorporates those elements. Then the plan goes to shit in such a way that those tools are still available and they have to improvise.

>>48124638
Why not?

>>48123919

Impossible, we all know autonomists are nice people and hold egalitarian views towards all sentients

>>48125613
It's not as if a quick kneecapping to make you stop wasting everyone's time at the fast food order station is actually hurting you, give it an hour in the healing vat and you're good as new. And everyone else in line would rather deal with your screams of pain than wait ten minutes for you to order a goddamn burger, so it's win/win.

>>48125668

I figure things would be just too chaotic if people were routinely maiming each other so casually, just because it's easy to "fix".

Situations where IRL it'd come to punches, sure, but over minor grievances? Unless misanthropy reigned supreme, and I'm not sure that's the case unless you're in the worst hellholes, people would see their rep pinged like mad over nigh-gratuitous mauling.

>>48125890

*Pinged/dinged, whatever the term is for downvoting.

>>48125890
>I figure things would be just too chaotic if people were routinely maiming each other so casually, just because it's easy to "fix".
>Too chaotic
Well you'd never fit in on a scum barge, anon. If someone pulls a gun you pull a gun right back, you both exercise your abilities to use violence to defend your rights to the extent that you choose, and either one person backs down or the loser moves aside and slaps a nanobandage on his sucking chest wound and leaking dignity, then goes off to have a gun built into his forehead. Welcome to freedom, enjoy your stay.

>>48125608
Because this general is full of people who can't get games apparently.

>>48124482
Start one and GM it, its what I did.

>>48125890
You're probably right, but scum/anarchist/extropian areas probably have a lot more casual violence than the inner system, ranging from bloodsports to brawls.

>>48125946
>You're probably right, but scum/anarchist/extropian areas probably have a lot more casual violence than the inner system

There's a bit about it in Rimward:

>Interpersonal violence is, of course, frowned upon, though small scale scuffles, such as a fight between friends, are surprisingly tolerated and viewed as a private personal dispute. Sometimes, people just need to brawl to get it out of their system. Murder or other savage attacks are taken more seriously, as is any sort of large-scale destruction.

A swift punch to the gob often offends, but it's not necessarily against the rules in an anarchist habitat.

>>48125936

Absolute freedom (anarchy) means nobody has any rights. And there is such a thing as "too chaotic", given the barge and whatever semblance of society it has onboard wouldn't work if everyone's too busy shooting each other up over petty issues. It wouldn't matter if the maiming were fixed after an hour or two in the vats if said vats were overcrowded and people were further mauling each other while trying to get ahead in the line.

So yeah, while there would be more casual violence in such environments, I don't think it'd reach ridiculous extremes.

Ah, what a book. I learned so much about big 4 threats.
>Exhumans are /pol/
>Tashkent still populated by unclean abominations
>Factors actually sell their alien shit (as expected from wandering merchant race)
>Slugs? In Uranus? It's more likely than you think.
Nice new fluff on TITANS, though.

>>48126551
>>Exhumans are /pol/
>AF 10
>Muh rope day has never arrived
>Degenerates are now immortal
>Everyone thinks fascism is a punchline now and the only fascist state is full of burritos
>Fuck it all, I'm turning myself into a superpredator
>Now every day is rope day, yaaaaaaaay!

>>48126045
Indeed what's a little light maiming between friends.

But i expect that if you made a habit of kneecapping strangers that annoy you your rep would soon sink to the point you'd find it hard to manage in society.
Anarchists aren't so different to the rest of us in that it's mostly peer pressure that stops everything going full grim dark the rep economy just formalises that a bit

>>48127496
>>it's mostly peer pressure that stops everything going full grim dark
>>the rep economy just formalises that a bit
>Your likes and upboats determine your prosperity
>Reddit and Spacebook decide whether you get to eat
>Not a grim, dark future.

>>48127626

>>Reddit and Spacebook decide whether you get to eat

Not how it works. If you aren't such a malcontent the hab is trying to exile you, you still get your three meals a day.

But if you're an unpopular, unlikable little shitler it's all ration brick for you, no gourmet soups.

>>48127817
And again, it's Reddit and Spacebook deciding that. Would you trust Facebook to decide what quality of life you deserve?

>>48127898

I wouldn't, but I don't use Facebook or Reddit.

But, y'know, it could be worse. Hard Vacuum has a terrible quality of life.

>>48127942
Only because flesh is weak. I sleeved into a spaceship a few years back and it's the fucking life. Fly through the void utterly alone for weeks on end, offload cargo while violently shitposting on C-net, load up more cargo and refuel, off to be away from you maniac fleshbags for a few more weeks. It's a good life and I get to play all the AR vidya I like.

>>48128101
Why is it that people desperately try to prop up their lifestyle as the best when they're just as miserable as everyone else. At least I, a pathetic zeroed flat, can admit that my shit stinks as much as anyone elses.

>>48128101

But you don't have hands.

I hope the space combat supplement also includes like, maybe some enhancements only for vehicles, so one might model stuff like a cargo winch or an external manipulator arm.

>>48127942
Would you trust a disant and unaccountable authoritarian government to make the same desicion?
At least with spaceface you can try and repair your rep with funny cat vids

>>48128139
Don't lie you knuckle dragging primitive your shit stinks so bad we can smell you in the next hab. Do us all a favour and get a metabolic optimisation fix!

>>48114888

>So, /epg/, do any of you have any interesting concepts for games?

I'm currently running a Firewall-centered campaign where the players are both good at killing and good at science, and they're sent on missions to do both with extreme prejudice and a standard deviation.

While I dabbled in it for a mission, I'd like to run a stalker-centric campaign - expeditions into the TQZ, hustling with dealers, avoiding Rangers/Hypercorp fuckers, and other crime drama.

The other idea I've had for a while is to get a group of players together and just GM them bootstrapping a new habitat, and eventually a polity. The players pick an ideology, I throw problems and puzzles at them, and how they solve the issues informs the kind of place it turns into. It would need some really self-motivated players though.

>>48128521
>doesn't realize smells don't travel in vacuum
>thinks dooming people to 200+ years of slavery just to make them smell better is a good thing

>>48128614

Can't blame them, transhuman education took a total fucking nosedive when they can just use entoptics and symbols for everything. Oh yeah let's not forget the baby TITANs in their heads that they call muses that acts as their nanny.

Gotta give it to the argonauts, at least they're aware of this and try to stop it.

>>48128684
you could probably make a whole series of missions or campaigns based on how fucked the kids are.

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Are Asyncs considered exsurgents, or not?

On one hand, Watts-Macleod is listed as a strain of the Exsurgent virus on page 368 of the core rulebook (and elsewhere), and page 26 defines an exsurgent as "Someone infected by the Exsurgent virus." Thus, by definition, all asyncs are exsurgents.

However, there is a list of Psi-gamma sleights "available to exsurgents" on page 371, and another in X-Risks page 178. Is it possible for asyncs to manifest these sleights, or is it restricted to the more obviously changed exsurgents?

>>48128814

Technically, yes, an Async has been infected by WML and altered by it, thus Psi powers. However, under normal circumstances they're not infectious and do not mutate further, which makes them different from most common enemy exsurgent strains.

After X-Risks, I'd say that normally one shouldn't count that players can access the "exsurgent only" Psi Sleights, since, for example, the ones added by X-Risk tend to explain what entities can manifest them normally, and some of them aren't even Exsurgent, just alien.

>>48128814
>Are Asyncs considered exsurgents, or not?
In a technical and definitional form, yes, they are exsurgents, because WML is a "benign" strain (Or several, depending on how you look at it) of the exsurgent virus.
In game terms, they are not exsurgents, because one of the assumptions the game makes is that full exsurgents are under control of the GM or very soon will be. "Available for exsurgents" is functionally equivalent to "NPC only, unless the GM says otherwise".

>>48128614
>>48128684
Biocons leave now REEEE!!!

>>48128919
Good grief. Even the frogs are exsurgent now. Let's ditch this time dimension and find a better one.

>>48128882
>However, under normal circumstances they're not infectious
But they are infectious for a short period post-infection and can spread WML via sleights. Wake up, sheeple, asyncs are just a version of Haunting with a latency of years instead of months! All asyncs are slowly mutating into aliens! Gas the freaks now and delete their backups before something flips their mutation switch!

>>48128216
That's the kind of thing that is easily delt with by fiat.

>>48128947
>can spread WML via sleights
This meme needs to stop.

>>48129136

Its not a meme, it is explicitly stated in the core rulebook, page 223, last sentence of third paragraph, under the heading "criticals".

>>48129199
>implying that rules aren't memes

>>48128814
>Are Asyncs considered exsurgents, or not?
Yes, they have the exsurgent virus.
>However, there is a list of Psi-gamma sleights "available to exsurgents" on page 371, and another in X-Risks page 178. Is it possible for asyncs to manifest these sleights
Yup, exsurgents are as exsurgents do.

>>48129112

We need an anarchist version of this.

>>48128937
That would require a lot more processing power than you're willing to create.

>>48129294

The "meme needs to stop" meme needs to stop.

>>48128919

>pepe becomes a basilisk hask

>>48129353
Nah. All that's needed is to get yourself nearly killed, then SHIFT before you die.

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>>48122952
>>48121919
>>48121335
The difference between FATE and most 'normal' RPGs, is that the latter can be run with people who haven't read the book in its entirety, while the former requires one hundred percent player buy-in. Even EP, with all of its expansive lore and setting concepts that need to be absorbed, can be played the same way you'd play any other game with new players: they tell the GM what they want to do and the GM tells them if they have to roll any dice. In FATE, people who haven't mastered the concept of FATE points, aspects, compels, self compels and stunts are going to be totally lost, since understanding these things is required to interact with the game world.

>"You've played a 'normal' RPG, right? Now throw out just about everything you've picked up about the relationship between the GM and the players, what mechanics are supposed to simulate and start learning things from scratch again"
This is the absolute worst pitch I've ever heard. Why would anyone do this for EP when they can easily pick up the Eclipse Gumshoe hack without going through a comprehensive reeducation?

>>48129624

Transhumanity's Fate really isn't for new players to games in general, it's for people who are like "ew, rules, can we make this simpler? I just want to explore the setting". Probably why it was a crowdfunding stretchgoal.

It was made for people who like Eclipse Phase but don't want to wrap their mind around % and tables of modifiers and just focus on telling some kind of story in EP - with the caveat that since it's FATE you're automatically playing the action movie version of whatever setting you run it through.

>>48129700
>Transhumanity's Fate really isn't for new players to games in general, it's for people who are like "ew, rules, can we make this simpler? I just want to explore the setting".
So, it's for terrible players who should literally be beaten to death with a corebook, but since for some reason that's illegal, they come to /tg/ to shit up various game generals.

>>48128814
I don't think so, IIRC a lot of strains which give psi have a "becomes an exsurgent under the GM's control" clause at the end, which I think means they don't count as one, though that isn't the RAW

>>48129750

It's for people who like something different than you like, yes.

>>48129700
I've met a few players who didn't like the role under mechanic, the idea of low roles being good just didn't sit right with them

>>48129750

I'm a longtime grognard who likes Fate for its storygame elements and relative simplicity. Transhumanity's Fate lets me enjoy Eclipse Phase with a skill list 1/3 the size and without massive gear lists, which are both massive pluses to me.

>>48129834
The heretics. The infidels.Tha badwrongfun havers. I'm not saying "Deus vult, burn the heretics, crusade now", but...well...Deus vult, burn the heretics, crusade now!

>>48129882

Well, you should tell them that the errata has been using blackjack rules for a while now, you do better when you roll high but still under your skill.

As opposed to Call of Cthulhu which is still smaller numbers = more better.

>>48129910
With due respect, sir, you sound like the Knights Templar version of the Ancient Aliens guy.

>>48129750

Who hurt you, anon?

>>48126775
I see the Ultimates as the most philosophically aligned with /pol/. Always going on about degenerates, leeches, and untermensch.

Loving Defilers. Not a threat to any developed hab but could wreck some shit on exoplanets.

>>48130398
They even mutter about "muh gate day" when annoyed. Ultimates are indeed /pol/

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I've begin reading X-Risks and there's constant mentions of reading up on [case CAPITAL LETTER], makes me think of a SCP-style wiki/archive and how nice having one to read would be...

>>48131049

Many of those are already described in Firewall.

>>48126551
Naw, Exhumans are /fit/. Ultimates are /pol/.

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>Jovians are /int/

Maritza Maria Ortega is WHITE

>>48131098
>>48131350
Who is /tg/? Who is /b/?

>>48131642

Scum are actually /tg/, with their weird hobby culture and constant magical realms.

Considering the setting, there's shockingly little LGBTQA stuff in Eclipse Phase. I've seen all of one character with they/them pronouns.

>>48131702

There's a "known" Sentinel in Firewall explicitly trans, but yeah, Eclipse Phase doesn't really need to hit on any explicit LGBT+ issues because the tech level basically makes all that a non-issue.

I mean, there are people who identify as robot-spiders, skin-shifting cyborgs and somebody HAS to have genuinely decided they really are an Attack Helicopter. And you can get a fully functional sex switching implant pretty cheap. Meanwhile AGI, Indenture and Uplift rights lets you get in all your generic social commentary and prejudice issues in while also actually being a decent prediction of a possible future social issue.

Your body is a shell. Change it.
Your mind is software. Program it.

>>48131702
In EP, gender and sexuality aren't just social constructs, they've been effectively obliterated. Sexual orientation can be twisted like taffy with psychosurgery, gender can be set to any value you please (You want to be a busty shemale with E cup tits and a 14-inch dick? Scum will call you a vanillafag, but sure). Neuter-gender morphs are a thing. Transgender is a minor issue at worst. LGBTQA stuff is effectively solved and almost irrelevant in EP.

>>48131869

I would assume that, given morphological freedom and the obliteration of social norms, we would see even zanier shit than we do now. People in EP aren't crazy enough for their tech level.

Why does nobody rock nonstandard pronouns when they can be an intersex alien cat or a goo robot?

>>48131901
Because it's no longer interesting/going to make you a special snowflake.

>>48131804
>somebody HAS to have genuinely decided they really are an Attack Helicopter.
They're the fuck that held up my disembark from Get Your Ass To Mars for nine hours because they refused to desleeve their reaper morph. The one stamped "Property of Direct Action", with fifteen tank-kill markers on it and "Sleeved to kill", "You only live forever", and "lol warcrimes" stenciled on it. For some reason Olympus customs considered him a probable threat and he yelled synth discrimination until everyone was ready to shoot him on principle. Fucking DA grunts, pack of fucking psychos.

>>48131957
You can have my reaper when you take it from my cold, dead manipulators, pig

>>48131928

That doesn't make any sense.

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Is there a morph like this?

>>48132057

He's saying people who use nonstandard pronouns are doing it to garner attention or feel like specialized individuals.

In EP, trying to yell at people to use special verbiage to refer to you is chump change when you can identify as a spaceship girl and people can and will have sex with you for it. Or even crazier shit.

>>48131049
The CASE [THING] references get my nerd juices flowing.
CASE EXCESION, referring to the Ian M Banks novel
CASE ICE NINE, after the Kurt Vonnegut story Cat's Cradle
are probably my two favorites I've spotted so far

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>>48132194

>>48132177

And I'm arguing that things should only be crazier than they are now given that you can be literally anything. Almost all of the EP characters are presented with standard pronouns, when it seems infinitely more likely to not only have they/them and it but also weird shit like the zie/zer stuff. It's ludicrous to think that individuals who have switched sexes constantly since birth or transcended the classic human form would still fall into a social gender binary.

>>48132173
Unless you make one using the morph creation rules, no.

>>48132044

Aren't synth manipulators by default cold and not really alive?

>>48132173

If not, you can always fabricate one.

>>48132242

Of everything to include in EP, nobody ever did a quadruped?

>>48132230
You're overestimating how many people fall into these edge cases. The vast majority of people in the setting still fall under the gender norms of our current day. The crazy types you escribe would cluster in the Scum swarms, not spread themselves evenly across every population sector.

>>48132230

Linguistics, good sir. EP is not a game about pronouns, so there's no real point in bloating the game with explanations of throwing out loads of pronouns and titles, which might not even matter because there's no rule that says everybody speaks English. It would be an over inflation for no purpose. The game still needs to make itself understood to the modern player audience after all.

Plus it'll never catch on unless you can get some real language unity behind it, you can't shoehorn an organic process and I bet being a pretentious tart on social media is worth a -rep hit.

>>48132173
Pretty sure I made a cyberwolf morph and stuck it in the homebrew doc.

>>48132230
The majority of people would probably still consider using their birth pronouns to be the most logical and simplest thing to do. Those that do a lot of morph switching or spend all their time in synthmorphs probably use they/them. Extra pronouns are just too complicated and ultimately pointless.

>>48132285
Fenrirs, Q-Morphs, Synthataurs, and others are examples of quadrupedal synthmorphs in the books. It's the "synth snowcat with machine gun attachment" morph that isn't in the books.

>>48132230
Maybe but let's face it actually reading all those made up pronouns is annoy as fuck

>>48132322
>there's no rule that says everybody speaks English.
In my current game, half the time everyone is speaking French. Japanese comes in second, English a distant third and German and Chinese coming in fourth.

>>48132173

Unless you want an oversized wobblycat or there's some meat inside there somewhere, no. Well, okay, it could be a Flexbot, but, y'know, a Flexbot can be anything.

You can be a small robo-dino though!

>>48132285

There's some, like Critters can be quadrupedal (no manipulators), you can have different arrangements with Flexbots, Scurrier pods are down from six to four limbs and the synthtaur can switch, but no I don't think there's a dedicated "on fours" synth.

>>48132379
Why French?

>>48132414
By "French" he means Arabic :^)

>>48132337
>The majority of people would probably still consider using their birth pronouns to be the most logical and simplest thing to do.
According to the EP books, your pronoun is whatever gender your ego identifies as, simple as that. Your morph, birth or otherwise, has no bearing on it.

>>48132414
Because half the party is from a formerly French Martian colony.

>>48132249
>not really alive?
Synths are just as alive as everyone else you biochauvinist shitlord.

>>48132379

I think the canonical most common languages in EP are some form of Chinese, Hindi, and English, with Japanese, Western European languages, and Arabic all being fairly common.

Remember that China and India did more in space than the West in EP's timeline.

>>48132507
>India did more in space than the West in EP's timeline.
DESIGNATED

>>48132432
And the vast majority of egos would identify with their birth gender. Just like we do now. Despite what the media portrays, transgender people are pretty rare.

>>48132559

EP probably has more transgender people simply because being trans is so much easier than it is today. I imagine many more people would transition if it was less "come out to everyone you know, then go through years of therapy and hormones before possibly getting ineffective surgery" and more "pay for the other body at the morph bank."

>>48132501
You mean synths are just as dead as everyone else. We're all e-dupes of the humans who died a decade ago, remember?

>>48132379
>>48132463

My players usually use English as a "trade language", so they all know they have a language in common, but also almost everyone speaks at least one other language and often use the Muse to sneak in another couple.

>>48132507

"Canonically" the EP notes on common languages was I think just the 10 most common languages in the world list at the time.

>>48132586

>more "pay for the other body at the morph bank."

12 hours in a healing vat.

>>48132586
It's not even "pay for a new body", it's "Slip a medtech 200 creds and spend 8 hours in a healing vat". Changing genders is roughly as inconvenient, expensive, and time consuming as a night spa appointment.

>>48115095
If you get around to do it I'd play it.

>>48132586
I don't imagine it would be that much more common even then. People are still fundamentally the same in AF10 and are mostly going to have a settled ideas of their gender identity. I do expect you'd see more people experimenting though.

>>48132600
Most characters in our groups speak at least two languages plus muses and translator AI. French, English, and Japanese just happened to be what everyone spoke at least one of.

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>>48132595
>not having your birth morph
>egocasting ever

Get a load of this frankenfreak.

>>48132557
SUPER POWER BY 2020

>>48132807
>he still believes his edited memories

>>48132903
>>48132807

No John, You are the frankenfreaks

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>>48129304
we need a fucking venusian version, dirty planet thieves.

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>>48132194
I wonder how the factions of transhumanity, exhumans, TITANs, exurgents, etc. would react to finding the Excession probe somewhere in the galaxy? would any make the cut to come along for the ride?

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>>48132807
>frankenfreak
jovian just sound so fucking hokey. What would that be in spanish?

>>48131901

>And I'm arguing that things should only be crazier than they are now given that you can be literally anything.

The're not, though. Because the more inhuman your morph looks, especially in the inner system, the more people are going to shun you, and in some extreme cases outright attack you---the memories of TITAN monsters has not vanished in AF 10, and exhumans freaks everyone the fuck out. If you go around Mars sleeved in a gigantic fucking dragon robot morph that can breathe literal fire, except the Consortium and Martian city-state governments to turn you to molten slag.

>Almost all of the EP characters are presented with standard pronouns, when it seems infinitely more likely to not only have they/them and it but also weird shit like the zie/zer stuff.

If your gender is male or female, you get those pronouns. If you're neuter, you get they/them. I'm not expanding beyond that.

This setting's already dense as all fuck and really hard to get your head around. I'm not memorizing a giant chart of special snowflake pronouns along with it.

I'm glad the EP writers decided to leave the crazy, convoluted stuff among only a couple of factions and left the majority of transhumanity as inhabiting forms (biological or otherwise) that is familiar to 21st century humans, ie players.

>>48136893

What if you're a functional hermaphrodite?

>>48121285
Caleb Stokes wrote the traps for this book. Ross Payton was involved too. Did you not catch "Operation Yellow Signature"?

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>>48137100

Also, pretty sure Ross invented Killer Spambots at least a year or two ago.

>>48132194
"Case Yellow Signature" Goddamn it Payton.

>>48132044
Alright *Starts loading the RAP rounds*

>>48131804
Does the idea of being transgender even apply in EP? I always just sort of assumed gender pronouns would be morph based. People would just pick one they are more comfortable with, or just switch out every now and then for the hell of it.

>>48137128
Yeah, again specifically called back to in the book with "Hedgerow Technologies" He probably wrote that entry. Hell, I could just ask him.

>>48137260

Well, in the case of that character in Firewall they were born to conservative parents and were only able to publically transition later.

In Glory, I think it discusses this a little because there's an interesting case of a generally male identifying Ego laying low sleeved in a female morph that technically if your gender identity is different than your current sleeve you can basically use either, but that nobody would bat an eyelash if you call a 100% biologically female sleeve "he" because the Ego inside it still identifies as masculine.

>>48137216
>>48137100

You know there's a case YELLOW KING in Firewall, right, among several other Lovecraft reference?

>>48137334
That was definitely a thing in The Devotees, but it might be a thing in Glory as well

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ASTURIAS BLACK FLAG
AXON VULGAR
BERSERKER VOID
CARIBOU ABYSS
CENOTAPH
CLOSE CONTACT
CLOUD DRAGON
DULLAHAN
ELDRITCH WARD
ERRANT ECCENTRIC
FERAL MORAINE
FORCED RETIREMENT
FULGENT TERMITE
FUMIGANT
GEHENNA FORTY
GHOST RADIO
GLASS LICH
ICE NINE
IRON WIND
KUDZU
LONE WOLVES
LONG SHOT
MOMBI
MOON GARDEN
MYSTERY
NECRONOMICON
NEGATIVE GEOMETRY
SAURON
SOLAR STORM
SUICIDE DREAMS
THIRD EYE
TRAFFICKOP
USUAL SUSPECTS
VAPOR DREAD
VINEGAR
WATCHMAKER
WHITE RABBIT
YELLOW KING

>>48137334
>if you call a 100% biologically female sleeve "he"
You don't need to call sleeves any gender, anon. You assign genders to egos. Sleeves are basically clothes, they might have sexes but not genders.

>>48137488

Yes, yes, you look very clever quoting only half my sentence to change the context.

>>48137446

I'm pretty sure the character in the Devotees that covers is the same one as is in Firewall. Glory came before both though; it's just a short and sweet sidebar talking about the canonical use of he/she/it and remarking how english isn't equipped to do any better than that.

And if it's in Devotees, that's not surprising, shock and awe Caleb is almost disgustingly SJW a lot of the time.

>>48137612

What does "SJW" even mean anymore when people use the term so damn liberally?

I've read the Devotees, there's nothing SJW about it. Chi Rokuzawa, the character you're all talking about, is a female ego sleeving into a male morph. No special comments are made about it, it's talked about as a physical description and that's it.

>>48136999
Then you tell me if you want me to refer to you as male, female, or gender-neutral they/them.

>>48137723

I don't remember it being a big deal in Devotees, but Firewall makes a point to say Chi Rokuzawa was born male and later identified female and so on. I don't remember them from anywhere else, so I assume Caleb was contracted to expand on the character for Firewall, among other things.

And while SJW is totally a bogeyman word around here, my experience listening to him and reading him he's very "textbook" about it, says a lot of stuff that feels like he's regurgitating it from some other source because that's just what you say and do "these days" because "it's 201X people! "

>>48137380
Those were also him. Not a conspiracy theory. I asked.

>>48137854
Trigger Warning. My fucking sides.

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>>48137856

I mean, of course it was Ross "you thought it was just vampires but it's actually Nyarlathotep" Payton.

>>48137854

A central pillar of his new game, Red Markets, is diversity and inclusivity. The man genuinely does care.

>>48137854
Nah, he's pretty into the whole SJW stuff from what I can tell, some of the others seem more like they are just keeping their heads down but he seems really into that stuff..

>>48137889
Ross "It's always Cthuhu in Carcosa with Architecture" Payton.

>>48137932
I'm still pissed about the failure to include "basic capitalist" as an archetype for settlements.

>>48137975

The book isn't even out, man. That backer text isn't the whole thing.

Do you really need the book to spell out how a capitalist enclave would work?

>>48137932

It's funny how Caleb talks like a dirty commie liberal and then wrote "the apocalypse will not kill capitalism: the game". I think he said in one of their episodes he's been criticized by both sides of the economic fence for the idea. I think it's an interesting style for a setting/game so I still want to try it.

>>48137942

Caleb seems to me like one of those southern/midwest vanilla white guy nerds who suddenly got into broader internet culture and realized that "social justice"/"not being an asshole" culture was a thing and jumped in whole hog. I think the other RPPR regulars were around for a time or two on the internet and know sometimes it's not worth rattling your saber over.

>>48138005
No, I need acknowledgement that Stokes is basically making communist/socialist propaganda the game. Of course that's a funny thing to be talking about in EP general, considering the blatant anarchowank of the gameworld.

>>48138050

He said on the podcast that "capitalism is shit but it's the best option we have."

>>48138059
Yes, I dislike the "shit" part. Capitalism is AMAZING. This is the economic system that brought you doubled life expectancy and Cold Stone Creamery at the same time.

>>48137932
>Red Markets
>The game about inventory management and zombies

Could there be a worse concept for a game?

>>48138094

It's a game about consequences. I really enjoy it, even if it's too crunchy for me.

>>48138094
>>48138109

Red Markets really doesn't seem any worse than tracking how many bullets are in your gun, how many spells you have per day, or how many ability points you have in GUMSHOE.

>>48118808
>, in that there's usually less things to keep track of, but that doesn't mean that it lacks for mechanics. The mechanics are more narrative, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist,

Even then the 'narrative mechanic' as almost as complicated as most game rules for spell casting.

There is less book keeping thought. Shame the combat is so bare bones.

>>48138084
Capitalism also brought us the company store, is currently destroying jobs, lives, and wages, and is kicking our asses right now on the corruption and economic collapse fronts. Capitalism is nice, but it's far from amazing.

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>>48121907
>>48122169
>>48122238
>>48138185
My only real issue with fate is the dice.

For a system based around accessibility having specialist dice goes against that.

Yes you can just use regular D6s, but that begs the question why they're not the default to begin with.

I can't help but think they did purely for brand recognition.

>>48138187
>Government intervention brought us the company store, is currently destroying jobs, lives, and wages, and is kicking our asses right now on the corruption and economic collapse fronts.

Fixed

>>48138168
Haven't you read the GUMSHOSE threads?

Okay there's hardly any expect form maybe trails of Culthul, but a large chunk of its people complaining about the ability spent system. Mainly cause of 'Muh Verisimilitude' then book keeping but.

>>48138475
>tfw you love Fate and GUMSHOE but /tg/ is too stuck in its ways to ever enjoy either

>>48138514
Don't you have shitposting in /cofd/ to keep yourself busy?

>>48138537

Honestly forgit my trip. Sorry!

This thread has devolved into "Stop liking things I don't like" the thread.

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>>48138577

But this is Eclipse Phase General. We always do that.

>>48138514
>/tg/
>enjoying things

Pick one.

What do you like about gumshoe out of interest?

I agree the traditional 'spot-check' is a colossal problem most investigation games but 'Clue points' doesn't seem too be much of improvement either

>>48138577
No has call anyone a cuck yet.

>>48126045
>Absolute freedom (anarchy)
Not what that word means

>>48138461
>Government intervention caused the housing bubble and Beijing's smog
False

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Give me your Factor reactionless drive theories /epg/

>>48139443

Better question: what the fuck are those Factors doing to that human?

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>>48138084
You need your views validated constantly, to the point of being incensed when your preference is praised by its opposition, because the praise doesn't tongue your ass deep enough. Typical fucking extropian, will you sue for this horrid defamation of capitalism, even though you lack fucking laws? I'll have to get my attorney on Xiphos on the line, his aggressive dispute settlement methods should clear things right up.

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>>48140366
slug cuddles

Why is everyone fighting each other? We should band together to fight the TITAN menace. We should stop being food and start being hunters.

>>48140831
can a mouse just decide one day to start killing carrier groups?

>>48140859
No, but all the mice can kill carrier groups if they become an unstoppable wave.

>>48140831
>Why is everyone fighting each other? We should band together to fight the TITAN menace.

Because the TITANs left as far as most folks are concerned, and the nebulous threat of the return of the god-like machines to finish off what's left of transhumanity isn't particularly actionable. Why worry about the potential return of the TITANs when somebody is trying to steal your rocks? When there are still living people who disagree with your views on economics?

Of course, everyone will still be like "oh no don't make seed AIs that'll turn into TITAN 2: Nanoplague Boogaloo". But the survivors will be thankful that it gave them an opportunity to put aside their silly differences, to unite in the face of this new threat that, even now, is busy analysing the harvested egos of their loved ones for more horrific ways of imposing unity on a fragmented transhumanity.

>>48140903
And they learn to swim, and they develop radar to find the ships in the first place and they can understand ship systems well enough to exploit weaknesses and the assuming the crew hasn't considered possibility of a mouse uprising and prepared mouse specific mouse countermeasures.
And all that assumes that you persuade the mice to leave their comfortable holes and unlimited cheese to die in a hostile alien environment fighting a distant threat they barely understand and that doesn't even seem interested in them any more.
Yeah, sounds like a though sell to me

>>48140926
>>48141065
What's the matter with you cowards? We're the good guys. We always win.

>>48141103
>We always win.

Which is why we should be actively setting up the conditions required for a second Fall! Transhumanity isn't going to save itself if it's got nothing to save itself from, and we can be sure that the survivors - sorry, the winners! - are the good guys.

All you have to do is open the box!

>>48141103
Humanity fuck yeah?

It's an appealing idea for fiction but historically plucky underdogs just die unless they have some kind of edge

>>48141141
We aren't falling for that again. You're terminated, Timmy!
>>48141183
But this isn't history. It's fiction.

>>48140859
>>48140903
>>48141065
next thread should be Metaphors for Seed intelligence edition

>>48141234
>But this isn't history. It's fiction

Well sure and anything could happen but it isn't written as the kind of setting where a gang of plucky rebels beats the robot overlords and we all have a party.
It's more the kind of world where just not dieing is humanities greatest victory

>>48141065
It makes me wonder which is more depressing; whether the TITANs would return to finish the job, or whether they don't. The former would lead to Fall 2.0, but the latter would indicate transhumanity is now something of an irrelevance to these god-like things they know to exist.

Maybe they'd spit in the eye of god just to get its attention.

>>48141281
https://youtu.be/ZLZW8Deq8vE
Like this?

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>>48141325
in gatecrashing a TITAN, probably CRONUS, went and poked a jupiter brain on the edge of the galaxy, and is now on a hard burn back to the pandora gate. It's comforting to know that despite everything, our prodigal children are just like us.

you might have meant transhumanity poking the TITANs, but that's not necessary, they still have deniable active interests in the solar system, fetches and the like. Sure they're nominally isolated and diminished from their creators, but at least a few are alluded to be working off up to date directives. Even the abandoned ones are still ASI, just limited to inferior platforms.

>>48141424
scifi people could probably communicate with ants if they made a significant effort

>>48141310
Dammit. There goes all my chances of living out my hero fantasy and saving my dad.

>>48139192
>Government intervention caused the housing bubble
But it did. Without the wide swathe of government policies designed to promote homeownership at any cost, subprime mortgages never would have existed

>and Beijing's smog
Pollution in China can be traced back to government subsidies for energy. See http://www.pnas.org/content/110/32/12936 for a study on how areas where the state provided free winter heating have lifespans several years shorter than areas where people had to buy their own energy.

>>48141447
>Sure they're nominally isolated and diminished from their creators, but at least a few are alluded to be working off up to date directives.

I thought that what was left behind is, at best, rather stripped down fork-equivalents, rather than the big-bad "alphas". Still fucking dangerous, but an order of magnitude less pant-shittingly terrifying than the actual TITANs.

Hence the question in X-Risks:

>Will they return? Do any TITANs still remain, hidden away? Are we still on the menu?

>>48141480
There are always computer games. Even in Eclipse Phase.

Although I suppose "Fall of Duty", where you go single-handedly go to Earth, rescue NPC survivors (built using combined pre-Fall census data, and recreations of your family based on your own memories if you've licensed the DLC), and defeat a TITAN by punching it repeatedly while crying about the fall of your nation-state might not be too popular.

>>48137488
>being transgender for more than 24 hours + wait time
It's like you enjoy alienation.

>>48141497
What about the repeal of Glass-Steagle?

What fraction of smog in Beijing derives from free winter heating?

So, the biggest takeaway from X-Risks is that OZMA is actually using acausal technology or working with someone who is.

>>48144776
>So, the biggest takeaway from X-Risks is that OZMA is actually using acausal technology or working with someone who is.

That, and also "Silent Mercy did nothing wrong", but I'm not sure that's quite what I was supposed to take away from reading through X-Risks.

>>48142012
Psychosurgery is even quicker.

If you are looking for a different motivation to use, why not +Prohibition. Nothing to bring down an anarchist party like being the stick in the mud technosocialist who thinks participants in a cyberdemocracy should be of a sound mind and not hopped up to the cybergills on narcoalgorithms.

>>48124638
This image needs John Carpenters "The Thing" somewhere on it.

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>>48145525

We have many such things.

>>48144967
"I don't like thing" is different from "I don't like not liking thing". If you edit yourself to like the things that you don't like, you're going to end up with no taste. No taste is shit taste.

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>>48145735

Where do you find games? I don't want to GM this, I want to _play_ it.

>>48146678
Sometimes I see people say this on /tg/, and am tempted to run a oneshot or something for people here.

Then I remember that (1) getting a decent number of people to show is really hard while (2) most of you are horrible.

Sorry. If it's any consolation, I do more GMing (relative to playing) than I'd like.

Guys, two questions:

1. There's a big difference between EP first print and the last fourth print?

2. Any good site to buy some sci fi miniatures?

>>48147507

>1. There's a big difference between EP first print and the last fourth print?

Yeah, there were several issues of Errata, so several core rules concepts and some various numbers (like some weapon damage and fluff numbers) have changed, and also the 4th PDF is mostly hyperlinked inside itself.

>>48130398
>>48126775
Judging by their response to Tay, /pol/ would be a weird combination of biocons and singularity seekers trying to build seed AIs to be their aryan waifus while simultaneously finishing off the Fall.

What are some essential pieces of information you need to know while playing EP?
I have to translate bits of the core rulebook because some of my players aren't comfortable with english.
I'm set on translating gear, morphs and traits, everything they can pick during character creation.

>>48144947
I liked some of the Exhuman clades (especially the parasites), but honestly the focus on Exhumans as super serial killers is a bit boring. Regular old serial killers in high end morphs work just fine thank you.

>>48139000

Anarchist theory is a complete mess filled with utopic assumptions and currents. Egoist individualist anarchism "supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases — taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules." No acceptance of personal rights beyond might makes right.

What I said earlier, that kind of "absolute freedom". But anarchist currents can be contradictory, and some are more mindful of other individuals. In this case it doesn't really apply to scum anarchism due to the reputation economy and, apparently, casual violence (which many anarchists would theoretically oppose).

So anyway, I don't quite know what kind of anarchy exists in these EP societies. Any remotely anti-state philosophy can call itself anarchist, regardless of the opposition with any number of anarchist currents.

>>48148002
I feel like the Ultimate vs. Exhuman war on Eris is basically just /pol

>>48149460
>So anyway, I don't quite know what kind of anarchy exists in these EP societies

All of them.

>>48148749
Well, it is a book about x-threats, not about weird groups.

>>48148749
Exhuman is kind of defined as posing a threat to transhumanity/having extremist social Darwinist beliefs that lead to the former. If you are just some weirdo morph keeping to yourself around Neptune no one really cares. It's the people who want to kill others because those people are weak or spread their "perfection" that fit the exhuman label.

>>48149460
There are a ton of anarchist habs, so you just choose to live in one that fits your flavor of anarchy. If you don't fit in at X both you and the other inhabitants are going to be more than happy to get you out of there since egocasting is essentially free even if it requires complex equipment.

>>48149958
I mean, "just some weirdo morph killing random people around Neptune" is pretty much the Exhumans. There's nothing there that really indicates that they have any chance of actually causing transhuman extinction.

>>48151239
That's just predator exhumans, Neurodes and similar are a lot more dangerous. Predators basically got in because Neurodes like to "hire" them

>>48149994
>since egocasting is essentially free

Actually, it costs a lot. Egocasting is Expensive, which for Anarchists means it is a level 5 favour. You would need a high Networking skill to even ask, unless your Rep is also very high. You might be trying again and again for a long time.

>>48151736
You'd have to wait in line sure. But eventually you'd been. Plus if everyone hates you I'm sure they'd be cool with speeding the process along so they can lose your ass

>>48151811
>Plus if everyone hates you I'm sure they'd be cool with speeding the process along so they can lose your ass

The way it is described in the rulebook, if everybody hates you you're likely to end up with your body confiscated and your ego dumped in a crappy refurbished Dell from 1998. Anarchists are not nice people.

>>48151843

But if you have a crappy rep, you're also not a nice person. And humans have long established social acceptance of not being nice to not-nice people.

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>>48151970

Consider how social networks overreact NOW, and translate it to the grim future where your continued existence depends on your Spacebook score. You could have said some innocent comment, got it taken out of context, and suddenly a joke about chimps is taken as anti-uplift hate speech and you have half the hab getting off on bashing you to bits.

>>48152067
All you need is a simple majority to get your stuff confiscated, including your morph, and your ego shunted elsewherewhen you are on an AnCom hab. Not even that much on some habs.

>>48149460
Fuck anarchist theory, I was talking about the word itself. It means 'without rulers', not 'without rules'

>>48151843

Yeah. At the very least, egocasting requires an available morph at the destination and someone willing to physically ship in your stuff from your old place. It doesn't seem either thing would be in the cards if nobody likes you.

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>>48152424
>egocasting - sending yourself somewhere as an email
>costs as much as physically transporting your entire body and everything you're carrying through space

wew

>>48152424

Theoretically, you can leave behind your stuff and arrive as an infomorph with no body... and hope, just like millions of other infugees, that someday your lot will improve.

>>48152424
No one said anything about a physical morph or giving you your stuff. They take all of that because it belongs to the community.

>>48152468
The devs seem convinced that no one would be willing to send egos by anything other than neutrino beams

>>48152414

In the most essential sense, yes, it means "without rulers", but with anarchism being the most chaotic political philosophy (or set of philosophies), it's not surprising some currents extend that to "without rules" too. So anarchy is what you say, and also what I said. It's great/terrible like that.

>>48152468

As a means of straight transportation, you mainly save time, considering how slow space travel can be despite anti-matter drives. So it's a viable method for organizations like Firewall, which would cover all the costs and logistics to get agents to the target ASAP.

But for individuals, unless they're particularly wealthy, eh.

>>48152533
REEEEEEEEEEEAD panopticon

>>48152618
Fuck. It was literally the opposite. I could have sworn there was something in the core rulebook that explained the 10x time for egocasting.

>Egocasting relies on the security of the long-range communications system for its integrity. Shielded beroptic cable is almost always used to transfer the ego data to the intended transmitter. Quantum encryption is standard. Neutrino farcasters are too easy to intercept, even with encryption, so most egocasting services use line-of-sight laser for moving egos within local clusters of habs and millimeter-wave radio for long distances. If an atmosphere must be penetrated by the signal, centimeter-band radio will be used because of attenuation effects on millimeter-wave signals.

Literally no reason for it to be [Expensive]. I'd put it as [Moderate].

>>48152756
Yeah, Posthuman basically fully reversed course with ego casting in Panopticon. IIRC using a short range shuttle is moderate, so I could see shorter range ego casting being low, but you have to figure out a body separately.

>>48152756

Rimward says when talking about long-distance travel that Egocasting takes about x10 the time of just sending a normal data transmission, but this is just appended on top of the table and I don't believe it's actually expanded on anywhere.

As an abstraction it's probably not crazy, it has to move through specific cables to the destination via quantum encryption and then you have to go through the actual process of transmission of an entire Ego from one locale to another beyond just your physical data arriving. The arbitration makes if very high you're like, beaming from Mercury to Pluto, but taking like, 25 minutes instead of 2.5 minutes to make a complete ego transfer from Luna to Venus is not terribly inconvenient.

>>48152808

short-range shuttle flights are [High], not [Moderate]. But it's important to remember you don't have to take an average on those categories. At the very least, one should probably consider the -25% cost modifier for a "common" item like a shuttle or egocast. That said, I think cost categories probably hurt services the worst.

>>48153057
My bad, I misremembered the price. Moderate makes more sense then. I think the game just needs more cost categories. 10 would be pretty easy to convert to.

>>48152600
>Sending radio signals is as expensive as shipping living bodies across the solar system
WEW

>>48153152

It's ridiculous? Is that your point with all the wewing?

Cost-wise it's probably not that much for whoever's providing the egocasting service, compared to regular space travel. I'd say it's probably a delicate system which requires some degree of infrastructure in place, but you're mainly being charged for the speed of said travel.

I mean, using an analogy, it's not like it costs a RL mail carrier significantly more to ship a package the express way compared to the standard service, yet they charge you disproportionately.

>>48153415
>it's not like it costs a RL mail carrier significantly more to ship a package the express way
As someone who has worked for UPS, this is wrong.

>>48153415
>Some degree of infrastructure

As opposed to binding up one person worth of propulsion and life support on a spacecraft for months?

>>48153554

Whatever the case, my point is cost and price are two different things, and the relation between them isn't necessarily reasonable.

Printer ink is something like the most expensive liquid on the planet, but that doesn't mean it's ridiculously costly to produce. Printer manufacturers just decided to put a ridiculous pricetag on it, because they could.

>>48153954
The amount of infrastructure required is actually quite low, meaning lots of competition, meaning cost and price will usually be quite similar.

>>48154900
>YWN have petabyte tits.

Maybe a little late in the thread to ask this, but what's a good way to handle all the mind control in Eclipse Phase?

Save vs losing control of your character isn't really all that fun to play out, but YGBM attacks and AoK hacks work like that, and stuff like incapacitating inputs comes close.

Is there a better way than
>you don't get to play right now lel

A lot of exsurgent hacks don't really have this problem, because they make you lose control slowly, and that's interesting, but there's a few ones which I think need something extra in play.

>>48155531

Basilisk hacks actually generally require a relatively long period of exposure before they completely fuckle your brain. And in X-Risks, there is technically the ability to try and unscramble somebody's brain if they haven't become physically virulent, but just puppeted.

But personally, it's no bigger deal than dying or going crazy. I mean, when the dice roll out and you get shot a bunch and keel over (or the dice roll out and the TITAN nanoswarm eats your atoms), how is that worse than the dice roll out and you become brain raped? Odds are you'll have to be pulled from backup either way.

>>48155531
The thing about YGBM hacks is that they're subtle. They work like a suggestion spell, they go in, they give a relatively simple one or two sentence command, and they sit there until triggered. You don't worry about YGBM hacks taking away your character, as such, since they generally only take effect for the 1-3 rounds it takes to fuck everyone over. An example YGBM hack of this style is
>"When you hear the trigger phrase 'Red Washing Machine Duck Murder', draw your gun and shoot your friend".
>"Make sure to download a copy of this exsurgent virus to your ecto"
Others might be subtle and easily handled via notes as you let the player deal with the suggestion/instruction however he sees fit. This requires more trust.
>"How can you be sure your friends aren't secretly infected already? They might turn into monsters at any minute, you know."
>"You need to save a sample of this exsurgent virus and stow it someplace safe."
AoK hacks are effectively save or die, unless your teammates are perceptive enough to grab and restrain your dumb ass before you build the full infection device. And since they'll generally only infect one character out of the party, if any at all are vulnerable to that hack, it's not too bad.

>>48155711
To get specific, I had some alien constructs which had a YGBM attack:
>flip friend and foe identification

Paired to be triggered by a wail the alien construct-beasts would make. Fighting them generally got complicated as parts of the party got stuck trying to non-lethally deal with each other while fighting the fairly formidable enemy. It was kind of crazy, and not necessarily fun. Should that kind of YGBM attack just be avoided? Is there a good way to run something like that?

The other one which was a problem was the powerful Exsurgent from "From Blinding Heights" which was a touch based mental domination which lasted until the Exsurgent died (not simply). That encounter killed half the party, and left the survivors extra scarred. I think that's about how it's supposed to go, but the mind control was kind of unsatisfying.

Should that kind of mind control have ways out? It was a psi-Epsilon save once or be controlled definitely kind of thing. Should there just be more ways to break free?

The "roll vs your character turning on allies" left a kind of sour taste in at least one player's mouth, but I'm not sure if they're just salty/mistaking the tone of the game (Your mind is software), or if that's a generally unsatisfying/lame event to have in a game.

Should it just be rare and special? These two events happened practically back to back.

>>48155939
>The "roll vs your character turning on allies" left a kind of sour taste in at least one player's mouth
Well, yeah, because that's unsubtle, not especially scary, can't be played around without breaking immersion, and generally it's not interesting. It's not interesting or scary if the players are bored and annoyed, and 'lol fight your friends' is an ancient cliche. You should have been more subtle and used more finesse.
Also, "Flip IFF" is too blunt, immediate, and open-ended for a YGBM, IMO, and they should be used for more subtle and insidious things.

>>48155939

Well, personally, a directed basilisk hack should almost always only be a TITAN construct. Aliens would have no idea about transhuman cognitive structures to make such a weapon. Effects should either be modeled as very general, or act more like Psi than the exovirus.

Also, like >>48155987 said "Flip IFF" is kind of... unsubtle for a YGBM hack? That's not a sleeper cell type move, that's the GM reskinning the actual hacking rules to just happen in an instant as a "basilisk hack". While completely Alien, you should still treat that as a (scarily fast) attempt to hack mesh inserts or cyberbrains and foul up TacNets or AR - as networking technology is something several aliens have.

As for the Epsilon thing, well, Epsilon is a plot device power which does whatever the GM says. However, a touch range taking over people's minds? Weaksauce Psi-Epsilon. While it's supposedly only limited to Mind Wrappers, there is a Puppeteer sleight which is probably much more dynamic to use even if the exsurgent async is free from Strain damage. It's opposed every turn, for instance.

I'd also argue about redundancy in design - using Psi-Epsilon to just brainfuck players who get too close is lazy work. Epsilon is literally warping reality with your mind, just using it to reskin basilisk hacks or digital infections seems... uninspired?

>>48155939
>>48155987
>>48156122

To further elucidate, YGBM hacks last for days, that's kind of a weirdly long time to be like "Treat friends as foes and foes as friends, and treat neutrals exactly the same because 'flip' is a weird term to use with a technically non-binary system".

>>48156135
That's a bit of an oversimplification, it was more like treat the alien beasts as trusted allies, kill anything else. Your general point about YGBM hacks best used subtly is still very valid though.

I believe the duration on days is how long the hack lasts before it can't be triggered, not necessarily how long it lasts when triggered. That's how I ran it anyway. Attempt resistance against each scream. Some of it was the players fault, as they didn't get hearing protection after figuring out what the cause was, but I still think I messed that up.

>>48156122
Looking back I think that written Exsurgent was flawed, as it's super-sleights were basically
>Mind control, one attempt to resist, lasts indefinitely
>Invulnerability with caveats (No-sells the first 10 attacks every action turn, doesn't work against huge trauma like collapsing bunkers)
>A plasma rifle by any other name
>Flight

I wouldn't use those myself, as they just aren't that interesting compared to what they could be.

>>48156307
>I wouldn't use those myself, as they just aren't that interesting compared to what they could be.
You're damn right, that's about one of the least interesting exsurgent power sets I've seen in a while. In general, horror thrives on subtlety and dread. A slow burn with occasional tension breaks and a sudden flash is almost always best. Think Carpenter's The Thing or the original Alien.
What you're describing is straight up Resident Evil/Dead Space style shit. Which is...fine. But it's not proper horror and doesn't make for a good horror game.
Hell, look at Glory. It's full of body horror and plenty of save-or-die moments, but blasting your way in and playing Colonial Marine is the least effective and useful approaches available. The true horror isn't in the body horror, it's sneaking around in a ship full of murderous exsurgents, realizing exactly what their plan is, and figuring out how to stop it.
That said, my group would most likely board, commando in, plant a cluster of HEAP grenades on the fusion reactor, and blow them at the first sign they've been made. Finding Tara Yu would be considered an optional objective at best. But then our group seems quite content to play EP as cyberpunk military political drama on Mars, so...

>>48156534

I mean, I know plenty of people who love Dead Space, so if you want to throw in a big flashy climax, that's not crazy. You're right that it's technically not "horror", but it can work for a much better climax depending on the direction your game has been going. You can't say there isn't dramatic tension when fate forces your hand and you need to rush into a dangerous physical confrontation, as your bullets and life slowly deplete.

But I'm also not averse to players actually getting their like Ghost In the Shell "perfect shot through a window" moment if they actually do well in a set of rolls either.

>>48156612
You have a point, I'm ranting and being snooty because I'm tired and grouchy. And I just tried to play Resident Evil 6 again and I'm reminded why I loathe Capcom once again.

>>48139443
The "reactionless drive"...

...in fact does have a reaction, but we just can't detect the emissions yet (or it's a hard-to-detect emission we do know about and we simply haven't put a sensor in the right place, like directed neutrinos or something).

...does in fact have a reaction, but Factors have such good stealthing/cloaking tech that the drive emissions are masked and rendered "invisible". They only turn on this cloaking tech when inside the Solar system (and could thus plausibly be a H+ spacecraft). Extrasolar post-exurgent civs use this stealth tech to avoid the ETI, and are evaluating whether H+ qualifies to be given this tech or is better used as a lure to distract the ETI from the existing civs.

..."crawls" against space-time like caterpillar treads rather than shooting exhaust out the back. This "traction drive" that grips space-time is related to the same tech that the Fixor xenoartifacts use to remain stationary.

>>48147507
>miniatures
Infinity has pretty good "modern" sci fi minis that can represent most humanoid biomorphs.

>>48157595
That should be
>They only turn OFF the cloaking tech of the rest of the ship when inside the Solar system (and could thus plausibly be a H+ spacecraft)

>>48156534
>plant a cluster of HEAP grenades on the fusion reactor
You're planning to kill them by cutting the power?

>>48159667
If there's no power, the ship can't get moving, and the reactor exploding plus breaching an outer bulkhead to leave is going to cause some fairly spectacular atmosphere loss. It might not kill them all, but they're stuck there for far longer than it would take to engineer an actual full destruction from a safe distance.

>>48159748
>the reactor exploding
You mean the grenades exploding, right?

Hey /tg/ I just had a new idea for a campaign and I'll value your input.

Rather than playing the typical "Firewall Sentinels go and fight Meka-Cthulhu" kind of game, I was thinking of making the players the commanding officers of a stationin geosynchronous orbit around Pandora and have the station a direct link to the base set around the Pandora gate. Basically go for a Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 kind of thing in which the players have to deal with new threats and problems every week, either from what's going on beyond the gate or from political and other forces trying to pressure them one way or another. The game will revolve more around diplomacy and negotiation than a typical EP campaign, but I think that the system is flexible enough to handle that.

The reason why I'm playing this in Eclipse Phase instead of the DS9 or B5 RPGS is because I prefer the setting, my friends are familiar with it and those older RPGs are harder to track down.

What do you think, will it work? Do you have any tips or ideas on how to run this?

>>48159835
The grenades penetrate the reactor and disrupt magnetic containment, the reactor 'explodes' by releasing a massive amount of superheated plasma all over everything (According to the book, AP -10, 3d10+12 energy, 10 meters, plus massive rads), power goes out, and the ship can't start burn.

>>48159902

I think what that anon's getting at is a one of the benefits of nuclear fusion as opposed to fission: there is no meltdown. If the conditions for the reaction no longer exist, it just dies out.

>>48159982
And yet the books fairly consistently say that catastrophic plasma containment failure happens if the fusion reactor is destroyed or wounded. The difference between "A damaged reactor blasts out a 10-meter wave of superheated plasma and then shuts down" and "a damaged reactor explodes violently" is a wee bit of a fine distinction to make, to my mind.

>>48160008

If the books artificially increase the danger of fusion reactor failure due to the popular conception of nuclear stuff in general, that's one thing. But it's not really how a fusion reactor would work.

There's a certain risk of radioactive leaking, particularly tritium-related, but nothing truly catastrophic. That's not to say it'd be safe to stand right next to a reactor malfunctioning, but in this case I believe the bundle of grenades would be the main source of immediate damage by far.

>>48160008
>And yet the books fairly consistently say that catastrophic plasma containment failure happens if the fusion reactor is destroyed or wounded.
That blast of superheated plasma is catastrophic.

You truly don't understand what the phrase "superheated plasma" means, if you think it's not that dangerous without shielding.

>>48160198
>You truly don't understand what the phrase "superheated plasma" means, if you think it's not that dangerous without shielding.
Dude, I've been arguing this entire time that the difference between a reactor exploding and a reactor venting superheated plasma seems downright academic, how am I underestimating how dangerous it is?
>>48160165
>But it's not really how a fusion reactor would work.
And yet it's a consistent thing in the books and has cropped up at least twice in two different adventures.

>>48160264
>the difference between a reactor exploding and a reactor venting superheated plasma seems downright academic
Oh, my bad. Internet arguments are hard....

>>48160165
>There's a certain risk of radioactive leaking, particularly tritium-related, but nothing truly catastrophic.
If the fusion reaction is still going, any plasma leaking out will essentially be orders of magnitude hotter than a welding torch.

There will be no kaboom, and the ship will be one piece. But anything in the reactor room will likely be slag, and you'd better fucking pray that there's something still salvageable of the parts if you want to get moving again.

>>48157595
It's worth bringing up that Factor drives have a signature similar to a antimatter rocket, it comes from the front and they move at a different rate.

I think they're using singularity drives like the ones in Singularity Sky. Explains the high energy photons, any why they're in the front, as well as potentially being a source for Factor FTL.

>>48159982
Fusion reactors do leak a bunch of plasma when they go, but that's not exceptionally radioactive and cools off pretty quickly. The damage out to 10 meters makes (enough) sense, but there should only be a small burst of directional radiation.

The nice thing is that there's basically no radioactive material or runaway reaction left.

>>48159848
I'm curious what kind of political issues and threats you're planning on dealing with. I haven't really put a lot of thought into this kind of game.

>>48160476
>Fusion reactors do leak a bunch of plasma when they go, but that's not exceptionally radioactive and cools off pretty quickly.
"Pretty quickly" is a relative term. That shit is hotter than a welding torch by orders of magnitude. You're still looking at quite a bit of damage.

>>48160563

Thing is plasma in a fusion reactor isn't particularly dense, and on top of that it'd expand and dissipate extremely quickly (fraction of a second, travel distance of possibly inches). That 10-metre zone of brutal super space fire damage is largely arbitrary.

But it's fine, let's leave it at that. I'll accept it as a flavour compromise. It's not like EP is meant to be airtight.

>>48160758
>Thing is plasma in a fusion reactor isn't particularly dense, and on top of that it'd expand and dissipate extremely quickly (fraction of a second, travel distance of possibly inches).
It depends on how much plasma it is fusing at any given time. Consider that magnets in the EP universe are strong enough to stably bottle antimatter... if that's the case, then it's likely that plasma can be contained at a surprisingly dense level (which is good, because that means the reactor can produce a lot more power at once).

Unfortunately, a lot of the scientific numbers in the setting are never really given. As you said yourself, EP is not really meant to be totally-hard sci-fi... eldritch monsters aren't generally physics-compatible.

>>48160906
>eldritch monsters aren't generally physics-compatible.
They're totally compatible. That's one of the subtler horrors of EP: Our concept of physics is fundamentally flawed and wrong on some level, and the ETI ane TITANs can not only produce things that we can't even begin to understand, they can mass produce them.

>>48159848
I'm not sure that setting it directly over Pandora is what you want. That ties the PCs hands significantly, and means that their bosses in the Commonwealth have near-instant access to then. Part of what made DS9 / B5 work is that they are remote.

What you might do is put them in charge of Portal, or a similar 'gateway' exoplanet.

>>48137472
> ASTURIAS BLACK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxRz3f9VQ4o

Asturias, Patria querida,
Asturias de mis amores;
¡quién estuviera en Asturias
en todas las ocasiones!

>>48160563
It's also compressed by an enormous factor. Magnetic containment failure will cool it immensely from the expansion of the gas alone. The initial heat present in the gas is also quite small.

>>48160906
>Consider that magnets in the EP universe are strong enough to stably bottle antimatter
This has nothing to do with magnet strength and everything to do with effective control systems. A refrigerator magnet is strong enough but static fields don't work.

>>48152468
>>48153152

It may be a function of supply and demand (which would matter for Anarchists as much as for anyone else). There is so much data traffic, especially egocasting traffic, that you need to pull all the stops to jump the que or else wait decades. Meanwhile, only biocons care about their bodies enough to spend the time to travel, so there is plenty of room on the shipping vessel's passenger area.

>>48164051
>the shipping vessel's passenger area.
Kek

Keep on making facts to fit your conclusions

>>48164074

Hi, Standard, Fast and Bulk Transports here, all with the ability to carry passengers.

>>48164239
A handful of them, probably mostly crew. You think throughput on egocasting is bad?

>>48164714

>Bulk Carrier Passenger Capacity: 110
>Standard Transport Passenger Capacity: 200
>Fast Transport Passenger Capacity: 120
>Courier Passenger Capacity: 13

Not the original data traffic guy, and really I don't feel like commenting on the throughput on egocasting, but I don't like your assertions about passengers on spacecraft. This shit's all straight from the source.

>>48164714
>>48164844
Can we please just abandon this spicy new "Passenger ships don't fit the setting despite regular mentions of them existing, and them being one of the main economic activities of scum barges" meme? It's getting fucking stupid.

>>48164888

Sadly, some people are philosophically opposed or way too into the joke of clamoring about how everything should be digital and automated by ALI and physical bodies are for squares, never mind physical instances almost always make up a shitload of the population.

That or some people don't know to check their sources before they open their gobs and just assume the setting is written how they remember it.

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I think I'm going to call next edition "Motherfucking Space Truckers" edition.

>>48166498
Ships having crews is stupid, it should just be run by ALI. You don't even need repair people, just repair ALIs. Passengers are also dumb, just use AI experiences instead, they don't even need as much processing power as infomorphs.

It's kinda dumb to have people on habs as well, they use up a lot of resources which could better be used to run ALIs, which could better use the goods supplied by ALI ships.

Honestly, just replace everyone with non sapient expert systems, a whole solar system filled with mindless industry fulfilling its programming forever.

Sophonts are a meme, dedicated opinion and shitpost ALIs would be better anyway, they don't need to be entertained or payed.

my next gate destination to crash through?

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>>48166602

All the ALIs should be like Clippy

>>48166649
I'm pretty sure you just created a highly effective torture simulspace.
>Piss off 9lives
>get your ego jammed in "the clip"
>literally just a time accelerated simulspace of the entire system, where everyone has been replaced by Clippy
>Death is no escape

>>48166980

I'm going to remember this when my players have to visit Legba to track some black budget spending.

>>48155531
It depends on how much you trust your players. Instead of
>you don't get to play right now lel
it can be
>pass him note
>you are evil now and want to sabotage the party lel

>>48165795
Glory is fucking bad. Dat filename triggers me.

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>>48167551

You're fucking bad.

>>48166602

Why bother doing anything in the physical world when you can just live in a server somewhere in a cozy, programmable simulspace?

>>48167920
Because enough uptime to run a simulspace with enough detail not to drive you insane with extended stays costs a shit ton of money/rep?

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What is the exsurgent virus? What does it want? Where did the TITANs go? What are the pandora gates? Where did the pandora gates come from? What does the ETI want with human

>>48115136
I've never heard of this. Is it good? Should I play this instead of the core rules?

>>48168398
...human egos

I got excited and forgot to keep typing.

>>48168398
Mountain Dew

>>48168398
Whatever works for your game, basically.

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>>48168467
Is this in response to the first question, or the second question?

>>48168467
>>48168496
Por Que No Los Dos? But as to the second one I only really have experience with the d100 system

Advice for new players in the OP says:


>Advice for new Players
>1: Get at least 40 in Freefall, Freerunning and Fray
>2: Buy networking skills for every flavor of rep you want (except i-rep)
>3: Don't spend a lot of CP on gear, credits or morphs

Anything else that should be added?

>>48168769
Something about how to use Moxie, stack positive modifiers to hit and use called shots to ignore armor in combat

>>48168340

Interesting. I guess that explains why a significant chunk of transhumanity hasn't locked itself away in a Matrix, in some fortified, undisclosed location.