/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

>>51203760
Orion's Arm Project. I love the ideas. Here is an interesting idea for a culture:
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/486028564241d

>>51203760
>>51203792

I use it a lot for details when making exoplanets.

>>51203792
Come to think of it, the EP system is probably a good bet to run an Orion Arm RPG.

>>51204368
>The EP system is good for X
False.

>>51204686

>Anon is good for X
False.

I am a little upset at the sheer lack of new books and materials. Argonauts has been 'Nearly ready' for a year and a half almost. New content is a trickle.
And the last two books were good they don't really contribute much to the setting. I'd like more stuff on the Hypercorps and life for the average Cit more then anything right now. Maybe weapons and vehicles.

>>51207645

Argonauts apparently had some trouble - but it is actually written now and in layout.

Also you're nuts if Firewall and X-Risks didn't add to the world. X-Risks entire middle section is like a monster manual.

No idea where the crime book is at.

>>51207750
>No idea where the crime book is at.
I think it got stolen.

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>>51207645
Yeah Firewall added a massive understand of several things. It was the onion of material with multiple layers of fluff.

X-risks i have yet to read more than just a random thumbing of it.

wasnt aware of argo book but was thinking of the crime one recentyl

>>51212687

Honestly, X-risk is a good thumb through title. You need to know something about Exhumans? Flip to that section, maybe skim a couple entries in the Threat Guide. You curious about TITANs, flip through that fluff. Want the trap rules an examples, or the consolidated Swarm rules? Whatever.

It's very much a toolkit for GMs to be like "wait, do they have something for this?"

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What would Zeriams stats be?

Also bonus to the clone types!

>>51215048

The fuck am I looking at?

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>>51215107
iria the zeriam animation- great anime

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>>51203760
>Healing vats will heal even the most grievous wounds in a matter of days, and can even restore characters who recently died or have been reduced to just a head.

So we should be collecting severed heads instead of stacks, right? You can make anywhere from 1 to 20 thousand dollars each taking them from people you kill, tossing them in a healing vat, then flipping the result. Morphs are worth a lot of money! Meanwhile, egos are practically worthless. There are already millions more of them than transhumanity can afford to embody and house. Who's going to pay you for one more?

>>51215613

You have the cash to buy or rent a shitload of vats, wait for like a month for the head to come back (assuming you haven't destroyed it in the process of killing the owner) and then flip it - neverminding the stolen property aspect?

Sure, a morph chop shop is probably a thing - but not something I'd wager most PCs are built to manage easily.

>Who's going to pay you for one more?
>selling Egos

"Nine Lives" better be printed somewhere on your body, son. You don't want to know what they do with scabs.

>You have the cash to buy or rent a shitload of vats,
Each of which pays for itself after reprocessing one [Expensive] morph

>wait for like a month for the head to come back
A month to make between 5 and 40 thousand dollars isn't bad at all, once you've got the initial investment taken care of and can grow your business. At the rate the average Firewall party kills people, that's hundreds of thousands of credits per month for something they're already doing anyway.

>(assuming you haven't destroyed it in the process of killing the owner)
That's what the difference between Durability and Death Rating is. If you can take someone down past their DUR without hitting their DR, the morph is still salvageable.

>Sure, a morph chop shop is probably a thing - but not something I'd wager most PCs are built to manage easily.
Profession: Nanosurgery, Profession: Vat Technician, Profession: Fence, the list goes on. What the hell are you going to spend your knowledge skill points on?

>"Nine Lives" better be printed somewhere on your body, son. You don't want to know what they do with scabs.
Nine Lives has piles and piles of cortical stacks. They make jewelry out of them. They clearly don't value them in the realm of 20 thousand credits a piece. Bodies are where the real money is.

>>51215738

Yeah, but if you're fucking selling the shit they sell, you better give them a cut.

Businessmen are all that separates you from the psychos.

>>51215613
Actually this idea is something that's explored pretty heavily in a webcomic called Schlock Mercenary. Basically they use something called a "nanny bag" that keeps stuff alive until they're able to drop it off somewhere.

>>51215783

Which is also in the rules, kinda. Or at least, no GM should have a problem with dumping a head in a Healing Pod to keep it "fresh".

>>51215783
>>51215811
Nanobandage. Trivial cost.

>>51215760
But I'm not selling the shit they sell. They can have the egos free, for all I care. They're worthless to me.

Honestly Nine Lives' business model is pretty stupid when you examine it closely

>Lets sell a thing that there's a huge surplus of and can be copied infinitely

They're like the music industry of the year 10 AF

>>51215885

I mean, it's called a "bandage" though. That has some implied scale. Do you wrap the head like a mummy?

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>>51215926
I think it is just a bigger version of the stereotypical bandage you use for cuts and stuff.

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>>51215904

They enforce a monopoly through violence. Plus, not everybody can sign into IndEx and ask to buy an Ego for what they want to do - the PC has to at least offer the vaguest pretense of humane treatment. You need an ego for something shitty no questions asked, no expose on SFOX news, no paperwork.

You're also undercutting the value of an Ego as an individual. No two minds should be exactly alike, you never know what people want/need. Most polities are against rampant alpha forking, because of sanity and legality. And if you're Nine Lives with a crate full of stacks, you don't want to artificially deflate your market.

>>51215939

Plums actually pretty big. It's probably a dispenser with like, a roll of space gauze inside.

>>51215968
>They enforce a monopoly through violence

But they don't have a monopoly. The ID crew also traffics egos, as does the Saint Catherine Tong on Titan.

>And if you're Nine Lives with a crate full of stacks, you don't want to artificially deflate your market.

The people you sell to have no such concerns, meaning each ego can only functionally be sold once. Copyable is copyable.

>>51215144
Definitely saving this for the next time britbong says police don't need to be armed

I have a bunch of friends, all new to RPing, who are interested in EP. What would be a good adventure to a) have them join Firewall and b) show some of the cosmic-horror side of things?

>>51219462
The funny thing is Britain does have armed police, but nobody wants to join them because the courts will crucify you if you actually shoot someone.

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>>51204686
>>51204723
>Penis is good for vagina
True.

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>Neandertals decide to settle a world by way of Pandora Gate and install a biosphere
>Factors are already there, oddly enough
>Arguments break out over borders
>Factors are oddly insistent on neandertals leaving
>Consortium has no idea wtf is happening
>Declaration of war from the neandertals
>SPEAR VERSUS SPRAY
>SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER
>LARGE
>OOZE
>HOLY
>BOOZE
>PCs end up in the middle somehow

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Hey guys, you have a theme you want for pictures? We haven't really got one going for the thread.

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>>51222929

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>>51223575

>>51215613
I ran a game where the players were all Firewall Proxies, and this was basically SOP. Part of our crime scene cleanup was seizing all the morphs we could and using them as backups in scratch spaces, spares or disguises for specific operations, or smuggling them to someone who could resell them for money. They didn't handle fencing morphs themselves, and generally either sent them off to chop shops owned by or related to Firewall, or smuggled them to Titan using Technosocialism Interplanetary. It's definitely an option, but probably not something sentinels should handle themselves in a lot of cases.

>>51215738
I think you're setting the sale costs too high. From the Gear Cost Modifiers table on page 296 a stolen and (heavily) used morph would only go for 25% of the stated value. That's still not bad, but something high end like a Fury would only go for 12.5k. I think you'd need to move a lot of morphs to make it worth it, which makes it seem unsuitable for a side project of sentinels. Probably better to send them to a proxy or dedicated friendly chop shop and keep stopping threats.

Of course, those are just suggestions for prices, but I strongly doubt you're getting close to full price for them.

>>51215904
9Lives makes most of their money selling XP and skillsofts I think. Egos are the fuel for their trade, not the output. If you just want egos for ethical or semi-ethical things InDex is better. They're basically a really violent interactive media company.

>>51219624
Continuity provides good reasons to join Firewall, but can be a little campy for the Cosmic Horror stuff. The bad guys are basically a crazy AI and some space monster zombies. That doesn't mean it's bad though, because new people may not recognize the threat in say, the Oracle from Think Before Asking without some previous exposure to EP or similar science fiction.

>>51224691

Also, if you're reselling them right away, Morphs kind of have a very unique "serial" which you're not getting rid of and they can probably check in like an afternoon. Now, stolen/destroyed reports on Flats or Splicers is probably not bad but you try and push a top of the line Fury on somebody they might check the carfax for Morphs - and then you run into "hey, why is this DNA profile reported as 'destroyed' back on Venus?".

>>51224691

>This widespread network of soul-traders specializes in the acquiring, trading, and overall trafficking of transhumans. Their primary market lies in ego-trading: stealing backups, fork-napping, kidnapping and forced uploading, and so on. Nine Lives are known to run illegal infomorph-slave colonies as well as organize pit fights using all manner of physical bodies (biomorphs, synthmorphs, animals) loaded with all manner of consciousnesses (transhuman, AI, animal, etc). Only the truly desperate look towards the syndicate to be smuggled out of a habitat or hypercorporate indenture. Their ruthlessness in acquiring egos has earned them a fearful reputation among the transhuman population as well as in infomorph societies.

The "kidnap and upload" is probably chump change, the data mining from forknapping and backup theft is probably where the bank is - Ego products are a secondary market.

>>51224914
I hadn't really thought about the intelligence gathering aspects, but that makes a lot of sense. 9Lives: Violent Google.

>>51224831
That's the big issue, and the best way to get around it is probably to move the morph far enough that the authorities won't care so much. Extropia is probably the best place to fence anything, but it's pretty remote from most of the inner system. A lot of stolen morphs probably end up in red markets like Fresh Kills and Qing Long before ending up strewn all over the system on Scum barges and anarchist stations.

>>51225621

Basically, I imagine Nine Lives probably makes the most money on short term, fast acting shady business.

You need 100 egos or a very specific type of Ego no questions asked? Call Nine Lives. You need access to somebody's fork or backup - or even better the information that fork or backup has without getting your hands dirty? Nine Lives. Want to move some Egos around and not fuck around with customs - and aren't part of a conspiracy like Firewall? Nine Lives has people for that. Shady XP or skillsoft right now - you don't care who it comes from, they'll hook you up.

And of course, if they don't have something "in stock", they can very "efficiently" acquire it for you. This would make sense how and why they have a rivalry with ID crew. ID doesn't specialize in the ego moving and acquisition elements, but do broker information generally so they can get it out of an Ego - but their dynamic is all about hacking and infosec.

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>>51227163
Reminds me of the donor beast from Lost Source.