/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

I don't think any of that is particularly compelling, and if I did there's probably settings that pull it off better, except maybe the posthuman degenerate angle, which I don't find a subject that lends itself well to games that are not ERP.

The game describes itself as transhuman conspiracy and horror first. No politics there yet. All of that comes after.

>No politics there yet. All of that comes after.

The answer is to run the game in one polity, and focus in on the politics that you like. Or just homebrew up the setting a little, make it one big homogeneous solar-system wide nation state. Though I guess, even then, it'd still be masturbating over politics, because if saying "look at all these different political systems" is masturbating over politics, then picking one particular type and making it the ascendant one is some kind of mega-masturbation.

Conspiracy IS politics, boy. Didn't you get that from any election cycle?

Or not focus on it. It's not hard. The politics in the setting are a clusterfuck, sure, but so are real life ones and people manage to go about doing other things just fine.

What conspiracies save criminal are there, that are not political in their nature, though?

All politics is conspiracy, but not all conspiracy is politics.

Transhuman ones.

So why arbitrarily exclude one type of conspiracy from a game dealing with all types of it?

Who said anything about exclusion?

I don't see how a transhuman conspiracy would not be by necessity either criminal or political.

No one did, but the claim EP 'masturbates over politics' strongly implies that its author would prefer the subject excluded or strongly diminished in its breadth and depth.

It was implied. If just wanted less of a focus on politics, then they could just leave it in the background until the PCs collide with it.

Well, if you want to take the word apart, a conspiracy is a plan to do something that harms someone in secret. So, you know, in a setting where a lot of lawless areas exist there's plenty of situations where that could happen and it isn't either illegal or politically motivated. Not to mention that we're dealing with inhuman threats that can take over minds here, the actions of which could also fall under that banner.

Or it could mean that other things should receive more focus.

I asked how it would be *different*.

It doesn't masturbate over politics any more than is necessary for fleshing out the setting.

Maybe you don't know anything about Forgotten Realms, or Shadowrun, or Warhammer 40k, or any of a dozen other major fictional settings, but Eclipse Phase actually masturbates over politics far less than any of those settings do.

Prove it.

Warhammer 40k has more factions and sub-factions than Eclipse Phase by far. The entire setting is a clusterfuck of ideologies colliding.

Forgotten Realms is fucking ridiculously politically complicated, owing to it's decades of existence and massive library of novels fleshing it out to the absolute limit of "who gives a shit anymore". There's so fucking many factions in that setting it's disgusting.

Shadowrun has just as many if not a handful more political factions as Eclipse Phase, mainly tied to your character's race or corporate affiliation or national background, not to mention there are three variations of reality to consider, and all the fantasy bullshit thrown in for good measure. It's comparable to Eclipse Phase, which makes sense, considering it was literally created by the same people.

>Warhammer 40k has more factions and sub-factions than Eclipse Phase by far. The entire setting is a clusterfuck of ideologies colliding.
But the focus is very rarely on the political interactions between them. Mostly they just try to kill each other, which is completely different.

>Forgotten Realms is fucking ridiculously politically complicated
It doesn't matter how complicated it is, what matters is how prominent it is to a player.

I'll give you that Shadowrun is similar, but even there the spread of political beliefs isn't nearly as widespread to all sorts of extreme and insane corners, and hence it gets a lot less spotlight.

The book spends half a chapter outlining politics and regions of space.

The rest of the book is devoted to game mechanics, character creation, skills, hacking, the mesh, and various technology.

You're exaggerating how much the setting focuses on politics. Yes, politics is a core element, but it's not any more of a core element than everything else going on. And like others have said, it's your game, so you can play it up as much as you want, or just run a game where you're doing GTA5 heists in outer space and it's just a series of adventure modules strung together with a flimsy meta-plot that has nothing to do with the political context.

I'm running a game exactly like that right now, and my players are brand new to the setting. Nobody has had any issues with politics being too complex. I've never even heard anyone bitch about this before you, and this general has been around a long time.

Sorry man, you're on your own.

Well you're misinterpreting my original complaint if you bring in mechanics. I was talking about the setting, and in the setting the politics are the primary thing to look at. Sure there are other things too, but they feel very secondary.

The game is about existential horror and transhumanism. Politics happens to be a big part of that, but it's not the primary focus. The primary focus IN FACT happens to be on morphs, and artificial intelligence, information security, and psychological warfare. Politics goes on that list, but it's nowhere near the top of it.

Yeah, but every time you read about some facet of the setting, it almost always ends up a list of things that have something to do with the various political factions.

It's like, no, it can't just tell you what the pandora gates are like, it has to go on and on for half an hour describing the political landscape around them and how the various factions are exploiting them.

No it doesn't.

To use your own example, on page 48 it gives a flavor text box explaining their origins, what we understand about them, who discovered them, what they're used for, and where they're located.

On page 377-379 it goes into even more detail about - guess what - how they work, where they came from, and where they lead. There's literally an entire paragraph just describing the wormhole that forms at the center. There's another paragraph about how they operate. Another about what they're used for. Another about "anomalies."

And... that's it. Politics isn't even briefly mentioned. It's barely mentioned at all.

I don't remember where I read it, and I don't have the pdfs with me right now anyway, but I remember perfectly well that there's loads of political information surrounding that.

If you want a different sort of example, just look at the threads here. The politics are mostly all that ever gets talked about.

Sorry man, you are wrong.

I have the book open right here right now in front of me and I checked it before I wrote that reply.

>It's like, no, it can't just tell you what the pandora gates are like, it has to go on and on for half an hour describing the political landscape around them and how the various factions are exploiting them.

And then you have half a page just describing what the wormhole LOOKS LIKE, and then speculations about how it works "is it plank-scale blah blah" quantum physics.

Oh, but it doesn't talk about what they're like, right? And you conveniently don't recall where you read it. Guess it wasn't in the core book then.

It spends half a page explaining how they operate. Another half a page explains who controls them and how they meter out their usage. Another half a page for anomalies, like I said.

The first half-page is entirely devoted to what they look like, and it even goes into detail about what they -feel like- to the touch.

You picked a really shitty example to use.

If it's not there then it's obviously somewhere else.

The specific example doesn't matter, it was just something that came to mind.

Yes, the specific example DOES matter, because why on earth WOULD it come to mind at all if you really knew what you were talking about?

Sorry but it's not obvious at all. Like I said, I have the book right in front of me, and checked every single entry for "pandora gate" in the index off the list. You're wrong as a point of fact. The only thing that's obvious is that you have a distorted subjective recollection of the setting and you're trying to pass it off as objective when it isn't.

Maybe he's remembering something he read in Gatecrashing. Or he might just be remembering something he read in a homebrew doc or on a previous /epg/ thread.

Because I'm talking about my own impression of the setting, which comes from my memories of exploring it.

The fact that you're still focusing on a single book when we already acknowledged that the stuff was probably somewhere else isn't very helpful to either you or me.

It's possible, though I'm almost certain it wasn't anything unofficial. I'm pretty good at keeping those separate, mostly because I don't read other people homebrew in the first place.

Your impression of the setting is distorted, which is made all the more evident by the fact that you can't even clearly recall it.

How can you claim your opinion is a legitimate one if you can't back it up?

The difference between EP and 40k or Forgotten Realms is that the ideologies in the two latter settings are largely fictional, while the ones in EP are extrapolations of real-life political ideologies. I would guess that's the distinction that makes EP masturbatory in the other user's view.

I can clearly recall it, I just can't recall where it was from.

And you do know what an opinion is, right?

If you can clearly recall it, then recall it for us. You don't have to cite the source, just repeat what was in it. Mention one or more details so maybe I can piece together what you are remembering and go find it for you, because I have no idea what you think you are recalling so clearly. I certainly -don't- recall it at all.

>And you do know what an opinion is, right?

Yes, and yours is baseless, in this case.

If you're sure you can recall it, search your books and find out which one has what you remember. Then post the book and page numbers here.

Well one thing for example is how the autonomists only hold one gate.

Are you referring to the half-a-page on page 22 of the Gatecrasher sourcebook talking about the Autonomist gates?

Because that's it. The rest of the -entire book- focuses on the climate and environment of dozens of exosolar planets, and the first chapter of the book is like 20 pages of quantum mechanics.

So, it's not in the corebook, and it's not in the sourcebook all about gates. I wonder where else "a half hour of politics" about the Pandora Gate could be then?

I'm legitimately drawing a blank here. I have no idea what you "clearly recall". Maybe you might try and be a little more clear than: "the autonomists only hold one gate." That doesn't sound like a "clear" recollection of the thing you read.

Look, I can't spare the attention to get into this deeply enough, but just for you I opened the book and ctrl-fd another term I remember being close to this topic, "Love and Rage".

It's there. You're just lazy. I mean, you can say that I'm lazy too if you want, but you're the one who feels this is important enough to scour the books because of it. So go and read the book if it's really that important to you.

Lol, now you're just being weasely.

Yes, I know exactly what you're referring to, and I'm sorry, is it "a half an hour of politics"?

Get over it. Your opinion is total bullshit and you're just bickering because you're trying to save face.

My opinion is fine, this setting has far more political wankery than any you can name. No, the three that you or someone else named don't even come close.

Your opinion is bullshit, as I've repeatedly shown. And every reply you make continues to demonstrate that all you're trying to do is save face at this point. It's really obnoxious and you should drop it if you "can't spare the attention to get into this deeply enough".

Oh, but I'm the one who's "just lazy" - right. Of course.

You haven't shown anything. I'm not trying to save face because my face has never even entered the equation.

An opinion can't even be bullshit in the first place, user, it's not a thing that you prove or disprove.

We can all agree that the politics in this setting are more prominent than in any other game, except possibly some other politics-oriented ones that I'm not aware of. You haven't actually done anything to talk about that after you were rebuffed, you just started talking about a single specific example that I made while even telling you that I can't back it up at the same time.

I've shown the holes in your logic, the self-contradicting statements you make again and again, and refuted the example you provided. You're trying to save face by getting the last word, even though you claim you "can't spare the attention to get into this deeply enough".

An opinion certainly can be bullshit when it's stated to be a -fact-, as you do here: "We can all agree that the politics in this setting are more prominent than in any other game".

Really? "We"? Who? Your imaginary friends? Here we go again with your weasely bullshit. You're trying to make it seem as if you speak from a position of authority or consensus. Okay, prove that your "opinion" reflects majority consensus, or should we again simply take your word for it? Maybe you can "clearly recall" the names of the individuals who share your opinion then. Forgive me if I don't hold my breath after your last "example".

And as for being "rebuffed" - how do you even figure? Did you prove somehow that anything I claimed about Forgotten Realms, Warhammer 40k, or Shadowrun was false or unwarranted? No. All you did was go "NUH UH" and completely ignore what I stated by misrepresenting it, again, in order to save face and make your opinion sound meaningful.

Oh, sorry. My bad. I keep forgetting. It's "just an opinion" right? Not like you're stating anything -factual- about the setting, right? It's "only an opinion". Gosh, maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know what an opinion is after all.

>the setting is all about political wankery

>why

>b-because like uh i read somewhere that uh well ITS MY OPINION

Is someone forcing you to play the game at gunpoint? Blink twice if you're in trouble user, I'm here for you.

user, you're incredibly tiresome, and my patience is getting thin. Unless you show more good faith instead of whatever butthurt crusade against me you're on right now, this will be my final post.

You've shown no holes in my logic, you've shown holes in my memory at best, since I can't remember any specific names off the top of my head. We haven't even started discussing any logic yet.

>the self-contradicting statements you make again and again
Like what? You're the one contradicting me, I've never made a complex enough claim for that to be even possible.

>You're trying to save face by getting the last word, even though you claim you "can't spare the attention to get into this deeply enough".
I don't feel I've lost any face, because I still don't feel that you've put even a small dent into my feelings about the setting. And yeah, I don't have the time to make a thorough read right now, I'm multitasking three things as it is.

>Really? "We"? Who?
We. You and me and some other guy who commented on that part, since the claim was made and not disputed. Well, it was disputed, but once I explained what it meant, you ignored that line afterwards. Instead you started badgering me about my memory and a specific example. We can go back if you like.

>You're trying to make it seem as if you speak from a position of authority or consensus.
No I'm not. I have no idea where you're getting this from, but it's not from me. All I've done was talk about my own opinions and views.

>Okay, prove that your "opinion" reflects majority consensus
Why would I need to? That's your brainfart, not something I ever said.

>And as for being "rebuffed" - how do you even figure?
Because the focus isn't on the politics there, they're in the background. You can't be serious here, can you? Shadowrun - yes, it's sort of similar. But the other two? Just no, user.

>Not like you're stating anything -factual- about the setting, right?
Am I? Can you give an example?

user, I said it would be better with less focus on politics, not that it can't be considered good the way it is. You're implying some sort of strawman here, I think.

>It's a "Anons argue about who among them is the biggest autist" episode

How is the inquisition hunting down heretics and resisting change in their millenial ways any different from Jovians resisting transhumanity and fighting off anarchs and shit?

It's the same thing, the difference is EP's politics are an extension of our own, while 40k's politics are completely fictional.

What focus on politics, though? The game is focused on high concept sci-fi shit, espionage and horror. The system doesn't even have any complex subsystems for social conflicts and macro-management of resources and/or other people, which is a big part of games focused on politics, like ASoIaF RPG and Reign.

The politics are all in the fluff. The only thing EP has more than those other systems is verisimilitude to our own real life politics. The setting of the game was written with a very hard sci-fi mindset, and sociol-economic factors play a much bigger part in the shaping of the setting than pew pews and lasers. Except, you know, that one part where we all got wiped out by pew pews and lasers.

Holy shit are you fucking kidding me...

>>Not like you're stating anything -factual- about the setting, right?
>Am I? Can you give an example?

Are you seriously fucking kidding me right now or what?

>It's the same thing, the difference is EP's politics are an extension of our own, while 40k's politics are completely fictional.
And that's a huge difference. But it's not the only difference. Most of 40k is about the fight, not political intrigue. The only places where political intrigue is prominent at all is if you look at the various factions in the imperium posturing at each other. But 40k is a LOT larger than that, there's an enormous amount of focus on things that aren't even in the imperium in the first place.
>The system doesn't even have any complex subsystems
Talking about the setting, not the game mechanics.

Go on, user.

Fuck off and get your attention elsewhere.

Funny, I was about to tell you the same thing if you made another tl;dr post at me.

Please stop, Anons.

>Talking about the setting, not the game mechanics.

You're saying the game is focused on politics. The setting isn't focused on anything, the setting is the setting; it is just a fictional world where things happen. The game will focus on specific parts of the setting.

While the tabletop war game and the RTS focus on the big, flashy battles of the 41st millenium, Battlefleet Gothic focuses on Naval warfare, and Dark Heresy focuses on investigation, espionage and, yes, political intrigue.

Of course, 40k is a setting that is ALWAYS at war, so most games in the setting will touch upon that, since EVERYTHING IS WARRING EVERYTHING AT ALL TIMES.

Eclipse Phase is NOT in a state of war, the setting is in a post-apocalyptic re-stabilization period, the factions are all trying to not start anything big so transhumanity can get back on its feet.
The game, though, is focused around espionage, exploration, investigation and combat.
All the fluff stories feature agents on stealth missions, backstabbing, shootouts, terrors beyond our comprehension and many other things that have absolutely nothing to do with political intrigue.

Like, I'm trying to understand your point here, but I can't see how anyone could claim that this is a game focused on politics.

No, go look up at the original post.
>This would be a great setting if it didn't masturbate over politics so much.
The setting. Okay, if you want a more specific way to put it, the descriptions of the setting. Better?

My point still stands. A setting doesn't "masturbate" over politics, it's just a setting. I mean, hell, it's super static even, the setting hardly develops from one splat to the other, it's all left to the players and GMs to decide what to do with the factions int heir own games.

Something like Warhammer plays up it's inter-faction relations, conflicts and intrigues much more explicitly, with canon plot development happening through splats and sourcebooks all the time, and with a much bigger focus on its political figures and leaders than any other system mentioned here.

Just because it has guns and people shooting at each other all the time doesn't mean it's not about politics. 40k's politics are much more infantile/cartoonish than EP's, sure, but it's a much bigger part of most games in the series than the latter.

The fandom's motto is "For the Emperor!", for fuck's sake.

...

>My point still stands. A setting doesn't "masturbate" over politics, it's just a setting.
Yeah, but the descriptions of the setting can.

>it's super static even
I don't see what that has to do with it?

> 40k's politics are much more infantile/cartoonish than EP's, sure, but it's a much bigger part of most games in the series than the latter.
Those aren't political factions in the same sense, they're enemy states basically. In EP there is constant political dialog happening, in 40k they just try to kill each other.

Wait. Is someone actually arguing that the devs don't fap over Anarcho-Communism?

They also hatefap over the Jovians, don't forget that.

This would be a great thread if that one guy didn't masturbate over masturbating about politics for 7 hours.

>Meat Market
A short story about an indenture getting gangbanged in a shitty brothel

>Jovian Women in Prison
Jovian waifu gets molested in Maui Patera...

>Jovian Women in Prison: Followup
...and masturbates thinking about gay shit

>Welcome to the Future
Revival fresh from dead storage gets passed around by a pair of savvy rusters

>Putting the 'RP' in ERP
Homestuck fapfic that mentions an /epg/ character by name

>Faction porn
Summaries of lewd XP

>Character Questionnaires
Sometimes porn

Did I miss anything?

What are you cataloguing? /epg/ smut or /epg/ writing?

That seems fairly complete for the former, but there's several exoplanet descriptions and some political stuff missing from the latter.

is there a better sort of pod than a pleasure pod?
>no

Novacrab

Basic pods are actually pretty nice. Same cost as a case for a Cyberbrain Splicer with a social stigma. Probably the best cheap morph. Worker pods are also super cheap useable combat morphs in a pinch.

...

I'm thinking now about a story of a criminal in hiding, who has to quickly transfer morphs in a shady underground body bank and ends up in an used, sluty as fuck pleasure pod.

This happened once in Know Evil - the party had to rent a anthroform morph quick because the party Face was an octopus who was also an XP star. They ended up with a very cheap Pleasure Pod.

Awesome.

Traditional sci fi is surprisingly conservative about imagine future societies. Often falling back on historical systems of goverment or very simplified versions of modern ones. The galaxy spanning feudalism of Dune and 40K or the militaristic meritocracy of Star Trek.

More recently post cyberpunk writers have tried to put more effort into imagining more radical future societies and Eclipse Phase reflects this with it's array of different would be utopias

Space

...

...

Not traditional sci-fi, but popular sci-fi.

There's lots and lots of great futurist sci-fi works out there, you just gotta look for it.

So, what faction would you guys choose?

"If you were really there" sorta thing.

Extropia. I'd see if that'd work out.

In fact, some of them are referenced by Eclipse Phase.

So, you'd be a space jew.

My attorney drones have informed me that might qualify as slander.

I'll give you a ten second head start.

>prim, corporate rep and procedure focused contract fraud specialist
>op goes loud, forced to egocast out to the belt to lay low
>sleeved in buttslut pleasure pod with tons of aftermarket mods
>software quirks and nervous system tuning that default to dirty behavior and extra sensitivity
>Hither addiction
>Locals that keep forgetting the body has a new owner
>Extropians that keep offering contracts

...

>implying we aren't perfect in our natural state

>Wanting extra morality

Whichever one lets me live in a figurative cage of dicks.

>wanting less morality

how should an oligarch or similarly powerful inner system character engage enemies if they ever enter combat personally? Deploy at the head of a cutting edge black ops army? Use super science weapons to obliterate everything? Calmly shoot enemies in their office while having a drink with them?

The person sitting across from them who intends to harm the hyperelite suddenly has his mind suspended and force uploaded into a hyperbolic simulspace where a psychosurgeon proceeds to inception mindfuck him until his ego completely unravels.

The keep a fork of his former self trapped in another simulspace prison for actual questioning and interrogation before subsequently deleting it and every other known backup of his psyche.

If the top boss is fighting, something has gone wrong.

Everything in a ten block radius is atomized and he is restored from backup elsewhere.