/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

Have a pie baking competition.

Kill yourself.

Bottlenosed and orcas should be removed, along with any octo not based on lesser pacific striped octopuses.

>any octo not based on lesser pacific striped octopuses.
They're transgenic, so... yeah

So, I think the discussion from last thread can only lead to one conclusion: gold-plated M1917s.

>They're transgenic, so... yeah
Of course they are, but lesser pacific striped octopuses aren't even mentioned.

>Muh niche bio knowledge

>implying that most of the metamaterial and carbon nanoshit applications aren't niche scientific knowledge
>implying that they should have any less knowledge when picking species to uplift

>but lesser pacific striped octopuses aren't even mentioned.
And what octopodes are mentioned?

>There are many species of octopi, but scientists chose the Pacific giant octopus to uplift due to its great size.
-Panopticon p114

I still say you're racist

Octopus is not a race.

lesser pacific striped octopus is

It's a species.

Oh. Well in that case your genocide proposal is okay. My mistake.

It's the only species that has the potential not to be sociopathic.

No, because uplifting involves genetic engineering. Also, it's not okay to kill people just because they're sociopaths. I've known at least one sociopath in real life who was a decent person that I admire. Most sociopaths aren't dangerous.

>Hidden Concern
>not dangerous
Can't tell if anarkiddo or spineless infiltrator

>every neooctopus is in hidden concern
>everyone in hidden concern deserves permadeath
Sure thing, Hitler

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Wait, I have something for this

But user, both of those things are 100 percent true

This genocide joke is clearly played out.

Except they are manufactured intelligences, so they don't have rights.

>Created intelligences don't deserve rights

Tell that to every human who has ever had a religion

>Implying humans aren't manufactured
Okay Hitler

I'm playing a Lost and I can't settle on a profession or skillset that both works mechanically with a high-WIL psi level 2 build and fits fluff-wise.

Would it be bad to just give them the kind of skills you expect a crazy dangerous person on the run to have? I want to go for verisimilitude and think of what habs they've been living in, what they do to make their way, but none of it seems to fit.

>I want to go for verisimilitude and think of what habs they've been living in, what they do to make their way, but none of it seems to fit.
Maybe if you explain what that means we can help

What I mean is I don't wanna just make a character that has all the skills you would expect a crazy Lost to have, I'd like to give them a career and actually invest the skills for their background, if they've been living in X type of faction's habs/community they should have the appropriate skills.

But envisioning your EP protagonist adventurer as a normal person existing in this world is hard enough when you aren't playing a fugitive with psychic powers.

But what skills are you talking about? I have no fucking clue what you're saying.

They're trying to play a person, not a crazy psychic murderhobo. I/E not just shoot, gun, gunshoot and spot hidden.

Open up transhuman, look at packages. This is what packages are for. If you can't actually decide like, what faction or focus they had on your own, you either need to roll randomly, or cut the idea loose because you're not necessarily going to get any less paralysis of choice hitting up the hivemind.

well first what faction are you considering?

Mine is an assassin/thief who, with the help of a programmer/psychosurgery/social specced ghostrider infolife, incapacitates her target, uses sleights to rip info/passwords out of its head, and drains their accounts into anonymous accounts.

>They're trying to play a person, not a crazy psychic murderhobo. I/E not just shoot, gun, gunshoot and spot hidden.
This provides exactly zero information about what skills might be avoided

I mean, that's good on you if you haven't ever seen a character who was like, just focused on maximum murderhobo PC skills.

Probably the quintessential example I can think of is Bartleby from the Know Evil AP, who was a Lost Brinker who didn't really seem to have any skills besides Psi, Shoot People, Dodge and Sneak and "See bad things and or people to shoot".

I have seen that. I still have no fucking clue which skills the guy doesn't think are appropriate, and I don't feel like sitting here and guessing when he could just fucking tell me.

You've just admitted you've seen it though. The guy is counting on the shared experience to convey through language - which you have said you understand.

It's spelled out pretty plainly in
>Would it be bad to just give them the kind of skills you expect a crazy dangerous person on the run to have?
and
>What I mean is I don't wanna just make a character that has all the skills you would expect a crazy Lost to have

Normally, you could say you "have no expectations", but if you've seen this concept before - you just said so. Do you lack imagination?

Imagine I've said I've spilled some paint, and one time you saw someone spill so much paint that they had to wade through it. Would you assume I've spilled that much paint? If so, congratulations. You probably qualify for government assistance.

The guy should pick a more fleshed out concept. What's this Lost's faction? What are their motivations? Basically the package system is perfect for this. If all we have to go on is "this person is a Lost" then you've got nothing

>If all we have to go on is "this person is a Lost" then you've got nothing
He never said that was his entire character concept. You can't assume something defines a person entirely just because it's the only thing they mentioned. I hoped you never serve on a jury.

Pretty sure that's exactly that first user asked for more explanation.

Which is what I said, but I don't think we got past the high concept phase of "I want to try playing a Psi 2 Lost", and we just ran into "what the fuck does a Psi 2 Lost even do?". Besides be a murderhobo.

Shitty analogies aside, you've basically said "what skills does an X" have, and then followed up with "yeah, I've seen or heard of some X before". It's not this guy's fault you can't draw a line from a concept you're familiar with based on what somebody is saying in plain language. But you'll probably come back at this and either try and call me stupid again, or just claim not to understand me. Because I'm not the guy saying "I have no fucking clue what you're saying".

That does actually seem to be as far as he's gotten with the concept though. First line is:
>I'm playing a Lost and I can't settle on a profession or skillset that both works mechanically with a high-WIL psi level 2 build and fits fluff-wise.

So he seems to have gotten from "Is a Lost" to "high WIL and Psi (2)", and then hit a snag.

That character is so good, but has also completely tainted the way I view Lost. I've seen creative uses of other asyncs, but for example I can't imagine an impersonation specced character, something psi sleights can really help with, workign that well with a Lost's social penalties from their naivety quality.

Let me put it this way. What are some ways you guys have seen Lost incorporated into the setting before, as PC's or NPC's? I'm having trouble envisioning a Lost being able to work for a Hypercorp or live in the Inner System without getting caught, for example.

Yeah, Bartleby did a lot of trend-setting, I think, since RPPR's EP games and campaign were probably like, some of the first big examples of that. Gave a lot of people ideas about how EP could work.

But really, the first example of a Lost character is the Lunar Ego Hunter in the core book.

>I'm having trouble envisioning a Lost being able to work for a Hypercorp or live in the Inner System without getting caught, for example.

Not as hard as you might think, especially with the right sleights or Psychosurgery. Hell, one of the viewpoint characters in Melt is a Lost, aren't they? They somehow got themselves deep cover enough to be elected to politics in Morningstar.

Hey look guys, user isn't retarded the way you assumed. I'll be accepting apologies now.

An impersonation spec probably isn't great (though certainly not undoable). There's plenty of more forceful social action to spec for though, and unrelated skills certainly shouldn't be overlooked.

So, now that people are immortal, do people bother with birthdays anymore? Do they only bother with children's and milestones? I know that they have parties for someone changing main sleeves.

Probably a spaceNEET living off space welfare, because it's really hard to be a functioning member of society with 3 full scale mental illnesses, some of which haven't even been named.

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what is the worst thing happening on earth 10AF?

Probably the rape factory.

The what!? I don't remember anything like that in the Earth section of Sunwards.

full wallpaper version

It's either somewhere in the official fiction or it's just an /epg/ meme

You might be thinking of Cthulhutech, which is like EP, but more anime and more shitty.

It's a much older meme than /epg/, but yes.

You asked for the worst thing that's happening on earth. Why would more details help? Speculation is much more horrifying.

Octopi Hitlers aside, can someone explain hacking to me?

Not the rules, but the concept. It's been at least a century of extensive data crunching and 10 years after the Rise of the Machines. And yet, your stuff can still be hacked into.

I understad hacking into complex systems within a week. But how can anyone justify hacking that takes less than an hour without exploiting built-in backdoors?

Because otherwise it's hard to handwave kooky space adventures in a world with perfect surveillance and AI guardians that should outflank human subterfuge 999 times out of 1000.

FWIW you can just pretend that hackers either have or know someone who has those exploits on hand, and the check just represents the execution.

>without exploiting built-in backdoors?

Uh, you don't not do that. Keep in mind, crypto and counter-crypto have had the same advanced, the arms race to hack or not be hacked doesn't stop - TITANs taught transhumans a shitload about netwar on both ends.

There's three "types" of hacking, you can spoof and thus ferret out or fake a valid into a system, you can conventionally hack, which requires you own appropriate exploit software and takes 10 minutes, but is among your stealthy options if you're good, or you can brute force, which takes about 1 minute, but is never subtle, as it basically means your exploit software is doing the equivalent of knocking on the target software with a SWAT ram.

Cracking and zero-day exploits and stuff is a huge business which is discussed all the time in the setting.

>perfect surveillance

Memes

>AI guardians

AI who are explicitly inferior to transhumans in terms of skills.

> zero-day exploits
This implies software keeps developing. But we should've perfected most of the software by this time.

Yeah, no, we have nothing new to learn about computer systems only 10 years after some superintelligent computers kicked out shit in.

Hahahahaha.

No.

That's not how this works. That's like saying "Why are there tax loopholes? We've been taxing things since the dawn of civilization! We should have perfected it by now."

>But we should've perfected most of the software by this time.

What.

Or "we have nothing new to learn about obtaining food, we were hunting and gathering before writing!"

We have successfully avoided extinction for thousands of years, why do we need Firewall?

>inb4 x-threats are made up to justify the creation of the shadowy conspiracy that is Firewall

> Or "we have nothing new to learn about obtaining food, we were hunting and gathering before writing!"
Nowadays we have pretty decent understanding of what food is poisonous, do we not?

Similarly, routine computing should be secure. Not cutting-edge stuff, but the basic stuff. Even spoofing secure systems should be impossible, since they are operating on one-time pads.

>Nowadays we have pretty decent understanding of what food is poisonous, do we not?

Do we though? Studies are still being released about long-term health effects food has. And, more to the point, does your average joe actually know what is and is not poisonous? It's in a book somewhere yes, but it's not necessarily a widely diffused knowledge.

Also, OTP isn't a flawless system. You're only supposed to use each "pad" once, and still have to distribute keys. I'm also not exactly sure how OTP encryption applies to like, an open internet connection.

I asked for nothing of the sort, you're confusing me with a different anonymous user

We don't. Name a single X-risk Firewall has successfully prevented. You can count them on zero hands.

>Name a single X-risk Firewall has successfully prevented

Well, technically, Firewall the book implies the events of Glory canonically occurred and were stopped.

> Do we though? Studies are still being released about long-term health effects food has.
That would be equivalent of analyzing meta-data: "after one month of monitoring enemy traffic we came to conclusion, someone there streams a lot of mlp cartoons".

> And, more to the point, does your average joe actually know what is and is not poisonous? It's in a book somewhere yes, but it's not necessarily a widely diffused knowledge.
If it's in the shop, it's very unlikely to be poisonous.

Similarly enough, regardless of your personal security skills, standard off-the-shelf equipment should be essentially unhackable.

> Also, OTP isn't a flawless system. You're only supposed to use each "pad" once, and still have to distribute keys. I'm also not exactly sure how OTP encryption applies to like, an open internet connection.
There is no global internet in EP (not in the meaning we use today).

Distributing keys could be a problem only if the connections are between settlements/spaceships. And even then, one drive should provide essentially unlimited amount of cypher (as long as you don't pump through uploaded people).

Yeah, but uh, what is this?
Something like shadowrun?
That card game?

Post-Singularity RPG (in theory, at least).

And when you buy your gear, chances are good that it's resistant to most common hacks. If you got some carrots yesterday, and today Doctor Vegetable releases a virus that turns carrots poisonous, the fact your carrot wasn't poisonous when you purchased it doesn't change the fact it's now not a good idea to eat the writing orange mass that identifies it as a "weaponised vegetable system, carrot class".

Your gear is going to likely be resistant to the threats that are in the wild at the time of it's manufacture, and all the threats that have been dealt with before it. The longer your gear/software goes unpatched, though, the more likely you are to run into something that can break it open. Nothing is future proof. A defensive system that cannot adapt is going to, eventually, get compromised by an attacker that can adapt, so you keep patching, you keep updating, you keep finding ways to defend against the people attacking your software.

It's a game with post-apocalyptic and transhumanism themes with intrigue and cosmic horror thrown in if the GM wishes for it.

Yeah, something like Shadowrun, minus the fantasy elements. More like Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, Alien, etc.

learntabletoprpgs.com/tabletop-roleplaying-games-to-play/eclipse-phase.html

>in a world with perfect surveillance and AI guardians that should outflank human subterfuge 999 times out of 1000.

I thought /epg/ went over this: surveillance is not 100% perfect, not even close. Maybe on certain habitats, but they'd be the exception, not the rule.

Also AIs are rather narrow in their skillset and aren't really capable of adaption or learning things outside of their programming, so if anything human subterfuge can usually outsmart them if they know what they're doing. AGIs and infomorph security spiders, on the other hand...

>Name a single X-risk Firewall has successfully prevented

Pretty sure that not being able to name X-risk events is proof that they are at least somewhat doing their job. Prevention is a fuck ton easier and safer than cleanup. Plus who's gonna know about one Brinker hab being blown up after turning into exsurgents?

> Your gear is going to likely be resistant to the threats that are in the wild at the time of it's manufacture, and all the threats that have been dealt with before it.
There is a limited amount of ways a software could be hacked.

Current trend of endless updates and fixes (that introduce new bugs that require new updates and fixes) is more of a commercial thing, than a real necessity.

Everybody is asleep.

Post cozy habs and hab rooms.

>If it's in the shop, it's very unlikely to be poisonous.
>What's a trans fat?

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Why are wheel habs so comfy?

Because farming in two dimensions means it's not allowed to be crowded or people die

There's nothing that makes you unable to use grow lights.

But look at the picture

Because gravity is a good thing.

>hurr every pic is a depiction of Eclipse Phase as it is
autism

>No commenting about pictures allowed
actual autism

Hi, Hypercapitalism

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