/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

X-Risks, probably tonight or tomorrow. Blowout soon, fellow Sentinel.

It's a game about transhumanism, conspiracies and horror. Except where it's not about transhumanism, conspiracies, or horror.

Has anyone played eclipse phase on the ruined earth?

Seekers are air breathing tiny cruise missiles, I don't think an ABM with literal high explosive fuel is a good comparison.

so how did you get your friends into this game? The setting is comple af, is not a game for everyone

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Playing an arachnoid morph in an upcoming short game. Need character art. Any good sources?

Tachikoma

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Buy a synthetic mask. Use this as your character portrait. Play the most upbeat guy possible, who just wants to give his buddies cuddles and rides. Invade everyone's personal space to give cuddles.

So, my question didn't really get answered last thread.

I want to run a game like Adeptus Evangelion, inspired by the Evangelion series. Unfortunately AdEva and CthulhuTech--the other system I know with rules for "basically just Evas"--are garbage.

The Eclipse Phase mechanics (but not really the setting) seem like they'd be perfect for a game about piloting giant meat robots that you're mentally connected to. I'm not completely sure how to handle AT abilities, or even Eva mutations (two additions from AdEva that I enjoyed). There's even something for Sync Ratio, isn't there?

Can I get some advice on how I would handle that kind of a game?

As someone who once tried to get into it:
It's a neat concept scifi game with a good system and a dense as fuck setting.

EP is basically just weird BRP. Rather than trying to cram it to fit Eva, just use a generic system.

>>EP is basically just weird BRP.
>It's basically Basic Roleplay, except not basic
Great post, chief. Also, generic systems are cancer.

Fate is good shit and can easily be made to fit Eva. There are some dope mecha Fate games.

>The Eclipse Phase mechanics seem like they'd be perfect for a game about piloting giant meat robots that you're mentally connected to.

What about the mechanics in particular make you think they'd be good for this? I'm curious, because I don't really see it myself - it's a fairly run of the mill percentile system, with a funny rule about criticals and a funny number-flippin thing for players to wriggle their way out of awkward dice related situations.

Without knowing the shortcomings of AdEva it's kinda of hard to give advice. (I know Cthulhutech has awful rules)

There isn't really something for sync ratio. It's a like like jamming or resleeving, but the consequences for failure are really different, and they're kinda of made for different things. I'm not sure how hard it would be to convert over the Integration/Alienation/Continuity rules to make sense there.

Funny number-flippin?
Also, Eclipse Phase has rules for piloting meat robots with your mind. I mean...
An Eva is basically just a giant Morph.

user, you're an idiot. Just find a mecha RPG and use that; there's nothing inherent to EP that makes it any more fit for Eva than literally any other system. You're basically being the guy who says "oh, we'll just use D&D 3.5 for our space opera game because you fight things in both."

And you don't even seem to know the EP ruls, so you can't even blame familiarity with the system.

>Funny number-flippin?

Moxie lets you flip the result on your d100 - so a 81 becomes an 18, for instance.

>Funny number-flipping

The way moxie works on rolls.

>Also, Eclipse Phase has rules for piloting meat robots with your mind. I mean...
An Eva is basically just a giant Morph.

The hard part of this is the giant part, not the meat robot part I think. So long as human and Eva scale stuff doesn't interact you could probably use the same stats for each, just have them be at a different scale.

>So long as human and Eva scale stuff doesn't interact you could probably use the same stats for each, just have them be at a different scale.

I think you'd be better off finding a system that handles the big Eva scale stuff explicitly. Sure, you could kludge Eclipse Phase's mechanics into a shape that resembles something that works, but you'd have to add so much stuff, and cut so much out, that it's safe to say there's probably a better starting point than Eclipse Phase.

Start off small. Keep it inner system as credits makes more sense than the rep system. Explain to them that rep is just favors. Show them the retarded morphs like space whales and octomorphs to spark interest. Hold their hand through chargen and use the package system for their first character.

Basically, simplify the game, then ease them into it.

Just run some games on Mars, they're basically just regular cyberpunk: shady night markets, tech-savvy anarchists fighting against the corporate establishment, feral robots wandering the wastes. If they like the politics and tech level, things can get crazier from there.

>Without knowing the shortcomings of AdEva it's kinda of hard to give advice. (I know Cthulhutech has awful rules)
AdEva is Dark Heresy, but 2-4 characters versus one character, with the one character being ridiculously huge and non-human.
youtu.be/mdU8dyjgXU0
So basically everything that makes it hard to use Dark Heresy rules. I don't know why that's what they originally chose.

But one of Eclipse Phase's core mechanics is literally the core mechanic of the show's setting. In fact, Eclipse Phase is literally the only system I can think of that has that kind of consciousness shifting mechanic as it's main focus. Everything else just treats it a bit ham fisted and has you use one set of physical stats but your own mental stats. Eclipse Phase on the other hand has your base attributes be based around things like kinesthetic sense.

Sounds like a neat effect. Is it a resource you can spend, like Fate/Hero Points/Bennies/Willpower? I like those kind of mechanics, especially if the ST is encouraged to bribe you with them.

I'd actually assumed Eclipse Phase *had* rules for giant robots. Can't you take control of a space ship with your EGO? I mean, you can essentially do *that* in Shadowrun.
>Sure, you could kludge Eclipse Phase's mechanics into a shape that resembles something that works, but you'd have to add so much stuff, and cut so much out, that it's safe to say there's probably a better starting point than Eclipse Phase.
Just what do you feel I'd need to cut or add? I mean, I'm not super versed in the system, but other than a few skills not being necessary and the apparent lack of scale differences, it doesn't seem like the core mechanics are missing anything. That's why I was thinking about it, after all.

>Can't you take control of a space ship with your EGO?
Sure, but spaceships are considered settings rather than true vehicles in EP, because EP subscribes to the bloody boring "Two swarms of tiny ships each armed with nuclear missiles stand in a line across from each other and fire, winner is whoever has more ships left" school of sci fi space combat.
>Is it a resource you can spend, like Fate/Hero Points/Bennies/Willpower? I like those kind of mechanics, especially if the ST is encouraged to bribe you with them.
It is, and you have to buy them with XP, the GM can't really affect your Moxie much.

Who do we need to suck off to get:

>Eclipse Phase xls Character sheet
sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet

updated?

>Who do we need to suck off
Coximus Baracus Maximus, the scum porn star with 15 dicks, four assholes, and eight balls.

Well, where ambiguity or convenience caveats don't get in the way, EP is generally a harder sci-fi setting - following more realistic limits of science and technology (compared to most things) and stuff that isn't is crazy mind-shattering sufficiently advanced alien/god AI technology.

So, no, the robots aren't giant, most stuff would be "Large" scale so it'd be at most like, twice as tall as an average transhuman.

Also, yeah, you could operate a Vehicle or even a space-based habitat with your Ego. But that's not like controlling it like it's your body necessarily. Usually it's basically piloting it remotely through VR, and even when it is your "body", the game doesn't really have rules for how you would interact with that scale beyond stuff like opening the pod bay doors with your mind or using Flight instead of Piloting.

So yeah, EP has some neat mechanics for mind/body duality and does have a sanity mechanic. It doesn't really do anything else you might want for NGE - and does a whole shitload of not NGE things.

>Is it a resource you can spend, like Fate/Hero Points/Bennies/Willpower?

Everyone starts with one point of Moxie, and you can buy more at character creation if I remember rightly. You refresh your Moxie after a significant amount of rest, and also for achieving goals that line up with your character's Motivations. It's not really the back-and-forth flow that games like Fate have with Fate points, although I imagine that the Fate conversion for Eclipse Phase folds Moxie in with Fate Points.

>Just what do you feel I'd need to cut or add?

It depends a lot on how you want to run you game, but presumably you wouldn't need the rules for hacking, you wouldn't really need the rules for networking, you probably wouldn't have the rules for reputation, the exsurgent stuff could likely be cut out (though maybe not, who knows!) and you'd probably need to take a look at how morphs and resleeving work and fiddle around with that. You are going to want to read through the mechanics before deciding whether or not it's really suited to your needs.

Now, one of the things I think might cause issues; Eclipse Phase treats your morph/body as a piece of gear, something that's rather disposable, and assumes that you're going to be swapping bodies around during the course of a campaign (egocasting, the easiest method for long-distance travel, will generally require getting a new body...), so the rules are designed in such a way to make it easy-ish to quickly calculate what your attributes are like in a new morph.

If you're running a game where players are either piloting a big ol' monsterbody or toddling about in their regular, inferior body, then it might run better to have a set of rules that's just about having two different body-ish things, and adding mechanics that match the tone of the game you want to run. I generally believe that "fluff" and "mechanics" should both serve to reinforce and support one another.

>EP subscribes to the bloody boring "Two swarms of tiny ships each armed with nuclear missiles stand in a line across from each other and fire, winner is whoever has more ships left" school of sci fi space combat.
That seems weirdly out of character.

>EP is generally a harder sci-fi setting
Yeah, that's the impression I got, so "we're WWII in space!" seems weird. Although, I mean, I've seen a few of the robots, and they're not exactly super different from the usual mecha. I mean, there are giant robot spiders.

Also, honestly, other than the size issue, it *does* still seem the most fitting. Although since I'm really going for "the Eva is as you as your real body", the Ego/Morph divide is pretty spot on for what I want.

Oh, yeah, I guess I would be cutting a lot of stuff, if that's what you mean. I hadn't thought of stuff I'm just not going to use as "cutting".

I mean, I figured that it would just be limited to the two Morphs, with the pilot body treated as their real self (so if it ever gets killed, they die instead of respawning). I'm aware of most of that, and I know I'm basically going to ignore a lot of the setting and mechanics, but that doesn't really bother me too much. It's really just the core mechanics and the actual swapping that matter to me.

What's this Exurgent thing?

>one of Eclipse Phase's core mechanics is literally the core mechanic of the show's setting
resleeving tests aren't a core mechanic and they're simple enough that you could just take that part out and put it into some other system that works better with giant robots.

I use the morph comparison chart all the time. I had to correct some major errors, though.

>That seems weirdly out of character.

Not really no, that's actually how fighting in space would work.

>I mean, there are giant robot spiders.

An arachnoid morph is on the same size scale as an adult human, just arranged differently.

This is bloody brilliant. Where can I have more?

That's hard to semi-hard sci fi space combat for you. A largely deterministic duel fought between 1000 KM and light second which leaves one ship 90% destroyed and the other one 100% destroyed. The same is largely true for fleets. This of course, isn't true if one side is way more powerful.

>we're WWII in space!

Where exactly did you get this idea?

>I mean, there are giant robot spiders

They're roughly human sized, not really comparable with a lot of mecha stuff. I guess Scorchers are technically large robot spiders, but they aren't exactly similar to mecha either, as they walk around very slowly. (They're 4 limbed walking mining platforms on Mercury)

Exsurgents are the product of a post-singularity weapon/virus which makes all kinds of nasties, including ones which ought to be forbidden by conventional laws of physics.

Resleeving tests for sure, but most games don't have a full spread of "mental" stats with body swapping implied.

It's not the test part I'm talking about, it's the Ego/Morph divide in general.

Fighting in space is not going to be nuclear armament musket battles. It's going to be shooting into dead air that you hope your enemy will move into. Due to the time differences, you'd only be able to accurately target something's temporal shadow. It's very likely that the battles will be too complicated for humans to do without the aid of computers. Hell, we've already got lag on drones, and those are on the same planet. It's going to be like modern naval warfare (where you might not even see the other ship) turned up to 11.

>An arachnoid morph is on the same size scale as an adult human, just arranged differently.
Giant is relative, when it comes to spiders. I was saying that oversized cool looking robots aren't exactly super hard scifi.

>Exsurgents are the product of a post-singularity weapon/virus which makes all kinds of nasties, including ones which ought to be forbidden by conventional laws of physics.
Sounds like the kind of thing that could perfectly be refluffed as Angels.

The only problem you're going to have on that end is while Exsurgent Psi is explicitly the "I reject your reality and substitute my own" sort of ability - there are almost no hard rules for it.

>It's going to be shooting into dead air that you hope your enemy will move into

We are going to have that, but we are also going to have missile since they can home on targets.

Also, remember that space battles are silent.

Did you really think that user's flippant explanation on Veeky Forums was an accurate description of something? Are you new or really dumb or something?

>I was saying that oversized cool looking robots aren't exactly super hard scifi.
It's well known that 8 legged things larger than cats are explicitly forbidden by the laws of physics.

>Sounds like the kind of thing that could perfectly be refluffed as Angels.

Angels are big, while most dangerous exsurgents make dust particles and nano weapons look big.

At this point my advice is to just actually read the EP books, rather than fishing for advice on hacking a system and setting that you don't understand well. If you're planning on a large scale rework, you shouldn't be confused by Moxie rules.

I don't know what silence has to do with anything.

>Did you really think that user's flippant explanation on Veeky Forums was an accurate description of something?
Did I really expect that I would get accurate (if flippant) information when asking about a setting in its general thread? Yes, I did.

I'm also not confused by Moxie. I was just asking how it worked, it sounds neat. You're right, though, I should just read the book and figure it out for myself.

I don't understand why you're so insistent on using a system you don't even know, especially after a thread full of people say "it's not a great fit."

I'm not trying to be a dick or anything, but I think you'll be able to tell what you need from EP a lot better by reading than asking a bunch of anons who really just want X-risks right now.

Because you've given me no reason to feel that it isn't? It is literally the only system I've seen that has the mechanic I want.

Probably. I was hoping to get a feel for what kind of stuff I might need to look out for to handle certain things, but I'll just look through it myself. Gonna stick with the Quickstart book for now.

Yeah, I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon here and say it's kind of silly to jump into a thread, ask for input from people who are VERY familiar with the game and then insist those people telling you they're not sure about your idea must be wrong before you've really dived into the game on your own.

>past noon on the West Coast
>X-Risks still isn't live

reeee

>Did I really expect that I would get accurate (if flippant) information when asking about a setting in its general thread?
Spaceship combat is kind of a sensitive subject for /epg/. Nobody is really happy with how it's set up right now, but nobody can agree on a solution, with the realism vs. drama crowds butting heads. Then you get the people who (trolling, joking, or not) say that ships shouldn't exist or don't need living crew at all, and so on. Flippant but very broadly accurate is your success state here.

Wait, hold on, you might not want to do that.

I can never remember. Was the quickstart rules actually updated with the Errata or is it still wrong.

Alas, we'll probably be waiting a while for that Space Combat supplement because we STILL don't have Argonauts.

How often in Evangelion do the kids get into the robots, fuck up a roll, and suffer massive body dysphoria and clumsiness until they get back out of the robot? That's what EP does with the morph/ego divide at worst, or else it literally never comes up. "Synch" isn't a thing in EP, but you're acting like that's what you're here for.

Go play a mecha RPG and fuck off.

>It doesn't make sense to me that the party's martian police investigator can come to the same understanding with the resident AI expert of how the big bad was able to create emergent aggressive AI personalities in a station's server which would then hijack the cortical stacks during backup.

That would likely be a Program roll, which your investigator likely doesn't have but your AI expert should.

Well, I had one person telling me that was how they worked, and another person telling me that's how it'd work in real life. I treat the first in good faith, and there's nothing wrong with setting the second straight.

What was wrong with it? Is it anything major?

That's not exactly what I mean. I mean the fact that you don't really have physical stats, you have "how well you can control your body" stats.

.

>Running out of non-lewd plugsuits

There's zero difference between naming a stat Somatics and naming it Body. That has fuck-all to do with the mechanics of EP.

>playing a game because you like the names of the skills

You're retarded.

>What was wrong with it? Is it anything major?

Well, if it wasn't reprinted, it's based on the first version of the rules - most critical to your ideas is that the initiative system and how Margin of Success/Failure is measured are improved now, and there's some other little things which have drifted over four revisions of the core book.

It's not the name of the skill, it's how it works.

>Implying I ever actually use initiative for real instead of just deciding who goes next based on a whim
I'm just skimming it to get a feel anyway.

Somatics isn't the same thing as a physical strength score, even if Posthuman forgets that from time to time.

The initiative rules will be a little different, and opposed checks make less sense. Some weapons might be screwed up as well, but that's probably not a problem for you.

>It's really just the core mechanics and the actual swapping that matter to me.

I still think that the core mechanics and the swapping thing aren't particularly suited for what you're trying to accomplish - the scale between the Evas and their pilots is quite different, and it would work so much better with a rules-set designed around accommodating them. Eclipse Phase doesn't really have rules for ship-versus-ship combat, and while it's possible to sleeve into some crazy huge things (like, say, habitats), the system seems most suited to small scale conflict resolutions, with a focus on preparation, planning and also dealing with the aftermath of it.

You've said you didn't think of stuff you're not going to use as cutting, but it's cutting - you're going to have to look at what the things that players aren't going to be able to take, and adjust character creation accordingly. The game assumes that you're generating a character that's part of a team of people working for a shadowy conspiracy that's trying to save transhumanity from a variety of threats, including itself. You're probably going to need to gut the skill system and replace much of it with other skills that are more relevant for a game of Eva-piloting. The lethality of the system is based on the idea that characters can be restored from back-up; if you're not having that, then the combat system might end up being too lethal for your needs, so you'll need to take a look at that.

Again, the setting and the mechanics support one another. The mechanics help hammer home the setting, the setting is reflected in the mechanics. Simply copy-pasting the mechanics into a document and slapping another setting on the top of it isn't going to lead to a good fit for either the setting or the mechanics.

>libertarians = ancaps
When will this meme end?

To me its about rule arguments evolving into physics arguments, being a cool robot and, sadly, being unable to feel immersed because every second you don't die feels like the GM is giving you to much leeway.

I believe X-Risks is now being sold on DriveThruRPG, /epg/.

Confirm, X-Risks now on sale.

Just got it

Termites In the Frame is surprisingly magical realm. Was not expecting Hindu async rape

SHARE THAT SHIT

Tell me more.

SHARE WHEN

mega.nz/#F!KwcS0bJK

Also has After The Fall

Key?

Try this one

mega.nz/#F!KwcS0bJK!9KLjZegzebaq-mlPUin45Q

It's asking me for a decryption key.

Hit the wrong link by mistake, should be fixed now

Confirm, this works.

Confirmed, it works. Thank you kindly, user. +1 I-rep.

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Skimming the Exhuman section right now, looks real good, some interesting new ideas for Exhuman motivations besides "rip-and-tear".

>And people were saying Eva wouldn't work because there was nothing that size

Those guys are still a couple of stories tall compared to an Eva which stands above skyscrapers, and as of yet I haven't seen any stats to suggest a "Very Large" TITAN warbot.

Maybe you've moved on by now but you could summarize the problem with EP as EVA is that EP is designed as a game about investigation, hacking and tactical futurecombat with an overabundance of smartweapons and lethality. All built around conspiracy digging, customization porn and big-ideas-sci-fi.

EVA is about why you shouldnt let kids pilot giant alien warmachines when the fate of the world is on the line. Its about long drawn out mecha punching matches and children competing by proxy for the 'worst parenting of all time' award.

Basically if you really want to do the extensive work of rewriting a whole system like AdEva did, look for a martial arts game and replace the highflying ideologies with teen angst.

love you user

Eh. Evas are whatever size Anno felt they should be at the time. For my purposes I just need "pretty big"

Does it even have investigation rules?
It's interesting that everyone emphasizes the conspiracies. The person who first showed me the system (when I'd thought it would fit for *another* completely different type of game; that one was an MMO game) hated Firewall and thought it was stupid.

Forgot my image. I'm still looking over things. I'm just very slow and easily distracted.

Oh factors, you are amazing and terrifying. I love this section so far.

And apparently they understand the concept of fucking table tennis.

Thank you for your tips. I think i'll start them in Mars with pregenerated characters and a simple plot. Then i'll see if continue with the politics/intrigue game or the munchkin destroy everything game.

+@rep

[ANGRY MACHINE GOD NOISES]

Well, guys, we might have to eat our words, because apparently this is a thing:

Jehovah’s Corpse: This oddity was recently discovered
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean by reclaimer
recon drones. It appears to be a massive organic
structure built along the ocean floor—in the shape of
a human body. It measures over two kilometers from
head to toe. Scans indicate it may actually be made
from flesh, though it has an inorganic skeleton and
numerous hollow spaces and tunnels run throughout
it. A large number of fractals were detected in and
around it. The reclaimers dubbed it Jehovah’s Corpse,
but they have no idea what it’s for or what the TITAN
machines plan to do with it. There’s no way such a
large construction could actually sit up or move in
Earth’s gravity

Well, still subject to "too big to move," as it should.

What?

The new book which just rolled out, X-Risks, has some very interesting items in it. This one is an example of suspected TITAN activity on earth.

When libertarians admit that they're actually ancaps.
There is only statism or anarchism; there is only recognizing the legal status of a state as a person, and it's sovereign authority, or denying its legal status as a person and stating that only individuals may have sovereign authority, and only over themselves.
You cannot have a government which can just enforce laws without the immediate consent of the people, as well as people who hold sovereign right over themselves and their property.

So, I have to wonder if somebody on the writing team either goes to /epg/ or did research by looking at us, because there is just a line of sidebars with Project OZMA ideas phrased as "user" forum posting on the Eye which legit sounds like some of the conversations we've had about Project OZMA.

>The Space Pope decided that Factors were intelligent creatures in need of God's Grace
>Aliens
>Needing God's Grace
>Because they have original sin that god needs to forgive
>And God apparently didn't sent them a message of such a covenant, or they rejected it
[Angry Theological Noises]

Of course they do. What I'm disappointed in is how little there was on Ozma when it was semi-officially implied for so so long that X-Risks was going to be the book that gave Ozma some flesh.
Maybe they've run out of derivative exothreat ideas and will put out Sunward II.