/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

Mysteries of the Universe edition

OFFICIAL BOOKS
>Eclipse Phase PDFs
robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs
>Transhumanity's FATE (FATE Conversion)
mediafire.com/download/ae113ujgd3hggpl/Transhumanitys_FATE.pdf
>X-Risks and After The Fall
mega.nz/#F!KwcS0bJK!9KLjZegzebaq-mlPUin45Q

PLAY AIDS:
>10 things you should know about Eclipse Phase
docs.google.com/document/d/1Qnrh0w7H0Jl2_CSsySRxcs4ugw27xsBIk5MYwXq2nDQ/edit
>Advice for new players and GMs
pastebin.com/e0EErN6X
>Online character creator
eclipsephase.next-loop.com/Creator/version4/index.php
>Eclipse Phase hacking cheet sheet
mediafire.com/view/?axe1vs35muk4juh
>Eclipse Phase xls Character sheet
sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet
>Package Character Creator
firewallagency.wordpress.com/

COMMUNITY CONTENT:
>3 new adventures for your use in convenient PDF form
awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/
>Ander's Sandberg's Eclipse Phase fanmade content, including several modules
aleph.se/EclipsePhase/
>Farcast: An Eclipse Phase yearblog full of items, locations, NPCs, and plot hooks
mediafire.com/download/dhqd1m83xc1wmpj/Farcast_Yearblog_2013.pdf
>The Ultimate's Guide to Combat
eclipsephase.com/sites/default/files/UltimatesGuideToCombat11a.pdf

/EPG/ HOMEBREW CONTENT
docs.google.com/document/d/19Gy02gp6-WPQ3SoN_24kLPTUu5EjFO8qh_9pjJSVrrY/edit

Previous Thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

science20.com/hammock_physicist/swimming_through_empty_space
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>pic

Can somebody tell me how the fuck a bunch of living heads on sticks can simulate higher-dimension mathematics.

They have cyberbrains running egos and using all the extra processing power to be a computer. It's essentially a really fucked up case mod.

It's based on a theory that the TITANs were using the heads for something, so I think in general like, the semi-random actions of the heads which are all networked as part of the computer are supposed to generate data to be interpreted as some kind of higher meaning.

Keeping in mind the guy who made it is just fucking crazy. The book doesn't even say it actually does anything, just that it's a freaky thing to run into.

...

I have seen a lot of new pictures in /epg/ lately. New book come out?

Yeah, X-Risks was released a short time ago. Links are in the OP.

There aren't any non-homicidal robots, are there?

It's not homicide when a robot kills a meatbag.

So if a character in a flat morph gets a cortical stack and basic biomods, what exactly distinguishes them from splicers?

According to the corebook, Flats have an average aptitude spread of 10, while Splicers have an average of 15. Look at the difference between the 'adult average' and the 'transhuman average'

I guess that makes sense. I ask because I'm creating an ex-SCI Infosec specialist not at all based off of Maritza Ortega for a Firewall game set in the Jovian system/Main Belt, and she has both a stack and biomods, with her highest aptitudes being COG and WIL 20, SAV being 10, and everything else being 15.

As it turns out, it's not completely crippling to play as a character sleeved in a flat with minimal augmentations and still kick ass at hacking shit.

I mean, if your GM is doing his homework you'll have time beating Cyberbrain Mentons with Multitasking or Infomorph AGIs, but yeah anybody designed to be good at hacking can be good at hacking, aptitudes just mean you had to spend less skill points to do it. NPCs are rarely maximum optimized for that morph bonus bump.

>NPCs are rarely maximum optimized for that morph bonus bump.

It's funny, all the NPCs in the NPC file have ridiculously high aptitudes, but pathetic skills. I think the devs intended for people to build characters that way, with a broad base of skills and a few points in each, instead of the way everyone actually does it: getting at least 60 in any skill that they want to use, so that they have a better than 50/50 chance of succeeding

It's also probably so NPCs can have more broad applicability, so they can default better, or GMs can feel better about swapping around skill values - though also a lot of characters in the NPC file have decent morphs too, which would be built into the stat line.

Then again, NPC File is a bit old. If you look in X-Risks for instance, most of the enemy stat lines are a wash in 50s, 60s and 70s for skills, even non-combat ones.

It's "art".

Lower aptitude maximums, no aptitude bonus, less durability. A Splicer is to a Flat what an Exalt is to a Splicer - an all-around better-built version.

...

How does one find an Eclipse Phase group? I really want to play it but there's never anything in Gamefinder, roll20's LFG or my local gaming meetup with 1500 members.

You don't find a group, you start one.

Shadow Run or Eclipse Phase. Which makes the best Ghost in the Shell game?

Eclipse Phase.

Either works, but Eclipse Phase probably works better - you need to hack SR more heavily, the setting isn't as conducive to a GitS game, though the system is overall superior so it might be worth it.

...

Shadow Run does not have resleeving. Case closed.

Shadowrun. You'd have to cut out a lot of cool shit to do GitS in Eclipse Phase, but you'd only have to cut out stupid shit to do it in Shadowrun.

That's fucking retarded. By that logic planets and the like also decrease entropy. Jesus.

I always pegged that image as one of the exhumans, the pre-fall one who hooked herself to a server farm with a tether and fucked u p the code so instead of becoming a baby god she became a drooler.

Prayer. I managed to convince a few from my old group to roll for a campaign. It was okay, but it takes a better storyteller than I am to make it a thing you want to play for more than one campaign. Serious featureitis.

What lies between the Pandora Gates Veeky Forums?

And now because of Madoka I can no longer think "Ancient godlike ETI Civ sets out to decrease universal entropy" without thinking of Kyuubey. AKA Bunnycat.

Your mom, spreadeagle and naked

It also depends on what you mean by 'Ghost in the Shell' game. Do you mean a game that emulates the tone, concerns, and aesthetics of Ghost in the Shell? In that case, Eclipse Phase, fairly easily. If you want to literally emulate Ghost in the Shell's setting, and focus more on planning, contacts, and just overall better systems....Shadowrun will do it, but you'll need to put some more work in.

If you're just going 'GitS-like', the question is also *where* to set the game. Titan is actually a good place for a Section-9 type organization to operate, but Luna, Mars, and Venus are all pretty good options.

Have they finally gotten around to releasing some rules for how gravity affects things, aside from -high g is bad, -10 per gee- ?

Gravity is bad, mmmkay?

One might even say gravity sucks. Oh, gravity, why can't we, seem to pull it together?

I seem to remember a homebrew list of professions, with situations. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? There was a list of academics and interests too, just expanding on them and possible plot hooks/connections for gms.

And meanwhile I'm chilling on my 1.8g exoplanet colony watching anarkiddies go through the gate, literally trip over their own feet, and bitch about how gravity is shit and makes literally everything worse and why do people even live here? And I'm just sitting in the cafe sipping my fucking latte and laughing inside.

Google 'ramjet all tommorrows'.

Very eclipse phase. At least on the gravity front. Try the Asteriomorphs for what the anarkiddos clearly think they are.

Every time someone makes up a small story like this I'm reminded that if I was in this setting I'd just go infomorph, launch myself into the void, fork myself a million times, and have a time accelerated orgy with myself forever. Because it's not like there's anything else to do.

>One might even say gravity sucks
GRAVITY DOESN'T SUCK
THERE ARE NO GRAVITY PRESSURE DIFFERENTIALS
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Why do you have so many pressure differentials, user

ur mum has pressure differentials LOL

Then how does the only confirmed-to-actually-work reactionless drive work?

Do you mean the alcubierre drive, that one that runs with the help of exotic matter, which is shorthand for 'shit doesn't exist'?

Because that shrinks and expands space like a rubber tube to accelerate the ship.

No I mean the useless one that coasts on gravity differentials just by morphing the shape of a body

RUDE

I don't actually know; I only popped into this thread because I saw that post on the first page and got triggered.

That's heavy, doc.

Also, has anyone used future-shock as a game element? Cryonics, or psychosurgery, or just someone from a backwater suddenly dumped into the future?

Well, all the evidence we have shows that gravity has a speed of C too, like all information transfer. So without a name, can't really look into it.
Shit, even earth survivors would get some pretty serious future shock if they'd only just escaped.

science20.com/hammock_physicist/swimming_through_empty_space

>People who go between microgravity and habs with assorted spin grav handle high gee worse than people who are always on the same planetary body

Ohh, that one. I think he meant that gravity doesn't have pressure. There are differentials, but nothing like a gas pressure system in gravity. Two different ball games.

S̸̯̰̺͙̫͚a͕y͏͉̘̬̬ ̝̬̤̰̹͉̹t҉̞͍h͈̳a̮t ̸̣͚͍ͅt҉o̸ ͡m͟y ̰͙͕͡P̢̘̲s̶i͍̳̰̪̳͉͝-͏̻̮̱͙̣E҉͔̫̰͎͖̻ͅp̬̺̜̮̺̱̯͜s͍̭̙̝̥i̴͎͈̤l͖͙̣̗̦o̪͉̣̳ṋ͖ ̸̼̙a͇͕̺̤̘̠͎n̸̟̳d̜̼ ̨̯̮̜ṋ̨̱͕̳̖̗o̴͓̟̫̺͎͖̫t ͔͖̩̮͙͟o͔v͈͚͓͙̗̻̫e̯͖̞̻͈r ͚̫t̨͎̲̳̭h͈̬̟̘͡ͅe ̸̼͍̘̬̲m̩̫̗̟̥͍es͔̤̭͙͔h͓̫͖̯ ̙͢f̼͍̻̻̭ͅṵ̘̪̮̝̳̥͘c̦̼̘̪͝k̶̝̗̟e͝r̙

Why would you even compare the two?

Ask the person making the original pun.

What would the Jovians do if they found a TITAN constructing an intelligent superobject in Jupiter?

Heavy bombardment with asteroids, and then they'd start sending every super weapon they could. They'd also immediately pop a warboner, because this is the shit they trained for. There would be a *lot* of nukes, and probably some fairly shitty speed-research on how to stellar-form the gas giant as a final oh shit button.

What they would NOT do is tell anyone, ever. The Jovians are a huge part of what keeps the PC from stomping all over the outer system, and if they weaken, everyone else (PC included) is going to come knocking.

Oh, and hyoden. It's been a fucking hassle for ages, they'd find a way to weaponise it and sling it at The Object.

>Invisible nukes
>Jovians protecting anything that isn't theirs
>Not addressing the issue of still having to live there when you're done
>Secretly turning Jupiter into a mini-star

Die, probably.

The EmDrive? It's actually quite simple, and the engineer explained it years ago.

Basically, it's a contained metal cone. The narrow end is in front, and the rear is a wide base with a magnetron in it.

Now while many physicists argue that this violates Newton's third law of motion. I'd argue that this is absolutely untrue. And I can justify it in total laymen's terms. And in three points:

Point 1: Photon emission produces no thrust.
If it did, then reactionless travel would be as easy as emitting shit-tons of light in space.

Point 2: While the emission of photons produces no motion, the absorption of photons CAN. This is what the concept of solar sails is built on, and so is the EmDrive. The engine has microwaves hitting the particles in the cavity, accelerating them to the front of the ship on a collision course with the tip of the conical engine. The impact of these particles produces thrust.

Point 3: Newton's laws deal with the interaction of matter and gravity, not with the interaction of photons with anything. In fact, Newton knew nothing of photons. He couldn't have known that it was possible to convert light into kinetic motion. There's a reason that Einstein had to essentially rewrite the theory of Universal Gravitation with relativity. Newton simply couldn't have known about what we would discover later.

At no point is this a transfer of kinetic energy from one object of mass to another. It's the emission of photons, the conversion of photonic energy into kinetic force, and the transference of that force from the internals of the engine to the ship as a whole. Newton's laws are never violated.

If anyone wants, I'm down to discuss all this.

The EmDrive? It's actually quite simple, and the engineer explained it years ago.

Basically, it's a contained metal cone. The narrow end is in front, and the rear is a wide base with a magnetron in it.

Now while many physicists argue that this violates Newton's third law of motion. I'd argue that this is absolutely untrue. And I can justify it in total laymen's terms. And in three points:

Point 1: Photon emission produces no thrust.
If it did, then reactionless travel would be as easy as emitting shit-tons of light in space.

Point 2: While the emission of photons produces no motion, the absorption of photons CAN. This is what the concept of solar sails is built on, and so is the EmDrive. The engine has microwaves hitting the particles in the cavity, accelerating them to the front of the ship on a collision course with the tip of the conical engine. The impact of these particles produces thrust.

Point 3: Newton's laws deal with the interaction of matter with other matter, not the interaction of photons with anything. In fact, Newton knew nothing of photons. He couldn't have known that it was possible to convert light into kinetic motion. There's a reason that Einstein had to essentially rewrite the theory of Universal Gravitation with relativity. Newton simply couldn't have known about what we would discover later.

At no point is this a transfer of kinetic energy from one object of mass to another. It's the emission of photons, the conversion of photonic energy into kinetic force, and the transference of that force from the internals of the engine to the ship as a whole. Newton's laws are never violated.

If anyone wants, I'm down to discuss all this.

>Point 1: Photon emission produces no thrust.
>If it did, then reactionless travel would be as easy as emitting shit-tons of light in space.
Why is this true?
Emitting the light would still require energy, wouldn't it?

Photons do generate thrust when emitted, it's just so fucking tiny that if you had, say, a light pwoered spaceship, blasting off from earth would put a hole in the planet clear through the other side, and probably tickle venus. And that's for something the size of your average flashlight.

In the Ultimate's Guide to Combat, it mentions the mjolnir system. Anyone know the range?

Kind of like the idea of paring it with a daedalus system for the world's most annoying iron man knockoff.

That sounds like some goddamn troll physics to me, at least superficially.

Mostly because I'm still not entirely clear on how EM radiation can consist of mediumless waves and particles at the same time. What actually happens during the process of photon emission?

Fucking photons, how do they work?

Then why is absorption of photons more powerful than emitting them?

Pretty sure he's a bit confused and it's not. Point 2/1 is wrong. Like, a solar sail doesn't work because it's absorbing photons. It works because it (and other things, google solar pressure) hits the sail and exerts pressure before disappearing - like wind on a regular sailing boat. A perfect solar sail is going to have nearly 100% reflectivity.

Dunno on your specific question, though. My training is economics, not physics. Most things like 'beam sailing' work on the idea of a planet/satellite bound maser pointed at the sail, because a sail mounted source would push backwards at the same rate it pushed forwards, if you were lucky and had perfect efficiency. Or the sail is initially coated with a chemical mass that is activated by an on board laser to provide thrust, the laser is switched off and they sail on like a normal solar craft.

Usual reminder that EP is set in 2144.

>While the emission of photons produces no motion, the absorption of photons CAN

Already wrong brude, photon rockets are a thing, a really, really inefficient thing. 1 Newton of thrust per 200 MW of emitted energy. A photon rocket is not a reactionless drive, and photons are weird because they have momentum even though they don't have mass.

Newton's 3rd law is a statement of a special case of the universal law of conservation of energy, but the general law does not have any exceptions as far as we know (which appears to be pretty far).

Now, the EMdrive might work, it appears to produce thrust, but the cause is unknown, and Roger Shawyer has no idea how it might work. No one really does. There's several theories, but all of them have problems of one kind or another.

It's not, that would be a violation of conservation of energy.

Would stellar-forming Jupiter be possible without killing everything in the solar system? Would it be possible at all?

The TITANs

Pretty sure Jupiter isn't even remotely massive enough to become a star. Brown dwarves have 12-80 times as much mass, and they're not even proper stars.

Yes, but only those who worship the Great God Atum and join the Nubia Connection will survive.

At least some of them are cuddly, right?

If a particle accelerator could start a chain reaction powerful enough to destroy a planet, then cosmic rays would have done the same job millions of years ago. The thing you have to remember about any sort of artificial high-energy physics is that it's still a tiny fraction of the energy produced by natural processes.

Anybody got good pointers for exoplanets one could use in gatecrashing campaigns from other RPG lines or just fiction in general? There's a fairly limited selection of EP homebrew on that front. I've used a few from Rogue Trader supplements since it largely plays with the same themes as EP Gatecrashing. Though the problem with those is that most of the times the adversaries are one of the Usual Suspects of the 40k universe, which makes it somewhat hard to adapt them to the EP setting.

Dank memes.

Roll up some using Traveler or GURPS tables.

I've toyed with the idea of using Oddworld as an exoplanet.

Pandora from Avatar. Pandora from Borderlands. Polar opposites, but they both work.

No. Doesn't mean they wouldn't try. Een a failed ignition might be acceptable to them, and hey, Catalyst goes out of their way to make the Jovians pants on head retarded.

Remember that planets aren't one biome, but the area the players are in is. Make yourself a biome table, with a 'transition' biome for intersections of 2 and 3 biomes, then roll on that.

As for hooks, I've taken to opening China Mieville books and picking a paragraph at random, then running with that.

>Photon emission produces no thrust.
>If it did, then reactionless travel would be as easy as emitting shit-tons of light in space.
False. See: the Pioneer anomaly. The trouble is that at 100% efficiency you would get just 1 Newton per 3 Gigawatts.

>At no point is this a transfer of kinetic energy from one object of mass to another.

Photons have kinetic energy and momentum. Google it. They do not violate the conservation of either of these things. This is covered in freshman year physics courses and tons of popular books.

> the transference of that force
Force doesn't transfer, except in the loose sense of pushing on an object while it's pushing on something else. You probably mean momentum, but that makes no sense thanks to Gauss's law and the fact that momentum is conserved. That's why the emdrive is bullshit. If it worked it would be extremely to prove with one cubesat mission.

>cubesat
>timecube

Huh?

>it would be extremely to prove
extremely what my nigga

Easy
Sorry

Have indentures lost work placements because they too long reading the contracts?

Probably. But it's not like it matters, once you sign you're fucked.

Any guesstimates about how many times an indenture has to fail to sign this way before they get deleted? Three times? Five? Ten?

No way to know. Depends on the group that owns the dead storage - if you refuse, or get told to sign without reading but do you get put back under. Then it depends on what they eventually do with the storage. You'd probably just be left there until the heat death of the universe.

Scientists want to test it on Earth before they test it in space. That doesn't mean they're doing science wrong, it just means real life isn't Kerbal Space Program.

EP is a horror game, so it makes as much sense as basilisk hacks being at all dangerous or transmissible via performances of The King in Yellow.

And that has been going terribly so far. "It looks like it works but that's probably measurement error" meets "electromagnetic interaction with test apparatus" compounded by allegations of fraud.

Stick it in a 1U cubesat with radar reflectors. Characterize its orbit. Start the emdrive. Check whether the change in the orbit is consistent with light pressure, gravitational anomalies, and exospheric drag. Program cost: perhaps $2 million, and the inventor could probably crowdfund that. If it works how he claims it would be irrefutable. If it works 10% as well as he claims it will still attract tons of investors.

Oh, and most importantly:

Anyone with equipment for measuring satellite position could verify the results

You realize Hyoden is a city-state on Callisto, right?

GURPS Transhuman Space is far closer to GitS than either.

Shadowrun can't do impressive cyberware and doesn't really engage well with transhumanism, Eclipse Phase has an appalling system and the setting doesn't actually engage with transhumanism very much either. Both are good, but neither fits. Both have magic, quasi-magic and sci-fantasy elements.

Sure. I also think they'd work out a way to uproot it and chuck it at whatever was within.

>the setting doesn't actually engage with transhumanism very much either
What?

Conflict with biocons, resleeving, AGI rights, exhumans, ultimates, uplifts, reinstantiation, and forking don't count?

I do agree that Transhuman Space is a better match for GiTS, but that's because what is possible in TS and GiTS is more limited than EP.