Isn't a Pod assumed to be less dangerous than your typical Synthmorph?
Julian Price
Hey guys, I was hoping if you lot could tell me if Eclipse Phase is right for me.
I'm wanting to run a planet-hopping, kaiju-hunting game. Is combat in Eclipse Phase interesting? Is it fluid? Is this scenario even appropriate for an Eclipse Phase game?
Thomas Sullivan
Synths are associated with indentures now, but pods are still assoicated with simple AI servants that you can ignore.
You're looking for GURPS. This is literally what GURPS is best at. Throw together a bunch of splats and you have a kaijuu-hunting game in space. No, EP is not the right thing for kaijuu, especially if you want to fight them in mecha.
Matthew Butler
That would highly depend on the Pod or Synth in question.
But that's not what the Social Stigma is about, that's about the fact that cheaply made synthmorphs (Clanking Masses) are discriminated against in some parts of the solar system as poor, working-class refugees. And Pods are discriminated against for being poor, working-class refugees that approximately 10.1 years ago were also just AI servants.
Leo Martin
Are there cops specifically made to police pods?
Blake Ramirez
I don't know about Pods, but in the LLA there are totally cops trying to catch rogue AGIs who might be using masked synths or pods.
Jose Anderson
I wonder if that would fall under some form of identity theft or fraud? After all, if an AGI isn't a person, then any AGI that attempted to exercise legal rights of a person would need to be committing fraud to have documentation. Illegal alpha forking would probably fall under the same banner.
Blake Long
Well, I think the Lunar cops are probably more agitated by an unshackled AGI wandering around, getting stronger (I/E, learning things) - but yeah, pretending to be a person would probably be fraudulent.
Ian Morgan
Maybe, but that would seem like it falls under something closer to the Titanian Science Police or Oversight, looking more at AGI research programs or general cybersecurity than hunting the 'AIs amongst us'. An AGI that's not attempting to bootstrap themselves has more to fear from the identity theft division than the anti-TITANS brigade.
Nathaniel Nguyen
Whose identity would they be stealing?
Hunt em down, make em sign their paper work, then treat them just like every other digital entity pretending to be a human.
Joseph Hernandez
Well, Oversight or MSP don't operate in the LLA - so that would still be some kind of Lunar cops. I imagine you'd probably just bundle that into some domestic intel/law enforcement agency which handles all aspects, people making unauthorized AGI, unauthorized AGIs wandering around - pretending to be citizens, and "foreign" AGIs entering LLA territory with or without authorization, possibly committing immigration fraud.
Oliver Johnson
I'm apparently equal parts blind and incompetent. I haven't managed to find one on roll20 when I looked. Cheers
Kevin Foster
...
Evan James
Anyone have rituals that they do because of paranoia/good reasons?
Case in point: first thing I do after I sleeve into a Synth is break the access jacks with a screwdriver, shut down the wireless, and print an ecto.
Carson Phillips
>overdesigned giant drone
For what purpose?
Blake Davis
>drone
Luis Gomez
There's barely enough room for a pilot, and the weight would drag it down anyway.
Ian Rivera
>pilot
Gavin Nguyen
That's clearly an uplifted corvid sleeved into a highly customized avian pod.
Oliver Young
If you're going to suggest something like a disembodied brain or digitized consciousness is in that machine, I have to stop you there. That sort of stuff violates the laws of physics.
Are you saying birds can be smart? That's impossible. Only humans are smart.
Jonathan Evans
Well that's were you're wrong, on counts.
Corvids and a number of other animals have displayed intelligences approaching that, or even exceeding, human children. Crows even have proper language.
And it doesn't violate the laws of physics. It violates the laws of computing. Maybe. I don't know if we know that for sure yet.
Evan Powell
>Being speciest Get out of here Jovian scum!
Cameron Garcia
Huh. You learn something new every day. Still, just sending out drones into the field would be more cost effective, wouldn't you think?
Do I really look like one of those Gekiganger-worshiping morons?
Bentley Lopez
I'm GMing my first Eclipse Phase campaign pretty soon and my two players are dead set on doing a buddy cop type bounty hunter thing, which I totally love, but why would someone need to die in a time when dying is really not such a big deal?
Noah Morris
Because if they're alive, they can resist and break something.
Owen Carter
Context?
Also, death is preventable, not impossible. Making a backup requires that you be able to trust the agency making the backup, or have the person resources to do it yourself, which might not be the case. If someone doesn't have a backup, they can die if their stack is lost or destroyed, deliberately or accidentally.
Eli Roberts
So do criminals not backup? Couldn't security just seize their backups?
Lincoln Thompson
You can just pop out their stacks, though depending on what they do, they might not have one or have a failsafe.
Joshua Ward
The context is two brothers, one died during the fall, one was evacuated, both ended up on an argonaut base owing the argonauts some favors (dead guy was sleeved into their spare daitya) So they were "problem solvers" ie, you need someone gone we get them gone.
Ethan Cook
Run it like Hyperion Cantos, they need to kill a guy temporary, or rather, they need to kill his last few hours.
Kill him before he finds a black market backup station (or maybe he carries a file that can't be transferred, I dunno?) and delivers some juicy info to the bad guys (or maybe you're the bad guys without knowing it?).
Run that shit like 24h, every minute counts.
Robert Peterson
They can backup, but if they can't trust a legal backup provider (because cops) they need an illegal one - like the Triads, or Nine Lives. This is not without certain risks, so it's possible that they might just chance it, especially if they were between locations/employers.
Nolan Gray
How does resleeving from and into morphs with Eidetic Memory work?
Does a character sleeving into a morph with the upgrade become able to perfectly remember everything in their memory from before having the implant?
And regardless of that, do they retain the photgraphic memories they acquired over the course of living in the eidetic memory morph after sleeving out of it?
Jaxon Brown
It would also depend on who they piss off I think.
If they're wanted by the hypercorps, I don't think the autonomists would care too much.
Jose Harris
Well this is a great idea. Someone could've found out about something and a backup of him is due in 24 hours. You have to stop him from backing up that last day, because then you'll be discovered.
Jackson Johnson
Work-safe board, you dipshit.
David Howard
Then stop stealing all the good clients, revival bitch.
Leo Sanchez
don't you see? the nipples are covered. that makes the ungodly abomination that is the female chest, completely harmless and a-ok.
Nicholas Jenkins
She would probably be reprimanded by her supervisor if she tried to get dressed
Camden Foster
>AF 10 >Wearing clothes
Julian White
...
Camden Allen
Hey /epg/, what elements of the Eclipse Phase setting do you think are underutilized, by either the writers or GMs?
Elijah Howard
Physics doesn't say much about disembodied brains except maybe Boltzmann brains. I'm pretty sure it's not a Boltzmann brain in there.
Jace Hughes
Space combat, though rumors of a splat in the works about that exist.
Grayson Carter
Rumors nothing, it's on their official list of projects in development.
Just in very early stages.
Noah Richardson
So EP twitter just sent out this fan compilation of future-slang. What do we think?
Bounty hunters are pretty common in EP as Ego Hunters. I think they're more about tracking down specific instances of people though, rather than trying to inflict real death. I ran a similar game except it was NQPD detectives working on ego crimes.
I think bounty/ego hunting is largely ego retrieval.
>Sent a beta fork to a meeting but it failed to check in? Send in ego hunters to see if it went rogue, got captured, or what.
>Indenture running off with corporate property and an incomplete contract? Recover the body with ego hunters. See if the ego will continue working, or reinstate a new copy.
>Want to know what happened to some family members during the fall? Get an ego hunter to see if they can find them in cold storage, or discover enough to place their stack on earth.
etc. Actually killing people completely likely goes beyond the remit of most ego hunters. Ego Killers do exist as well, but they mostly operate by having a lot of contacts with backup agencies and the hacking abilities needed to corrupt secure backups. Memory removal is probably something some of them do.
I actually really like this kind of setup for games. It's good for exploring just how nasty humanity can be with transhuman tech. Brushing shoulders with 9Lives or Exhumans, or other unsavory types in the ego trade, and so on.
The Panopticon. It changes practically everything about how secrecy works, but most prewritten games have some way of avoiding it rather than embracing it.
Jackson Brown
You could get something out of someone being temporarily dead. You can steal/destroy their stack and then what they remember depends on how frequently they backup. Most people only do so every 6 months. Only people with risky jobs do so more, which is usually weekly, although may be daily.
David Moore
>an AGI Ego Hunter uplifted from a Barsoomian loper AI
Is this workable, or is it bad?
Ryder Taylor
What do you mean by loper AI?
Isaiah Carter
Oh, it's doable. The only real holdup is Emergent AGI is Eidolon/Infomorph only (to start)
Christopher Watson
The Wild Artificial from X-Risks.
Easton Reyes
That's fine. It would probably get ripped out of the bot before it got uplifted, anyway.
Grayson Gray
...
Hunter Brown
Using rep&networking to recruit quick short-term allies, social networks in general, memetic conflict, Edited Memories trait, more mundane applications of psychosurgery, non-Firewall plotlines
Benjamin Garcia
Alright, genius, what's your future-slang like?
Oliver Carter
Emergent AGI backround gibbs you by 15 CP.
Josiah Torres
Some of these are actually pretty funny.
Caleb Ortiz
Fuck off to >>>r/sharia
Leo Thompson
Pretty bad, I wish those meme spouting faggots at RPPR weren't considered the canonical example of Eclipse Phase play
Parker Collins
Schway.
Elijah Bennett
Look, if any future slang makes me give an involuntary shudder and gives me an urge to punch whoever invented the slang, it's failed.
Michael Butler
Schwarbage.
Luke Adams
I pretty sure, there is no official answer. Both options are possible.
I read Eidetic Memory is "perfect memory recall" - and yes, I surmise, it would work retroactively. Maybe not instantly.
Then again... Maybe Eidetic Memory changes the way your memories are written, how they settle in and interconnect. So they had to be formed under Eidetic Memory to reliably bring them back.
Apologies, that's not a question I can give a clear answer to.
Julian Gutierrez
Tofts, as in "he's tofts." Slang for Immortality Blues. Originated from having resleeved 'too often.' Many claim it stands for 'Too Old For This Shit.' See BACKROnym.
Alexander Sanders
I'm thinking about running this game but haven't played it before, and one thing I'm wondering is: how necessary are maps? One of the reasons I'm moving away from Pathfinder is that I don't want to fuck around with maps in roll20.
Ryder Barnes
Unless if you really need to keep track of people and their positions, like during a chase or in a labyrinthine section of a hab, no.
Jayden Gray
I find large scale maps for the local hab or surface area is nice for orientation, but you don't really need combat maps.
Pathfinder or D&D style gridded combat is super awkward for EP, because you can easily have multi-kilometer engagement ranges on planet surfaces. A local map with a rough scale is generally what I use, just to keep things straight.
You don't even need that for simpler fights, in my experience EP combats are either short range fuck-fests which end by the speed three action phase, where maps aren't important as no one has time to move much. Or they're prolonged games of cat and mouse which ends up a fuck-fest of stealth signals and recon drones, and a map is nice to keep track of the overflying or creeping drones. Either way, its fairly stressful and a big mess of plans falling apart.
Chase Kelly
PRIVILEGE: a morph's advantageous qualities. >"What's your privilege?" >"Circadian hack plus hibernation mod. I've also been told it feels great as the big spoon."
COGNITE MADE ME DO IT: said by people who have done something extremely foolish, a way of saying "the thought process I had at the time isn't something worth explaining" >"I swear. I wasn't trying to fuck her or anything! Cognite made me do it!"
CCTV: Mnemonic Augmentation cyberware >"Wait a sec, I've caught him doing that on my CCTV, I'll show you."
This is pretty fun I think /epg/ could make a pretty nice assortment of slang on its own
That just means it's the slang of the faction you don't self-insert as. Go ahead and make your favorite faction's, and don't forget to add derogatory terms for presumed self-insert factions of people inventing the slang you dislike
William Barnes
No, really, if your vagina looks like pic related, get into a healing vat and stop fucking bruisers.
Andrew Hughes
I came up with a couple thinking about it.
ACTION FIGURE A combat-rated or specialized pod. Usually operated by Puppet-Sock. >"It was going well, but then the Security team started playing with their action figures"
BURNING DELTA Wasting time, effort or energy. Comes from "Burning Daylight" and Delta-V. >"Let's pick up the pace, we're burning delta here!"
FRACTAL Firewall slang for something (usually a mission) gone really wrong. Comes from TITANs use of fractal technology and shapes. >"It should be a piece of cake, but if one of us goes down then the whole thing will go fractal"
Ethan Scott
I don't disagree. I just think that could well be a common condition in some factions in Eclipse Phase of all settings, and hence that the term could be used there.
I like the action figure one.
Ryan Ortiz
>Using rep&networking to recruit quick short-term allies That seems like a really neat supplement idea. OR maybe a fan made one. Some sample characters you can call up, tables you can use to make a quick one on the fly or at least spark ideas.
Dominic Kelly
BIRDBRAIN: Someone extremely adept at zero-g and/or three-dimensional orientation. May also be used to describe a good pilot. Not popular among neo-avians.
>"Nice flying, birdbrain!"
HELLFARM Massive inter-connected computational center. Enough advanced hardware to run a Seed AI, hypothetically.
>"That's when we stumbled on a hellfarm. No time to get through that shit, we just scorched it to be certain.
BOG An area-denial tactic/weapon, which involves over-saturating an area with heated gases, airborne particles and flexible cover sheets, impenetrable in multiple visual spectra, sound generators and every other imaginable, sometimes improvised method to render any attempts to navigate or scan the given space impossible.
>"Tell the commander, the whole station is a bog. Bloody ayys."
AYYS Members of Autonomist Alliance, as well as unaffiliated anarchists. Rarely, actual aliens.
Jaxon Carter
If an AGI isn't a person, then it isn't committing any crime, let alone fraud. The person who created it would be considered responsible, either directly or through negligence. At least, that's how I see it. Same deal for other legally non-person intelligences, like forks or muses.
Jaxon Brooks
I'm trying to solve the skill bloat problem. And it is a problem, don't deny it, /epg/.
How merging certain skills based on the same aptitude into one (like Climbing (SOM), Swimming (SOM) and Freerunning (SOM) into Athletics (SOM)) would work, if I lower the starting CP amount?
Elijah Fisher
I like those. I feel like 'fractally fucked' is a thing as well.
SLEEP ON IT In a time of regulated circadian rhythms and beings with no need of sleep, 'sleeping it over' means taking an extraordinary long time to decide or do something. Especially used by synthmorphs and AGIs.
Charles Lopez
...
Blake Foster
CANCER ENTHUSIAST Vocal Jovian sympathizer or person who willingly emigrates to the Republic. >"The elevator out is that way, you fucking cancer enthusiast."
FOREVER LAG The state of being there physically in some form of dead digital storage and presumably not being resleeved until the heat death of the universe >"If you ever want to try and top the IRL FPS highscore, get a good lawyer or you get forever lag."
WHO RESET THE FUCKING CALENDAR The question everyone in game is afraid to ask.
299792458 meters travelled by light per second, dank meme related to exhumans >"these days I just wanna say fuck it and take the 299792458m walk"
Brandon Torres
I like the first two, though I'm not sure I appreciate the dankness of the last one.
Evan Hill
That's actually as intended, since it's a 1488-9/11-420 kind of dank.
Owen Clark
Here's a couple more.
BOILER Martian slang for an exowomb or healing vat growing a morph for resleeving use. A BOILER ROOM is any enclosed morph house or facility. "Hitting/Going to" the Boiler Room refers to the act of stealing a morph. >"We're gonna hit the boiler room soon, get us some premium Rusters."
FACTORY A item which is relatively new, and as such hasn't been modified or broken in yet. Usually refers to hypercorp designs which still feature DRM or other IP protection. From both "Factory Reset" and "Unsatisfactory". >"Man, this body is still factory. I need to get some implants and take out the GRM."
MAJOR TOM Someone who has started drifting off into space without being appropriately anchored to a ship or hab. >"Hold on tight as we pop the airlock, you you'll be Major Tom."
PAPERCLIP A really primitive or shittly made AI, usually one which is poorly socialized. These kinds of poorly made AIs can become PAPERCLIP MAXIMIZERS. Also "CLIP" or "CLIPPY". >"Have you met that guy's muse? Such a paperclip."
Colton Anderson
>Boiler Room Isn't that "PUPPET HOUSE" already?
Leo Russell
>PUPPET HOUSE You mean a skin store?
Anthony Perry
...
Mason Cox
LAG Sleep. >"I need to lag for a while"
Luke White
Operation Spider Cup: putting a bad thing into a sample container
Landon Flores
True story, my players came up with this.
Jacob Butler
Is it a Void Spider?
William Jenkins
>If you're going to suggest something like a disembodied brain or digitized consciousness is in that machine, I have to stop you there. That sort of stuff violates the laws of physics.
It's also a fundamental truth of Eclipse Phase that not only can we digitize the consciousness, we can project it across great distances, edit it (albeit poorly) copy it, upload it into other kinds of bodies, and even store it in a space as small as a grape.
Uplifts are also a thing, corvids whose bodies and minds have been manipulated to be on par with human consciousness. Their egos can ihabit humanoid bodies, and human egos can inhabit corvid bodies.