Eclipse Phase General /epg/

throw my saucer at it to get a better look.

Report this to the organizations on the other side, make a backup of everyone I give a shit about on this mission.

Start poking it with a very long and thin stick.

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So is it true Stellar Intelligence is comprised of infomorphs? It says they're a virtual collective in the core book.

How do you guys use the Factors in your games?

I don't really. I think their inclusion is kind of pointless and much prefer to express the "alienness" with weird things through morphological freedom like exhumans and scum.

You are looking for Blue Planet

I doubt there are enough drawfriends around that even know about EP for that to happen...

You need Japanese for that. Most other people are not crazy enough to do EP justice.

Haven't yet, and I don't think I will be anytime soon - if I was to include them, it'd likely be as something that two different factions are squabbling over (some captured Factor, or some hybrid-tech stuff, or what-have-you) that looks likely to escalate into "send in the player characters" territory in order to sort stuff out. It still probably wouldn't feature Factor stuff too heavily, just acting as the catalyst to set other things in motion.

If the players started to show a serious interest in the Factors-as-mcguffin, then it could naturally expand into being more directly involved with them - if they weigh in on one side or the other in that plot seed, then it'd serve as a good way in for them if that's the way they wanted to go. If nobody in the group expresses much of an interest in them, it can just stay as the mcguffin.

Have you thought about *not* having a macguffin?

At the beginning of campaigns, they're pretty useful - Eclipse Phase as a setting is presented as something of a status quo, and having some particular thing occur to threaten it gives a bit of structure to the opening of the campaign. Usually, in my experience, player character decisions and actions become the thing that drives the plot forwards, but games - again, this is just my experience - seem to run more smoothly when there is an initial thing that spurs them into that first bit of action.

It might just be my group, of course, but asking:
>What do you want to do?
Doesn't get good answers, compared to asking:
>What do you want to do about this?

What happens when a group of Gatecrashers find a habitable world with no spooky downsides?

That's not what a macguffin is

Fair enough, please forgive my misuse of the word then. Out of curiousity, is there a term for a plot object that spurs non-player characters (or groups of them) into action and conflict, such that the players could get involved?

Macguffin is specifically a poorly explained plot object. If you have an item with good stakes, powers and consequences eg "this is a Factor who was captured. If we let him phone home he will blow up Mercury" is much less of a macguffin than "Guys bad dudes have totally stolen the Tessaract! With that much power they could do... um... bad stuff!"

Well in general it's a plot device. MacGuffins are plot devices characterized by being inactive objects that everyone is trying to acquire and replacing it with a different object wouldn't matter.

Without knowing more about how you intend to use this Factor, I don't think I can give a more specific term.

I'll add that the use of MacGuffins isn't necessarily bad, particularly in side plots. For instance, if you are stealing a valuable object to gain someone's trust, it may not much matter whether it's a set of data on a hupercorp's planned business strategy or a priceless pre-fall artifact. And that's okay. The players only have so much attention to spare anyway. But when you try to build a whole campaign around something like that though it tends to not be very engaging.

The vague thing I was trying to get at was more that the Factor itself wouldn't be the thing of interest, but rather the thing that causes other groups to start moving against one another - if the players began to show interest in the actual Factor stuff itself, then it'd get fleshed out to become more of a thing, but otherwise the thing that the players would be interacting with are the two groups vying for control over (or access to) the not!mcguffin.

So in that regards, it feels a bit like a mcguffin - the Factor-stuff moves various NPC groups into conflicts, the players move in to stop it. The Factor-stuff could equally be any of the other mysterious and weird shit in Eclipse Phase that people would come to blows other, it's only Factor-stuff because it's a way of testing the waters as to whether or not it's the sort of stuff that my players would be interested in. If they express an interest in the source of the conflict, that can get fleshed out more, if they're only interested in resolving the conflict, then it can remain a bit more nebulous.

You mean it's a puppetmaster?

...

...

It turns into a battleground as rival factions compete over who gets to settle it.

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Factors are stupid as fuck. If they're more advanced than transhumanity then they should be outfitting themselves into kickass morphs, not these retarded colonial bodies.

They must be the Amish of space.

Well, tech kills in EP. Factors say no Gates, no AI.

Amish say no computers, no cars.

...

Amish buy cars and then have a chauffeur drive them around. Therefore, AI would totally be okay. Also, they have phones, but they have to make it inconvenient to use them. They probably allow them nominally for emergency usage, but some take business calls.

t. someone who goes to Lancaster all the time to visit family

>kickass morphs
They don't seem to use morphs like thanshumanity. So not only are AI:s, gates, infomorphs and so on off the table, but they likely do even have biomorphs like transhumanity.

It's more like transhumanity are the unproductive and self-destructive anarkiddies of space.

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So the Factors are ass-backwards Luddites, in other words.

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>Factor morphs are so shitty
>They only usually dramatically outperform transhuman morphs in most ways

...

reminder that factors are nothing more than a race of opportunistic scavengers who stole all their ships and tech and are here to sell humanity some beads before disappearing into the void

What could transhumanity have that the factors would want?

They want to see if we have anything cool we do. They seem to like some of our art.

I'm sure releasing the TITANS into the universe may raise a few eyebrows.

How strange do you like your Hazers morphs? I like them almost elfin in appearance.

So say if I was in a game with someone who's character was sleeved into a neo-octopus and they wanted to fuck my character who is sleeved into an exalt.
How the hell does this work?

Tentacle hentai.

/epg/ how does this sound for a settup for a story?

Going with the default assumption that they are all Firewall Agents.

Theyare being deployed to a Jovian habitat to search for a TITAN originating decryption program that Firewall believes the Jovian security council is close to reconstructing from some artifact.

Their full mission is to find the artifact and destroy it, while transmitting to Firewall the research documents relating to the project.

They are being injected to the habitat under the pretence of being there to do upgrades and maintenance on a Firewall front business in the form of a fast food franchise on Hyoden (a more permissive Jovian hab that will actually permit you to come in if you are not in a natural body). The location has a nanofaber machine for manufacturing mission equiptment and a quantum bridge for exfiltrating the mission data. These are both illegal, so caution should be taken to avoid bringing attention to the location.

Hyoden was probably chosen for the research because it is nigh impossible for an enemy to rapidly capture and occupy (Jovian Citizenship requires passing a Starship Troopers like military service requirement, and Hyoden demands a further 6 years to gain the right to reproduction or consciousness forking) but it is far enough from the core habs to ensure the artifact won't take out the heart of Republic.

They don't know exactly where the research is being done, so they will need to either work with criminal elements to get information or infiltrate the Jovian bureaucracy enough to track down the facility.

Sorry I forgot to mention the octopus is female and the exalt is male.

Tentacle. Porn.

Tentacles up the butt.

Maybe tentacle hand job.

Not sure if octopus mouth works for blowjobs, but if so then maybe that.

How spelled out do you need this to be?

Do neo-octopus still have beaks or do they have human like mouths?

How does the octopus get pleasure out of that though?

I don't know!

The octopus wants to do it, maybe she gets off on giving out handy's or being up butts.

Some people have weird kinks.

Hyoden isn't a part of the Jovian Republic, they're an independent city-state aligned most closely with Titan.

Europa is a better choice if you want cosmopolitan Jovian space, as it's semi-independent but still a part of the JR.

Thanks, I have a prospective PC who thinks the spacewhales are super cool so her character being sent to Europa would make some sense in case the lab is actually hidden in the vast European seascape.

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Are there any narrative books set on this setting?
Altered carbon and Blindsight were fine but not Eclipse phase enough for me.

A Time of Eclipse, Lack, Melt, An Infinite Horizon, El Destino Verde Pt. 1, Into the White, Interference, and After the Fall are all the EP fiction I've got. Some of them are from the books (Lack is from the core book, etc.).

thnks brah

Hyoden is not part of the Republic

Beaks. They speak through the siphon.

Europa is not part of the Republic either.

>When you're big on F-net, you can do anything you want, they'll let you do anything
>Grab em by the siphon!

Hey, /epg/, do you think it's possible to have a 'fame merc' as a character type? A glitterati who's a hardened-but-sexy survivor of the fall who joined up with a militia down there during the Fall; but who had previously been, I dunno, a pro gamer or something. Survived the fall, missed the fame, but liked the rush of combat; decided to go mercenary and started streaming their jobs live to anyone who wanted to tune in to their audience in between going back to futuretwitch gamestreaming. What other factions would such a character likely have rep with, assuming their are, factionally, Glitterati?

Sounds like a cool idea, I know I'd watch mercenary live streams, but not practical. Especially when you're required to have a subtlety. Then there's the boring mercenary work (Most of it probably) like standing guard or waiting a kilometer away with a sniper rifle JUST IN CASE something goes wrong. You can always livestream yourself playing survival horror Sims, or record XPs in a quarantine zone, though that's dangerous, stupid, and will make your muse have a shit fit.

Well, presumably they aren't livestreaming all the time when it's boring work (or subtle work, but one gets the feeling this character would have a preferance for less-subtle work. Gets more futuretwitch views); presumably they'd turn streaming on either at massive viewer request during boring stuff or when the action starts to happen.

Besides, this is the Glitterati we're talking about here. Practical is another word for boring, and boring is another way to say you don't matter.

You could always record it, edit out the boring parts and post it a few days later.

That doesn't really have the same viewer thrill as full on livestreams, I think; though they'd probably do that too.

I could see a mercenary hypercorp using them as PR, although there is the problem of them potentially coming across something sensitive during an op.

The problem with livestreaming a battle is that they're giving off constant radio signals. Even if the feed is encrypted, it still makes them stand out to the enemy's SIGINT guys. Also, anyone who does find the stream can exploit stream sniping to gain the upper hand in a fight.

That arguably just makes it better; again, they're glitterati, not hypercorp (the two have a great amount of overlap, but are not entirely overlapping).

What's a better way to show off how SKILLED AND GOOD you are by letting hte people you're up against try to stream snipe your shit just to fuck them up anyway, with a resounding cry of 'GIT GUD FAGGOTS'? It's like the ultimate self imposed video game challenge.

Insert false orders and other trickery into the stream

>although there is the problem of them potentially coming across something sensitive during an op
Something like a basilisk, maybe?

Good points. Maybe vary the stream delay at random intervals so they never have exact knowledge of what's going on, just a vague idea of your position.

Well there's a quick and dirty way to mass-produce YGBM sleepers.

Combat situations aren't exactly something that are distributed publicly without heavy censoring though, and it's been like that since 'nam. Depending on the mercenary work it could be something as simple as repoing some deadbeat's biomorph or going on black ops in a proxy war. Guess which one of those two would get you killed.

Either could, depending; but this is a new world, you know? Eclipse phase's setting isn't the modern day, and a lot of modern day squeamish bits don't really apply anymore.

So on the topic of OC, what kind of sports would the Factors play? They briefly talked about some kind of week long game of acquiring positions on a field while competing against one or more colonies. But doesn't detail it.

Personally I imagine it to be like Chinese checkers, but maybe the goal isn't to get to the other side of the field. The fact that it takes so long means it probably isn't fast paced, but slow and purposeful. Considering how the Factors can neither see or hear means that it would involve a lot of probing like a game of mine sweeper or battleship.

Yes it does. That's why warbots on mars strapped a bunch of live, screaming civilians to their frame. It's bad for enemy moral. Besides, the whole point of a proxy war is that nothing can be traced back to you. On top of that, providing you're enemy with a live feed of a battle isn't exactly tactically sound.

Well, for starters, I think X-Risks says they can comprehend and appreciate Table Tennis and other similar sports.

Who told you Factors can't hear?

>On top of that, providing you're enemy with a live feed of a battle isn't exactly tactically sound.

>start streaming our running battle with exhumans, somewhere on the martian surface
>3000 viewers
>build up some hype as squad leader gives speech before we make the final push into their base
>muse handling user chat, sets up bet where users can win month of subscription if they guess the number of exhumans the streamer bags
>7498 viewers as @LunaHUNTER's stream goes offline and viewers switch over
>name-drop Prosperity Group subdivision; credits deposited to the account for cross-promotion
>8519 viewers - squad leader has finished outlining plan, get a dramatic sweep of the martian outback and entrance to underground facility
>squadmate in front drops to the ground, gaping hole in head
>drop to the ground just as sergeant gets popped
>user chat goes fucking insane speculating direction of the attack
>fucking stream sniped
>still, 239 new subscribers!

And that's what matters!

>player takes phobia as a drawback
>it's kangaroos
>not even morph type, specifically kangaroos
>force him to change it because it's retarded and is the same as taking "Enemy: US president" in a GURPS Fantasy game
>hands in the sheet with the biggest shit eating grin
>phobia: sharks

I should've just torn his sheet to pieces and pointed to the door. I'm not sure why I didn't do that, it only got worse from there.

Still looking for people to sign up for my roll20 campaign. Character Creation is the week before thanksgiving, First Game is the week after.

app.roll20.net/forum/post/4230802/introductions#post-4234570

No, you should have had him get gang-raped by kangaroos in simulspace.

that sucks, but i've never heard that thing about taking the president as an enemy in GURPS. Whats the precedent? Seems like the president would be a powerful enemy.

my god, thats so fucking atavistic, I love it!

Whose to say the whole battle isn't staged, like in the movie Gamer?

There is no President in a fantasy setting.

Oh. Well you said GURPS, not GURPS fantasy. But I agree, this asshat isn't even being clever.

I said GURPS Fantasy.

oh. so you did.
my bad.

the week after Thankgiving, that is. Not the week after character creation.

That's when you start dropping these on him.

No, I agree with him, if someone is being a passive aggressive asshole you don't up your game by being an even bigger shitlord, you fucking drop his ass.