How drastically would the setting be affected if one made it a bit more like Altered Carbon, at least in how cortical stacks and death works? In other words, many people only have a single backup and real death is still a distinct possibility if you die AND your cortical stack is destroyed. Unless you have a lot of money or rep, of course.
I kinda feel like there's no real sense of tension or drama to a EP game if immortality is guaranteed for literally everyone except for a handful of people. And I know the main source of tension in the game is cosmic horror or existential dread and yes, loss of continuity means that death is hardly a mental cakewalk, more so if you remember how you died, but there's only so much you can get done with using those.
Luke Hernandez
I mean, you can always decide to increase risk by causing situations which endanger the stack. They aren't invincible though most personnel weapons won't cause them serious harm.
Also, for players, never let them get away with a "free" backup. Unless they say they're going out to spend a couple hours backing up, if they die and their stack can't be recovered (a very real possibility), they go back to how they started the campaign.
You can keep stakes high while still keeping the original tone an intent of the game.
Daniel Campbell
>I kinda feel like there's no real sense of tension or drama to a EP game if immortality is guaranteed for literally everyone except for a handful of people. You forget that one of the fundamental elements of the setting is things worse than death. Permanent death sounds downright swell in comparison to having your stack stolen by Nine Lives, or being infected by the exsurgent virus.
Death is an outdated concept in EP. Lamenting the lack of it is a lot like complaining that you can't have an alchemist (not chemist) in your sci-fi campaign.
Luke Scott
Why'd you take back the lampblack analogy?
Joshua Perez
Getting shoved back into cold storage is death for most purposes.
Jackson Hernandez
an exurgent horror is coming to turn you into meat fractals, roll to see how you fare
Tyler Allen
>immortality is guaranteed for literally everyone except for a handful of people
But it's not. Immortality requires that someone be willing to retrieve your stack or back you up if you die, both of which are services like any other which cost credits or rep. Then to be re-instantiated you need either a body or server runtime, neither of which are free either. Bodies are the most expensive and desirable commodity in the setting. Immortality is a pipe dream for anyone without the thousands and thousands of credits or the massive popularity necessary to continually resleeve. If you're 'lucky' you might experience immortality stuck in a synth, without skin, organs, genitals or a face. You don't need to make the setting more like Altered Carbon, it already is.
