/epg/ - Eclipse Phase General

CC document if anybody has missed it

I can't say I'm that surprised, 1E is fun but it already reeked of communist strawmanning. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot and slowly dismantle what I thought was a very interesting setting it is their choice. I'll just keep playing 1E and be happy with it.

>Morphs not having aptitude mods
Boy that is some low-tier bai-
>eclipsephase.com/comment/61137#comment-61137
>I've explained this elsewhere, but aptitude modifiers required recalculation of skills when you resleeved. That was easily one of our top complaints about EP1. It slowed things down. So aptitude modifiers had to go. We still wanted to keep the concept of morphs having an impact on your capabilities, though, so that's why we introduced pools.
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And yet they have reintroduced Apt. Mods as TRAITS.

Only applies to x3 Aptitude Checks though, so you don't need to recalculate skills.

Honestly 2nd Edition seems more and more shit by the day.

* Skill condensation, which almost always results in shallower characterizations.
* No currency/money in a system that already had an extremely handwave-y approach to the acquisition of goods & services.
* Morphs do not affect aptitudes and are apparently all created equal beyond traits and abilities that will still have to be tracked anyway, in a transhumanist setting; a flat is potentially as good as a fury at a glance, on average.
* Simplified character creation (jesus fuck, how easy can something get?).
* Increased and heavy-handed politicizing by people that clearly don't even understand politics beyond "fascism = bad!".
* Oh so edgy punk androgony, going by the new art, which just comes across as pathetic.

The only good thing I've seen so far is the Pool system, but ultimately the value of it is incredibly debatable, since it's basically a Luck/Fate Point/Moxie-type system, except with multiple pools for different things, all of which have to be independently tracked.

All-in-all, it seems like a dumbing down of the game, instigated by dumb people that cannot help but to politicize everything they touch and virtue-signal so hard that they suffer anal prolapse.

Extinction, Corruption, Regression, Stagnation.

>a flat is potentially as good as a fury at a glance, on average.

Apart from the 20 more health, the intrinsic armor, the way better total pool spread even if you max Ego Flex and you can recharge your entire pool in half as much time.

>Apart from the 20 more health, the intrinsic armor, the way better total pool spread even if you max Ego Flex and you can recharge your entire pool in half as much time.

Yes, all which have to be tracked anyway, and doesn't change the fact that apparently, they are just as good at dodging things or carrying things.

There's still modifiers, but the idea of a Flat being as strong as a Fury or as smart as a Mentat is ridiculous. And that's before we even throw synthmorphs into the game, the differences of which - honestly - are already absurdly down-played in 1st Ed.

How often do people resleeve in a game, anyway? The fluff implies that it's not that damn common, that morphs are expensive, and that it's a potentially crippling and disorienting process, yet at the same time, the game keeps highlighting it as an important, integral part of the game.

I would've expected the mechanical aspects of it to be downplayed in a 2nd Ed., not that the core game would be simplified or dumbed down just to cater more to it. They seem to put a lot of emphasis on an aspect of the game that most people don't actually do that damn often and that the fluff suggests doesn't or shouldn't happen that often under normal circumstances.

Makes me wonder if they actually ever talk to anyone outside of their circlejerk.

>There's still modifiers, but the idea of a Flat being as strong as a Fury or as smart as a Mentat is ridiculous.

Don't be retarded, you fucking fascist. Everyone knows that physical or cognitive ability has nothing to do with your genetics or the social construct of race. It's 2017.

I mean, I see no reason for them to lie so when they say in the nearly 10 years EP has been around and they have collected feedback from players (including running loads of con games directly) people most frequently complain about how resleeving - which is supposed to be a cool game concept you should be experimenting with and actually using even if infrequently - is a pain in the ass to do quickly (especially considering it's the respawn mechanic when you die) and easily, especially if you're some kind of dead-tree pleb.

I'd say feel free to tell them you don't think it's an issue but since, y'know, the KS is nearly over and they've been working on 2E for a while I'd say those of us who didn't really notice are outvoted.

Unless you want to claim you're such a unique and special snowflake that PS has to cater the game specifically to your wants and needs over 2100 backers at least who are excited for the new stuff.

On the subject of morph bonuses vs pools, I think this might just be like a paradigm thing?

To people familiar with 1E, there's a clear advantage of the Fury over the Flat besides just the higher DUR and even the higher aptitude cap (which I believe is also done away with because it hardly mattered due to implants), you can see that due to the aptitude bonuses, a Fury will always accel over a Flat in certain areas assuming they have the same level of training and basic talent.

With the morph pools - this is technically still correct. You can apply those pools into normal bonuses/effects as well as special ones, and because the Fury has more of them in a broader spread, this means that they can outspend a Flat 1v1 and will thus assuredly be "better" until the pools are exhausted and then the Fury can recharge quicker. Obviously this must be tracked in the moment, but morph bonuses need to be tracked and math'd too.

However, because the resource can now be expended, it's theoretically possible for a clever Flat to bide their time and resources and overcome an exhausted high-caliber morph with their more flexible advantages (though obviously, without ego Flex you're not going to get far so in a combat situation anyway the Fury can probably win via attrition) - which you think people would like given the usual levels of jovian shitposting.

I-I just need to see this system in action in order to understand how it FEELS. But fuck me for living in no-game land.

What's interesting to me is that the Ultimates are frequently compared to Nietzche's Übermensch by the community, and even in some of the EP books. And yet, the Übermensch is supposed to reject asceticism/other-worldiness, and be satisfied with this world and this life. The Nazis co-opted the terminology, but anyone who's actually read Nietzche knows that the ideology of the Übermensch is fundamentally incompatible with notions of racial superiority; the Übermensch is a mindset, not a race.

In EP terms, an Übermensch would have more in common with the Scum than the Ultimates.

>Übermensch is fundamentally incompatible with notions of racial superiority; the Übermensch is a mindset, not a race.

Some mindsets are more common in some genetic groups. From kin selection to IQ, biology is...diverse.

That's what's beautiful about humanity.

>Discuss Posthuman's recent decision to drop Ultimates; "we pushed them more in the fascist/x-threat direction, and we don't want to be encouraging people to play fascists."
Ultimates were basically biocon exhumans anyway, as paradoxical as that may sound.

That might be a more acceptable way to turn Ultimates into X-risks.
Have a sect of Ults go full exhuman and decide that the Ubermensch can be made real and work on making the "Perfect" morph. Then they start work on the "Perfect" ego and Firewall becomes concerned.
Eventually they decide that this is an X-risk in the making. And so out the Ult's secret project, making sure to salt it with just enough lies to make it sound more dangerous than it is.
And so Ultimates are pursued by a witch-hunt to the point where they stop trying to explain themselves and commit themselves to the Ubermensch concept.

The Firewall fuckers who started this justify it as popping the boil before it festers.

Does this sound reasonable or autistic?

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Autistic, because the Übermensch describes a philosophy not a physical being.

Okay, let me rephrase that.
Do you think this is something PS would implement?

I'm fucking drunk right now but it makes sense to me. Always was kind of disappointed how EP portrays exhumans as goofy Star Trek monsters.

Portraying Ultimates as more of an x-threat and less of a character option makes sense too and I'd be more into it if EP was done by a different studio.

Probably, because it only makes sense if you've never read Nietzche and the dev clearly have not.

It's bait, you mongoloid.

So, here's something not being discussed a lot - sure Ultimates aren't an "official" player faction but that's also super meaningless now. Faction merely gives you a motivation and some Knowledge skill points, and you can even choose to have no factional allegiance.

>the ideology of the Übermensch is fundamentally incompatible with notions of racial superiority; the Übermensch is a mindset, not a race.

This is not true in the least, however; in simplest terms, the idea of biological superiority is analogous to the idea of spiritual superiority. In essence, the creation of physical Übermensch to match the philosophical Übermensch.

That said, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of national socialism to claim that national socialism was fundamentally about the belief of a pre-existing Übermensch (exemplified by germans/"aryans").

To think that ideologically aware intellectuals and philosophers within the national socialist movement and within fascism would not understand Nietzsche and the concept of Übermensch is absurd.

The idea of the Übermensch as used by national socialist thinkers was very much a philosophical one, applied to the ideology and the volk; eugenically, physically, the ideal was never pre-existing, but an ongoing process towards greater forms by means of evolutionary principles.

Autistic, because it goes against what we already know about the Ultimates, and moving the narrative forward in this setting just to make an established faction bad guys makes no sense.

There is no inherent reason why the Ultimates should be made into boogeymen. Your suggestion hinges on the value of making the Ultimates into NPC:s on principle, but in your suggestion, you've also removed the fundamental reasons the developers think that they shouldn't be playable - because they're "fascists".

Your idea is a post-hoc rationalization of something that shouldn't happen in the first place based on things as they are.

>it only makes sense if you've never read Nietzche and the dev clearly have not.

I doubt that the developers have actually read any philosophical or political literature outside of marxist-leninist ideology. They've proved this countless times.

Let's not forget that the Jovian Republic is somehow "fascist", yet have no elements of corporativism, has a limited democracy á la Starship Troopers (citizenship for those that serve), and yet is controlled by lobbyism.

Like, it could be an interesting faction just on the basis of Starship Troopers alone, but they seem to just have watched the movie and disregarded the whole thing as fascist, and then thrown "everything I don't like about America" in there.

It's jarringly ignorant and inconsistent, really.

It's not so much that it matters - people that want to play Ultimates will continue to do so, rules or no rules - but it's telling that despite the obviousness of this and how the choice of faction now matters even less, they choose to remove the choice altogether, on political grounds.

God knows what they'll do to the writing, honestly. Ultimates rape babies when?

Biocon & ultimate vs anarchist and exhuman is seeing through a glass darkly, IMO.

The question in software format is formal verification vs bricolage; slow perfection vs fast utility and the risk of bugs.

If the devs could think that way instead of straw-nazi expies...

Jovians are still selectable and Ultimates are not.

Well, Exhumans and Singularity Seekers were included as explicit "factions" in Transhuman but are lost in 2E (several things are actually). Those are definitely an antagonist group - if perhaps the intent is more clearly that the Ultimates are not a positive force for transhumanity and should not be regarded as such in the default game setting than pulling them from the suggestion list is fine. This is a fluff concern which we can't really comment on now.

> if perhaps the intent is more clearly that the Ultimates are not a positive force for transhumanity and should not be regarded as such in the default game setting than pulling them from the suggestion list is fine.

Except we know that's not the intent. The intent was clearly stated in no-nonsense terms. Ultimates are not available because they don't want to encourage people to play fascists.

To the developers, it is more of a problem that someone wants to play something "fascist" than it is to play someone that's a literal extinction risk.

Death of the Author. What they say they mean is pointless unless that's conveyed in the the text.

Are you saying that, to the thinkers of the national socialist movement, the ubermensch and the master race were separate things?

>gets rid of one of the most interesting factions because "hurr fashies"
2nd edition is gonna suck isn't it?

It sounds like a whole lot of two steps forward, one step back to me.

I know I'm glad I'm not putting any money into it though.

>all these faggots triggered by the Ultimates

>Are you saying that, to the thinkers of the national socialist movement, the ubermensch and the master race were separate things?

Yes. But more importantly, you've probably misunderstood the concept of "master race" as well.

The terms in German would be "Übermensch" and "Herrenvolk". But "Herrenvolk" didn't refer to the concept of a pre-existing, present "master race", but rather the idea of rulership of one's own nation and country, in the same manner similar terms were used for someone whose house you were visiting.

Such as in Germany, Germans were the Herrenvolk. The conflation with race and volk or people was a common one in those days, in the same way the "British race" could easily be referenced by many British, despite being fundamentally similar to other Europeans. Hitler even references this in his testament, where he writes on "race" as a convenient phrase of the time rather than an intent of scientific accuracy.

The rest can largely be attributed to wartime and post-war propaganda relating the concepts to race (rather than volk) and supreme rulership of all things (claiming that the Germans wanted world domination, which is absurd, no matter who you blame the war on).

And either way, to suggest that some of the most intelligent people in Germany, large parts of German academia, and prominent political philosophers would somehow "misunderstand" Nietzsche regarding the meaning of his philosophies and the ideals of the Übermensch is absolutely preposterous, and if they sought to deliberately co-opt it, one must ask oneself why one would seek to do that, when those that knew and understood the term would challenge any such co-opting, while those with no knowledge of the term would simply not care.

>the devs are among them
Why'd they even make them like that if they didn't like it?

>It sounds like a whole lot of two steps forward, one step back to me.

Haven't really seen any steps forward. Looks more like four steps back, no steps forward, honestly. Very little worthwile seems to be done.

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Because in their minds, they need to have them, because if it was only anarchists in the setting, it would be literal utopia.

A few hundred said something negative. The thousands stayed silent. This is because the thousands were fine. By changing things to cater to the few it alienates the many.

>if they sought to deliberately co-opt it, one must ask oneself why one would seek to do that, when those that knew and understood the term would challenge any such co-opting
But user, this is exactly what happened.

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for real though, where have people been this whole time? were you just ignoring who made this game? because they have always been like this.

If you're that ass-blasted, just don't buy the books at all and play it, or just keep playing your version of the game where you do whatever the fuck you want.

And already back then, such claims were absurd. We're not talking about a small group of nazis here, we're talking about a huge movement even within academia, in an age where people took a huge interest in politics and philosophy, and Nietzsche was practically a household name.

National socialist thinkers misunderstanding the term is ridiculous, because not only were many leaders far above average in intelligence, but many national socialists and politicals were extremely well-educated, and co-opting the term for the term in itself would be of literally zero value.

That being said, as stated earlier, there were absolutely people that saw a biological analogue to the philosophical Übermensch, and within national socialist philosophy, the imperative of self-improvement not only as an individual but as a volk could easily be considered a physical "overcoming" of the "self" (the volk).

But the distinction would've been clear to anyone that took an interest in such discussions.

I was giving them credit for trying to make resleeving less of a pain. Not that they're showing a great plan for that...

>it's absurd to say the terminology was co-opted. why didn't anyone call it out?
But they did.
>yeah and it was absurd

To further reinforce your point, this tweet is from 2014 nearly 3 years ago.

>why didn't anyone call it out?

Nice strawmanning there.

I'm not seeing a many here bro, vs the amount of backers (which included retailers who obviously think this product is marketable).

History is made by those who show up.

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Ok guys, i just went through rolling up a character with the new play test and I have a couple questions.
1) Assuming it isnt the same as first ed, what is Moxie now and also what is Vigor, Flex and Insight.
2) Am I reading this right or do I not get a muse as an explorer? I thought everyone had those, even the Jovians.

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Transhuman Space is better anyway.

Thank you kindly friend. Seems I was missing half of it.

THS is great, but its a little out of date and the writing is dryer than your girlfriend's pussy. The books give you a ton of info about the world but it's not quite as obviously "adventure ready" as EP. Blending the two together would probably lead to good results. Maybe throw in some Infinity or something

Last year my FLGS had pretty much all the THS books for sale in their used section. I could only afford the corebook and High Frontier, which saddens me to this day.

>The books give you a ton of info about the world but it's not quite as obviously "adventure ready" as EP
I'm not too familiar with GURPs, but that seems their thing, right? Tons of tools and raw material but its up to you to figure out what to make with it.

And updated THS would be amazing though. Transhuman roleplaying without weirdly overt poltical shit getting in the way...

Strictly speaking bots can't attack without modified AI, because they can't default on their blades/clubs/etc. That's really restrictive though.

Does anyone find it kinda funny the Dreadnought in X-Risks is holding a bolt-action rifle?

Anyway - does anyone have a full list of what SkyArk "revives"?

>Ultimates aren't PCs now

That's pretty dumb. especially since in the earlier books a lot of them are just mercenaries and only one faction/core dudes have plans to remake the whole system. That being said it's just badwrongfun nothing to stop you from playing as an ultimate. And some of them definitely are building towards some kind of "seize the gates race war now!" so they've been an x-risk for awhile. Definitely a pinko myself but I've always liked that they included player options for exhumans, Jovians, ultimates etc.

Your faction is literally just an interest skill at 30 and a motivation. Even if they aren't on the list it takes maybe 10 seconds to come up with an Ultimate Faction.
I'm pretty sure bolt action rifles don't usually have a box magazine, but I bet there's a horrible abortion of the gun someone made to prove me wrong.

>we don't want to be encouraging people to play fascists
Why not? It's a game. Hell, you might even learn something about how people come to favor fascism.

That said, Battacharya really didn't seem like he had much direct power previously.

>anarcho-communist devs
>Marxist-Leninist

Bakunin would like some words with you

>It takes maybe 10 seconds

Good to know should be pretty easy to homebrew factions including some of the obscure ones. I'm also quite surprised that people on Veeky Forums would overreact about something

>I'm pretty sure bolt action rifles don't usually have a box magazine
What are you talking about?

I mean something like the big 500 round box that's apparently hanging off the side of the "rifle" the dreadnought has

Are we looking at the same dreadnought? That's maybe a 20 round magazine and there's no indication that the gun has a bolt action.

You can also chose not to pick a faction and either pick during play - or just be factionless and get free Knowledge skill points in something, y'know, relevant.

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Because if you knew why people became fascists, you might become a fascist yourself.

>I'm not seeing a many here bro, vs the amount of backers (which included retailers who obviously think this product is marketable).

Eclipse Phase 2nd Edition is the second edition of a game that's already been established for close to 10 years, and it's got 14 hours left to go on Kickstarter, with just below 2300 backers.

Even Numenera and the Cypher System, games that are also pretty much dead in the water relative to many other RPG:s, who also have troubles keeping threads alive, let alone generals, with tons of dead forums dedicated to them, have gotten consistently a higher amount of backers over a lot more Kickstarters (which leads to backer fatigue).

There's a huge difference between the people that can consider backing a potential product and the number of people that invest time and effort into actually complaining. Most people just shrug and move on.

It's not like the people that have no interest or that has already been sufficiently put off by the product are going to bother "showing up". You can not, by the very nature of a negative, gauge how many could've considered backing but said "Nah, fuck 'em".

Is it "marketable"? Yes, sure, it is. They're not going to die, they're not going to starve, I'm sure. But could Eclipse Phase both be a better product and simultaneously appeal to more people? Yes, it absolutely could. They needlessly and ignorantly sabotage what could be a truly unique setting and system that fills a niche no other system really does, simply because they are ideologically myopic.

>History is made by those who show up.

Platitudes. The point, if anything, is that a lot of people aren't going to bother showing up.

Anyone that has the latest version of Singularity? I haven't played in a long time and I lost it.

>Ultimates are fascists

I don't even understand. They barely have a system of internal governance beyond basic meritocracy or military hierarchy.

Also, I'm salty as fuck about this. I love the overall philosophy of the Ultimates and their design/inspiration. Not to mention all they would have had to do was make it more clear that Overhumanists are a minority within the faction.

This is dogshit, confusing dogshit to boot because it's not like it's gonna stop anyone from playing them.

It actually does kinda look like a silly little robot arm is operating the action of the gun, but I don't think it's supposed to be bolt action at all.

>Even Numenera and ... who also have troubles keeping threads alive

EP's threads are quite strong. There is almost always an /epg/ alive. Nothing like Numenara. If anything it's deader now with the kickstarter going.

What are some good Motivations for a curious AGI that's working as a Firewall assistant? I'm primarily going to be a small floating drone based on the Rover synthmorph chassis, like a hovering BB-8, scanning things, built-in flashlights, a 3D-display; you all know the type.

I've already jotted down "Discovery", but I'm having trouble coming up with more. "Helpfulness" just feels odd as a motivation, somehow, like writing down "Not being an ass to party-members".

I'd upload a picture but I Veeky Forums is shitting on me today for some reason, failing all uploads.

It's doing the same for pretty much everyone it seems.

Helpfulness isn't so bad, especially if it's more of a general thing. It struggles to not be friendly and helpful to people even if it knows it shouldn't be.

>basic meritocracy
>military hierarchy

user, we're talking about people that have the general political understanding of rocks, and whose idea of civil discourse consists of assaulting people for disagreeing with them.

Those two things are easily enough for them to label something fascist.

Why is military hierarchy not sufficient for fascism? Many fascist governments have been military states.

I would argue that, at least in first edition, Ultimates aren't as a rule part of a military hierarchy, outside of perhaps their local mercenary group.

+Mercurialism or whatever you want to call AGI rights would certainly fit. +Open Source would be another good one.

Basic was also meant to be attached to military hierarchy. They've got squads, and squad leaders, then some officer types that those leaders report to, and finally generals.

They're honestly structured like a school as much as they are a military. They're as fascistic as any loose group of militant individuals. Which is to say, not particularly.

>Why is military hierarchy not sufficient for fascism?

Because fascism is much more than a military hierarchy. Fascism doesn't even necessitate a military hierarchy of any kind, and fascism often espouse militaristic values and clear social hierarchies, but aren't organized in a military fashion at all (outside of the military, obviously).

If you want to get technical, no fascist government has been a military state. Military states are states that are controlled by the military, while fascism is a system of social, political and economical organization. If the military on it's own accord was just to rule through threat of violence, you have base despotism, not fascism.

I noticed that several sample player characters basically has organizations as their motivations, so I'm thinking +Discovery, +Firewall, -Violence.

>I noticed that several sample player characters basically has organizations as their motivations

Yeah, that's the Faction rule right now. You get a motivation and Interest: [Faction] 30.

>Because fascism is much more than a military hierarchy
No shit but you acted like you need more governance than that in order to be fascist.

I'm putting more thought into what's been said here and I need some feedback on how comprehensible it sounds.
Exhumans fall into the category of X-Risks not because of their morphs, but because of their Egos. Give me a chance to explain.
Exhumans are transhumans who no longer consider themselves human. Previously this condition was limited to psychopaths and people who underwent extreme isolatory stresses. Events which caused them to view themselves as separate from other "people".
If Earth still existed, if humanity was not spread so thinly across the void, then the Exhumans could be allowed to exist. They could be given a patch of land and allowed to be, as long as they did not infringe upon the rest of humanity.
But if humanity is to survive it must remain united. Threats which serve only to divide and turn humanity upon itself must be removed.

And as I explained, you do. Fascism is a system of social, political and economical organization. If all you've got is a military hierarchy, it cannot be fascist.

At the very least you need elements of meritocracy, integralism and corporativism. I can go so far as to give some leeway in the interpretation of that (national syndicalism comes to mind, technocracy, etc.) but you cannot have fascism through military despotism.

>Yeah, that's the Faction rule right now. You get a motivation and Interest: [Faction] 30.

What? You don't get Motivations through anything, you come up with your own.

>Each choice provides a motivation (p. XX) and a Knowledge skill of Interest: [Faction] 30.