Eclipse Phase

It will be taking out two of the most popular playable factions in the game:
>The bio-conservative Jovian Junta which is the only group in the game that still describes themselves as "humanity" rather than "transhumanity" and is considered a bunch of backwards hicks as a result. Doesn't stop them having one of the best militaries in the solar system.
>The Ultimates, individualistic fascists that adhere to eugenics and social darwinism. They dedicate themselves to perfection, seeking to obtain the perfect form for themselves. The strong rise, the weak fall, etc. Known for being as militant as they are mercenary.

It's not finished yet, and a lot of what is known is unpopular. The flaws have already been picked apart (not that the devs care what Veeky Forums thinks), and now the wait for the final damage report has set in.

What? The jovians are out too? Why?

Like the Ultimates, they indulge in and encourage right-wing and conservative ideals.

Cravers are cool.

That's just bad gming though. The game shouldn't be set up so super hackers are jacking into every system with no opposition.

Every non public system should have at least one AI doing weekly cybersecurity checkups.

Important targets should have at least 3 infomorph hackers watching who logs onto the public spimes in the area and feeding false images into them.

Corp networks will be airgapped and only accessible on premesis. Very important networks will be behind physical security and only accessible via wired connection.

This works the other way too. The players shouldn't just try to murder someone and get away with it. They now need to upload out that body, scrub or alter the morph brokerages sale info to peg that dna to someone else then escape jurisdiction before the police research division figures out what happened (which they should),

Its more complicated and a pain as a gm to do this stuff but if you're playing exactly the setting in the book it's the way to handle it.

Dayum, I've never seen Cravers looking so slick before. It's like these are the bleeding edge fighter craft to the piles of scrap and muscles, or 10-year-old diggers pic related resembles.

They are Craver Primes. They get an upgrade with a choice at the end of their faction quest.

Link? I've seen their reply regarding the Ultimates removal, but they're really getting on Antifa level craziness now.

I still don't understand how the Ultimates are fascists.

They abhor weakness so much that they consider it right to kill those deemed too weak.

I know, right?

Cravers are fukken' sick. I never did go with the upgrade option, though. It felt so much better to throw off the shackles of the Endless and forge a new future. Mind you, a future fed with the corpses of non-cravers, but a new future nonetheless.

Is it possible to stat a Craver as a morph in Eclipse Phase?

First of all, due to how nebulous and difficult it is to pin down an exact definition, how do you define fascism?

Then we'll go from there.

>It will be taking out two of the most popular playable factions in the game
What?
>What? The jovians are out too? Why?
What?
>Like the Ultimates, they indulge in and encourage right-wing and conservative ideals.
What?
>I've seen their reply regarding the Ultimates removal
Ok. Someone fill me in. They made stupidly the Jovians a joke faction But this is a bit unbelievable.

It is possible, but will it be accurate?

So do AnCaps.

I'm just interested in seeing what one of those buggy bio-mechanical bastards would look like in EP. I'm not familiar enough with the system to throw it together, sadly.

>Ok. Someone fill me in. They made stupidly the Jovians a joke faction But this is a bit unbelievable.
"Ultimates have indeed been dropped as a PC faction. As you noted, we pushed them more in the fascist/x-threat direction, and we don't want to be encouraging people to play fascists."
eclipsephase.com/comment/61134#comment-61134

Nah, we just believe that no one should be forced to care for them.

>fascism is literally a threat to the existence of humanity
lmao

Transhuman has morph generation rules, though I haven't looked into them too closely.

Thanks, user. I'm about to get hit with Midterms next week, so I'll get down to business on checking that out afterwards.

Hahahahahaha, fucking shit.
Dude, progs really ruin everything. And I really like this game.
They are like a sect, no fun allowed.
The new puritans.

Is there anywhere to download the rulebooks? I looked through the pdf archives and didn't find them

Heed this man's advice

If omnipotent hacking can be canceled out by omnipotent surveilliance you haven't created anything interesting, you've just taken Delta Green and eaten up 30 minutes of table time while the hacker rolls dice and the rest of the group sits around with their dicks in their hands

>playing exactly the setting in the book

Pic extremely related

Go to the dev's blog. It's all there, I don't know how you could have missed it.

That has nothing to do with Fascism. Fascism is a political system, and the Ultimates barely have any system of governance besides "listen to the guy immediately above you because he's smarter than you".

I might be retarded, but every link I find takes me to Amazon, and the blog has 84ish pages of unrelated nonsense

The interesting part is in the margins.

When a hacker has to be infiltrated through the roof by beefy military commandos in order to access the off the grid mainframe that's fun

When the player party figures out they can get rid of the network security specialist by faking calls from the hospital about his daughter that's interesting.

When a hacker team has to prepare and pull off regular and clever timing attacks to beat the security sweeps all while pretending they find the neo aristocrats very interesting that has the potential for a great time.

If you just play the Roll to defeat firewall, roll to backdoor gameplay that pervades 90% of groups then of course it's going to be shit, because you're actively going out of your way to run the hacking in a shit way. It's already obvious that the system lets someone with sufficient time hack anything so why are you even spending the "30 minutes of table time" representing it instead of saying "yes, you take the time to do that" for such trivial bullshit.

>while the hacker rolls dice
>Having a dedicated hacker
It's incredibly easy in this system to take basic security skills so you can be involved. The startup cost to be useful and involved is 40 cp, and exploit software. Add a tac net or a bit of mental speed and the players can all metagame together and enjoy the section as a group. What the fuck are your players building that they can't or won't put a few points aside so they can always be involved in the game.

Literally first google result for Eclipse Phase PDFs

robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/

Enjoy

>robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/
I am not a smart man

>why aren't the players investing points so they can participate in the shittiest, least interesting part of the game

Think you just answered your own question famulimus

it died cause of second edition is shit! SHIIIIIIT!!!!!!!!!

This is wrong

/epg/ was dead long before 2nd Edition was even announced

Just as an aside, didn't the Ultimates used to be more inclined to use really posthuman technologies but scaled back after the Fall? At least in terms of morphs.

Virgin detected

I'd be a posthuman if all the technology around it wasn't absolutely bushleague. Currently your main options are a) turning into a brain with schizophrenia because bootstrapping is really hard or b) lobotomize myself because I'm literally too edgy for life.

Call me back when a transhuman can get to Seed AI without breaking their ego.

In any case, all that unearned improvement gets beat by a guy with sick Indian kung-fu philosophy.

What the fuck. I can see why the game died with second edition. At least the first edition books are untouched.

Honestly it died with the Argonaut sourcebook which was 40% academic ethics discussion and 0% interesting content.

>In any case, all that unearned improvement gets beat by a guy with sick Indian kung-fu philosophy.

False. The TITANs wiped out 90 percent of the Ultimates. If you want to be the top of the food chain, rather than the strongest retard in the kiddie pool, you need to step the fuck up

Seed AI is obviously the goal, but exhumans as they are not headed in that direction. The ones that are lose their minds because they're jacking into untested technology held together with duct tape.

>Actually being retarded enough to believe this

I never saw much activity in their forums anyway. Kind of surprised me.

>all that unearned improvement gets beat by a guy with sick Indian kung-fu philosophy
Explain?

In the fluff there are Ultimates who are legendary badasses and fight with swords. The devs are hoping we'll just ignore how swords do so little damage that even with maxed out strength you can't pierce a suit of body armor, let alone a TITAN warbot

I'm still kinda sad about that.
I want to make a knife/sword breaking-and-entering assassin sort of deal, but I'll have to bring a rail gun as well if I ever want to kill anything more armoured than a naked splicer.
I just want to be a stab-happy AGI assassin

No fun allowed.

who cares that they took out the dumbass junta, precautionists still exist and aren't braindead authoritarians

>Why everyone don't think like me?
t. post

have fun dying of cancer at 50 genetrash, rest assured that jupiter will go to someone who knows how to use it.

>Doesn't stop them having one of the best militaries in the solar system.
>no nanowar capability
>no stacks
>best military
nice try jovenigger

That's not the point.
But let me play...
Have fun being horribly killed because your pet TITAN that you thought it was under control broke free and wiped out all your civilization.
And not only killed but emulated and killed again and again and again and again and again...

>Have fun being horribly killed because your pet TITAN that you thought it was under control broke free and wiped out all your civilization.
it's almost like there are rules to prevent that from happening and a whole organization devoted to keeping that from happening. but i wouldn't expect jovian brainlets to know that.

Implying the most important thing isn't spaceships
>>no nanowar capability
Frankenstein, please.

>there are rules
The exurgent virus might be terrified about your rules.
>a whole organization
More than one actually but I wouldn't expect you to realize this.
I think that will be of some comfort to you when you ask yourself:
How this could have happened again?

>implying jovian outdated manufacturing capabilities can match the full industrial might of the consortium in a full scale war
>implying the consortium even needs to resort to full scale physical war to reduce the 'republic' to nothing
you're only useful for keeping the anarch degenerates in check, don't kid yourself zero

>I think that will be of some comfort to you when you ask yourself:
How this could have happened again?
>the only way to prevent a seed AI from hard takeoff is pseudo primativism and traditionalism
it'll take much less than the titans returning to wipe the jovians off the map if that's the case

To modern liberals, fascism means "everything I don't like".

If the consortium doesn't wipe out itself sooner.
As I see it those are two evolutionary strategies. The consortium is trying a high risk high gain bet. The Jovians are going for stealth. Only time would tell which one is the best.
By the way I'm not pro-Jovian. I just think the setting is better with them, specially if they were portrayed seriously and as a credible faction. The developers suffer from this prog tendency to let their political opinions creep into their creations by making them a cautionary tale, which is a worse option that actually making a nuanced an complex faction that actually has a point. Black and white evil guys with evil laughs are not a good creative bet especially in a rich and complex setting they stand out as vehicles for the creators attempts at making morality plays. Let the players decide what they want to play, give them freedom. Oh I forgot. That's not progressive, a fucking dictatorship of the enlightened it's the real progressive.

Strawman. Not the only thing. But at least they are not trying to recreate the TITANS in a controlled environment or playing with TITAN tech or remnants. It goes a long way to not recreate the fall not doing stupid things before you are ready.

Fascism is a collectivist political system where all individuals are expected to unify under a single leader. Everyone works for the good of the state. Warfare is okay to do as long as it will benefit the state.

>It goes a long way to not recreate the fall not doing stupid things before you are ready.
that's not bioconservatist philosophy though. that's precautionism

>The Ultimates, individualistic fascists that adhere to eugenics and social darwinism.
>individualistic fascists

Okay, see this is where you know the writers aren't doing any reading. There is no such thing as an individualistic fascist. That is as dumb as calling the Ultimates individualistic communists.

Fascism's defining feature is complete unity and cooperation between all citizens, not unlike socialism or communism. Individualism is not a virtue in a fascist society.

True. But in a practical way bioconservativism is closer. Pure bioconservativism is a dead end, but you can change your views with time. You have slim chances to recover from a X-risk and the consortium is buying more tickets in that lottery.

Shut up fascist

Implying fascist or fascism is not a buzzword for things progs don't like.

Kicking fascist gamer assume since 2009

phoneposter detected

Pic related

>Fascism's defining feature is complete unity and cooperation between all citizens at risk of death or imprisonment at the hands of a secret police, not unlike socialism or communism.
ftfy

Eclipse Phase is awesome. It has the potential to be the most immersive cyberpunk rpg. Setting is great take on old themes, and the system is built from the ground up to compliment.

But one major, MAJOR caveat. Do not play EP with DnD players or poor roleplayers. This game involves a lot of investment by your players in understanding the universe and system. If they don't dig in, it can quickly become a negative experience

It's a bit too out-there for cyberpunk. I feel Transhuman Space is better for classic stuff, and EP for all the crazy shit.

I don't understand how the junta thinks it's safe against exsurgency, at least any safer than any other reasonable faction. It spreads through biological born and raised people just as easily as it spreads through computers. That's the whole point.

>Player perspective against inside world perspective.
Mind you that they think it's all TITANS fault. They have only suspicions about the exurgent virus.

I played in a 10 session campaign of Eclipse Phase. My general thoughts in closing is that Eclipse Phase is atrocious in closing, and also fails to critically realise its own setting.

Fluffwise, there is a major issue of "Why does anyone do anything ever?". The marginal resource cost to set yourself up such that you have absolutely no need to rely on others for your survival, or even for a supremely comfortable existence, basically forever, is extraordinarily low. Not to mention, that the only possible threats that can be levee'd against your existence or livelihood rely on you
being in contact with other people. You basically need to play someone who is a complete misfit in the ancap hellscape of EP just to rationalise why you aren't spending 100% of your time trying to leave the party.

As for mechanics, I appreciate that nothing is perfect, but EP manages to fail at both ends of its premise. Given that EP is a complex setting with a lot of different weird shit that can go down, I could understand if its core mechanics were a bit neglected and disfunctional to make up for that top heavy nature. And they are. Completely mundane interactions such as talking to people to get information or having a simple gunfight between people are handled atrociously.

Except that the top isn't there. Any of the fancy shit about parallel processing within your own fractal body (I should point out that flexbots are a core morph that are objectively worse and less efficient than other synthmorphs to make up for an advantage they have which remains totally unstatted, which offers very few ways to homebrew it that are not gamebreakingly powerful) or taking on a station as your morph, or designing new technology. Even the everyday weird shit: I remember something to the extent of having captured a cortical stack I wanted to interrogate, but I, a master psychosurgeon, did not by RAW have a way to access the mind inside other than slotting it into a morph.

I agree with everything you said except the very last line. Cortical stacks are memory only. They have no capacity to run any of their data. They're just portable hard drives for people.

Aren't there rules for running people on servers in VR/Informorph though?

Yes. I couldn't point it out specifically, but getting an ego from stack to simulspace should be a trivial affair. That is, I recall, explicitly how most such interrogations or detainments are done to begin with.

To clarify, I endorse Eclipse Phase for being ambitious with its setting and taking on something very unusual. And it even manages to encompass most of its own scope. But while there are a small handful of moderate sized issue with the setting, the RPG itself is in all likelihood not the best way to play Eclipse Phase.

Eclipse Phase ultimately offloads a lot more of the burden of work necessary to make it good onto its players and GMs than you would see in other games. And I don't believe that is acceptable.

>Aren't there rules for running people on servers in VR/Informorph though?
I don't know if there are rules, but there is plenty of that in the fluff.

It would improve greatly from a second edition with a serious overhaul of the rules.
Still there is any RPG that got his rules right in a first edition? Or even second?

It is indeed how interrogations are described as running. And there are rules for renting simulspace access on station servers. What there aren't any rules for is being able to read data from a cortical stack. Like, we assumed that there must logically be a way to do this in a non-retarded fashion and made something up, but the rules didn't offer anything better than installing it into a morph with simulspace access, except there's no mechanical means to force the morph into simulspace, much less the specific portion of simulspace dedicated to torturing forks of it.

Yes. For all that people complain about balance issues, every FFG game I can even think of was astronomically more functional out of the box than EP is. All my precious indie games as well. I want to be clear that there is a lot more to the mechanical dysfunction of this game than I have actually mentioned. A chargen build can use a 20th century revolver to shoot something inside a closed box without hitting the box, as a relatively egregious example.

Also, everything I've heard about EP's 2nd edition makes me worry further for the weird fucking political bullshit / writers lacking capacity for introspection that was a lowkey issue I had with 1st.

>Once a cortical stack is retrieved, it may be loaded into an ego bridge (p. 328) and used to bring the ego back, either as an infomorph or by resleeving. (p.268)

This is what I'd thought, but went to check. You can reinstantiate someone as an informorph using any ego-bridge you can get ahold of. The rules for resleeving as an infomorph themselves are p.272

>was astronomically more functional out of the box than EP is
Disclaimer. I haven't actually played it.
It strikes me that EP was very ambitious and making functional rules for that is exponentially more difficult than simpler settings. Still I keep hearing people complaining about even the more basic things, so there is that. I looked into the sleighs and my impression was that they were only good for computer related task and there was always a technological gimmick that could replicate all the powers but better.
>A chargen build can use a 20th century revolver to shoot something inside a closed box without hitting the box
Explanation? If it's some kind of weird optimization most of them actually rely in gross misrepresentation of the rules that only work by throwing your brain and common sense though the window.

Here's a fixed version of the Junta
seedwareblog.com/2015/04/120-jovian-union.html

>playing EP
>one of the players has a character directly taken from an anime, name included
>no players have read the handbook, and even the GM barely understands the universe
>players are constantly trying to loot bodies, completely unaware of the fact that EP takes place in a largely post-scarcity economy (literally an entire section of the book dedicated to this)
>entire game is played out of character with most obstacles being discussed as metagame issues- ie. "who has the highest X score?" discussions
>GM won't allow any lethality. Anywhere our characters could die gets magically handwaived once things go upside down, removing all tension from what is ostensibly a horror game

>Going out of the way to not kill characters
>In a game where you can literally backup your brain

And I thought I was a pussy GM

>players are constantly trying to loot bodies, completely unaware of the fact that EP takes place in a largely post-scarcity economy

The fluff says so, the actual game says otherwise. A full set of gear costs more than any character is carrying around in credits. Trying to fabricate it all would take days in the game system. Acquiring it all with favors is the same - and in Second Edition it's going to use the same system as spending money, creating even more problems.

The main thing they should be looting from bodies are the bodies themselves. Morphs are the scarcest and most sought after commodity in the entire setting. Toss a dead body in a healing vat and in a day or two you've got a new morph, as long as you have a head to grow from.

Well, if you do that, you probably will bring back the person who just tried to kill you.

>individualistic fascists
do you even know what those two words mean?
you just described a square circle

No, you can wipe a brain of its previous owner using an ego bridge