Planning to play this with my group soon. Anyone know any good scenarios for an introduction to the system and setting...

Planning to play this with my group soon. Anyone know any good scenarios for an introduction to the system and setting? Also general eclipse phase thread.

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rpg.rem.uz/FUDGE & FATE/Mindjammer/
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Neotenics a best

I agree and so does most of my group, but one of the members hates anything loli or childlike with a passion. I think he just resents us calling him a fag for always talking about traps and dickgirls.

pls give recommendations. I refuse to believe everyone in the old eclipse phase threads left.

Are you trying to rustle us from the get go?

I've run Continuity and Million Year Echo for completely new people and they worked really well. Haven't messed around with other ones though.

>NEOTENIC
Neotenics are transhumans modified to retain a child-like form. They are smaller, more agile, inquisitive, and less resource-depleting, making them ideal for habitat living and spacecraft. Some people find neotenic sleeves distasteful, especially when employed in certain media and sex work capacities.

We always talked about magical realm, but apparently transhuman realm is where it's at

Would it be reasonable to move the setting to 15 or 20 years after the Fall? I'm going back over the books and honestly stable political blocs forming up and facing off in a cold war in a 10 year timeframe seems a bit unrealistic.
>inb4 expecting realistic geopolitics from EP is unrealistic

>inb4 expecting realistic geopolitics from EP is unrealistic
I'm sorry but that's the only answer. For the creators of such an interesting setting they are absolutely terrible writers. All of the first person sections of the book red like shitty fan fiction from a high schooler.

Yeah that'd work fine. You'd need to change some numbers in the timeline to space things out but that's it.

I've run Glory and Mind the WMD as early adventures before, and played in Bump In The Night run by a first-time EP GM.

If anybody has the old /epg/ links, the fan-made Dehumanize Yourself also made a good intro once, though I ran that with only one new player.

In before uplifts are mentioned

> Now that that is out of the way; these morphs aren’t just for sex workers. I know of one brinker community that raises their kids in pleasure pods so they can be raised with
a more fluid gender identity.

These are the pleasure pods, that can change their physical sex more or less at will

And people give AW an hard time for the sex moves.

>brinker community that raises their kids in pleasure pods so they can be raised with a more fluid gender identity
Sounds like child abuse to me

I mean, the kid controls the sex switch internally (with a cyberbrain) so it's on them to decide if they have tits that week or whatever.

But also yes, possibly. Brinkers are weird, isolated ideologues. For every weird transhuman brinker clan, there's some clan who believes women should stay in the kitchen and wear ankle-length skirts even in microgravity. That's just not really a new concept, so the books don't spend much space on it.

You know, in a sense I kinda admire what they did, honestly. It's giving ME future shock. Rarely done with scifi RPG settings, and writers are pretty brave to challenge taboos as big as these.

At the same, jesus christ, I played shit like Bacchanal, Monsterhearts and Bliss Stage and I don't know if I would do EP just for the possiibility of this coming out.

I kind of like the futuristic explorations of the implications of technology. I always despise fantasy for being so cowardly in exploring the implications of magic in their own settings. On the other hand I despise the progressive vibes of the authors and obvious bias.

Well, believing in change as a good thing is a sign of being progressive. It's not like there aren't conservative future setting either.

That's a massive oversimplification. And I don't think there are conservative or progressist settings. That's just label that people, specially here, put. The bias of EP authors on the other hand are obvious.

While they are certainly obviously biased, I don't think it's all that big of a problem, I doubt they would be willing to do so much risqué stuff if they didn't think they were good things. Besides, while they certainly are pro-anarchists, they don't really straw man the opposition either, which means that it's perfectly reasonable for someone to support a group like the Jovian Republic even if the authors didn't like them.

>You know, in a sense I kinda admire what they did, honestly. It's giving ME future shock.
I agree, because future shit is supposed to freak you out. I just hate how their politics absolutely flood into the setting, Everything is always the great anarcho-socialists with a perfect system vs the evil reactionary capitalists who are also an ex-threat. Funnily enough the new economy they praise so much seems to work a lot like the old one. Guess that limited access to fabricators really bottlenecks their ideology.

Sounds like you deserve each other.

Personally, I do. Tolkien is a glaring example of a VERY conservative setting (tough he had pretty personal ideas). Roddenberry was pretty flamingly liberal with ST, on the other hand.

It's probably less common in not-indie RPGs tough.

>they don't really straw man the opposition either
What were the names of the satellites or some shit of the Jovian Republic?
Margaret Tacher?
Well it seems a bit of a strawman to me. When I read the basic book I got this vibe that the Jovian Republic were a designated baddy. Which I think hurts the game itself since in an otherwise very complex and interesting setting the Jovians could have been made in an interesting faction that actually had a point, making the setting more complex and nuanced. But, no.

>they don't really straw man the opposition either
They most certainly do, while the anarchists and Argonauts are their designated sues. Look at the amount of exthreats caused by jovians opposed to those caused by anarchists. Also a massive amount of the "technology gone wrong" is done by the hypercorps and not the people with an autistic urge to advance humanity technology no matter the cost. Also look what they did to the Ultimates.

I wouldn't call middle earth a future setting. ST is clearly very liberal but I was thinking more in roleplaying games.

Semi related- but I never understood people who labeled Starship Troopers as "fascist". It's a multicultural Earth in space with somewhat strict rules - pretty much space Singapore.

>I wouldn't call middle earth a future setting
>implying Eru wasn't a nuclear bomb
>implying all races aren't post mutation humans and beasts (and mutated trees)

Well, let's be honest, she DOES sound ominous even as a satellite.

I guess A Canticle for Leibowtiz? Too dark? I dunno, it's not that much of a stretch that conservatives would go for "the future will fuck us all" more than the "the future will be better".
If not I would call for Heinlein, perhaps, but I'm not sure he would be "conservative", just "democracy might be overrated".

The problem with RPG settings here is that I don't think there are really much politically charged settings that are good enough. I mean, Blue Rose is... eh.

Believe it or not fascism isn't that much anti-multicult. I mean, Mussolini seemed to not care much about muslims in the colonies, or at least they weren't bad because they were arabs (or albanians).

I always toyed with a rewriting of the history of ME as post-apo, honestly. Shit is ABSURDLY depopulated, and the more advanced part of the population ponders if to return or not to spac.... I mean, over the Sea.

There is not enough fire to burn so much heresy.
>Hiro, bring the the Firestorm legion.

Intriguing. What would the ring be in such a setting?

It depends on how we define Sauron's powers, mostly. Probably an code access to unlock something like the REAL bunker-armories of Mordor, or to its grey goo facilities.

>Interestingly, Sauron's power of industrialization would stay there, of course.

Plus some termoptic camo for shit and giggles.

>Look at the amount of exthreats caused by jovians opposed to those caused by anarchists
But Jovian territory is explicitly stated to have almost no x-threats, because they are so good at dealing with them. Sure, the writers say that the Jovians ARE an x-threat, but that's just them being biased, the facts within the books are pretty favorable to the Jovians.

How about a code to unlock the remaining nukes?

>Lonesome Road intensifies

Second Edition of this is launching soon, correct? I am in a cyberpunk mood after a few episodes of Altered Carbon, but don't wanna start with the 1st ed if I can just wait a bit.

Starship Troopers is a pretty conservative future setting.

Think Before Asking

I've always felt that the hatred leveled towards certain groups in Eclipse Phase is unwarranted. Sure, you can turn yourself into a sun whale, or put your kids into sexually fucked up pleasure pods and no one bats an eye, but if you decide to reject humanity altogether and become something more like the exhumans do then all of a sudden you're a monster.

At this point I just assumed that the narration if the game is simply biased.

So Jovian republic might look like a terrible place to live but it's actually alright. JR is just controlling information to make their place look like a turbo shit place so they are left alone. And when fake humans arrive on your station and see that everything isn't sit you just tell them "nah mate, this is just the best place we have. The REST looks shit, I swear"

Because exhumans are actively hostile to the rest of humanity.

The weird thing is that the actual facts about the JR that are brought up in the material are pretty favorable to it, but it's the person narrating those facts that is biased. You'll have some anarchist faggot talking about how terrible a place it is to live and how they should be liberated, while describing how they're a constitutional republic that has widespread good healthcare and keeps their population safe from x-threats better than anyone else in the solar system.

I feel like it's also worth mentioning that for all the praise that is heaped upon the anarchist, the ONLY reason they are still alive is because Firewall is willing to stop x-threats that pop up frequently in their territory all the time, using any means necessary.

Don't forget that they are basically made out of money because they control the traffic that passes their planet, was it Jupiter?

Yup, they control the airspace around Jupiter (or is it spacespace?) which means that they can force a toll on people who want to use the planet to slingshot resources to other planets.

They also have the strongest military, especially in terms of spaceships, and they are the only major faction in the game putting any serious preparation into the possibility of the TITANs returning.

And we are supposed to not like them why again ?

Because they have a government and a regulated capitalist economy (the writers are anarchists so these are bad things in their eyes), they don't let their citizens play around with dangerous technology that lead to the Fall, and they have a tendency to be authoritarian, religious, and paranoid because it turns out that humanity almost being wiped out will do that to you.

Truth be told, there's very few reasons that any normal person wouldn't like them, it's just that every time someone speaks of the Jovians, it's from a non-Jovian perspective (aka from an anarchist), so they say what you'd expect them to say.

That they are terrible oppressive people and backwater people who would run into the arms of their transhuman saviours given the chance ?.

tfw i will never get to play EP again

Just fork yourself.

So have the fag developers pretty much doomed any discussion of their game turning into people talking about the effects of an ideologue writer? Kind of sad because I liked the game and setting(for the most part).

It's the reason /epg/ died, entire discussion just turned into right vs. left

Can't it turn into a discussion about playing a ballsy jovian space cowboy ?

you used the j word, it's already over

Awww

It's kind of sad because I just started getting into the game as the threads died. There was like a 4 day revival, but it ended pretty quick. Guess nothing kills a game faster. Did they ever even make any money off this though?

Post Jovian memes. I dont have any though.

Not sure. The problem is simply that finding / getting a game going is hard. the setting is difficult to GM due to all the options players have and it not being listed in roll20s games doesn't make it easier.
No games = not much to discuss, after people burned through the lore/rules

>STALKER
>Bundeswehr Flecktarn parka

I don't have any jovian stuff, but i do have space cowboys.

Yeah I first found out about it on here then listened to some RPPR podcasts about it. I guess a lot of people don't really use a resource like this where a lot of games are discussed. It's just that I've seen it in so many places I assumed it was pretty well known, but that might be the classic symptom of spending too much time on the internet.

Anyone listen to any of the rppr podcasts? Most of them are kind of irritating fags who can't roleplay for shit, but two of them write some damn good scenarios.

RIP /epg/, not even netflix' altered carbon series could revive you

I got excited to see threads when 2nd edition came out, but it was nothing but "this shit fucking sucks". That's when I knew we had died.

My only issue with Jovians is that it seems like it's really hard to interact with them since they have such a lock down on tech. How often are you going to see Jovians travel to another polity for a vacation or whatever? How often if at all do they conduct trade with anyone else? Obviously there are people who do sleeve into different bodies and have varying degrees of body modifications or even stacks but I imagine only the wealthiest Jovians are going to interact with the solar system proper if that.

It's not too hard to interact with them unless you are a AGI or uplift, but they will usually think you are a ticking time bomb. I'm really surprised the creators haven't really talked more about the "Star Trek transporter problem" or fear of having a million computers in you. They brush it off as superstitious nonsense when I think a lot of people would actually be afraid of that shit, especially after the fall.

Basically the writers are the kind of emotionally stunted 8 year olds who go 'What do you mean I can't tattoo my eyeballs with unrefined meth while owning a flamethrower, REE, BIG GOVERNMENT STRIKES AGAIN'
I'm as libertarian as the next man, but if humanity was almost wiped out by god damned space monsters, you bet your ass I'd be the first to pull on some jackboots and say 'no you can't just run around shooting each other in the face like this is mad fucking max, we need to save mankind'

More or less.

Their Rimward portrayal was a little better but not by that much.

You should actually be able to find them almost anywhere though not on vacation. They sell a lot of raw resources and considering how they feel about AGI and automated systems each of their freighters should have a couple of people.

Then you have physical diplomatic missions to polities in inner system that at least consider bioconservatism. Diplomats visiting other habs is a less often occurrence but not unheard of. And where you have diplomats you also have crew, bodyguards and other people following them.

Also reclaimers. While official stance of Jovians on them is pretty murky, unofficially they support Reclamation of Earth and there should be groups of their crazy guys working with other crazy guys on Earth-drops.
______

Don't forget that while many anarchists habs count every ounce of mass and erg of energy - Jovians don't give a fuck. They have one of the largest antimatter farms in the Solar system. They support largest combat space fleet in the system. And they have Jupiter and most of its moons for resources.

For many people spending resources on outfitting a fusion courier with 1500 km/s of delta-V is an unaffordable luxury. For Jovians it is a footnote.

So anyone got any opinions on Mindjammer, since Eclipse Phase is apparently dead?
It's a pretty fantastic setting and unlike the EP staff the Mindjammer staff don't include their politics in the slightest. Even the Venu, the generic nazi stormtroopers of the setting get an entire book to fill them out in fantastic, logical detail on how they got there and explaining in firm detail how they're damned well right, they couldn't survive without doing what they've done for the most part.

Why do people act like the new economy is so great? It acts basically just like the old economy except there is no way to really inherit wealth that isn't in some kind of asset. That probably doesn't come up very often since everyone is basically immortal. All the transitional economy does is give people both the ability to use credits and the ability to properly record reputation and favors for the future.

>the Mindjammer staff don't include their politics in the slightest
It is irritating to see good factions in the book get sidelined because of politics, but since I'm GM I just run it as I please. I mainly like the use of morphs and cortical stacks and all the shit. I've heard of Mindjammer but never really played it, can you give me a quick rundown?

I'm interested, how easy is it to find a mindjammer game though?

Short version: Mindjammer is the shit and you should play it.

Slightly longer version:
“It is the Second Age of Space. The light of human civilisation, which had flickered and threatened to die, burns bright again with contact with the thousand worlds of space. Humankind laughs, filled with the joys and power of a new-found youth, and strides forth to bring its message of hope and regeneration to the stars…”
– The Songs of Old Earth, Book I

Mindjammer takes place in the far future. Its default setting, the New Commonality of Humankind, is over ten thousand years old, until recently an ancient and stagnant slower-than-light civilisation centred in Manhome, the solar system of Old Earth, and a handful of surrounding star systems. 200 years ago, the Commonality discovered faster-than-light travel, and has been expanding out into the galaxy, discovering lost colonies it settled by slower-than-light generation and stasis ship many thousands of years before.

The Commonality is at once strange and familiar. A vast interstellar “shared consciousness” called the Mindscape links all Commonality citizens by neural implant, tying the overstretched civilisation together. The Core Worlds around Old Earth are complex and highly advanced, as far from our 21st century – and as incomprehensible – as we are from the Stone Age. On the ever-expanding Frontier there are civilisations more like our own – and just as many far stranger. Everywhere there is turmoil and conflict.

Human Space – the theoretical limit of human colonisation by the Diaspora slower-than-light generation and stasis ships – extends to a possible 10,000 light years from Old Earth

Not that easy sadly, but hey, the more people know about it the better the chances are right?

Just looked over it, mindjammer looks awesome

So it's basically The Culture Series: The rpg. nice

how is EP dead? Have they done some weird thing to alter your book?

The Jovians shot a lot of people in the face to get started though.

the galactic disk.

Basically the entire setting is a cauldron of ideals, cultures, races and species all sparking off each other.
So far they've released 5 'main' culture books.
The core book is all about the Commonality, which is a magnificent clusterfuck of Hedgemonic power as the Core Worlds attempt to influence the worlds they come across. However the Commonality has become its own beast in all but name due to the influences of other lands.

Then you have the Core Worlds themselves, weighted down by the aeons, filled with history and tradition, run by benevolent, transcended tyrants that play games that last aeons.

The far havens are a more classic 'hard sci-fi' type set up, set far above the Commonality, they've got droids but they're 3 laws compliant, they have guilds and are a bit more low-tech, feeling the tug of this great, unknown cultural beast that swims in the waters below them on the galactic plane.

Then you got the Venu, to sum up the Venu, they're the reason the Commonality has war ships, the first thing they did when the diplomats landed in their capital was execute the whole damned lot, reverse engineer their equipment and declare Jihad in the name of their divine-emperor.
Now I know what you're thinking, you're expecting their tyrant-church to be a poor rip off of 40K with hypocrisy rife and corrupt bullshit at all levels because we can't have a villain doing war crimes that sincerely believes in it.
Nope, they're 100% sincere, from the Emperor down and honestly believe in what they're doing and fuck if that isn't refreshing. Best comparison I can make is that they're the Imperium, thinking that Chaos tried to make 'peaceful' contact so it could infiltrate. Of course they fought back, how could they not when the other side wants to destroy their way of life.
Which, in a majestic development, it totally does, The Commonality would absorb the shit out of them.

>nth for Ultimates as best faction

Don't just shitpost, upload some pdfs.

Seconding this, please upload the mindjammer PDFs

It's more "we cant allow people do upgrade themselfs because of reasons". Really all the ethical conflict in the setting is very very shalow and i would incourege people to homebrew the factions a bit. Hell, even though the writers are anarchists they have a very poor grip on anarchist theory

What's also fantastic about the series is that players get built into the setting. I don't have space to explain it here but through the extras system every player has access to culture/group/organization actions, basically representing their contacts outside of themselves, you're built into the world setting seamlessly during character creation so all that cultural conflict and shit isn't just set dressing, it's something you're actively involved in the war of.
Play Mindjammer, it's fucking grand.

rpg.rem.uz/FUDGE & FATE/Mindjammer/

Huh, this actually sounds pretty interesting.

Apart from the world(s)building, what are some other draws to this game? Tell us more.

I want to play but dont have any scifi nerd friends to do so. Life is suffering.

Well the sheer variety for one.
Seriously, I am ever-gobsmacked by how every time I think they're done with coming up with new cool shit to add to the setting, the new books they throw out bring more in.
Characters I've made for games in Mindjammer, all of which were perfectly viable
>Owner of a charity megacorp running his own CAPITALISM machine with intentions to claim control of an entire sector so it can be repaired and uplifted
>Damaged, PTSD ex-child soldier that rebuilt a ship (With its own badly damaged AI)
>A living virus that used human bodies the same way humans use space ships
>A drone warrior
>Starship, two in fact
>Warrior-King of a recently uplifted culture aiming to bring his regressed barbarian people to the stars (Turned out their 'home' was a starship)

Apart from that, the focus on cultural and social conflict as well as physical is great, bringing a whole new layer to the setting, you actually have mechanics for influencing and manipulating entire cultures or worlds and enacting memetic warfare, or organizations going toe-to-toe. The entire thing is a big, beautiful toolbox to tell the stories that you want to tell.

Want to do a game based on a space station alone? Totally possible to make interesting.
Dying planet that gets found and uplifted drama? Too easy.
Star Trek? Damned fine stuff.

I'd say it's less 'The Culture' since they're not shown as perfect (Unless you want them to be)
Hell one of the best things about the book in my opinion is the section where the authors just step back, look you in the eye and go 'It's your call how utopian the Commonality really is, not ours, you want it to be perfect, more power to you, you want it to be a thin coat of paint over tyranical philosopher-king bullshit? Rock on'

Find people on discord, I have been considering throwing together a Mindjammer discord for a while. I might do so tomorrow once I have my computer back.

A discord would be great

Well with 2e coming around maybebthere an opportunity to submit writing. Like Eclipse Phase has the framework for a good setting, it's just that a)the developers are more or less stuck in an echochamber and b)as a result most of the factions are shallow
Maybe they need some pro-Hypercorp, pro-JR writers. Not to "convince them of the errors of their ways" but just to balance the writing team and make for more interesting writing.

I mean imagine if each "faction supplement" was written by someone who legitimately sympathizes with their axioms. If it was done right (i.e. without needless hostility) is could make for an interesting expansion on the setting.

Hmm, I'm going to take a look at this now

You've just missed the open call for Your Whispering Muse, then, but they did have it.

Hell with it, why not
discord.gg/YcqShYX
Everyone in thread is invited. I'm currently on an ass backwards laptop but hey, it's all good.

Invite everyone you can, the more the merrier really. It'll be more for gathering people than a single game, is the intention.

>hurrdurr every faction has to be justifiable
>having any characters who do bad things and are bad people is for kids, real intellectuals only appreciate villains who are just as right as the heroes

This but unironically.

Well from what I see, mindjammer has "evil" too

Oh there are totally bad people. Hell, the Venu have reduced entire planets to blastglass because fuck mutants and that's the least nasty way they've killed people. They're actively omnicidal.
But, they think they're doing the right thing in doing so, because they sincerely believe that the Commonality are abominations and that their tyranical social structure is entirely necessary because of the cultural context they developed in.

No culture or nation has ever existed that wasn't convinced it was in the right to one degree or another and they sure as shit don't just appear out of nowhere to be the bad guys in someone elses story.

Nah, took a look at it and decided that it isn't for me.
I prefer the space western/space opera approche traveller has to transhumanism.
It's a thing, it's around and nobody thinks it's exceptional.

Just assume everything first-person is unreliable narrator and intended to be taken this way.

There are many brands of fascism, and Hitler's demented brand of ein volk is just one.
At it's core, it's just a form of corporatism obsessed with the trappings of militant romanticism.

With the way the word gets thrown around now you can't really expect most people to actually understand what it means.

It was shockingly progressive for its time.
>powered armor
>Philipino-latinos protagonist
>women in the military full time
>everyone can vote, as long as they are willing to work for it; tests are not there to fail you, just to find something that will fit you;