Eclipse Phase is weird and I don't like it

Never heard about it, someone tell me what is this about, please. It's unlikeable, therefore somethin right for me.

People created one or maybe multiple self improving AIs that pretty fast got out of control and started wrecking havoc on Earth. When nukes didn't stop their forces humans started running away spreading over the Solar system. Most people were able to run away only as digitized consciousness inside computers.

Somewhere during all this clusterfuck called The Fall AIs actually fucked off and what people were fighting is actually were just there peripheral systems. AIs left the Solar system, supposedly, through Pandora gates that are basically stable wormholes and could be found on some planets (not on Earth).

Now people somewhat rebuilt and are trying to decide what are they going to do next. There are multiple powers that are trying to in one way or the other to determine the future of humanity. Some want to go further into transhumanism, some want more conservative approach, commies, ultra-capitalists, jew-nationalists, fascits, and so on and so on.

Plus there is a fuckton of shit left after AIs that can screw you at any moment. And not only on Earth. Like say watching a video can cram your brain with some new information that get downloaded into your subconsciousness after which you go on a rampage or start building doomsday devices.

Don't read derivative work. Read the original and far superior Altered Carbon.

Sounds quite fun, especially the last part. How is this unlikeable, except for some uncanny political ideologies existing?

People dont like it because the book generally presents the interplantery megacorps as bad dudes and it gets their panties twisted

Well the first part is more or less what this guy said Authors have a clear political bias and don't care about showing it. The first edition has it but the second seems to have even more. Coincidentally EP threads died out on Veeky Forums after first info about second edition dropped.

Second part is the fact that authors relationship with technology and sciences is somewhat strenuous. As in sometimes they don't know what the fuck they are writing about. And that 'sometimes' seems to happen every time they write about anything beyond things that were written in the sci-fi books that they read.

Third part is the system which is pretty mediocre and downright shitty in some moments. You would be much better off using some other system capable of accommodating EP setting. There is a FATE conversion if you like something like this.

Another issue is that the guys who think that's is unnatural to upload your mind into robots or monkey men or sex dolls or space whales are painted as the villains despite their legitimate issues with copying your mind into a man-sized spider crab or a parrot or a squid.

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I (think) the reason they're painted as villains is because they've got a slippery slope argument going on where "preserving humanity from the evils of transhumanity" justifies all kinds of authoritarian nonsense, and the books generally go "authoritarianism isn't good", which kinda runs counter to the whole "authoritarians are cool now" thing going on at the moment.

There's other polities that push a don't-sleeve-into-synths agenda, like the Planetary Consortium, that don't also come with the weird baggage that the Jovians have.

Don't worry, user. The devs are doing their best to make sure nobody likes eclipse phase.

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Nova Praxis doesn't quite capture the 'fighting in the face of predetermined oblivion' feeling that EP has, but it's an interesting game in the same vein.

Don't forget that the books keep talking about bio-chauvinism and how everybody should be omnisexual. And that pedophilia and sleeving into minors is forbidden in only most habs.

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It does? I recall there's a bit in the core book about gender and sexuality, which takes up a grand total of two, maybe three paragraphs in the entirety of the book.

Fucking minors is only forbidden in most countries, user.

Mentioned in the Morph Recognition Guide under certain entries.

Unless I was weirdly fixated on picking out bits where people are talking about sexuality, I still wouldn't consider the books are banging on about it.

I mean, by the argument that the views of a couple of people within the setting are taken to be the standard viewpoint, people are weirded out by neotenics being used for sex.

If I had to choose one bad thing about EP, it's its economics. Unbelievably retarded.

The thing is, cyberpunk requires balls-to-walls worldbuilding skills. It's very close to the modern reality and subsequently a lot of aspects of cyberpunk are directly derivable by reason and thought. What that means is it takes just a mental dive just a little bit more scrutinous than skin-deep for any shoddy work on the setting to reveal itself and break that suspense of disbelief.
At the same time cyberpunk has to respect many classic tropes if it aspires to be called 'cyberpunk'. A lot of those tropes, while not necessarily retarded in their intent, are a product of olden times.

Eclipse Phase, well, it tries to be a kitchen-sink, and incorporate tropes—the more the better,—but at times it does flop at keeping the overall picture self-consistent.

And the system is a piece of clunky shit.

It comes up 'organically' through the rest of the books too. Pig and rat dicks, etc. It's a bit silly.

It's hardly anything. The way people bang on about it, it's as if every morph entry has a whole section about what it's sexual functionality is, like it's trying to be FATAL In Space. The only way I can see it being as prevalent as it apparently is in the books is if you're going out of your way to look for it, and then hanging on to every off-handed mention about sexuality, ignoring everything else, and then going "well, I remember there was loads of sex and stuff in the books compared to everything else!".

And armored spider-crabs or killer-spheres are normal guys. There could be ponies, or Canadian geese.

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No, pretty sure there's just loads of squick in the books.

>Libertarian Space Fantasy? check.
there's literally one large libertarian hab in the entire setting and the authors shit on it through views of anarcho-communist faction.

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There are the robocentaurs. You can also apply synthetic mask to any synthmorph, bot, or vehicle technically.

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As someone who is really prone to being squicked out by sex, I didn't find the Eclipse Phase to be particularly uncomfortable reading. Sexuality in it never felt like the primary focus and, when it did come up, it was pretty matter-of-fact rather than coming across as an attempt to titillate. Haven't read much outside of the rulebook and supplements, so the novels and pre-written adventures might be chockablock with graphic depictions of sex.

The World of Darkness rulebook and splatbooks felt way, way worse.

desu i'm already just assuming that the narrator is a flawed one.

Everybody is somewhat preparing for another TITAN accident
Jovian republic is an alright place to live in if not as advanced as no-ethics arnacs
most people don't really give a damn about all that post-human mumbo wumbo

Wouldn't it be more of an Alister Reynolds ripoff?

You can read the list of books they ripped off at the end of core rulebook.

>VtM seduction rules

Anyone figured out yet why in the future Judaism and Christianity proved too rigid and old fashioned to survive but Islam is apparently innovative and enlightened enough to survive?

Because Islam is a religion of peace, the only thing the TITANs fear. And also because they really, really wanted a free palestine, so they killed all the jews they could find preferentially.

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d% is fine, but there's too much clunky shit in chargen. I would never put it in front of my players as their first, second, or third campaign. Give them pregens for the first, let them choose between being bio, droid, or uplift for the second, and then for the third maybe let them pick bodies.

After they're used to all the sleeves, and used to the setting, and used to all that shit, then MAYBE you throw full point-buy at them.

Lol that's some next level cucked shit.

Erm, but Jews have a whole asteroid to themselves and Jovians have a pretty active Christian community.

It's "libertarian" the way socialists say everything is really socialism because in like 1845 someone wrote a pamphlet and used the word once.

It's a shitty, cartoonish ripoff of Transhuman Space.

The asteroid has a minimal population, and it's the only jewish settlement.

The jovians are christian, but they're a cartoony ripoff of everything the devs hate about the US. Despite being south american somehow. Everywhere else? Not so much.

Better question: Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca several times per day. How do you handle that when you're in space.

Shit, is Mecca still around after the AIs murderfucked the planet?

The entire middle east is a giant nanoswarm.

And there's a few mentions of AROs pointing at Mecca.

Considering that Israel was nuked it's not surprising that there is not that many jews on the asteroid.

Jovians situation is funny because they are a mix between Americans, Russians and Chinese, but in books you read almost exclusively about americans and mexicans.

Yeah, well, the original premise was "why have these all mostly died out except for space muslims". There is no good reason for why, and the remaining populations are pretty minimal. Except for the Jovians, but I forget their population. It's not enormous. But the space muslims, despite holding the most 'archaic and outdated beliefs', according to the book, somehow thrive. unlike the others, who held less outdated and archaic beliefs but are dying out.

What I really dislike is that they authors' ideal society is a real life facebook where cliques of bullies can essentially decide that disliked person's bank account is suddenly empty, and this is see as saner than every other form of society the authors shit on.

You're confusing right libertarianism with libertarianism. Ancoms are left libertarian.

40 millions for Jovians if I remember right.

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Well, the Muslim settlement of Qurain on Mars got murderfucked by the TITAN quarantine zone, whereas the Hindu settlement of Ashoka to the east survived just fine.

Possibly it's just an extension of the situation we currently see on Earth: except for Islam, which is growing, all other religions are fading into secularism.

Muslims are still a huge force, and there are plenty of settlements. Salah, Enceladus, etc. There's still plenty of muslims all over mars.

The White Butterfly and societies like it, too.

That's part of the silliness. The Jews apparently just couldn't get over the loss of Jerusalem... But the Muslims got over losing Mecca just fine and dandy.

Because Judaism and Christianity are mainstream Western religions, therefore they are icky and represent the current state of events. Islam is hip and exotic. Your parents hate it and you barely even learned about it at school! Surely it is the religion of the future.

Reminder that Jovians are lower than animals, and should be thrown into gladiator arenas with exhumans for the entertainment of the people

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Single Jovian warship probably weights more than Ultimates and all their equipment taken together.

and yet a single ultimate soldier is probably worth an entire regiment of jovians

go back to starving to death, jovenigger

Doesnt' matter how strong are your soldiers when they are turned into radioactive dust.

Weren't the Ultimates taken out of the 2e due to their problematic resemblance to Nazis?

First to be honest, I haven't read anything of Eclipse Phase and I don't even know why I'm reading this thread, so I don't know how it exactly depicts things. But!

In western, majorly christian society religion tends to be on the backburner for most people. Even for many people who think themselves as religious, it's more of a habitual thing, you go to church maybe once a year, religious holidays are a thing, maybe you mumble some grace before dinner.
And compared to that, from outsider perspective Islam could seem as much more involved thing. Especially when looking at foreign religion it's easy to note the most visible aspects and people. And that could create the idea that Islam could have more lasting power.

That and being pretty bad at slotting into a lot of groups since the community latched super hard onto the 'We won't get along with people' aspects when they do have sub-groups that are perfectly willing to get along/push others to improve themselves too.

Yep. They are still in the setting but no longer supposed to be player characters. And as I understand authors built them upon one of their old and most retarded clads.

Guess we'll just have to wait for the "Terminals", the posthuman faction who remade themselves in the image of antifa

>jovetard doesn't even know what active missile defense is
i'd tell you to get cancer and die, but it seems that you're already doing a good job of that

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Unlike you I know what it is. And that you need literal space magic to beat the 1000 to 1 mass difference. And even then it doesn't always help.

So, like today, really.

When they explain why it hurts them personally, I'll start caring.

>inb4 BUT MUH HUMANITY

>Third part is the system which is pretty mediocre and downright shitty in some moments.

Jesus christ. Imagine if shadowrun decided it needed MORE stats, then made you track two different sets of them at once depending on what body you're actually in, and you have Eclipse Phase. It's a mess. And its mechanics, despite the seeming best efforts of the authors (most of the over-complication comes from trying to simulate having different bodies) are still divorced from the tone of the setting. It's supposed to be horror, and yet it's far too easy to make a combat god without even having tried to.

just play as Jovian and hunt down the transtrash that pretends being human.

I went to EP discord but they banned me when I said I liked Jovians and space-fascism

Sounds more like how outsiders think the Jews and Muslims would react. The most faithful in both groups would have already been in the Holy Land and long since part of the nano-swarm.

Basically. They started pushing the overhuman group, pretending it represented the entire faction. Dumb fucks.

They ban for everything. One bloke did a great forum write up of Saturn being a banana communorepublic where everyone was starving and life was horrible - BENNED.

I like the fact that it can be used as a way of exploring different ideologies but, like you say, the narrator is flawed and the tone is geared to heavily towards one group.

I actually like some of the ideas of the anarchist but also see that they are not some utopian way of life and belief as they are made out to be because you can't just sit around and get high and fuck all the time while saying fuck the man. It's hard work, you have to gather resources and pool them together to keep your ship afloat and morphs working and then you go to mars or venus and trade for shit for credits so you can buy the things you need then go out again. The fact that you may be a close knit group that have group parties/orgies and free love is just a consequence of being togheter all the time but not the entirety of it. If you're lazy they will reclaim the morph and throw your ass out.

Similarly, the Jovians arn't the crazy backwards hillbillies they are made out to be. Ultra cautious yes but they do use modern tech they just don't want someone to be working on an antimatter bomb in their garage or a new super swarm of nanites based on some blueprints they got off the net.

I so do wonder how you people ever consume any media?
Like, do you read dictionaries to get proper 'objective' entertainment or what? You are definitely not reading much sci-fi that's for sure.

You sound like a fag.

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>One bloke did a great forum write up of Saturn being a banana communorepublic where everyone was starving and life was horrible - BENNED.

Do you have link to that?
Maybe we could subvert EP by re-writing the whole setting ?
God knows there is ton of stuff for Jovians that is much better than what the developers made

Remember that one Morph that is used by a group of internet shitlords who are such a transparent reference that the image literally has the Morph wear a Guy Fawkes mask? Because that's what we're dealing with here.

The Griefer. It's called a Griefer.

Let me get you an example abut Jovians. Supposedly the war that decided who of Americans, Russians and Chinese would control the Jupiter space took 17 minutes. Now go check the size of the Jupiter orbit.

You'd be surprised at what you can find if you read the books.

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Yeah, it's stupid. In my experience the over humanists weren't even that popular with players, most played iconics.

THIS is why we fight!

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I'm pawing through the forums on half remembered search terms.

eclipsephase.com/official-downsides-autonomist-alliance

Here's something I found in the meantime. The arguments against boil down to 'Nu-UH, AA is best!'

eclipsephase.com/cynics-autonomist-alliance

Here we go!

Complete with: Wrongthink! BANNED. Or: You are wrongthinking, we say you are this guy, BANNED!

>eclipsephase.com/cynics-autonomist-alliance
As somebody who lived under communism I have to smirk how their reaction is so similar to stereotypical party and local workers statements

The guy they claim he is, Alkahest, also uses a pig avatar, but sounds different. It might be a conscious choice. I don't know. But the Alkahest guy is fucking hilarious, search out his posts.

I would have preferred a Posthuman Stars game

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The Titanian Commonwealth seem to be the good guys and more realistic than other factions.

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The Titans are the true and rightful rulers of mankind and its descendents.

>and you barely even learned about it at school!
This must be an American thing. Islam was a very huge part of religious studies even when I was in school and the subject was mandatory.

The few alkahest posts I could find were sensible and interesting variations and explorations of the setting?

So they could have Muslim nomads on Mars like in the Red Mars books.

I'm surprised that any population near from the ecuator survives the catastrophic climate in the setting's backstory.

Ah, and now the vegetarianism debate. Interesting character this Alkahest

The Ultimates are right. In a world of infinite choice where the only scarcity is artificial, anyone who would choose to be worthless and weak is either a lazy criminal or a loathsome degenerate.

They're painted as the villains because they're hypocrites who artificially limit their people's access to advanced technology in spite of living in technofuture splendor themselves. This is especially egregious because it means their bioconservative philosophy is just a political tool they use to oppress their people rather than being an actual belief that they have. Eclipse Phase doesn't have anyone relevant who legitimately believes in bioconservativism on a philosophical, moral or religious basis (personally, I also object to biocon, but I get how some of the more radical aspects of transhumanism can freak people out).

Opress? Well it's true but in fact most of the things that they do will benefit their habs in case if they are hit by terrorists or exsurgents. Faraday cages, decentralized life-support systems, physical controls and non-wireless connections. Basic biomods are still a thing even if they are made on top a flat - so incredibly long life, almost no aging, and so on. The next generation is basically splicers.

You also, like many other AA supporting people, forget that Jovians do not fight the same way as you. You engage in surgical incursions and information warfare. Jovians just glass the site from orbit. No matter how genius of a programmer you are, or what bling out morph you are sleeved in, it won't help against an anti-proton beam.

This is true. If I had to choose in which faction have to live, the Titanian Commonwealth is the clear winner.

Correct, but the Ultimates are also pretty flawed ideologically. Becoming the perfect human is a dead end. Everyone should be trying to bootstrap themselves to god hood, or at least trying to make that process as effective as possible if it's still too dangerous.

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