Eclipse Phase

[Joose]

Eclipse Phase is a new game by the crazy bastards behind Shadowrun. Its interesting for two reasons:

1) The setting is bloody weird, in a pretty awesome way
2) Its kinda free.

I'll deal with 2 first, as its the quickest to explain. The writers have taken the pretty unusual choice of releasing the game on the Creative Commons Licence. Basically what this boils down to is that although it is available for sale on their website, you can stick it up on the interwebs and distribute it as much as you feel like. So I have done this. GET IT.

Now, back to 1. The game is set in the nearish future, after an apocalyptic event has utterly rogered the earth in horrible ways. Humanity (or whats left of it) is spread through the solar system in space stations and small colonies on planets. So far, so standard sci-fi RPG.

Where it gets interesting is the "post human" theme. In Eclipse Phase, humanity has mastered the technology to upload a human mind into a digital form, and then download it again into a new body. This core idea has been expanded on in all manner of wierd and wonderful ways. Heres some examples:

Death pretty much doesnt happen, as most people have little chips in their heads that "back up" a persons mind just before the moment of death. Download from that chip into a new body, and you are good to go. Little chip all exploaded? No worries, just get a backup of your mind from a little while ago off the server and you are up and about again (albeit with a gap in your memory).

Need to travel to a far away place? Dont get in a ship, just upload your mind, transmit it across the interwebs, and hire a body at the other end. When you are done, you can transmit your mind back and return to your original body.

Feel like your body is a bit lacking in physical stats? Dont hit the gym, just buy a meatier body and jump your mind into it. Feel like something really different? How about jumping into a robot body instead? Or several small bodies at the same time? Or a wierd genetically modified body? In fact, why bother with a body, you can just have your mind slip about the interwebs as an Infomorph.

Need to do several things at once? Upload a copy of your mind, send it off on a task, then absorb it back into your mind when you are done.

Ive barely scratched the surface of some of the crazy-awesome ideas they have crammed into this game. Theres octopii player characters, entire stations manned by multiple copies of the same guy, crazy AI's that harvest peoples heads for unknown reasons, aliens, stargate type thingies, nano-fabricators...all sorts of stuff. Even if you never have any intention of playing, its worth downloading for a read and a bit of a headfuck. Plus, the art is pretty.

As for the actual game...its kind of hard to tell without playing it. It looks, on the surface, like the game mechanics are actually pretty simple to use once you have your head around the setting. Character creation took a bit of getting used to, especially as they seem to have gone out of their way to give the attributes weird, unobvious names. After a while it seemed to suddenly just click though, and I'm now fairly confident at it.

I know this isn't really a proper review, but I don't think one can be done until the game has been played at least once. Still, its free and interesting. Check it out!

EDIT: By the way, if you are interested more in the specifics of the whole Creative Commons thing, check this out too

[FatherJack]

Sounds a lot like Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga with the brain backups and augmentations, though he did tie the body to the mind with a sense of self, rather than the rental bodies for travel and multitasking. I don't think those things would be impossible in his world, just that he explored how humans would react to them a little more deeply - in that it took people a while to get over a body death and that not everyone could afford brain backups.

[HereComesPete]

Sounds a lot like Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga...

I grabbed these after being pointed towards them by Lat, excellent series with a mix of hard sci-fi and space opera ideas that I like.

[Dog Pants]

in that it took people a while to get over a body death and that not everyone could afford brain backups.

In the case of Eclipse Phase there are psychological payoffs to repeatedly dying I think, and while everyone can afford a backup not everyone can afford a new body. There are massive databases full of disembodied refugees from when Earth fell IIRC.

I'm quite keen to run this game as a break from SLA, since SLA seems to be losing momentum. I was considering doing it as kind of a convention game though - a one-off run with kind of throwaway characters and maybe a view to doing more later if it catches on or handing over to someone.

[Joose]

In the case of Eclipse Phase there are psychological payoffs to repeatedly dying I think, and while everyone can afford a backup not everyone can afford a new body. There are massive databases full of disembodied refugees from when Earth fell IIRC.

and making copies of you mind (called forking) can lead to all sorts of issues too.

I'm quite keen to run this game as a break from SLA, since SLA seems to be losing momentum. I was considering doing it as kind of a convention game though - a one-off run with kind of throwaway characters and maybe a view to doing more later if it catches on or handing over to someone.

Sounds good to me. Ive made one character already, and im halfway through making my second. If anyone wants a hand with character creation, I can help. Or, if you only want to dabble and are not sure you want to play enough to make it worth figuring out the character creation rules yourself, just give me a character concept and I could make one for you.

[Dog Pants]

Oh yeah, you can play 'uplifted' animals, made to human level intelligence and usually genetically modified to be bigger. Parrots, ravens, orangutans, crabs, chimps, dolphins, octupii, and various others. What's more, without being limited to a particular body type you can play a parrot in a crab's body, or an AI in a human body, or a chimp in a massive killer robot body.

[Anhamgrimmar]

... a chimp in a massive killer robot body.

A poo Flinging Monkeyborg? SOLD!

[Baliame]

In the case of Eclipse Phase there are psychological payoffs to repeatedly dying I think, and while everyone can afford a backup not everyone can afford a new body. There are massive databases full of disembodied refugees from when Earth fell IIRC.

I'm quite keen to run this game as a break from SLA, since SLA seems to be losing momentum. I was considering doing it as kind of a convention game though - a one-off run with kind of throwaway characters and maybe a view to doing more later if it catches on or handing over to someone.

[Dog Pants]

I take it that's a register of interest, rather than an offer to run the game

What I was thinking of doing was starting off with one or two people and picking up players as it goes along. Makes life easier when you can find a disembodied head floating in a derelict space station and upload it to a new body. Voila, instant party member.

[Baliame]

Yes, yes it is.

Also, if I find a disembodied head that sort-of lives, I'd rather keep it. Like the one in Monkey Island.

[MORDETH LESTOK]

[Dog Pants]

Not quite, but replace disembodied heads with disembodied people stored as software and it's not far off.

[Dog Pants]

I'm chucking together a campaign skeleton for this and I'm going to try a semi-experiment if I can. Similar to my most successful, longest running campaign to date, Star Wars, I'm going to make it player driven and open world, drawing upon the available information and a load of pre-made locations and characters in order to react to the platers' actions rather than drive them. This differs from Star Wars in that I won't be providing a linear set of leads for adventures, but a whole bunch of potential leads from the off, each of which have only a basic structure but can be elaborated on if and when the players choose to follow them. Of course as people develop their own stories the universe will start to develop around them and rest assured the NPCs encountered will be doing their own machinations.

This has some potential advantages and disadvantages;
Players will need to be motivated to progress themselves rather than sit on the rollercoaster. If their own momentum starts to diminish then the campaign could stall.
Player characters will need aims and objectives from the offset. The more background the better. If characters are happy with a 9-to-5 then they're never going to get involved.
This means at least a basic understanding of the game setting is needed by new players, meaning some reading before they start. They can counteract this somewhat by following the game in progress though.
The campaign can be run with any number of players due to there being no artificial limits set. I'm expecting the number to be on the lower end though.
Running on the fly is far more feasible in a forum game as I can pause for as long as needed to generate content, unlike a conventional game.
Players will be doing exactly what they want to do, not following the whims of NPCs, making the campaign their own design effectively.

Whether it works or not will depend as much on the players as me, so I'd like to gauge some interest first. I won't be running until at least the end of the next SLA BPN though, so there's time.

[Joose]

Now I have got my head around character creation, I am extremely up for this.

I now have two characters made. Third one is in production. You will be glad to hear that this isn't just because of my chronic altaholism though, I'm actually using it to iron the bugs out of a character creation excel doobery. I found the character sheet utterly useless for making the characters (it seems to be pretty badly flawed once you have finished the character, for that matter), so I'm custom building one from scratch, purely for putting doods together. Its almost done, I'll post it when its ready.

[TheJockGit]

Don't normally do the Beardy thing, though i used to dabble in AD&D many many moons ago, but this has piqued my interest.. playing a Mutated Orangutang with Crab claws and Octopus Tentacles sounds fun.. have downloaded PDF and I'm finding it a good read so far, just got to get my head round character creation and I may be up for this one... colour me interested please..

[Dog Pants]

I think the character creation thing might be a stumbling block for many, but hopefully once Joose has fiddled his spreadsheet thingy it might get clearer.

As for the campaign, I'm not sure how long lived it will be so I'll probably run an introductory scenario that can stand as a one-off if needed and extend it into a freeform campaign if there's still interest after that. I'm not running it until after the next SLA BPN though, so it won't be for a few months yet.

[Baliame]

I'll try and fiddle with character creation myself once I have little time as well, it can't be THAT complicated.

[Dog Pants]

It's not complicated in theory, it's just that you spend points on stats that then change the points costs of skills, which vary in cost anyway depending on what level they're at. It's difficult to adjust things during creation.

[Joose]

I'll try and fiddle with character creation myself once I have little time as well, it can't be THAT complicated.

It sort of is and sort of isn't. It wouldn't be as complicated if they hadn't decided to give everything stupid names, for one thing.

What would really slow down people new to the game is that a lot of it isn't as clearly described as it could be. Skills, for example: You only pay points towards upping skills, but skills don't start at zero, they start at the level of the aptitude they are linked to. Some choices made during character creation (faction, for example) modify your skills *before* you buy points, some modify them *after* you buy points. If the skill is modified before, it could end up costing a different amount than if it was modified after, just to get it to the same final value.

Dont worry though, I've almost finished my character creation thingy now, which should make it a lot easier. It automates all that shit for you (I hope)

[Fred Woogle]

I just read the first post, and I WANT IN!!!!! Downloaded the pdf and will read tomorrow :D