BayouSnowman |
Cool. That makes two. Have you played much then by PBP or in RL? I've been reading up on some old games on other forums, trying to get a feel for the game. Currently reading different ones at the same time, mostly done with core. Just really interesting and fascinating tech/ideas that I've seen or read about in other books.
You ever read "Pandora's Star?"(Or any of the books in the series)
BayouSnowman |
Yea, that's five and fine. I'm still reading and could maybe GM a scenario that's offered. (Never GM'd in RL or PbP.) I'm just building stuff now for a RL game I'm going to GM eventually, not ready to be tried here first or anything.
If anyone else is better versed in the system, which seems very similar to 40k mechancically speaking, then I'd love to actually play the system before I GM. If no one wishes to step up, then I'll need some time to polish up on the rule books before I'm ready.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
Six (presuming six is acceptable). Haven't quite the time to devote to GMing right now, but I'm very familiar with the system, having played in a few campaigns and have all of the books (most in hardcover, even!). I can help anyone having issues or questions with chargen if needed.
For those who don't have Transhuman (and yes, it does make chargen easier, although I like to use it as a stepping stone to the old-school full-control of every CP method), all of the EP books are legally downloadable and shareable...It's a Creative Commons licensed RPG. Do a search for Rob Boyle's blog (creator) and it'll have all of the download links.
It looks as though we have 2, possibly 3 potential GMs (if I am reading Cirle right).
Did people have a particular desired venue in-system (or out-system for that matter!)?
BayouSnowman |
I would like someone who has played the system to GM. It's nice some more interest has turned up, so make that 2??? People who could GM. I'm fine with any type of game. I've got some original story line stuff I'm writing and even researched some old and current games from other forums, mostly giantitp.com.
One of the homebrew things I saw that I'm implementing in my game was a "CP morph" Pool. Maybe you guys play it or know what I mean, but instead of your CP buying a Morph, you put aside an amount thats your pool, to use anytime you resleeve. There's more to it than that, as well as negatives for emergency resleeving and other stuff, but it seemed like a perfect fit for the way I was going to run my campaign IRL.
Then again some of my ideas may not fit and even better, some of my ideas are already implemented and laid out in the book, so I'm excited to play and GM it eventually.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
I've seen the CP morph pool before, and I've usually been pretty opposed to it. Part of EP's cachet, in my experience, has been the peculiar tension between treating a body as equipment, and knowing that if you lose it you might end up with something far less specialized.
There are benefits and drawbacks to overspecialization of morphs. In the long run, the most flexible agents are those who are flexible even if you sleeve them in a tuna can. Additionally, a GM may sometimes choose to toss unusual or specific morphs at a party for reasons that the players may not understand.
Eventually, experienced agents end up with safe houses and morphs stashed all over the place against eventuality, rather like the Major in GitS. But those still represent choices...Where to keep what morph?
And all of that goes pretty much right out the window if you just assume everyone has a CP pool for buying morphs. At its most reprehensible extreme I actually heard someone discussing starting out as an infomorph while investing in a big CP pool so they could grab whatever morph the scenario needed...Not terribly realistic when part of the political tension in the majority of the game setting revolves around there being fewer morphs available than egos to sleeve into them, and there are explicit rules regarding how long it takes custom morphs to be grown.
For me it's just messing with a core element of the setting, but I know that not everyone sees it that way.
BayouSnowman |
I'm willing to GM. Im writing a story for an IRL game and I'd be happy to try it out here first. That game wont begin for atleast a month, while my players read up on it.
I've never played EP and I've never GM'd on PBP. With that in mind, anyone interested is welcome to join.
No informorphs or AIs. Any book you want to use stuff from is fine, just let me know if its not from Core or Transhuman. Tell me where I can find it if I need to reference it.
I'll try to post an intro and campaign info ASAP, I'll switch up this thread and make it a proper one for a campaign.
Any suggestion, advice, and constructive criticism is welcome. I'm used to the WH40k system, which is very similar. Also I've got a few additions that I'll be making, but nothign that will affect your PC creation.
Everyone has a week to submit PCs. I'll take 2-6, depending on interest.
Tamilius Zantamia |
A week starting now, or a week starting after you post the campaign info? Because that'll be important. Also, we seem to have a party of people assembled already? Maybe we should just stick together and talk to figure out a good balanced party instead of everyone just throwing in characters and seeing what sticks? Just my two cents, anyhow.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
First time I've ever heard someone say EP resembled 40k, I must admit. They're both distopic SF games, I suppose, but to me, at least, 40k is far more cartoony, not nearly so obsessed with trying to be mostly hard SF (EP claims to be this, but admittedly its interpretations of nano, strong AI, and an AI singularity don't support that argument...And the Psi is right off the charts, of course...I think it's more 'hard' in the sense of 'no warp drive, just raw thrust slow-boating all the way'). 40K has magic and demons, of course... And elves, and orcs and... And the systems to me seem as different as tic-tac-toe and chess.
How would you say they are similar? I am very curious! They both have horror, and they both have slave-states (although one is a corporate wage-slave-state while the other is more like a grossly distorted medieval empire with feudal characteristics).
EP really does benefit more than most games from having a coordinated party, so I agree with Tamilius that talking together is the way to go.
Also, this next week is going to be VERY busy for me, but I'll see what I can do.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
Also, what character creation system. There are three. Two of which are easily compatible. As for chars, my Novacrab idea would probably work best as an enforcer and visible security.
All three systems are fully compatible. However, a minor CP adjustment must be made to the original purchase point system to 'equalize' it with the other two. See the red textbox at the bottom of p.13 of Transhuman. The Transhuman package system builds 1100 CP characters, so players wishing to use the original system need to expend an additional 100 CP to have an equivalent character.
Note also that the purely random system can generate characters well above or well below 1100 CP...The dice giveth and the dice taketh away. I find it to be an intriguing thing for generating fast NPC backgrounds but I don't use it for PC character generation, myself.
I also note that it's very difficult to organize a party if people are using the purely random generation system.
"Oh look, I rolled a hacker, too! That's what, five out of six hackers? Bob, what's your character?" (Bob begins rolling the dice, dreading the obvious dramatic outcome.)
BayouSnowman, did you have a particular region of the system you intended us to be in? Is this a gatecrashing campaign? Firewall? No-Firewall? Isolated habitat? Urban confabulation? :)
It's not just a matter of 'specialization' (one thing EP reinforces quite nicely is that specialization is for insects), it's also just for character-concept work.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
Firewall is the default faction which PCs belong to in the game. It's basically a cryptic underground cell-based organization dedicated to dealing with X-threats. They provide a free resleeve, some support in the sense of being 'sekrit agent doodz' but not much. They're not like the CIA or the KGB, they're more like a distributed activist network with heavy duty partitioning...Or more like a terrorist network of do-gooders. You might get a mission where you have to use what's in your pockets, sorry, we had to rely on you, nobody else is there to prep, we've got no recon, you're going in cold, the universe depends on you buddy, we'll get you support as soon as we can but no promises...Or you might be given a set of connections, passwords, and pre-established caches with gear. It all depends on how long Firewall has known about what's happening and what sort of agent support network they have in the area.
Firewall's 'grab whatever assets are convenient and get them moving' motif is also useful for roping together a group of characters who otherwise might not have reason to work with each other (though I really prefer putting characters together by discussion and agreement to create a party with a bit of history).
The key GM details on Firewall are on pages 356-361, but you will notice that the vast majority of most EP books contain sidebar information that is marked as 'Firewall sourced' information. Over 200 of the core book's pages contain the word 'Firewall.' It's pervasive for a reason...The original game intent was that most PC teams will be Firewall teams because, hey, it immediately gives them a reason to get in trouble. But some people dislike it for various reasons and don't like running or playing Firewall games, so you will discover that 'Firewall or not?' is a pretty normal question at the beginning of an EP game.
The reason why Nohwear advocates Firewall or Gatecrashing is that both give the GM more tools for moving the party around. Firewall has this vast undercover cell-based network where someone you don't know might bump-pass you something and you'd never see them again, just find yourself learning that there's a heavy plasma rifle built into the wall behind Schmo's Pho & Pizza and starting to worry how soon you're going to be told who you have to use it on. Firewall ops tend towards espionage and cthulhoid nightmare fuel.
A Gatecrashing expedition is basically alien-world away-team adventure. See the entire book Gatecrashing for more info. If you're worried about dealing with the myriad social environments, clades and factors (and Factors) in EP, Gatecrashing is MUCH easier.
And then there's the dark-hab run. Most of the deep space habitats (and even many surface habitats) from humanity's golden age are still abandoned. Damaged, or invaded, or trapped during the Fall. Some criminal types or unscrupulous hypercorps use such nightmare ruins as secret outposts. Others are breeding grounds for leftover TITAN war-machines or other horrors. Dark-habs are basically the EP equivalent of a dungeon-crawl: screw the social stuff, your ass is in an airlock, the lights are out, there's no air, you can feel the abandoned wreck groaning slowly through the sole's of your vacsuit as the misaligned centrifuge gradually turns, pirouetting unsteadily in the void.
...What do you do?
Hope that helps!
BayouSnowman |
Thanks for the recap of Firewall. It's what I thought it was, no, don't think we will be firewall agents initially. I've created my own, still lots of room for wiggle and everything you described, just with a backstory and characters that I've been working on and was looking for the right universe to put them in. Found EP and been loving it since. Some of the things will be a bit different, not too much, just might stretch the capabilities of a few things, nothing game breaking, just mechanical stuff that offers some diverse and interesting roleplay.
Anyways, enough tease, I'll try and have some stuff up this week. Feel free to take your time, work together to build a party, ask questions, etc.
You're going to have a contact named "Chase." I'l create the alias and all later, but essentially they'll be your "handler" for lack of a better word. I'll be adding to some history, hopefully not changing it, I haven't read everything, but I'm working on it.
Just letting you know it won't be standard cookie cutter scenario from the book, I may bypass and intro I was writing for my players as they'll be new, was going to have them run a small scenario in Real-Sim ( I think that's the name)...Just to give them a chance at the system and then let them make changes if we decide we like the game and want to continue.
For you guys, less necessary on Pbp and most of you have played it before, I'd rather just wave through a few technical things I had written things for to make it colorful, but here it would be too slow.
Ok, so hope you enjoyed your weekend, mine is just beginning, (Off Mon-Tues) so I'm going tree shopping, in China.
Tisiphone Cyrin |
I'll try to have a character concept up later, but it'd help if I had some info on the campaign itself. If you're still getting things together, that's fine. So, what kinds of character roles does an EP typically have? Psionicist, scientist, fighter, doctor, stealth, hacker, pilot, ect.
EP isn't that easy. Like I said earlier, specialization is for insects. Anyone with anything over a 50 is the equivalent of a doctorate in their field, 60+ is 'known' in their field, and by the time you hit 80 EVERYONE in your field has heard of you. At 90, everyone in the system has heard of you whether they are interested in what you do or not. Skill returns start costing hard at 60+, the thing to remember is that you don't NEED skills much over 60 to be superhuman. Here's an example:
Skill A (60) with a specialization (+10 when it applies), plus a complement skill (some other skill that's relevant to what you're doing: say using Academics: Physics to assist your Pilot: Spacecraft) which can be anywhere from +10 to +30 (if the complement skill is also 60+)...Oh hey we just hit 100%, didn't we? But it doesn't stop there. Your muse may be able to assist you if it has relevant skills...Add another +10. If you've got the right tools, add +10 if it's just a toolbelt, +20 for a serious toolbox, +30 if you're in your lab or your garage or whatever and have 'BIG' tools. Oh, and +10 for each of your team-mates helping you. Oh, and BY THE WAY if you want to take extra time you can trade extra time for more skill bonuses.
Wait, we're WAAAAAY over 100%! How did that happen with a skill of 60%? How come every character in the game isn't superman? Because there will be minuses thrown against you sometimes, too. For example, the same way you can 'take your time and do it right' you can also 'rush the job'...Say you want to hack the local security systems before that plasma turret lights you up? NOT the time to take your time, amIrite? The big thing to remember is that AFTER all of the bonuses from all the stuff I just listed, and AFTER all of the penalties (voluntary or otherwise) you cannot be more than + or - 60% to your own base skill value.
But because of the way complement skills work it's MUCH better to have a bunch of situationally relatable skills at 60%-ish than to have two-three skills at 70% or one skill at 80%.
What this means is that almost EVERYONE will have some solid weapon skills, some solid science skills, etc. You'll be 'better at' doing certain things than other team members, but by no means are you likely to be 'the only guy who can do _______.' If you are, it means your team-mates' characters are overspecialized and the team is pretty weak. There are a LOT of times the hacker will want someone with 'some' hacking skills to lend them a hand, or the tactical bad-boys will want somebody who isn't a bona-fide SNOIPAH to lay down covering fire while they make their moves. Eclipse Phase really rewards characters that have some flexibility and teams that can help cover each other's bases. My personal rule of thumb is 3-4 (not SUPER-related) skills in the mid-60s, probably twice that many in the 40s-50s, and a scattering of 20s-30s.
Now as to the thing you're BEST at, sure...It's nice to be able to let people know "I'm an ___________." In EP, you get a lot of different possibilities. Hacker? Sure. Combat Hacker or Information Specialist or Digital Forgery Specialist? Nano-specialist? Programmer/Fabricator? Infiltrator? Security Specialist? Many kinds of Scientists? Social Network Face? In-Person Seduction Face? Various sorts of Engineer? Bot Jammer? Melee Specialist (but, but, this is sci-fi, where are my guns? They're somewhere else when you're dragging your naked body out of a vat that your infiltration specialist and hacker have uploaded you into from five parsecs away, and you haven't even got a rolled-up newspaper to help you secure the room so your buddies can get sleeved up! Nice to know how to use your knuckles sometimes...)? And of course any number of Shooty types.
Lots of choices, hm?
Your typical team will have a couple of guys who can do nasty wetwork, a couple who can hack, and a couple who can do other things of various sorts...And all of them will be able to do a little bit of at least some of the rest of the team's jobs in an emergency, or help them out to give them a solid bonus.
You're going to have a contact named "Chase." I'l create the alias and all later, but essentially they'll be your "handler" for lack of a better word. I'll be adding to some history, hopefully not changing it, I haven't read everything, but I'm working on it.
What kind of a contact? Criminal? Financial? Old drinking buddy? "Handler" suggests an espionage outfit of some type, and that's something that we should probably factor into who our characters are, right? :)
Just letting you know it won't be standard cookie cutter scenario from the book,
Unless you mean some of the modules, there really isn't a 'standard' scenario that I've seen. Well, maybe Dark-Hab work...
I may bypass and intro I was writing for my players as they'll be new, was going to have them run a small scenario in Real-Sim ( I think that's the name)
Simulspace?
Ok, so hope you enjoyed your weekend, mine is just beginning, (Off Mon-Tues) so I'm going tree shopping, in China.
Nifty! What kind of tree? Trying to find a nice solid holiday fir in Mao-land?
Tisiphone Cyrin |
Hey, can I put my muse in a servitor bot? I assume I can, but I can't find whether it says either way. I just want to check :)
Muses are AIs, bots are run by AIs...Every campaign I've ever been in would have no problem with it. However I'd recommend putting a copy of your Muse in the bot. Most characters in EP really need their Muse inside their head, providing them with active information, monitoring their PAN for security breaches, running on-the-fly translations and language lookups, etc. Not to mention helping you keep a calm head when the walls are bleeding and that fabber just grew legs and tentacles.
Tamilius Zantamia |
Yeah, I figured as much, thanks. Also, I had planned on it being a copy, but thanks for the advice :) I'm nearly done with my character. Also, it seems like I can, but to be clear, can I buy a robot and then buy robotic enhancements for it? It says they're for synthmorphs/robots, so it looks like I can, but I'm not sure. I really want to make a robot with sensors and stuff that I (a biomorph) cannot use.
BayouSnowman |
How is that usually role played? Is the GM every muse? Before my plan was Chase being like a muse until I read about the muse. My plan was for something called =zero time" then I read about simulspace. Even the gates, I had other plans for those... So..
Do you all mind playing with my custom additions, just some tweaks I'm making for IRL campaign with new players. It's nothing more than mechanical stuff really to ease role-playing.
I'm fine either way, it's stuff I'd introduce in the beginning with story, if you don't like it, the we jus go back to core.
Tamilius Zantamia |
Yeah, knowing ahead of time what we're getting into is good. Some people might judge a GM for not knowing the setting well, but TBH, in my Pathfinder game, my players know more than I do about Golarion :P
But anyway, I finished the stats on my character. I won't have time to post the full background until Wednesday or Thursday probably (real busy, I am). But in short, he's a 61yo Ring Flyer navigator/scout type. He lived the first half of his life as a spacer, mostly planetary exploration, geomapping, that sort of thing. Joined the hypercorp military where he was a scout and remained until he was killed in the Fall, but of course was backed up and uploaded into this body. He spent the next years exploring/gatecrashing until his ship suffered some sort of malfunction and was rescued by the group we'll be working for, I was thinking. He then decided the join them.
I used the Life Path system (mostly randomized, but I did move some skills around like it said I could), so if that's too OP, we can work it out. The first thing I'd like to drop is my Moxie if I need to lower anything. My skills and augments and robot are very important to me. I don't know if I got more augments than usual, but I really love augments, and only bought ones that could help in exploring (sensors, survival, mobility). Same with gear and robot (all CRB sensors, enhanced transportation capabilities). The Sense Filter is from Panopticon and the Survival Belt is from Gatecrashing. I may have some other non-CRB/transhuman augmentations but I can't remember any in particular right now.
Muse's name is Pepper and is stored in his head, with a copy in his Servitor, who serves him while at home. Also has a Recon Hopper (Gatecrashing) named Tarry that has been heavily modified with sensor and mobility augmentations (and also some armor).
As a character, he's a nice, playful old guy. He has his body kept looking like he's 51 years old (in old Human years) for some reason. He is pro-technology and pro-transhuman with a focus on robots and morphs. He treats all AI with respect, knowing that even if they lack the same sentience that he has, everything deserves respect. This gets him some anarchist rep, of course. He also is respectful towards uplifts, and well, everyone else, too. He's a thrill seeker and can often be found hanging by his tail, climbing walls, or gliding.
BayouSnowman |
^^Sounds good. Shouldn't be a problem with what you want. Please turn it into an Alias so I can view, I don't really think I'll not be approving much, unless others take issue. So please check each others, as will I, just to make sure.
NO GOOGLE(Sorry, maybe I'll finally get another VPN, but for now, I haven't renewed.)
I'm in China, which has thinkgs like Google, Facebook (Dont care) and Youtube and a plethora of other sites blocked. So you'll have to submit the alias here for me to view or you could PM/Email me.
Anwyas, had my 10 year wedding aniv. yesterday, so sorry for late replies, I'll try and post some of my changes without spoiling too much later today when I'm at work.