/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

Also you guys are so funny

>Find out this game is only gonna have 3 players
>Lots of people talking about wanting in
>Stress a little making a good character concept
>No one else applies

Dude I was in Spain until last Tuesday and didn't see this until yesterday. I need a little time to create an application. The core rulebook has bloody 400 pages. Even the quickstart has 40.

Yeah i was more talking about the people who were all hype when Anon3 first brought it up. The rulebook is SUPER dense in terms of shit you need to know

Eclipse Phase has a lot of stuff going on in it that you need to understand before you can make a character.

Being able to play as an AI character is one of those things. It's right there on the box. What they don't tell you is that most of the solar system either bars you from traveling there outright, or enforces a lot of regulation and securities on you if you do travel there. It's not a "space rednecks" thing, where it's secluded pockets of backwards hateful people. It's most of the inner systems. It's all of Jove.

Then there's the double-standard that you're not a "real" AI but an "Artificial GENERAL Intelligence" or AGI. Basically a digital intelligence that experienced a simulated "growth" period where you were a "child" living in a digital space with other young AGI's, and you've also got a ton of limiters and things irreparably built into you to make sure you never get too far beyond the transhuman potential for intelligence and cognition.

...and that's just one thing. The game is full of those things. Almost every thing has a thing behind it.

There's a lot of popular or cool sci-fi tropes and stereotypes that don't work in the Eclipse Phase setting. On the plus side it has its own kinds of weirdness (all the uplifts you can play as, being a pleasure pod prostitute cyborg, your character is trans-schoolbus in order to pay the bills, the rep economy, etc.)

...now take all that and add to it that I'm trying to run a more social/knowledge based detective type game and the already raised bar goes up even higher. It's kinda ridiculous, I really am asking for a lot here so it's fine if people think twice about submitting characters or start to and then decide not. It's totally possible you might come up with something that I then strongly suggest you "fix".

I think, out of all the previous EP I've played or GM'ed, only one other character I've seen before in a prior game would actually work here. Maybe two or three if they were just played differently but with the same stats.

Alright, I don't think I will be able to build a character conforming to such a strict ruleset until I get more experience with Eclipse Phase itself. Even if I read all the books from head to tail.

Does one of the books have a set of pre-created character (concepts) that would fit the bill for your even stricter restrictions?

1) Read the fluff at the beginning of the core book. It's more important that you know the story and setting than you do all the mechanics and rules. I can teach you the rules as we go. I will probably be making mistakes there as well.

2) The role you guys are in as detectives will use your social skills and deduction skills a lot more than combat. That's all. 90% of EP characters (like every RPG, really) are based around FIGHTIN MENS. This game, that wont really be happening. Any archetype from the book that isn't "Dude who is really good at shooting/stabbing/psi-ops'ing people" or "Dude who is good at sneaking into places and stealing shit" is probably good.

3) Ceres is pretty cosmopolitan so the overall city attitude towards AI's is accepting, but expect to find pockets of people who will want to caress you with a sledgehammer every so often. One of the reasons a lot of AGI's remain as infolifes is because it becomes really hard for bioconservatives to attack them. I mean, to be fair a bunch of otherwise benign AI's did rapidly explode in intellect and succeed in wiping out all life on Earth only ten years ago. Would you think it's a great idea for people to keep creating new AI's like "Oh no but THIS time will be different"? Also a huge number of refugees from Earth still exist only as backups in storage or purely digitally because there just aren't enough bodies to go around for everyone yet. That someone out there is creating new life and sticking them into morphs when there are still people waiting in line to "live" again seems really shitty to some.

4) While browsing around, if you find a really interesting keyword or concept you want to integrate into your character run it by this encyclopedia first to get a brief on it:

https://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/

Also, isn't there magic or psionics in there?

And this magic/psi stuff is basically a genetically engineered plague by the big bad AI rebellion that eventually takes over your mind to go into KILL ALL HUMANS mode?
It's a big setting

Psi is basically mindfuck superpowers, and while some strains eventually make you go into KILL ALL HUMANS mode, the one you can buy doesn't, although it has multiple downsides.

The Exsurgent Virus is pretttttty fucking crazy. There's one documented strain that doesn't outright murder/mutate/subvert the infected, known as the Watts-MacLeod strain. It gives you psi powers, which is neat, but it also gives you a bunch of mental disorders and most folks would probably throw you right out an airlock and scrub any backups of your ego if they knew you were carrying it. Crazy thing about it is you actually have a chance to infect others with it (giving them level 1 psi powers and mental disorders too!) in certain cases when using psi powers on people.

Other strains can do prettymuch anything you can imagine to people. Both overt and subtle mind control. Complete identity subversion. Complete physical mutation. What makes them completely insane is that the vectors for them transcend the regular concepts for a virus. It's a technobiological nanovirus that is also capable of riding inside signal carriers like audio/visual information, called a "basilisk hack". Think subliminal messaging but instead of wanting to buy more Coca Cola you become a sleeper agent of the TITANs. Interfacing with infected computer networks can lead to you breaking down into a puddle of goo later and reforming as all kinds of nasty exsurgent lifeforms.

It's basically a deus ex machina for the GM.

Two characters approved, one slot remains

ShadowDimentio and Wyzack are both in.

seems bretty good

I'm still working on my own application, if someone else gets the final slot before me I'll accept my loss though.

Alright I've tried to read up as much as possible on the lore, and I definitely want to stick with an AGI character, because it looks like it would make for some interesting interactions.

I'm trying to decide among three of the character archetypes in the book: the Mercurial Investigator, the Criminal Hacker and the Socialite Escort/Venusian Negotiator. The first one would probably mean my character remains an infomorph, so I'm not sure if that works in what An0n3 has in mind. The second one could be either an infomorph or an actual morph, but the third one definitely means my character obtained a morph somehow (and pretends to be transhuman most of the time).

Being an infomorph doesn't mean you're relegated to only interacting with people in specific situations, or that you're not there ever.

You're actually kind of omnipresent, since you're always floating around in the ambient digital space of the station you can kinda go anywhere anyone else goes. They'll see you standing there if you're in the local area as a digital construct through their ectos. As long as the area has cameras and sensors (and practically EVERYWHERE does, unless people purposely disable them) you'll be able to see things similarly to everyone else and attempt all your perception checks and whatnot through them.

Alternatively you can buy some drones and remote operate them as well so you have some "hands on" ability for poking at scenes and such.

I will have a little gnat camera drone you can slot into if you need it. I can boot my muse somewhere else

Rico is in! That gives us our three.

If anyone was nearly finished with a character and wants to submit it anyway I could keep you in mind in case someone drops out later, or maybe have you cameo as something or help me out with NPC's until the story maybe opens up somewhat.

Also we need to pick a day/time to start playing and get goin'.

Ideally for me alternating Thursdays each week at something early-ish like 7pm EST and going til whenever each sessions. Thoughts?

An0n3 wrote: or maybe have you cameo as something or help me out with NPC's until the story maybe opens up somewhat.

here is my filler octosquid guy, change the name if you want it was more of a joke that I never changed
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2mnRg ... sp=sharing

I may have a use for you in the game at some point(s). I'll keep you posted.

Could we swing wednesdays instead? It would be a bit better for me if it works for everyone else

Wednesdays are just as good for me.

watts-macleod, exsurgen viruses in general in fact, are quantum entangled with your consciousness. They aren't really an infection in any traditional way, the word just serves as an analogy for how it spreads.
watts-macleod is the straight up weakest form of the exsurgent virus in terms of both effects and side effects. anything it can do, you could reasonably chalk up to technology or savantism.
it is kind of implied that in case of the strains that let you do psi shit, it's not really the virus directly fucking your brain up, it's just that having the ability to do that kind of shit is just so innately post human that it'll make you ruin yourself all on your own.

For just a split-second I wasn't sure whether I was reading John_Oxford or a spambot.

Then it clicked.

Almost every day works for me until the end of august, but 7pm est is already 1am for me.

Bother, now I've got the urge to play some Eclipse Phase.

Perhaps I'll put together a characters as a potential cameo/drop-out replacement. Got an interesting idea for an Infomorph.

Drynwyn wrote:an Infomorph.

hissssss my territory

make an animorph

Somebody needs to run a Shadowrun game and let me play in it so I can learn how it works before I have to run it.

EndgamerAzari wrote:Somebody needs to run a Shadowrun game and let me play in it so I can learn how it works before I have to run it.

alright I'm booting up my 360 as we speak, my gamertag is xXxOptic_VaporwavexXx I'll see you soon


also, obligatory tg rpg games are cursed meme

I run Shadowrun twice a week(For two different groups)

Can't let you play since it's full already, but you can come watch one of the groups(The other is not okay with being watched)

Oh, that'd be cool, XSI. When do you play?

I'd like to watch unless we are talking watching via stream or something the old copper wires don't like that.

Saturdays, usually starting at 6 PM my time(Dutch), but we are usually delayed by a an hour and sometimes a bit more because people are slow to get on or they forgot the game was that day

This week it's going to be a very slow and not very combat oriented session as one of the group is at a con, it will be mostly detective work for the players to handle.

Play is at Roll20, great site, supports everything but we're using just text and the map, not streaming music either as a player has a bit slow net and requested that I just link any tracks

Roll20 is usually pretty great, I've used it a lot. It'd be great if it had an 'observer' sort of designation, where someone could see everything that's going on but couldn't interact with anything (or maybe it does and I just missed it somehow).

It does
It's called just being a player and not having any tokens assigned to you so you can't touch anything

But most GMs are lazy and trust their players, so they tag communal notes and such as being for all players. It's easier than selecting individual players

Well, I meant so I could see GM side stuff, too, since I'm going to be running a game eventually. Regardless, though, it'll be good to see it in action.

The system is crazy fun, but reconciling the real world, the virtual world and the astral world is a fucking pain, especially if you have players trying to do things with them at the same time.

Well, you can see GM stuff if the GM shows you, but that just means in practice that I'll be telling you through steam or something

I still keep my NPC sheets and such on my computer, not on Roll20. Same for the plans

ya can't make that time without pain

have fun

My group has really taken a shine to Warhammer Fantasy RP 2nd edition, which is pretty rare. I am running a fucking massive party of 8 players, but combat is so streamlined that it runs very well. Running another session today, i have all our battle maps prepared in tabletop simulator. It was fun but it took a long time to do. Luckily there are so many good 3d models for warhammer fantasy that it all looks really good. It is a shame that beastmen are a garbage army, I need lots of them today but no one ever made an army pack for them so i am stuck proxying skaven and orcs

For the Eclipse Phase crew:

I"ll try to message you each individually again as well, but in case you see this first:

This week, Wednesday evening EST, game time. 7pm is pretty late for Rico, how much earlier can we do?

I can probably swing as early as five, but there is a chance i might not make it till 5 30. My work hours are kind of uncertain that way, i get done early pretty often but there is always a chance

played some https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Everyone_Is_John with friends a couple days ago, it was really fun.

Fucking hell this heat is giving me a headache.

Can we do tomorrow or Friday this week?

Yes please! Just came here to post that on a freak whim I have to stay insanely late for work but I will have tomorrow off as a result

Okay. If you have tomorrow off what's the earliest everyone can play?

I'm free all day, and I know Rico has a crazy timezone so I'm thinking early afternoon would be best if popular.

An0n3 wrote: Rico has a crazy timezone

CET isn't a crazy timezone...

I'm using this time to add more NPC's and flesh out the ones that are already there, so it's not for nothin'.

I can start around 4 EST, maybe a bit earlier if that works for you guys.

Also please be gentle, I am playing a character that has a working knowledge of the setting and local area that is far beyond my own, so it might be a bit rough starting up

It's fine, I'll probably have to correct and be corrected by everyone on all sorts of shit.

It's fine. Everything is fine.

Also where are you?

Success! Audiolog to follow. Next session scheduled again for Wednesday 4pm next week.