Roleplaying Game of Transhuman Conspiracy and Horror, Eclipse Phase HUH? Options

[eidolon]

So various stumblings around have led me to discover a new game coming up from (I'm guessing newly formed) Posthuman Studios, to be published by Catalyst.

Eclipse Phase The Roleplaying Game of Transhuman Conspiracy and Horror

What?? Really?? SWEET! I know next to nothing about this game, and I can't freaking wait to get it and read it.

I've wanted to try that SJG game Transhuman Space, but I don't much care for GURPS. Now I can gets my transhuman fix from CGL. Bad ass.

Looks like they've also got a card game on the way called Paparazzi. As much as I hate the culture of celebrity for the sake of celebrity, I might actually be checking that out too.

I wonder if these will be out for preview at GenCon?

[Caine Hazen]

Awesome just touches the tip of this stuff (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Moon-Hawk]

Based on the tagline on the preview book you linked and the team working on it, I think I can safely say: I'll buy it.

Hmmmm, think there will be any little SR/ED hints, as in 7th world, or completely separate universe?

[TW]

It'll be a separate universe. And yes, it'll rock!

Some more info on these new IMR / CGL / PHS games can also be found here, look for Adam's replies.

[WearzManySkins]

Yet another Sci-Fi RPG.

No sorry I feel you are not putting enough time and effort into the already existing product lines, with another line........

Focus Focus Focus.

WMS

[Blade]

So that's the new Sci-Fi game from Rob Boyle...
For all those who felt that there was a trend towards Transhumanism in SR, here might lie some answers...

[Caine Hazen]

No sorry I feel you are not putting enough time and effort into the already existing product lines, with another line........

Well considering that Posthuman Studios really only has one guy on its staff really deeply involved in SR right now (Correct me if I'm wrong Adam, but the others are involved mostly in EP and DeGenesis) it wouldn't appear to take any time away from their SR duties.

[Adarael]

Oh hell yeah.

Time to re-read Newton's Wake and The Cassini Division.

[Adam]

No sorry I feel you are not putting enough time and effort into the already existing product lines, with another line........

Catalyst Game Labs has a fulltime developer working on all three of our RPG lines, plus an additional developer who works on all three lines and anything else we throw at him. We just brought in a couple new freelance graphic designers to help out with things as well. We're on schedule to hit both of our yearly targets for SR and CBT -- six new books in each line -- this year, along with the new games.

[Grinder]

Hey everyone, just wanted to pop my head in and provide some extra info on the upcoming Eclipse Phase game. This is a game that I’ve actually had in the works for awhile (over 2 years) but that has just come into active development in the past half-year. We’re still in the final draft, playtesting, and dev-editing stage, but it will be out later this year.

The game has a post-apocalyptic, post-singularity transhumanist setting. It’s influenced a lot by sci-fi by authors like Richard Morgan, Charlie Stross, Ken Macleod, Alistair Reynolds, Bruce Sterling, and Peter Hamilton. It’s a bit darker than Transhuman Space, and while we do try and stick close to a hard science approach, it does include things like psi and wormhole gates. It takes place primarily in the Solar system, with a few extrasolar colonies and opportunities to explore beyond via wormholes gates.

There’s an emphasis on backing up your mind and downloading into new bodies of different types (biological, synthetic, or mixed), allowing for character “save points� as well as optimizing your character’s abilities for specific missions.

Here’s some of the sell sheet text:

Humanity stands on the cusp of a new age, with accelerated technological growth converging toward a singularity point, promising an undreamt-of future. Despite the ecopocalypse and social upheavals on Earth, humanity has conquered the solar system and partially terraformed Mars. Advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and cognitive science have transformed our lives. Everyone is wirelessly networked with the world around them, AIs process vast amounts of information, and nano-fabrication enables people to “print� complex devices from the molecular level—at home. Biotechnology allows people to genefix, enhance, and clone their bodies, while others pursue body modifications to adapt to new environments or make themselves into something no longer quite human. People’s minds and memories can be digitized, uploaded, transferred over long distances, and downloaded into new bodies (biological or synthetic). Death has been defeated—for those who can afford it.

From within, disaster struck. Transhumanity reaped the rewards of its arrogance when a group of military AIs known as TITANS achieved full sentience, autonomy, and rapidly began exponentially incrementing their own intellectual growth. The AI intelligences spawned by this hard-takeoff singularity quickly turned against transhumanity, enveloping the system in unprecedented levels of violence, disaster, and warfare. What began as a struggle between man and machine escalated into a whirlwind of conflict between political factions, revolutionaries, and hypercorps.

In less than a year, transhumanity was nearly wiped out with nuclear strikes, biowarfare plagues, destructive nanoswarms, infowar attacks, mass uploads, and other unexplained singularity events, ripping the superpowers of old to pieces. Our planetary home—Earth—was transformed into a toxic and strange hellhole, while many major habitats were left frozen sarcophagi in the vacuum of space. Just as quickly as they came, the TITANS disappeared, taking millions of uploaded minds with them, leaving behind a network of wormhole gateways. Known as Pandora Gates, these poorly-understood devices allow instantaneous teleportation to distant star systems—often one-way and/or fatal. Though only a handful of Pandora Gates are known to exist—each highly contested—the foolish, brave, curious, and desperate are already risking certain death to enter and explore what lies beyond.

In the aftermath of the Fall, transhumanity lives on, divided into a patchwork of hypercorp combines, survivalist stations, transhuman faction species, and city-state habitats. Under the oppressive police states of immortal inner-system oligarchies, advanced technologies remain highly restricted, and refugee infomorphs are held in virtual slavery or resleeved in robotic bodies and forced into indentured labor. In the outer system, rebel transhuman scientists and techno-anarchists struggle to maintain a new society—from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. And on the fringes and in the niches lurk networked tribes of political extremists, religious fanatics, criminal entrepreneurs, and bizarre posthumans, among other, stranger, and more alien things …

Though most claim the Fall was carefully orchestrated by the out-of-control TITANS, others whisper that the driving powers behind the wars—both AI and transhuman—were infected by a mutating virus with multiple infection vectors—biological, information, nano—dubbed the Exsurgent virus. Whatever its source, this virus has been known to sometimes transform its victims into something unexplainable … something monstrous and reality-altering. Whatever the truth, the remnants of the TITANS and this virus were left to the desolated ruins or driven to the edges of the system, where they remain hidden away in dark corners, quietly waiting to infect the minds of the scavengers and explorers who find them …

The game system is a simple d100 variant, optimized for quick resolution so people can focus on the setting more than mechanics.

We’ll have a website up soon at http://eclipsephase.com. Feel free to post questions, but I may wait to answer them over at the forums we’ll have on the website.

http://www.adamjury.com/2008/upcoming-game...udios/#comments

Sounds interesting, even though the "AIs want to destroy all humans"-approach is a bit lame.

[Backgammon]

Richard Morgan (IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) meets Firefly (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

This may be the only other RPG EVER that I'd seriously consider playing.

[Grinder]

Wait 'til you read Equinox (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Backgammon]

What is Equinox?

[Grinder]

In the dark night of a distant future, the shattered remains of Earth drift through the cold void of space. The shadows of the past have been driven away, and the dark clouds at the horizon appear to be man-made. After the Great War, which resulted in the destruction of Earth, mankind is restless, scattered across the void, bereft of its home.

The Sol system became the last, safe hideout for the Vagrants, now rebels to the oppressive might of the Consortium—a government they deem to be fascistic and corrupted from deep within. True freedom can only be found among the stars, the voices of the galactic underground say. To them, the Great War isn't over. It has only just begun.

Equinox is a roleplaying game set in the dark future of the war-ravaged Eighth World, and contains everything you need to experience fantastic adventures with your friends: extensive setting material, exotic races, spaceships, mystic powers, guns, tainted artifacts, and much more!

http://www.equinox-rpg.com/

[TW]

This is what little is known about Equinox - in addition to hints at a connection to the ED/SR universe: Equinox was set to be the 8th world.
[edit]what Grinder just posted

And while it indeed sounds interesting, repeatedly mentioning how awesome will be while holding back any further details is just ...lame. And teasing (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[edit 2] without wanting to lure people away from this forum, there's an ongoing thread over at rpg.net with more information on Eclipse Phase directly from Rob and some of the authors.

[Grinder]

I wish it would be teasing on Equinox, but I'm as clueless as anyone else... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Aaron]

The whole transhuman thing reminds me of the "What is human?" theme from Neuromancer. All of the characters in that book can have that question asked of them, and there are arguments for and against in each case.

[Backgammon]

Equinox actually seems less appealing to me than Eclipse Phase. Of couse, I'm basically judging a few paragraphs against a few more, but still.

[DocTaotsu]

I say to you BOOOO on "Evil AI's Kill Everything"

AI's Are Evil is a very non-transhumanist theme in my book.

[WearzManySkins]

Unfortunately the AI kills everyone has been done and majorly done badly. Most RPG devs have a lack of understanding of how a AI views things and humans. But then they view the AI as merely Plot Device, so a lack of caring/understanding can be understood.

AI are not good or evil they are AI's they transcend the pigeon hole definitions of good and evil.

Also remember the time frame reference/difference for a AI and a human are vastly different, kinda like a human(AI) and a Redwood tree(Human). The AI time is so much faster than ours, we would look like slow growing trees to them. Now that could mean the AI's could act like Shepherds/Tenders/Breeders of humans/transhumans for their own agendas.

WMS

[nezumi]

That said, if the devs pull a metrophage on us, I would not complain (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Rhandhali]

If you all want to hear a little bit more about Eclipse Phase we're publishing a series of interviews we conducted with two of the developers, Rob Boyle and Brian Cross, you can view the first in the series at http://www.bluealien.org/node/380

[Wesley Street]

Well, it's the end of Q1, 2009. The website still has this listed as TBA but I swear I saw something, somewhere about a PDF release sometime soon. Does anyone have any info?

[Adam]

Well, it's the end of Q1, 2009. The website still has this listed as TBA but I swear I saw something, somewhere about a PDF release sometime soon. Does anyone have any info?

We're still in the production process. Got held up a little bit when SR4A got a little more complex than we expected ... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Wesley Street]

Cool. Rob's post said the release dates were tentative but I was still curious to see how far along the core book was. The fiancee and I are both big "Culture" and Takeshi Kovacs novel fans so we're pretty stoked about this one. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)