Eclipse Phase RPG, downloadable PDF Options

[Buio]

Looking forward to the re-release. I wasn't able to grab a copy over here before they was out. Or rather make that, I didn't know I wanted the book early enough.

[Adam]

We appear to be back in stock on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/epamazon

[Kanada Ten]

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Interesting...

[Delta]

Does anyone have any experience with the pre-generated EP characters from the core book? I'm thinking about running an introductory adventure on a convention in a couple weeks, and for all it's awesomeness, I think the character creation is a little bit too complex to be handled in such a limited time for a group of complete EP newbies.

[Demonseed Elite]

Does anyone have any experience with the pre-generated EP characters from the core book? I'm thinking about running an introductory adventure on a convention in a couple weeks, and for all it's awesomeness, I think the character creation is a little bit too complex to be handled in such a limited time for a group of complete EP newbies.

I don't personally have any experience using them, but they seem pretty solid. In an earlier post of mine, I linked to a character I made, which was posted on an rpg.net thread full of characters people made. So you could always use those too.

[Adam]

Delta, there are some characters in the Quick Start Rules as well: http://eclipsephase.com/eclipse-phase-quick-start-rules

[Adam]

Sooo, things seem to be going well enough that we're up as high as #6 on the Gaming books chart, and Amazon is down to 5 copies in their warehouse, with more on the way, of course. Quite a day!

[Backgammon]

I played the Quick Start game. I offered my players to make their own or use the Quick Start premades. 2 Players ended up using the premades, and they were just fine for the adventure. And, in hindsights, having playing the entire QS mission, I can say using only the premades would have been just fine.

[Demonseed Elite]

Sooo, things seem to be going well enough that we're up as high as #6 on the Gaming books chart, and Amazon is down to 5 copies in their warehouse, with more on the way, of course. Quite a day!

Awesome! And only two left in stock now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Delta]

Thanks a lot, so I guess I'll give "Mind the WMDs" a try with the premade characters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Kumo]

Premade characters are really good idea for convention gaming - chargen just takes too long with players new to the system.
And QSR adventure is REALLY good introduction for EP and much fun (players' faces when I gave them 2nd versions of character sheets... just priceless. "Man, now you are a tachikoma!" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) ).

[Abschalten]

I modified the QSR for use with my (very small) gaming group. I found parts of the adventure to be rather railroady, as if they WANTED you to die. I understand that furthers the vibe of the game, especially with new players, but I never set out to ensure my players die under any circumstances. I also let the players use their own characters instead of forcing them to use premades, and I fleshed out a few parts (let them roleplay on the Scum barge, among other things.)

Example:

[ Spoiler ]

One of my player is an Ultimate Drifter, and I actually gave him a small ship as part of his backstory, which he stole escaping from a Jovian crackdown. He docks at the Scum barge shortly before the events of the module. When he's on Gray Xu's freighter and the nanite cloud is swarming the ship, he and the other guy in the team make it to the bridge of the ship and seal the doors. Knowing the nanite cloud would get to them eventually, he shoots out the window and decompresses the bridge, but fortunately both of them were equipped for vacuum conditions and had internal air tanks. With his excellent Freefall skill, he manages to get them both to his ship, and he fires one of his own rockets at the barge and destroys it. And, might I add, he did all this without prompting or knowing the module, and he kept the module on track.

[Adam]

Introductory scenarios should demo the key concepts of a game. Resleeving is a key concept.

Please write up and post the changes/additions you made here, or to the EP forums!

[Buio]

We appear to be back in stock on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/epamazon

Any chance some ex finding their way to Europe? I usually buy my games at a local shop (gotta support local gaming shops), but if its unlikely to get any wider distribution at the moment, I might try and order from Amazon.com in USA.

[Adam]

There are copies on the way to European distributors. Please give your local shop a call/email/facebook message/whatever you do to contact them and let them know you want one!

[Abschalten]

Introductory scenarios should demo the key concepts of a game. Resleeving is a key concept.

I agree with that, and I totally see the design behind the pre-gens and the way the adventure is laid out. However, I wanted to kick off a campaign for my players with characters they created, and felt like while the QSR adventure was a good outline for an initial adventure, it needed some work.

Please write up and post the changes/additions you made here, or to the EP forums!

I'm not sure that anything I changed could be applied widely to everyone's game. I let them roleplay being on the Scum barge for a bit, having given them both RP reasons why they are there (one was hustling and doing some business with some smugglers to get some illegal cargo down to Elysium, the other had just arrived while escaping from the Jovians.) I let them roleplay some stuff and interact with people, let them make some rolls of various tests to get them used to the base mechanics.

I didn't force them to die, but neither did I fudge the rolls. I followed the module fairly closely in most regards, except I didn't accept that they would necessarily make choices causing them to die. There were only two players, but they made good choices and had no need to resleeve at all during the entire Quick-start campaign.

[ Spoiler ]

As for changes I made to the module itself, I felt like the entire thing needed to be fluffed out a bit. There were four "acts" and one of them was just doing some legwork (which you could easily boil down to 15 minutes) and another is just a drive out on Mars. I wanted to add some more meat to the adventure, so I first let them roleplay on the Scum barge. Then when doing legwork to find Gray Xu I threw in some monkeywrenches and made them track down one of the potential buyers for the nanite swarm. They used him to get onto her ship.

I felt like the trip to the actual settlement where the weapons cache was located was sorta boring and uneventful. I made them navigate a rugged, dangerous terrain riddled with mudslides. I also gave them an opportunity to realize they were being tracked and followed (which they discovered.) I had them run across some Barsoomians who were being attacked by a stray TITAN head-hunter bot. Saving them generated good will with the autonomists and the Barsoomians actually helped when they got to Ebb-6, which was good since there were only two players and I didn't reduce the number of bad guys at the settlement.

I also did some research in the core book and determined that it made alot of sense to have Ebb-6 located in the Quarantine Zone, given the description of the area. I felt it matched up with what was described in the QSR. It also let me play up on some of the political themes going on in Elysium, given that many people living there are concerned with what the politicos are (or aren't) doing about the Quarantine Zone not too far from where they are. Since the border to the Quarantine zone would be (I surmised) heavily guarded, I had Firewall use their pull to open a security gap so the players could slip into there undetected.

With the Barsoomians there, it turned into a pretty nasty three-way gun battle once the mysterious third party showed up. It may have turned into a four-way battle had they decided to turn on the Barsoomians -- after all, they had to hide the real reason they were there, and were using the cover that they were looking for salvage.

Basically I felt like the QSR didn't have enough content, so I added some stuff based on what I liked and felt was appropriate from the core book, which I thought was a tremendous help to me. I used the core rules instead of some of the "streamlined" rules in the QSR regarding reputation/favors and damage value modification. I also modified the adventure to allow for my characters to feel part of Eclipse Phase's rich universe, as opposed to forcing them to play pregens they had no attachment to.

Adam, had you seen these guys in action you would've been proud. I haven't listed all they did in our two sessions here, but suffice it to say I had as much fun GMing the game for them as they did playing. I'm looking forward to getting Glory and running it for them.

[kxU]

something i've been thinking about while brainstorming for an ep game, and i figured here is as good a place as any to pose the question to the very intelligent guys and gals of dumpshock to see what ya'll think - what exactly does joe bloggs do in the universe of eclipse phase? put another way, what's the most common profession for your average, somewhat educated, middle class person? in shadowrun, we have joe bloggs the wage slave, who earns his keep by working for the megacorporations, probably in an office, a cog in the great machine of free market capitalism. in ep, hypercorps no longer need physical worker bees, with most of their daily administrative tasks delegated to infomorphs and weak AIs. does joe bloggs even need to work at all, especially if he lives in an outer system habitat with a post-scarcity economy? i imagine the 40 hour work week no longer exists, and while everyone will have to pitch in with some communal work, such as habitat maintenance and the like, for the most part, leisure time makes up a large part of a person's day. there are probably a lot more people indulging in creative pursuits, since they don't need to worry about maintaining a steady income, and it allows them to contribute meaningfully to society in a stimulating, enjoyable way. no doubt there will be lazy people who just do the bare minimum that they can to get by, but they'll probably be looked down upon by society much like how "leechers" who only download and never upload anything are stigmatized in today's peer-to-peer sharing networks.

thoughts/comments/insights?

[nezumi]

Really depends on where. Most people live in the inner system, which isn't all that different from a modern setting. In many locations, people still use money, so still need jobs, and so on. The cost for food and power has dropped dramatically (and are oftentimes free), but the cost for housing and a body have risen, so once you get over that hurdle of getting a house and a morph, Joe Inner System just needs to secure any sort of job and he'll make enough to keep himself fed and happy. I expect that, with the exception of the Junta, work days for the average person have dropped considerably. With much of the manufacturing and service industries gone, there just isn't as much to do. Big jobs are surveying, mining, repairing/technical work, shipping and designing.

In the outer system it works more on the idea of social responsibility, but it still works out similarly. In many places, the society seems to feel obliged to provide you a body, a place to stow it, and food, so you could indeed be a slug if you wanted. However, people get belligerent when they feel like their neighbors are taking advantage of them, and understandably so. So a character who refuses to do any more work than walk to the food dispenser is probably going to find himself getting a cold shoulder sooner or later - and unlike a cash economy, that sort of thing is harder to correct.

I expect in anarchist societies, all time is 'leisure time' in that you choose the work you do, so many more people will be finding themselves doing jobs they love because of the lack of economic pressures.

[GrimWulf]

Question on the Watts Macleod Virus

[ Spoiler ]

As it's in the running the game section I'll spoiler the question.

On p368 of the new PDF(and old for that matter) In the Watts-Macleod section It has a reference to the preceding page stating that the other side effects of the infection also apply. Is there a missing section on the previous page or is the infection supposed to use the Haunting Virus side effects? The only mention of W-MI on that page is a note saying they shouldn't know if they are infected by HI or W-MI.

[Adam]

Origins Award, best RPG of the Year, Eclipse Phase: http://www.eclipsephase.com/eclipse-phase-...-award-best-rpg

[Demonseed Elite]

Yay!

[Thanee]

Sweet, Adam! Well deserved, I would say. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bye
Thanee

[Buio]

Congratulations!

I gonna go talk with the store so they take notice that they are missing a Origins Awarded game in their inventory. And get myself a copy.

[Grinder]

A peek at Sunward: http://twitpic.com/1wsh7a/full

Any chance that it will be released as a free PDF too?

[Ravennus]

Just wanted to say...

I had seen this book around, and I believe I quickly flipped through it once at one of my local stores.... but nothing really pulled me into it.

However, I was bored and saw this thread.... and decided to check out the PDF. Just skimmed it already, but I'm actually loving it so far!
Thanks for posting this! I probably would have never given this game a chance if not for this thead. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)