Sunward will be Creative Commons-licensed: rip mix burn.

The PDF will be sensibly-priced and sharable.

I'm gonna buy it anyway, was just curious about the free release.

Step away from the word free. Sharable. Isn't that nicer? Sharing is caring.

Sharable, I see.

Any online EP games going on that anyone is aware of? I'm just starting to get into the book, but I'm dying to try it and the only way I'd play it here is if I ran it, which I wouldn't feel comfortable doing just yet.
I'm also heeding the spoiler warnings for all the GM stuff in the back of the book, as hard as it is!

Loving almost everything I've read so far. Adam and gang, I'm definitely getting a copy of this as soon as I find steady employment again!
I much prefer having a hardcopy in my hands, and this one looks to be one giant behemoth of fun.

I've also starting talking it up with my local gaming group. I have at least one person's interest piqued so... *fingers crossed*

There's one running on RPoL looking for more players and GMs.

Great, thanks for the heads up. I'll have to check out that site.

There may well be some games starting up here, too: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=31688

Whilst reading this thread last night, with Futurama playing in the background, I was hit with a thought: you could make a fairly serviceable combat medic from a Novacrab and call him John Zoidberg. And with that you could pretty much have a gritty, dark, hardcore Futurama reboot with Eclipse Phase.
...I probably shouldn't be allowed to play this game.

I have managed to get my gaming group (horribly resistant to change though they are. one of them is the epitome of the poster "Consistency: ah, jim, I see you are playing a backstabbing asshole. Again" and has been for the last 5 years) to agree to let me test Eclipse Phase on them. I have the quickstart adventure and "Think Before Asking". I wanted to know who here has played both, which they would suggest over the other, and suggestions on running them. The only reason TBA is in the running is my gaming group is experienced enough I have faith in them being able to dive right in.

The thing to remember is this is not just a future tech game, it's a horror game.

I played a demo at Origins, and was wonderfully creeped out the entire game. Like, on a visceral level. And I was playing the character that was a swarm of nanites. When you have a completely organic human party member entering an airlock without a suit, deliberately spacing himself, and the rest of the party agrees that's the most sane course of action, you know things have gotten screwed up badly.

There are... things... in the dark. Horrid shapes, hinting of fangs and claws and the reflection of pale light off terribly intelligent eyes. And this time, Humanity's got nowhere to run.

What happens to the backstabbing asshole in horror movies? Right.






-karma

I don't get it... is this PDF for free? Where do I send money?

As Adam likes to say... it's not free, but sharable.

If you like it well enough, you can still buy a copy (hardcopy or PDF or both) to support the company.

Bye
Thanee

Eclipse Phase is Creative Commons licensed. This means you can share it with friends, modify it as you like, and share those modifications as long as you extend permission for everyone else to distribute and modify your modifications under the same license. (Non-commercially only.) License details are here: http://eclipsephase.com/cclicense/

If you would like to buy the PDF, here's the link: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?cP...iliate_id=77000

You can buy the core book in print at amazon -- http://tinyurl.com/epamazon -- and at your local game store.

My hardcopy arrives from Amazon on Wednesday. Yay!

(Adam is secretly an anarcho-socialist! Pass it on.)

Secretly?

Partly this was our personal preference. I'm not very fond of systems that narrow down your character's capabilities to a dozen or so skills; I prefer more variety, more options, more fine-tuning. For the EP setting, since we were looking at characters enhanced beyond normal human abilities, we also wanted to make sure there was enough room for specialization.

I'm not sure what you mean by "big numbers" -- it's a percentile system, so the numbers go from 0 to 99. Even so, we made some effort in the core book to keep things simplified: we always used multiples of 5 for example with aptitudes and skills, even though you don't have to. Likewise, we made all of the modifiers multiples of 10, so any math you have to do will be easy. Even the few places where we call for a margin of success, we keep it simple and easy to eyeball.



Like Adam said, we are mostly interested in seeing what the fan community generates on its own. That said, I have seen a demand for adventures. Posthuman has some plans for this, and we will likely be doing a website contest soon, but more is always good. Personally I'd love to see someone do an EP mod for the Celestia program too, showing where all of the habitats are in the solar system.



That page reference should actually point to Psi, p. 220.

New fiction, and an iPad experiment: http://eclipsephase.com/new-electronic-eclipse-phase-titles

ENnie nominations announced today: http://www.ennie-awards.com/nominations/nominees.asp

Best Cover Art, Best Production, Best Writing, Product of the Year.

I'm a little bit stoked.

Congrats, Adam, and to everyone at Posthuman. I hope you sweep those categories.

ENnies voting is live. Here's my thoughts about it: http://adamjury.com/2010/ennies-award-voting-2010/

Sunward, a Sunward Hack Pack, and a NPC collection called NPC File 1: Prime are all hitting electronic release on July 28th! Sorry if I stole your thunder, Adam.

And they're up:


Sunward PDF - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info...iliate_id=77000

Sunward Hack Pack - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info...iliate_id=77000

NPC File 1: Prime - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info...iliate_id=77000

[takei] Oh my. [/takei]

Your mission is now to start this game. Right effing now. I call Fry.

DOO EET.

I'm not able to find a torrent for this. Is there somewhere I should be looking for that?

(My RPG budget doesn't refresh until August and I'm impatient.)

Shpladow!

RPG.Net has download links for Sunward and NPC File 1: Prime in this thread and here are Demonoid torrent links for Sunward and NPC File 1: Prime.

Just remember to support the game when you have the opportunity, because it's awesome.

Indeed. I sent the link to my wife, who is also into EP, to see if she'd buy it with her July budget money, but since we've both been away for two weeks in NOLA, I think we're both dry for now

I will say, I'm a little upset that Sunward ends at Mars and doesn't touch Extropia. I'm focusing a lot on Extropia right now, and it seems a much more interesting place than say Mercury.

Well, pitch us an Extropia sourcebook/chapter/something, then!

I can assure you, when I pitch a book, it'll be something I actually know something about.

I notice, for instance, Eclipse Phase (a game of transhumanist conspiracy and horror) is woefully short in drop bears.

Yeah, we need to change that!

Oh noes!!!



Bye
Thanee

So, did anyone read through Sunward yet? Comments, opinions, rants?

I've read through it and I greatly enjoyed it. Quality writing all around, but particularly the Mars chapter, which I thought was fantastic. Artwork and layout, as expected, were also top quality. If I had to find something to be critical about, I wish the Venus chapter had more depth and detail on the intrigue. There's a lot of potential for some vastly interesting power players, shadowy organizations, and political schemes, but the chapter itself didn't seem to go into it very deeply. If anything, the introduction fiction piece, Melt, covered the concept more than the Venus chapter did.

Some interesting new morphs in the book too. I particularly like the Steel synthmorph; it gives a lot more options for people who enjoy synthetic morphs.

Did you notice the Liquid Silver variant? I read it as being basically a T-1000 morph, very nice for infiltrators and assassins.

Absolutely. I love that Liquid Silver variant, because I had been looking for something that would make for a nice synthmorph ninja.

Speaking of morphs, I came up with a couple new biomorphs that I posted a few places, but not here. In case anyone is interested:

Ace
The Ace morph was originally developed by the Morningstar Constellation to outfit pilots in the Venusian Aerospace GP, a championship jet race held in the Venusian atmosphere. The success of this morph in competitive racing has expanded its use throughout the piloting world, whether for ground, air, or spacecraft. The Ace morph includes implants for navigation and increased reaction speed and is often behaviorally modified for confidence and control.

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Access Jacks, Anti-Glare, Direction Sense, Enhanced Vision, Reflex Boosters
Aptitude Maximum: 30
Durability: 35
Wound Threshold: 7
Advantages: +10 REF, +5 COG
CP Cost: 50
Credit Cost: Expensive

Ranger
Ranger morphs are designed for long-term reconnaissance missions, often in difficult environments or behind enemy lines. Their adaptability has led to their widespread use, from the conflicts between the hypercorps and anarchists to reclaimer runs on the ruined Earth. There are many customized versions of the basic Ranger morph, some built for combat applications, while others are built for better long-term survivability in dangerous environments. Most Ranger morphs feature behavioral modifications for self-sufficiency and tend to be loners.

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Chameleon Skin, Circadian Regulation, Direction Sense, Echolocation, Eidetic Memory, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Vision, Grip Pads, Mnemonic Augmentation, Temperature Tolerance, T-Ray Emitter
Aptitude Maximum: 30
Durability: 45
Wound Threshold: 9
Advantages: +10 INT, +5 COO, +5 SOM, +5 WIL, +5 to one aptitude of the player’s choice
CP Cost: 60
Credit Cost: Expensive (minimum 40,000)

I'd been making a character that is more or less a Liquid Silver Steel synthmorph.

Except it involved buying a pair of extra Flexbot bodies, joining them together into a skeletal human shape, and covering that with the character's main Swarmanoid morph body w/ Synthetic Mask.

Imagine the T-X from Terminator 3, except it can split in half if needed.



-karma

I haven't finished reading, but it's an excellent book. The Mercury and Solar sections game me some good ideas. There's something about the extreme environment, the juxtaposed loneliness of there being nothing but the beautiful light of mother sun all around you that will kill you so easily... I really liked the movie Sunshine from a few years back. It wasn't the greatest movie ever, but combine it with the stuff from Sunward and you've got some great inspiration. If you found and downloaded the beeping noise from the probe in Sunshine and put it in your game, it'd be awesome.

http://www.eclipsephase.com/blog

The GM Pack ran into a distribution snag, but it, _and_ Sunward, should be in stores for September 1st. Give your local store a call/email/facebook message and let them know that you want a copy.

Got Sunward delivered yesterday - it's beautiful!

Yippy. FLGS just called and said my copies of Sunward and the Gamemaster's Pack came in.

Since, you know, its a topic about EP and all, thought I'd post this here too, 6 EP events were snuck onto the schedule for Dragon*Con if you are going, 3 sessions each of Bump in the Night and Continuity

They don't come up on the web site (EP isn't mentioned at all). Are those two missions especially good?

Was finally able to get my GM Pack and Sunward today. Very well laid-out books, high quality. I was reading a bit of the Earth chapter of Sunward and I was having a blast. Good job, guys. And thank you, Adam.

Continuity is really good. Wonderfully creepy.

I can't comment on the other since I didn't play it.



-karma

Here's Bump in the Night, the next standalone adventure. Portrait and Landscape PDFs in one package: http://eclipsephase.com/bump-night-now-sale

My old group fixed that. We had tracked an Exsurgent virus outbreak to an Ark (a type of habitat filled with animal DNA samples working on restoring them and in some cases using them for expensive custom animorphs) that had been infecting people going their for morphs and letting them spread the disease. When we raided the place we faced the usual infected craziness with the added fun of infected elephants, infected gorillas some of which were dual wielding assault rifles but thankfully they were just spraying bullets everywhere, infected wolves, infected bears (oh god...the bears...) and how could I every forget the infected llamas that shot, I kid you not, nanite filled saliva that ate through anything it hit. What kind of screwed game is it when you would rather face the mutated gorillas with automatic weapons then a bunch of bloody llamas.

As we made our way through this twisted zoo working towards the core of the facility where we could damage the stations core and burn away everything and everyone with a hefty amount of radiation our GM made us make a perception test. Me and our reaper were the only ones who noticed the glowing red eyes above us, slowly descending on a black ichor like webbing, and who were poised to attack. First thing i do is open up a burst from my railgun as I tackle our hacker out of the way. The reaper chooses a more direct approach and uses his flamethrower (actually it was some stuff that burned a lot hotter then normal fire but I forgot the name) to start blasting through the little freaks. Only after a couple of them land on one of our teammates and start savagely mauling him do we realize what were facing. I start rubbing my eyes and ask are those drop bears. The GM answers yes and that our budding should probably check for infection. From the creepy webbing you can guess the weren't normal drop bears. They were a three way mix between Half Life Head Crabs, a bit of spider thrown in, but mostly creepy as hell Koalas.

Awesome!