What will be the next releases? Your Website doesn't say much on this...

I believe the next major release is Panopticon, Volume One.

Jay's correct, our next release is Panopticon (formerly called Hotfix).

We don't announce much about upcoming projects, and prefer to keep only a small handful of upcoming projects "known." It's simply much easier for us to manage.

It's unproductive and unprofitable for people to be super-hyped over a book that isn't going to be delivered for 18 months.

Totally understandable, but the lack of any information on at least the next upcoming sourcebook is it frustrating (assuming that it won't be 18 months until its release date).

Regarding Panopticon: I love the piece of art - an octopus fighting a monkey in space. With laser swords.

Eclipse Phase: Yeah, it's kinda like that.

Twitter mentioned there's another adventure coming out (which apparently is 'very exciting'). Also, according to the EP forums, Rimward is on its way out.

Adam?

What? Next print release is Panopticon. When we have street dates for PDFs, we announce them. Our 2010 Year in Review will be up soon, and it talks about the upcoming year.

But in general, time that we could spend talking about upcoming stuff is time we can better spend _making_ upcoming stuff, and time you spend anticipating upcoming stuff is time you should spend _using_ the current stuff.

*mumbles* Don't tell us what we have to do...*mumbles*
*goes back to reading Gatecrashing*

We are also hard at work on Rimward, the companion book to Sunward, for release after Panopticon. I'm fairly sure we've mentioned that elsewhere but if not, there you go, juicy gossip.

Does a fork have a cortical stack?

Like this? http://www.amazon.com/Pedrini-Miro-Clear-D...e/dp/B0000959GP

If it sleeves into a morph with a cortical stack, then yes. Why wouldn't it?

D'oh! Brainfart!

Here's our 2010 Year in Review: http://eclipsephase.com/posthuman-2010-year-end-review

Caution! Possible next brainfart incoming!

How does opration a Pandora Gate work? If I understood Gatecrashing right, every Pandora Gate does have a build-in library that can be used to open connections to other gates (whose adress is memorized in the Pandora Gates library). These adresses can't be copied to other gates. Now there is the portable gate control unit that has its own library of adresses and is able to copy adresses of Pandora Gates. In short: I don't get the following two paragraphes of Gatecrashing (it's pg. 144).

Imagine it like this.

Each gate has the telephone and a list of telephone numbers. Dial the number in the phone and you get a connection to... something.

People have been calling each number and penciling the name of who answers. The list of numbers + the names of who answers = a catalog.

The list of numbers is GIANT, and it's not just a text file you can download, so people are manually going through 'discovering' more and penciling the name of who answers.

Your portable unit has a catalog from gates A, B, C, and D. Each of these catalogs is a list of the phone numbers discovered *at the time your unit was programmed* + the suspected names attached to that number. This information is often discovered to be wrong later.

That make more sense?

That's very helpful, thanks a lot!

Two questions that came up in tonight's session:

1. Does the Exsurgent Virus infects the cortical stack too?
2. How does a space habitat create microgravity of 0.01 g? And how does such a minor gravity affect the daily life on space habitat? Would it be like living in Zero-G or not?

1: the cortical stack is a mirror image of your mind, so when it is recovered you can flash it into a new body, and continue your life. the exsurgent virus infects your mind, and this is copied into your cortical stack, unless you take steps to prevent this.

2: space habitats next to large masses may provide the necessary G. otherwise, they can take a circular or toroidal habitat and spin it at the required speed for centripidal force to create the desired Gs.
0.01 G is rather small. you might be able to notice it in your inner ear a bit. and the fact that small objects will always head one direction after a while.

Say hello to your backup then.



Is 0.01 g still effectively like 0 g? I mean, is everything floating around and stuff (even if heading in one direction after a while)?

0.01g is effectively like 0 g (for most purposes). Cups will stay on tables and liquids will stay in cups, but if you hit that cup, the immediate behavior is like zero g. Just imagine what combat would be like if you weighed 2 pounds. You can 'throw' yourself 50 yards, and the recoil from your gun could knock you off your feet if you don't brace yourself properly.

0.01g would probably be because of slight movement or acceleration in the habitat, or its proximity to a larger body or its own large size.

low but non-zero levels of gravity have been proposed to be useful for industrial purposes, like growing crystals, and other motion-sensitive chemical processes.

Ok, so you are floating around, like the people on the ISS.



..well.. or not. I'm confused.

Think of it like this. Everything is much lighter but unless a force acts upon it the gravity isn't an issue. Your cup will stay on the table because no force is pushing it one way or another. The minute something does however the cup and it's liquid will begin floating away.

In combat you'll be fine. That is until the kinetic energy being forced through the front of your gun shoots you backwards if you weren't prepared for it. That is why freefall is so important in zero g combat. That or some magnetic boots.

Exactly. Things not in motion act like there's gravity. As soon as there's motion, they act like it's zero-g. If left for long enough, they will act like there's gravity again, but in slow motion (thanks mostly to air resistance).

Also worth mentioning, things still have mass, even when they don't have weight. You can "lift" a car, since it has no weight, but it takes a long time (low acceleration) because it has so much mass.

This is why moving heavy things in zero/low gravity is potentially dangerous.

You might be thinking, "Oh, I can swing this car around", but it still has mass and momentum. Try to stop it the wrong way when it gets moving, and you can end up squashed in slow motion between the car and the wall behind you.


-k

Quick shameless Eclipse Phase-related plug!

I'm involved in a collaborative writing project for Eclipse Phase called Meltwater. It's basically a boomtown habitat on Mars that is being fleshed out by anyone who cares to pitch in. It's a frontier town sitting on valuable water ice that has become a flashpoint between hypercorporate interests and native terraformers. Anders Sandberg has started to compile the material into a PDF that we'll update as the material grows.

Figured I'd advertise the project to the EP fans on this forum in case anyone wanted to hop in and get involved.

thx for the update. saw the project on the EP forums, didn't know you had a pdf out yet.

If you've missed it, our latest adventure, Ego Hunter, is six kinds of awesome: http://eclipsephase.com/ego-hunter-has-landed

Heh, as an aside to the thread topic, I was reading my coworker's old Air and Space magazine the other day, and they was an article about the astronauts having to cope with stuff in orbit, mainly about hygiene. They mentioned about Alan Bean's journal entry on board Skylab, essentially he was having a bad day since while he was peeing, he sneezed. He got launched while spraying, fun times. Basically the article mentioned about astronauts propelling themselves due to sneezes and farts. Heh, it was fun little article, just felt like sharing since y'all were talking about acting in near zero-G.

I need your help and creative input, fellow Eclipse Phase gamers! I'm trying to write up a scenario for my upcoming game: my group of five characters are the collective owners of a mining ship and currently located in higher Mars orbit (on the edge between Inner and Outer System). One of the characters is the Titanian Explorer archetype of the main rulebook and I woud like to center the next scenario on him to give the player more spotlight (and responsibility). What I need is a good idea on how the group stumbles over an artifact; to whose alien race it belonged to; which other factions would be interested in it; and how a pirate band of uplifts can be brought into the whole mess too (space pirate monkeys attack! ). I'm sorry if this reads confusing (it's early in the morning), but I'm hopefully getting the main premise across.

Is the artifact in the shape of a tapered helix?




-k

Wacky. I didn't realize artifacts of various alien were just lying around in EP, though. I thought you had to use the stargates. The MacGuffin works regardless of details, though. It's just 'valuable', so any faction/space monkeys would want it. Sounds fun.

Yeah, alien artifacts aren't common in the EP universe/ solar system, but maybe one faction lost one somewhere?

An artifact left behind by the Iktomi, perhaps?

Are they a merc group, or do other people get to call on them?

Are they actually miners? Do they have other troublesome crew members who might reasonably expected to serve as red shirts?

They are miners (one of the characters knows how to operate the mining stuff), but work as traders and mercenaries too; usually following their own agenda. They don't have any crew members.

Maybe the artifact isn't just hanging out in the Sol system, maybe it was en route somewhere after being brought through a Pandora Gate. The Planetary Consortium's Pathfinder corporation controls the Martian gate. Maybe they found something on an exoplanet and are transporting it to a corporate research facility off-planet when something happens. Your crew of PCs responds to a distress signal or perhaps just stumbles across the ship floating dead through space. There's not just the mystery of the ship's artifact cargo, but also the mystery of what happened to the original ship's crew. Did the artifact cause their demise?

Not to mention whatever corporation was sponsoring the gatecrashing mission is going to want their artifact back. And anyone else who hears about the artifact is going to want it for themselves, whether rival corporations, autonomists, pirates, Titanian researchers, brinker cults, Firewall, whomever!

Perfect, Demonseed Elite. Mysterious crisis during transport is *classic*.

A friend arranges a social call. He swings by the station, enjoys lunch, makes small talk. He's been working closely with some gatecrashers through the Love & Hate Gate. He avoids talking about what he's doing so far from 'home', although it is clear he is actually travelling by shuttle, not egocasting.

After the meal, the group's hacker comes up with something odd on the security equiment. The party finds a small pouch hidden in a ventilation shaft. Inside is a strange artifact the size of a peach pit. A tag attached to it identifies it as being from the friend, that it should be kept safe until he can return to collect it. Using microscopy, the skin of the artifact is inscribed with an alien script.

News reports that the friend's morph was found dead a week and a half later on a circulator to Luna, his stack brutally removed. Digging deeper reveals that all of his possessions are mising and the morph was actually surgically opened, although it's unclear why.

How it continues depends on the PCs. The artifact may be induced to begin revealing information. It's a sort of treasure map, except instead of leading to treasure, it tracks the movements of this band of aliens as they were pursued by a highly advanced, automated device pursuing the extermination of their species. That detail is not revealed until later on. The mathematical work of establish routes and locations is much easier, and suggest that there is something at a particular location which the characters may get close to by gate. The artifact was recovered by a private team working through the Love-Hate gate, then purchased (through suspicious circumstances) by Go-Nin before it apparently disappeared. Go-Nin is intensely interested in the artifact, since they already began unlocking the map and believe it leads to more alien artifacts. They are actively pursuing it, and killing anyone in their way. They've hired several bands of mercenaries, including the Band of the Black Hand, a group of primate uplifts.

If a transhuman reaches the artifact, they will discover that it is the genocide device - and if interacted with, it will lock onto the transhuman and begin a campaign to exterminate all transhuman life in the galaxy - something which it is, without question, capable of.

Pleased to announce that Sunward has been nominated in the Origins Awards for Best RPG Supplement: http://www.eclipsephase.com/sunward-nominated-origins-awards

It's a shame Gatecrashing wasn't considered. IMO, that is the better of those two books (or Rimward, which is certainly going to be the bestest book ever).

Gatecrashing is eligible next year.

In competition with Rimward. It doesn't stand a chance!

Panopticon! Don't forget that book!

No, sorry, Rimward will carry it, assuming it's released in 2011.

(I do admit bias, though.)

Sounds like someone here contributed to it.

Just a little ;P

Hey, nothing stops the same company from being nominated more than once in a category ...

(although that would split the vote and probably end up being a BAD thing.)

Rimward Sell Sheet is up. Very interesting, even though the cover left me... meh. Anyway, want Panopticum before - and now! Now!