So I recently stumbled upon the creative commons release dropbox of Eclipse Phase, so outside of the whole "Humanity (or what's left of it) being digital entities that pilot Robots / Meatbags" thing, what's /tg/'s opinion on it?
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>>98609850I'm just an anon but I like bits of it. Autonomists are over-wanked by default (not saying current capital has to work in the future but Black Mirror's Nosedive shows why rep economies can go dystopically wrong) and Jovians demonized (HFY retards usually overcorrect when glazing them). Ironically the gatecrashing worlds are some of the neater concepts despite them either flying in the face of the setting (no longer Sol-based and flying in the face of "known physics, stretched") or not mattering at all (everything's Exsurgent / TITAN simulation). I don't care for the psychics for obviously related reasons. Super-savant "Empaths" (provided targets have microexpression compatible sleeves) and "Voice" (ditto for bandwidth / face perception) could be cool but spooky action at a distance powers feel at odds with wider themes.Overall body-swapping post-singularity is a tricky genre to write for let alone to make into a playable game out of. I applaud the ambition even if the end product stumbles.
>>98610128A fellow appreciator of Venusian culture, I see.
>>98609850i am an uplifted squid
and when I tried to pitch it to someone, I totally told said someone they could TOTOALLY play as a Goblin.
>>98610352I actually had someone play as octodad in an EP game once.Uplift octopus with PSI, and all his mental fuckups as a result of the PSI were "nobody must know I am an octopus, I must pass as human" type delusions and body dysmorphia.Actually a very fun character when played seriously.>>98609850My opinion is that EP1e >EP2e, because 2e just shoved in more meta-currency, fucked with the rules in ways that probably aren't necessary, and put a lot of "no you can't play as characters we the devs find objectionable even though they are in the setting" disclaimers in.EP1e happily mostly predates the moral hand-wringing of the late 2010s, so while it's still Somewhat Political in the way any game about human interaction in spaaaace will have political elements, it's not preachy.In general, things I very much like about EP are>decent balance of mechanics for what is your mind and what is your body, making it not too OP to have a great body but worth having one>rules for resleeving etc are generally decent>characters remain fairly balanced up to a certain point, as long as you are careful to not give out extra speed >I really appreciate there NOT being a hard single answer to the meta plot questions, but instead a list of suggestions and the GM is told to pick or make it up>having space magic but keeping it limited in power and scope, with specific rules that it cannot break>works quite well as a generic cyberpunk system if you want to run it without the setting (I successfully used it for Ghost in the Shell once)Things I think are retarded about EP>the timeline, it does not feel like all that is five years post-fall or whatever. The fall should be within living memory but not THAT recent>what happens to the system if you have combat bunnies looking to break it (not an uncommon problem for any system)>the rep/credit system is a bit futurewank
>>98611379>2e just shoved in more meta-currency, fucked with the rules in ways that probably aren't necessaryIt's very strange to read 2e, it's like the knew 1e was kind of clunky and needed some streamlining, but completely misunderstood what that meant or what that could possibly look like.
>>98609850Eclipse Phase is interesting because I feel like it was the last big release of a 90s style "we are not trying to make a game, we are trying to create an engine to simulate this world." I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing, I just think it's interesting to see kind of the last gasp of that kind of game design.
>>98610309>spooky action at a distance powers feel at odds with wider themes.The psi PCs can get access to don't do that. That is NPC full exsurgent only stuff.
>>98609850As cool as some aspects of it are/were. It's kind of overwrought in it's reach and execution.Most of the non-Mars locations feel very one-off and more like themeparks you reserve for background noise rather than a destination you should would actually go out of your way for.My only other gripe is really a matter of how much of certain rules and such you choose to ignore like no penalties for dicking around in someone's brain or being able to make back-ups with no penality.
>>98613199I really wish they had focused on a particular place. Mars would have been good, the LLA would have been good, I think the other side of a Pandora gate could have been really interesting.Trying to be the entire solar system, and altered carbon, and Revelation Space, and Bruce Sterling shit really kind of hurt it. I think firewall is also kind of a weak framing device.
>>98609850An okay game ruined by leftist bullshit.
>>98610352Sadsquid are you still sad?
>>98609850Personally I wish it gave you more options to play as a pure A.I/Egomorph, or a nonhumanoid mech.>>98611379>and put a lot of "no you can't play as characters we the devs find objectionable even though they are in the setting" disclaimers in.Didn't the 1e rulebook include a short story with a character who was controlling a synthetic child body that the protagonist found creepy? >>98613749Is it worse than what happened to Starfinder?
>>98613974>more options to play as a pure A.I/Egomorph, or a nonhumanoid mech.The stuff in transhuman and the MRG seems pretty expansive. What did you think was missing?
>>98610309>(not saying current capital has to work in the future but Black Mirror's Nosedive shows why rep economies can go dystopically wrong)Reddit is essentially a rep economy and you can see what kind of shithole it isI got b& from the game forums long ago over shitting on their rep economy wank
>>98614393You don't like the anarchist utopian vision of the collective mind of facebook deciding whether you're able to buy food tonight?
>>98609850I like it. The political leanings of the authors and how it seeps into the game can be off-putting but I feel that makes it more "genuine" or something somehow. How common AI assistants (muses) and how people are relatively ok with mass surveillance is feels dated now but kinda makes sense with how some countries are embracing chatbots and how kids nowdays are making friends with them and with the latter how people are putting their life and thoughts out on the internet with social media by the day, hour, or minute. I like how it is more on the simulationist side of things and how it takes the "you will own nothing and be happy" and runs with it for quite a few places.
>>98613974>Didn't the 1e rulebook include a short story with a character who was controlling a synthetic child body that the protagonist found creepy?Yes, but that's "this is a thing, here are the rules for it, some people will dislike you and we will portray that using the fiction segments" and what they did with the jovians in 2e ("you can't play one, they're the bad guys, even though they were playable in 1e")
