Eclipse Phase - Making A Future Dude

[Neurosis]

Checking out Eclipse Phase. Making a character, actually several characters, and trying to quickly learn the setting/system without actually reading the book (which is beautifully laid out, but LONG and DENSE informationally speaking) from cover to cover.

Thoughts/advice on what's important, how the rules work and (less importantly) how not to suck? Seems like a well designed game, but it's all a tad overwhelming.

I wouldn't say no to a link to Frank's review, either.

Sorry for the short post!

[Ancient History]

My advice is to go to the eclipsephase.com forums - I think there's a PACKS-style modular chargen thing in homebrew, but admittedly I haven't been there since I stopped writing EP fanfiction.

[Username17]

Eclipse Phase Review. It comes equipped with a fanboi drive-by trolling.

-Username17

[UmaroVI]

The setting has some interesting ideas with a healthy sprinkling of fail and stupid mixed in. The system is pure undiluted garbage. My rant about how shitty it is is http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=23 ... ht=#233581 in that thread Frank just linked.

Summary of how not to suck:

Willpower is important. If you give even the tiniest shit about fighting, Somatics is important. Don't have any of your other attributes too high or you shaft yourself, especially not the ones linked to your core skills. Moxie is the most important stat you can get and you should max it.

[Neurosis]

hahahaha based on what you're saying my first EP character is probably so made of fail

(tried to build an infolife criminal information broker in a tricked out synth body, knowing that I'd have to fight the system hard to make a face with inherent uncouth and willing to do so; managed to wind up a much better hacker and slightly better killer of shit than a face (knew immediately to max out fray; clearly most important skill in game), and a not-completely terrible face, was okay with that, successfully tricked out my morph (although based on UmaroVI's post I guess my armor of 14/12 isn't that good and ALSO doesn't matter), then read what UmaroVI about the stats and....realized that Willpower and Somatics were my "dump" stats, at base 10 each. D'oh.

I'm confused tho; Fray at least is Ref based, right, not Somatics?

also unlike Shadowrun I am fully in favor of brainhacking in EP because everyone has a god damn fucking Ghost in the Shell cyberbraini

[Koumei]

If the MC is running a sort of horror game like mine did, then every time you see an enemy it's "the wall of flesh splits open and a flayed man crawls out with bone spikes" and it's SAN check time.

And if you fail it you take trauma or stress or whatever and are stunned for "the entire combat" and have a personality change for "the entire session".

So if it's being done as a horror, max your Willpower.

[JonSetanta]

Nanites. Invest in everything nanites. Especially implanted countermeasures against hostile nanites.

[Username17]

The setting has some interesting ideas with a healthy sprinkling of fail and stupid mixed in. The system is pure undiluted garbage. My rant about how shitty it is is http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=23 ... ht=#233581 in that thread Frank just linked.

I never went about discussing that post, but I should have.

I have now played Eclipse Phase, and the system is SO SHITTY. I do disagree with Frank about the details of how the skill and attribute system is shitty (although not the magnitude of the shittiness).

So, attributes give you "free" points in skills. You do it like this:

Figure out your brain's attribute. This is the base for the skill.

Pay points to bump the skill up. You pay double past 60.

To USE the skill, though, you then add on modifiers. Such as the modifier to the attribute you get from being in your body, or the bullshit you get for being infected with a space virus. These add on last, and do NOT affect the doubling of cost past 60.

That's defensible. But the bottom line is still that the exact way Aptitudes interact with skill values is very much debatable. Your aptitudes are affected by your body, and your starting aptitudes affect your starting skill values, and changing your body is supposed to change your skill values, but it's not at all clear if changing your aptitudes by changing your body is supposed to change your skill values, since your skills are just numbers rather than calculated values once you leave chargen.

The rules are thus contradictory on a very basic level as to what the fuck happens when you resleeve, and you'll have to discuss with your MC what the hell happens. Certainly, there is a valid reading of the rules where the correct thing to do is to start with a maxed brain aptitude and a shitty body, buy up your skill as high as it will go, and then resleeve to a good body so that your skill jumps up when your aptitudes "change". There is also a valid reading of the rules where you want to start with a high aptitude and a good body, and then it just doesn't fucking matter because your skill values are already set. There are several other values.

Summary of how not to suck:

Willpower is important. If you give even the tiniest shit about fighting, Somatics is important. Don't have any of your other attributes too high or you shaft yourself, especially not the ones linked to your core skills. Moxie is the most important stat you can get and you should max it.

Willpower is... highly situational. If your MC decides that they are playing CthulhuTech with a better system (yes, really), then you are going to be making Willpower checks constantly. But if you're playing out of the book and avoiding the Psionics, you basically don't have to make Willpower checks at all. Try to find out what the game is going to be about before you decide to give yourself a middling Willpower level or a high Willpower level.

-Username17

[Neurosis]

Just ran a game for a few people; sample pregen characters and one of the official published adventures, Continuity. Everyone was egregiously high on marijuana and unfamiliar with the system, so I mainly blame that for what an unmitigated disaster it was, but I also partially blame the adventure starting out the PCs without their equipment and in new bodies and in constant danger of exovirus infection, and more than that, a problem with the pregen characters the game shares with Shadowrun 4E: namely, sucking.

Still love the setting/concept, still eager to give it another go without being all drug-addled and unprepared.

Is it me or do the three tests you have to make on resleeving (Integration, Alienation, and Continuity) COMPLETELY FUCK YOU OVER far beyond the point of being able to meaningfully participate in any adventure within a reasonable timeframe? I mean we're talking about getting slammed with multiple traumas and like -30 or more of penalties.

[UmaroVI]

That's defensible. But the bottom line is still that the exact way Aptitudes interact with skill values is very much debatable. Your aptitudes are affected by your body, and your starting aptitudes affect your starting skill values, and changing your body is supposed to change your skill values, but it's not at all clear if changing your aptitudes by changing your body is supposed to change your skill values, since your skills are just numbers rather than calculated values once you leave chargen.

The rules are thus contradictory on a very basic level as to what the fuck happens when you resleeve, and you'll have to discuss with your MC what the hell happens. Certainly, there is a valid reading of the rules where the correct thing to do is to start with a maxed brain aptitude and a shitty body, buy up your skill as high as it will go, and then resleeve to a good body so that your skill jumps up when your aptitudes "change". There is also a valid reading of the rules where you want to start with a high aptitude and a good body, and then it just doesn't fucking matter because your skill values are already set. There are several other values.

Summary of how not to suck:

Willpower is important. If you give even the tiniest shit about fighting, Somatics is important. Don't have any of your other attributes too high or you shaft yourself, especially not the ones linked to your core skills. Moxie is the most important stat you can get and you should max it.

Willpower is... highly situational. If your MC decides that they are playing CthulhuTech with a better system (yes, really), then you are going to be making Willpower checks constantly. But if you're playing out of the book and avoiding the Psionics, you basically don't have to make Willpower checks at all. Try to find out what the game is going to be about before you decide to give yourself a middling Willpower level or a high Willpower level.

-Username17

While EP is shittily explained, I think it's actually clear that the morph mods to your stats DO affect your skills. Page 124 has an example in the top right box that says:

Eva has a Cognition aptitude of 25. She is unfor-
tunately forced to sleeve into a flat morph with an
aptitude maximum of 20. For the duration of the
period she inhabits that morph, her Cognition is
reduced to 20, which also impacts all of her COG-
linked skills, reducing them by 5.

Re: Willpower, that is totally true, but I'm basing it on the sample and published adventures I've seen which are reasonably heavy on the Willpower shit.

The other thing is, if you look at the table for what kind of stuff can give you traumas (which are what you want Willpower to resist), on p215, enough of them are for things that you will run into even without any stupid exopsioniviroalien bullshit - in particular, viewing extreme violence and committing extreme violence can both mess you up.

[Neurosis]

Having recently played Eclipse Phase and my own scifi homebrew in rapid succession I think I prefer my own little gamelet. That said, more data is certainly needed; still in love with the Eclipse Phase setting/theme/distribution mechanic.

[Username17]

While EP is shittily explained, I think it's actually clear that the morph mods to your stats DO affect your skills. Page 124 has an example in the top right box that says:

Eva has a Cognition aptitude of 25. She is unfor-
tunately forced to sleeve into a flat morph with an
aptitude maximum of 20. For the duration of the
period she inhabits that morph, her Cognition is
reduced to 20, which also impacts all of her COG-
linked skills, reducing them by 5.

I am aware that it says that in the game mechanics section. That is however, not what it says in the Skills section:

All learned skills have a linked aptitude that is used to calculate their initial value, and which is also defaulted to if the player does not have that particular skill.

In the description of Aptitudes, it talks about skills being a dynamically calculated Aptitude + Skill Bonus (like a D&D skill). But in the description of skills, it talks about skills being a fixed value whose starting cost is calculated from the Aptitude at the time of purchase (like a CoC skill).

They are not the same. And some GMs use one version and others use the other.

-Username17

[Neurosis]

I think the interpretation that "Aptitude changes matter" is the only rational one, otherwise there wouldn't be so many things that can alter aptitudes during play. I mean, shittily written, sure, but I can't defend the GM who supports the "Aptitudes changing never changes skills" interpretation.