Interest Check: Eclipse Phase

Started by Empyrean, June 14, 2014, 04:47:17 PM

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CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 24, 2014, 01:15:26 AMMaybe.  But the cornerstone, the stuff you must have to be a good hacker is the same.  You're not doing much of what you described with just an Infosec skill of 30.

Yeeeeah. I wasn't saying you didn't. Just that 'everyone should have hacking skills' in no way obviated the need for a dedicated hacker. I think we're basically agreeing with each other on this stuff.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 24, 2014, 01:15:26 AMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science

When Empyrean and I were working on the character, he was asking for technically-oriented skills, and noted that he had taken stuff related to the Mesh.  I was trying to be creative and come up with an Academic skill to give besides computer science, so I used my own Research skill to find the entry above.  Read it.  Let it change your life.

Be damned, that IS a new one on me. The way EP uses 'networking' to mean two totally different things means it's something I often check with people about when they throw the term around in the game and I'm not sure of the context.

You mentioned you had more to say regarding starting morphs, Reiji?

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

Actually, I had two things to say.

1: Is anyone going to talk to the head E people about Neotenics?  My position was that they were essentially the 'dwarves' (and I mean that in the fantasy context) of EP.

2: The custom morph builder on earlier versions of Kindalas character sheet is functioning properly, but anyone who uses those sheets, the custom faction builder is broken, so you'll need to use a standard faction.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 24, 2014, 08:45:46 AM1: Is anyone going to talk to the head E people about Neotenics?  My position was that they were essentially the 'dwarves' (and I mean that in the fantasy context) of EP.

If that is how we're handling them, and that is how Linna has said she is handling them, then there seems to be no conflict. If there's concern about there being a conflict, seems like either Linna or you would be the person to do the checking. Any of the rest of us asking about someone else's character would seem as if we were deliberately participating in centrifugal agitation of fecal matter.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 24, 2014, 08:45:46 AM2: The custom morph builder on earlier versions of Kindalas character sheet is functioning properly, but anyone who uses those sheets, the custom faction builder is broken, so you'll need to use a standard faction.

Yeah, I was using 0.94 for the potential Jenkin. Which I'm not going to continue fleshing out until I'm sure that the party hasn't got a gaping skill-hole in it somewhere vital.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

(If we end up needing a fighter or a dedicated hacker I'll swap in some other character...But if that's covered, then this is who I'd like to bring along.)

(No image yet. Since we're waiting on some clarification about starting morphs ("We'll talk bodies in a bit."), I'm not going to worry about it much.)

Name: Tickle Pink Mnemosyne
Background: Lost
Faction: Scum
Primary Morph: Jenkin (Brainboxed)
Gender Identity: Female (flexibly)
Actual Age: Counting time-acceleration in the lab or just realtime? Old enough, either way.
Motivations: +Hedonism, -Planetary Consortium, +Better Living Through Chemistry
Role: Drugs, Biotech, Nanotech, and Psionic Support

Background: April 13 Beta was a wholly synthetic creation of the Fortuna project, genetically tweaked and exowomb-grown. During the bloody exodus/escape from Cognite's Legacy Station, she used her abilities to make her way to Mars, adopting the identity of a transfer student from Luna who she had killed, and thereby getting herself an education in biochemistry and nanotechnology. She put the knowledge thus acquired to work researching drugs which might help her hold her own head together. April ended up working with a bunch of sheep-farmers in Tharsis who were treating the sheep as biofactories: marsform sheep capable of growing carbon-fiber wool and with various genetic modifications to milk glands to produce diverse chemicals. The Tharsis Rangers got called in after a series of monorails were destroyed using a plastique compound formulated from something suspiciously reminiscent of sheep's milk, and while they didn't find any of the sheep locally modified to manufacture explosives, they did find a bunch that were modified to produce various psychoactives which she'd been selling on the side to the riggers working the big machines along Highway One. April got kicked around a bit by various representatives of the Tharsis League and fled Mars with a bounty on her head after a Ranger outpost coincidentally exploded in a somewhat cheesey fashion. She ended up hitching a ride with a passing Scum swarm and taking a new name...Hardly an unusual practice among those who were adopted into the Swarm.

The Scum were extremely supportive of her experimental drug research, and April (now Tickle Pink Mnemosyne) ended up getting a break in the designer drug market with some fairly avante-garde petal designs. She has been migrating around from swarm to swarm (including the infamous Carnival of the Goat) ever since, plying her trade and working on "medicines" to try and ameliorate her own problems, as well as those of other people. Tickle Pink is a definite believer in chemical manipulation of one's own states of awareness and a tiny bit evangelical about how marvelous it can be. She came to Firewall's attention after a Scum salvage group she had attached herself to had the misfortune to run across some TITAN artifacts and were very nearly wiped out by them.

Tickle Pink's existence is a roller-coaster of altered mental states, shifting from one cocktail of mood-altering drugs to another in a never-ending game of trying to stay one step ahead of real addiction, and stacking the deck as best she can by the time-honored pharmacological practice of using different drugs to manage pending withdrawal. Nothing, however, can seem to counter certain elements of her personality: she's rather more clingy and touchy-feely than many in-system types find appropriate, a little bit adrenaline-happy, and sometimes frighteningly impulsive. Her familiarity with bioware design has allowed her to treat her own body as a biofactory, and morphs which she occupies for any extended length of time are likely to be modified to produce all sorts of mood-altering chemicals. Tickle Pink isn't fussy about the gender of the morphs she occupies, and like most Carnival devotees has been known to switch morph-genders just for entertainment's sake. However, regardless of her morph's genitalia, she nearly always will make some distinctly feminine modifications. After all, her best and earliest work was with milk-soluble psychoactives...

Quote: "Straight from the tap, as pure as it gets. Seriously? You really do need to relax. I sweat things there isn't even a street name for yet. Would your blood pressure stabilize if I grabbed a breast pump and a glass?"

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Empyrean

Tickle looks interesting. :) I look forward to seeing how this team interacts. They all come from such varied backgrounds and all.

What's this about blueprints? Does Tickle has a fabber? I hadn't purchased any blueprints for Sachiko but I could if needed.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#55
Quote from: Empyrean on June 24, 2014, 04:04:34 PM
Tickle looks interesting. :) I look forward to seeing how this team interacts. They all come from such varied backgrounds and all.

Should be entertaining. Tickle has a high enough Art: Drug Design (Petals) to legitimately graze system-wide notoriety (78/88), and I figure she might be helpful in social situations where Sachiko's inner-system hyperelite origins could prove problematic. It might even make up for her being clingy, lascivious and constantly in an altered mental state that would do Tim Leary proud. Odds of someone in the party getting addicted to something before we're done? Probably pretty close to a hundred percent.

Quote from: Empyrean on June 24, 2014, 04:04:34 PMWhat's this about blueprints? Does Tickle has a fabber? I hadn't purchased any blueprints for Sachiko but I could if needed.

No, she doesn't. Okay, things, stuff...Eclipse Phase character philosophy for Firewall Agents.

I've played in a bunch of EP games, and one of the things which is a constant is the idea that "you can't take it with you," as so succinctly put in the latest book, Transhuman. Therefore, I've found it's best to burn the majority of your CP and funds on things which you can take with you, squirreled away in your Ego-memory to be egocast to wherever Firewall needs you. Most places have fabbers, the problem is hacking them and running off a few copies of whatever you want without getting caught. In a Firewall campaign unless the GM has explicitly said 'You'll be starting out in the morph you buy during chargen' I don't put more than maybe 25KCr into it. Everything else is skills, software and blueprints, which go with you wherever you go.

Now Reiji has kinda dodged every time I've tried to poke him about starting morphs, ;D but my basic attitude at this point is founded on the following assumptions and observations:


  • It'd be a rarely cruel GM who didn't warn you if you were never going to get to use your starting morph (i.e., game begins with you being egocast elsewhere into something new and you never have an opportunity to go back).

  • Reiji has said "this campaign will span pretty much the entire range of planets - Sunward, the Main Belt, Rimward, probably even a couple of exoplanets." so that tells me there will be egocating involved. You can slowboat it some places in the Inner System, particularly in the LLA and the vicinity of Mars/Venus where there are not only major astronomical bodies (moons, planets) but also a slew of habitats in the LaGrange points around them, but generally speaking for long distance travel you get tossed around as an Ego. Nothing physical flies with you.
  • Reiji has not encouraged us to create characters 'all in one location.' Tickle is definitely going to be in a scum swarm, but many of those migrate through the inner-and-outer system on sorta short-cometary ovals, so she isn't necessarily "on the other side of the world." but even getting between Jupiter and Saturn's moons, egocasting is more economical than slowboating it. So I'm assuming we'll be egocasting fairly soon after we begin. And that means new morphs, and that means luck of the draw, and the Fates are not known for being exceptionally kind.

  • This is a Firewall game. If we aren't doing infiltration into places where we need stuff we can't just ask for, Firewall probably isn't using us very well. I'm betting that won't be the case. ;D

So I'd start out with a nominal morph that you'd be comfortable seeing as your character's 'standard' morph, just in case it turns out that you're the lottery winner and everyone else has to egocast to where YOU are. I.E., don't buy a Case to start with unless that's really part of who your character is when they're at home enjoying themselves or doing their job.

Beyond that, equipment you'd keep around you when you're NOT on a Firewall erasure mission. Remember that because Firewall often tosses people around the system, they also often have caches (when they can manage to do the prep work) set up. Not always but sometimes you're lucky. Remember also that if something goes down in your local neighborhood and half of your neighbors know you just fabbed up a half-dozen plasma rifles the local law enforcement/militia/nosy-parker anarchists who are concerned about the problem will come calling. I wouldn't purchase starting equipment to gear up for exoplanet run, for instance, unless Reiji said 'you are all starting at the Fissure Gate on Oberon as part of a crashing mission.'

It's a bit easier for Tickle since she's Scum, and doesn't really have an apartment or anything like that. Communal living, and 'you need a what? okay. When can I have it back?' (or even, given her skill-set and probable connections, 'you need a what? Sure...Got any new petals?'). But even in-system, a relatively decent apartment is just moderate-per-month so it isn't much of an investment.

I just wouldn't stack it full of guns and powered armor. ;D Because sooner or later we'll be wandering away, probably via egocast, and at that point all you take with you is in your head.

Equipment at the far end of the Egocast is whatever you can beg, borrow, finagle, scrounge, steal...Or have a blueprint for in the back of your head that you can feed into a fabber hacked by your friendly team-mate.

One of the most exciting EP games I ever played, the team got darkcast into a totally hostile station via a slow-remote hack virusing the station's sensor arrays to create a back-channel, which then took the station's backup medlab sensors offline and looped a feed of 'nothing going on here' while hacking the medlab to warm up half a dozen bodies which the team was then back-channel egocast into. Everybody got a splicer...no exceptions, there was nothing on the habitat except splicers...And reapers, which were all controlled by a rampant seed AI. We weren't getting one of those. All this was handled by Firewall as 'pre-game.' our team woke up in the dark, in a medlab, covered in preservative gunk, built a couple of bombs out of portable fire extinguishing equipment and other chemical resources, hacked the fabber in the medlab to spit out some combat drugs, snuck across the corridor into a supply/janitorial room that had a fabber, hacked THAT to kick out a couple of diamond axes and some armored vests. And exactly one pistol because the thing didn't have much in the way of metal resources and would've had to requisition more which might've set off alarm bells.

And then we took the station. Full of hostile hive-minded splicers and murderous reapers.

We didn't even have underwear.

And it was awesome.

So yeah, I basically figure that for most Firewall games, I'm going to spend at most 1/4 of my starting Cr allowance on morph-bits unless it seems likely that morph will never see use at all, then the rest will likely go into blueprints.

Tickle is not an amazing combatant, she's more of a buffer/debuffer...Keep everyone on our side medicated with things that make them faster, stronger, better, toss slip and disassembler and injector swarms at the enemy, and if it comes to the worst she's got Twitch injectors in her claws (also Oxytocin-A and a few of our other favorite flavors). And more importantly, she's got the blueprints for all that so if she has any time to work with when she goes somewhere else, and has fabber access, she can start producing swarms, hives, drugs, injector implants, splash grenades, etc. She can do some medical support, can evaluate weird poisons and drugs and probably make antidotes/counters, modify blueprints, and analyze TITAN nanoswarms.

Problem is, as mentioned, that's all 'support.' If we haven't got a hacker on team, the blueprints become a lot harder (or take a lot longer) to get rolling in hostile areas. If we haven't got a combat-monkey, well sure she can dose anybody on the team with MRDR but it won't do nearly as much good. I may need to dump her in favor of such a role if nobody else brings one. We'll discuss it, I guess. Support characters are only really valid once all the necessities are covered.

I will note that one of the advantages Psi has (if you choose the right sleights) is that you can do things like have Speed 2 and your hand becomes a weapon potentially more powerful than a diamond axe straight out of the egocasting tank without ever picking up a tool...And provided you aren't in a can. Alas, Tickle's Psi talents are nothing so drastic and run more along the lines of fast programming, analysis, blueprint design, a little bit of mind-reading and a little bit of 'Hi! Let me hold your gun a minute while you tighten your shoelaces.'

She's also good for getting invited to the kinds of parties your mother warned you about.

So yeah, one of my character-design exercises for building a Firewall character is 'just woke up in an effectively naked morph with no implants and covered in slime...What can I do to make the party more effective?'

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
No, she doesn't. Okay, things, stuff...Eclipse Phase character philosophy for Firewall Agents.

I've played in a bunch of EP games, and one of the things which is a constant is the idea that "you can't take it with you," as so succinctly put in the latest book, Transhuman. Therefore, I've found it's best to burn the majority of your CP and funds on things which you can take with you, squirreled away in your Ego-memory to be egocast to wherever Firewall needs you. Most places have fabbers, the problem is hacking them and running off a few copies of whatever you want without getting caught. In a Firewall campaign unless the GM has explicitly said 'You'll be starting out in the morph you buy during chargen' I don't put more than maybe 25KCr into it. Everything else is skills, software and blueprints, which go with you wherever you go.

The problem I find with blueprints is that they're expensive.  A set of blueprints for an SMG?  5000 credits, or 20,000 if you want the railgun variant.  And you only have 115,000 credits (at most, assuming you max out CP spends on credits and take the Hyperelite background for the extra 10k).  Plus, even if you take the biggest size nanofabber (a DCM, which is 20k itself), they produce, at best, small-size items.  Meaning that Assault Rail Rifle you just plopped down 20k on the blueprints?  Oh, now you need to assemble it, and pray to God that you do it right, otherwise it could fritz at the wrong moment and now you're Headhunter chow.

Yes, they are useful, and they can't be taken away from you unless you get deleted, but the game designers should stick to building the universe and giving the players (and GMs) cool toys to play with, not telling us how to play the game.  Their stupidity comes out when they do, and this 'blueprints over gear' shtick is el mejor ejemplo.

A person experienced in the game would tell you that I'm wrong, that blueprints are worth the Fort Knoxes you spend.  A smart person experienced in the game would tell you that I'm right, that they're crazily expensive, and that you can easily pick up blueprints from your friends via the social network (especially for Autonomists & Argonauts).  A really smart person experienced in the game would just tell you that you can program your own.

But, you know, whatever you wanna do is fine with me.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
Now Reiji has kinda dodged every time I've tried to poke him about starting morphs, ;D but my basic attitude at this point is founded on the following assumptions and observations:

I plead the Fifth.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM

  • It'd be a rarely cruel GM who didn't warn you if you were never going to get to use your starting morph (i.e., game begins with you being egocast elsewhere into something new and you never have an opportunity to go back).

You are going to get to use your starter body.  And quite a bit.  See below.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
  • Reiji has said "this campaign will span pretty much the entire range of planets - Sunward, the Main Belt, Rimward, probably even a couple of exoplanets." so that tells me there will be egocating involved. You can slowboat it some places in the Inner System, particularly in the LLA and the vicinity of Mars/Venus where there are not only major astronomical bodies (moons, planets) but also a slew of habitats in the LaGrange points around them, but generally speaking for long distance travel you get tossed around as an Ego. Nothing physical flies with you.

I did indeed say that.  But what I didn't say was how much was whereMost of the game will be taking place inside of the Main Belt.  Empyrean and I struck a deal which has landed you guys a ship - a Fast Transport modified to travel at THE SPEED OF PLOT.

I realize I'm taking an aside here for a moment, but to me, I think one of the things I like the least about EP is how the writers did up the traveling bits.  It's said that Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale, and that's what I'm sensing here with the travel table listed in Rimward.  I understand that the whole egocasting thing is part of the whole 'digitize your mind and reinstantiate in a new body!' gimmick that is one of three EP is built around, but come on!  According to the Rimward table, it takes longer to get from Mars to Earth than it does to go from Mars to Mercury.  And I'm looking at the officially published corebook map, and I'm saying BULLSHIT!  I realize that the map says the obligatory 'not to scale'...but no, just no

OTOH, we do need some form of figuring out how long travel takes, so I'm going with a modded version of the Rimward time table.  So what we'll be doing is going off of the Rimward table - based on the Mercury row alone.  That means that rather than taking 27 days to travel from Mars to the Moon/Earth, it instead takes around a week.

Back to the campaign issue - most of your story will be utilized from Main Belt & Sunward, and if you have an exoplanet you can go to, it'll be one tied to either the Vulcanoid or Mars Gates.  The endgame will be out Rimward way,  but I have a plan to get you out there that doesn't take a month, or require egocasting.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
  • Reiji has not encouraged us to create characters 'all in one location.' Tickle is definitely going to be in a scum swarm, but many of those migrate through the inner-and-outer system on sorta short-cometary ovals, so she isn't necessarily "on the other side of the world." but even getting between Jupiter and Saturn's moons, egocasting is more economical than slowboating it. So I'm assuming we'll be egocasting fairly soon after we begin. And that means new morphs, and that means luck of the draw, and the Fates are not known for being exceptionally kind.

Actually not.  The body you start with, barring death, should last you, oh...75% of the game.  To me, the Reinstantiate button is EP's version of the True Resurrection button from D&D - a way to make sure that you're not dead.  Maybe it's just my Jovianism showing, but from where I sit, if a group of characters is forced to reinstantiate more than 2-3 times in a campaign, you're doing it wrong.  In most of my stories, my characters should be able to finish in the body they start with, or at least have the chance to.

If you're really worried about Egocasting and having to grab a lottery body, well...there's always the Right At Home (Exalts) Trait.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
So I'd start out with a nominal morph that you'd be comfortable seeing as your character's 'standard' morph, just in case it turns out that you're the lottery winner and everyone else has to egocast to where YOU are. I.E., don't buy a Case to start with unless that's really part of who your character is when they're at home enjoying themselves or doing their job.

Ah, hell, might as well tell you.  You're all starting on Mars, near Pathfinder City.  If you had to egocast to get to Mars, it's assumed that whatever body you're buying is the one that you got when you arrived there.  (IE, I'm being generous.)

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
Beyond that, equipment you'd keep around you when you're NOT on a Firewall erasure mission. Remember that because Firewall often tosses people around the system, they also often have caches (when they can manage to do the prep work) set up. Not always but sometimes you're lucky. Remember also that if something goes down in your local neighborhood and half of your neighbors know you just fabbed up a half-dozen plasma rifles the local law enforcement/militia/nosy-parker anarchists who are concerned about the problem will come calling. I wouldn't purchase starting equipment to gear up for exoplanet run, for instance, unless Reiji said 'you are all starting at the Fissure Gate on Oberon as part of a crashing mission.'

I know I ragged on the game designers earlier, but they did get one thing right - spend less on shinies, and more on skills.  Without exception, when I design a starting character (1000 CP), the extra ~250 CP I have left at the end (400 Active, 300 Knowledge, ~50 for a body), half of that goes to skills, and the rest goes to everything else...and if I'm struggling with spend what I have left on the other end, I just take that and BUY MOAR SKILL.


Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 05:44:58 PM
Problem is, as mentioned, that's all 'support.' If we haven't got a hacker on team, the blueprints become a lot harder (or take a lot longer) to get rolling in hostile areas. If we haven't got a combat-monkey, well sure she can dose anybody on the team with MRDR but it won't do nearly as much good. I may need to dump her in favor of such a role if nobody else brings one. We'll discuss it, I guess. Support characters are only really valid once all the necessities are covered.

At this point, it's not looking promising that we're getting a hacker.  Linna may be able to pick up that bit, or Muse if he ever gets back to me, or maybe even Darkling (his character concept is a TerraGenesis Corvid Uplift sneaky-type), but...[/list]

ChaoticSky

#57
Oh yay. The... school of thought i ended up on when i started EP and had my first few games happened to be the sort who invested heavily in bodies... then i wandered off for a few months and when i took up EP again the whole 'never spend money on your body' stuff had taken hold, whats the point of all the cool gear/augs if no one ever uses them because theres no point in upgrading a body with expensive kit? D:

But this does bring up some additional possibilities;

I have a solarian explorer with ship skills, if you need someone to fly the ship/have a ship. That way you dont have to fudge it (assuming thats what you did to get us a ship). Shes a young orca sunwhale who decided to leave her pod to explore the solar system and learn about transhumanity. combat, crasher-oriented and exploration/flight skills.

Also, i have my AGI hacker i mentioned to you reiji... but i dont think you want me to play her after what i did with her before ;D. Shes no slouch in combat either though, so she does allow me to fill both the 'needed' roles of hacker and combat.. and shes already made more or less so it wouldnt take me as long to put her together. I promise not to do my TITAN impression ;)

However, it will probably be a little while before i can make any serious headway there, as i had the good fortune yesterday to put a screw through my finger, which makes typing quite the chore (this post took forever) so dont expect much progress for a little while  :-X

(and your never on your AIM :P do you have one you use more often?)

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#58
Okay, you clearly have some feelings about this, Reiji. I'm gonna answer anyway in hopes things can be happily sorted out.

Indeed blueprints are expensive, though in-game they can be harder or easier to get, depending on where you are in the system. On Mars, per the rules and setting as written, it's next to impossible to get anything unusual safely because the only people with non-monitored fabber access are crooks. In the outer system? Pfff. Easy-peasy. As for assembling it? That sort of thing is why HW: Armorer is a good buy for somebody in the party, usually your combat-guy or techie.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 24, 2014, 07:39:25 PMYes, they are useful, and they can't be taken away from you unless you get deleted, but the game designers should stick to building the universe and giving the players (and GMs) cool toys to play with, not telling us how to play the game.  Their stupidity comes out when they do, and this 'blueprints over gear' shtick is el mejor ejemplo.

A person experienced in the game would tell you that I'm wrong, that blueprints are worth the Fort Knoxes you spend. A smart person experienced in the game would tell you that I'm right, that they're crazily expensive, and that you can easily pick up blueprints from your friends via the social network (especially for Autonomists & Argonauts).  A really smart person experienced in the game would just tell you that you can program your own.

You certainly can run EP how you want to, and I'm OKAY with how you are saying you want to run the game, but I will thank you to NOT say things like "a smart person experienced with the game would tell you that I'm right"...

Because the flip side of that statement is 'Carny, you're an idiot.'

I've been playing this game since it was released to the public. I've been in four long-term face-to-face campaigns, one of which ran three years and had multiple agent-retirements because characters got powerful enough that we missed the small-scale challenges since we didn't want to be setting system policy. I've played numerous online PbP campaigns as well, only one of which was finished because PbP is that damn way. And it just so happens that I have email in my Elliquiy inbox from you last year asking me how to play this game and how to build a character for Ebpohmr's Eclipse Phase campaign. So I am that experienced player, and I disagree with your generalizations based on my experiences. And I really don't appreciate the conversational tactic of suggesting that a smart person would agree with you THEREFORE anyone who disagrees is stupid.

Yes, in some games it's easier to get hold of blueprints, and in some settings it is, as well. Other gamemasters and going by the setting RAW will make it exceptionally difficult, and programming blueprints from scratch (rather than modifying some you have in hand) is far more difficult unless you have a very large skillset. Ergo, it's a good idea to pick up cheaper blueprints for common stuff you don't want to waste time on, and then spend your research/programming/negotiating/wheedling time in-game on the stuff that's too expensive to get as a blueprint starting out. You've now told us how you see blueprints in your game. Good to know. If that had been made clear, my advice would have been different.

But regardless, it would've been much nicer and less judgemental to say 'I don't like the way this is treated by the game and I'm going to handle it differently' than to come out saying 'anyone smart would agree with me (so clearly you aren't smart).'

As far as travel-time, ANY tabulation of transits from one point into the solar system to another is nonsense unless it takes into account where in their orbits all of the relevant bodies are (and 'relevant' includes gravitational slingshots or gravitational drag created by other bodies). For many orbits it's much faster to slingshot down into the sun's gravity well than to make anything approaching a straight transition. The solar system is NOT a nice neat set of spheroids traveling in perfectly flat orbits in the same plane and it sure as hell is not a line of planets that begin with Mercury and end with Neptune.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

There are times in Mars' orbit when it is MUCH closer to Mercury than it is to Earth.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

I'm guessing the EP guys looked at a positional chart when that was the case. Because you know? It actually happens fairly often due to Mercury's orbital speed, which means it is often on the same side of the sun as Mars, and the fact that the Earth can be on the far side of the sun from Mars. Planets do not maintain standard, steady positions relative to each other.

MARS ---------------- Venus --- Mercury -- SUN ------------------Earth

I understand your frustration. That table irritates me, too. Possibly more so because I've actually studied astronomy. If it helps any, you might want to know that the game designers were constantly pestered on the forums by people asking them for 'a simple table' and gave up on telling people 'it isn't that simple.' and posted a table which (as any simple table about planetary movements) will be wrong better than 90% of the time.

And as any planetary astronomer can tell you:

(Distances given are rough averages plus min/max because the planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular.)

Mars' orbit varies between a perihelion of 127 million miles and aphelion of 155.
Earth's orbit varies between a perihelion of 91 million miles and aphelion of 94.
Mercury's orbit orbit varies between a perihelion of 29 million miles and aphelion of 43.

Closest possible approach between Mars and Mercury (both effectively in line on the same side of the sun): 84 million miles.
Maximum possible distance between Mars and Earth (in opposition to each other around the sun): 249 million miles.

In this orbital configuration the distance between Mars and Mercury is only a little more than 1/3 the distance between Mars and Earth.

The table is borked, you're right. But not for the reasons you think.

I've got no problem with you handwaving travel times and assigning the party a ship and saying 'we're not going to do the egocast thing for reasons.' Totally cool with that. But the solar system isn't a flatmap, and it's pretty common for Mercury to be closer to Mars than to Earth.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: Darkling on June 24, 2014, 08:19:19 PM
Oh yay. The... school of thought i ended up on when i started EP and had my first few games happened to be the sort who invested heavily in bodies... then i wandered off for a few months and when i took up EP again the whole 'never spend money on your body' stuff had taken hold, whats the point of all the cool gear/augs if no one ever uses them because theres no point in upgrading a body with expensive kit? D:

Kitting out a premium body makes a LOT of sense if you know your campaign is going to be 'in one place.' Not so much if you're told it'll be all over the system in a game which normally uses egocasting for long distance travel. *Shrug* It's situational, like most things.

But this does bring up some additional possibilities;

Quote from: Darkling on June 24, 2014, 08:19:19 PMI have a solarian explorer with ship skills, if you need someone to fly the ship/have a ship. That way you dont have to fudge it (assuming thats what you did to get us a ship). Shes a young orca sunwhale who decided to leave her pod to explore the solar system and learn about transhumanity. combat, crasher-oriented and exploration/flight skills.

Also, i have my AGI hacker i mentioned to you reiji... but i dont think you want me to play her after what i did with her before ;D. Shes no slouch in combat either though, so she does allow me to fill both the 'needed' roles of hacker and combat.. and shes already made more or less so it wouldnt take me as long to put her together. I promise not to do my TITAN impression ;)

Both of these sound like fun to me.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
Okay, you clearly have some feelings about this, Reiji. I'm gonna answer anyway in hopes things can be happily sorted out.

It's not often that I get strong feelings about something.  But when I do, expect my feelings to color practically everything I have to say on the subject.


Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
Indeed blueprints are expensive, though in-game they can be harder or easier to get, depending on where you are in the system. On Mars, per the rules and setting as written, it's next to impossible to get anything unusual safely because the only people with non-monitored fabber access are crooks. In the outer system? Pfff. Easy-peasy. As for assembling it? That sort of thing is why HW: Armorer is a good buy for somebody in the party, usually your combat-guy or techie.

My issue with blueprints is mainly because of my IRL crew.  They haven't played EP, and they probably never will, but damn they are devious.  Our group has a standing rule about any sort of D&D campaign we play - no invisibility anything.  Because whatever the GM has planned will get boned.  Giving them a nanofabber and blueprints would basically be asking for all sorts of trouble.

Now, if you want to start out with blueprints for a couple of low-key things, that's fine by me.  Spending 1000 credits so that you can go anywhere and have a handgun or shard pistol where you go seems like a good investment.  But if you get much more beyond that, I start picturing laundry lists of nothing but blueprints, and I know it's irrational, but you guys should start with at least some actual gear.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
You certainly can run EP how you want to, and I'm OKAY with how you are saying you want to run the game, but I will thank you to NOT say things like "a smart person experienced with the game would tell you that I'm right"...

Because the flip side of that statement is 'Carny, you're an idiot.'

People have to usually semi-regularly remind me that 'Reiji, intelligence of any caliber is not license to mock people who aren't as smart as you.  Or people who you think aren't as smart as you.'

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
I've been playing this game since it was released to the public. I've been in four long-term face-to-face campaigns, one of which ran three years and had multiple agent-retirements because characters got powerful enough that we missed the small-scale challenges since we didn't want to be setting system policy. I've played numerous online PbP campaigns as well, only one of which was finished because PbP is that damn way. And it just so happens that I have email in my Elliquiy inbox from you last year asking me how to play this game and how to build a character for Ebpohmr's Eclipse Phase campaign. So I am that experienced player, and I disagree with your generalizations based on my experiences. And I really don't appreciate the conversational tactic of suggesting that a smart person would agree with you THEREFORE anyone who disagrees is stupid.

And I've learned a lot in that year.  About character designing, about how I see the game world - I own a copy of the corebook (3rd print run), and it sits on my dresser next to my bed.  I read at least one chapter (two if they're short) every weeknight before I sleep.  But I'm sorry.  I could have laid out the options for acquiring blueprints outside of buying them without insulting anyone.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
Yes, in some games it's easier to get hold of blueprints, and in some settings it is, as well. Other gamemasters and going by the setting RAW will make it exceptionally difficult, and programming blueprints from scratch (rather than modifying some you have in hand) is far more difficult unless you have a very large skillset. Ergo, it's a good idea to pick up cheaper blueprints for common stuff you don't want to waste time on, and then spend your research/programming/negotiating/wheedling time in-game on the stuff that's too expensive to get as a blueprint starting out. You've now told us how you see blueprints in your game. Good to know. If that had been made clear, my advice would have been different.

Okay.  So you're not necessarily talking about getting blueprints for things like railguns or plasma weapons or anything like that.  As I stated above - basic, low-cost stuff (who wouldn't like to have an endless supply of batteries for only 250 credits?) is a worthwhile investment, but I can't see myself throwing down much more than High cost on blueprints.  And I understand why they're this way, but that one cost category higher rule for blueprints is really a kick in the pants.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
As far as travel-time, ANY tabulation of transits from one point into the solar system to another is nonsense unless it takes into account where in their orbits all of the relevant bodies are (and 'relevant' includes gravitational slingshots or gravitational drag created by other bodies). For many orbits it's much faster to slingshot down into the sun's gravity well than to make anything approaching a straight transition. The solar system is NOT a nice neat set of spheroids traveling in perfectly flat orbits in the same plane and it sure as hell is not a line of planets that begin with Mercury and end with Neptune.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

There are times in Mars' orbit when it is MUCH closer to Mercury than it is to Earth.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

I'm guessing the EP guys looked at a positional chart when that was the case. Because you know? It actually happens fairly often due to Mercury's orbital speed, which means it is often on the same side of the sun as Mars, and the fact that the Earth can be on the far side of the sun from Mars. Planets do not maintain standard, steady positions relative to each other.

MARS ---------------- Venus --- Mercury -- SUN ------------------Earth

Right.  And I know that the map in the book lacks any sort of 3-D quality (as you note below), and that planets may not be on the same side of the Sun - it would be a bigger trip to get from Mars to Earth than Mars to Mercury if Mercury was on the same side of the sun as Mars, but Earth was opposite them both.

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 24, 2014, 08:55:30 PM
I understand your frustration. That table irritates me, too. Possibly more so because I've actually studied astronomy. If it helps any, you might want to know that the game designers were constantly pestered on the forums by people asking them for 'a simple table' and gave up on telling people 'it isn't that simple.' and posted a table which (as any simple table about planetary movements) will be wrong better than 90% of the time.

The table is borked, you're right. But not for the reasons you think.

I've got no problem with you handwaving travel times and assigning the party a ship and saying 'we're not going to do the egocast thing for reasons.' Totally cool with that. But the solar system isn't a flatmap, and it's pretty common for Mercury to be closer to Mars than to Earth.

Personally, if it had been me, I would have told those guys to go figure it out themselves, if they were so damn worried about it.  Then again, I've never been the social type.  But if what you're saying about the table being that wrong is true, then I might as well do it up myself, yes?  Don't worry, I'll try and be reasonable about how long it takes - going from Mercury to Saturn in a week just isn't happening - but I'm not going to have this campaign start 10 AF and end up finishing 8 years later.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 02:57:25 AM
My issue with blueprints is mainly because of my IRL crew.  They haven't played EP, and they probably never will, but damn they are devious.  Our group has a standing rule about any sort of D&D campaign we play - no invisibility anything.  Because whatever the GM has planned will get boned.  Giving them a nanofabber and blueprints would basically be asking for all sorts of trouble.

I have a friend who used to work IT. He constantly would mumble about how "everything would be fine if they just got rid of all of the damned users who fucked everything up."

I can understand what you're getting at here, really I can. My crowd includes two no-that's-my-job physicists and I was once treated to a lesson in how-to-deconstruct-a-space-elevator-oops-no-wait-how-to-make-it-destroy-itself that pretty much cut the big scary part of my campaign in half, because I expected them to try to clear and verify the anchor as well as the docking station. I would've gotten away with everything if it weren't for those meddling players.

At the same time, even in EP, I like to be a fan of the player characters and the player cleverness. I just calmly moved the big bad encounter. After all, orbital mechanics take a while to have effect and there was more than one elevator pod and shuttle available and I pointed out that they couldn't afford to NOT be sure that the insurgents were all destroyed, which meant anything intact that could hold atmosphere...

I guess my thing is, if a player is being damn clever with his firemage in a way that makes the game cooler for everyone (important), then once in a long while I'm going to throw some fire monsters at him which don't care about fire, or even better get stronger from it, because that's going to make him think and diversify. I'm NOT going to have every encounter suddenly turn up in asbestos plate armor. Even in a game like EP, which I have run at a few gaming conventions (and you NEVER know what you're getting into with players in a thing like that!) I feel no qualms about handing someone their ass, but I'm going to hand them their ass for the thing they missed, NOT the thing they got clever as fuck about.

Different GM styles, I am sure...They ALL are. What boggles me is when you get a group that's deviously cunning as hell and makes you think on your feet...And then they persistently miss what you thought of as the giant, unmissable clues that they need to notice to move on. THAT frustrates me! Usually frustrates them, too.

In the end run, it bears remembering that it's supposed to be fun for everybody.
Odds are really good that before we're done I'll try to do something clever using nano or chemicals. I'll bounce it off you via PM as soon as I come up with it, rather than springing it like a bouncing betty at the last possible minute when it's guaranteed to bring a combat/denouement to a halt. Okay?

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 02:57:25 AM
Now, if you want to start out with blueprints for a couple of low-key things, that's fine by me.  Spending 1000 credits so that you can go anywhere and have a handgun or shard pistol where you go seems like a good investment.  But if you get much more beyond that, I start picturing laundry lists of nothing but blueprints, and I know it's irrational, but you guys should start with at least some actual gear.

Shit. *Hides LLOTV blueprint she was planning on running in a coffeemaker just to watch it fail in the worst possible way*

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 02:57:25 AMOkay.  So you're not necessarily talking about getting blueprints for things like railguns or plasma weapons or anything like that.  As I stated above - basic, low-cost stuff (who wouldn't like to have an endless supply of batteries for only 250 credits?) is a worthwhile investment, but I can't see myself throwing down much more than High cost on blueprints.  And I understand why they're this way, but that one cost category higher rule for blueprints is really a kick in the pants.

Seriously, that's exactly what I was talking about. Cheap, fast stuff. If you're hacking a fabber in enemy territory you don't want to sit there for 24 hours while it churns out something complicated as hell. Look at the example I gave: diamond axes, a couple of armor vests, one kinetic pistol...Because any MINUTE it would've been reasonable to expect a patrol or something. Cheap = FAST. Expensive = SLOW. Now there are exceptions to that...For instance, specific to my character, if I decide to whip up a handful of doses of a moderate drug, I don't expect it to take the Maker 2 hours per dose...Or even 2 hours, honestly. The majority of medicines are predominantly CHON.

Page 285 of the core rules has a significant little comment on it:
QuoteThe exact timeframe to create an object varies, but roughly approximates 1 hour per cost category of the item (1 hour for Trivial, 2 for Low, 3 for Moderate, etc.). The gamemaster may feel free to modify this period as appropriate for the object.

On the one hand, fabbing CAN definitely be abused. Transhuman provides a TON of ways to put the brakes on it, and if your characters are being smart they will recognize them (like checking the fabber in advance and realizing there's only enough metal bits for one complex machine like a small pistol). On the other hand, picture the accelerated future, where getting one dose of aspirin takes an hour, and getting two takes two hours...Not likely, right? I'm not going to run off half a million doses of drugs, because it'd get way too much attention. On the other hand, having 10-20 isn't really any more of a big deal than 5-10. What matters is, did the party have enough advance warning to take drugs with a 20-minute onset time? And do they have someplace to hide while they come down off their 'combat high' so they don't get picked up with a body full of interesting chemical compounds? And of course there's addiction to worry about... There are LOTS of brakes on the abuse train and I look for them myself and call them out, so I'm NOT going to try to slide them by you.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 02:57:25 AMPeople have to usually semi-regularly remind me that 'Reiji, intelligence of any caliber is not license to mock people who aren't as smart as you.  Or people who you think aren't as smart as you.'

And I've learned a lot in that year.  About character designing, about how I see the game world - I own a copy of the corebook (3rd print run), and it sits on my dresser next to my bed.  I read at least one chapter (two if they're short) every weeknight before I sleep.  But I'm sorry.  I could have laid out the options for acquiring blueprints outside of buying them without insulting anyone.

All forgiven, apology accepted, everybody has bad days/weeks/months. Let's move forward with a focus on trying to communicate stuff in advance and avoid confusion/miscomms. Is there anything else we should probably know during character design re: house rules and the like?

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 02:57:25 AMRight.  And I know that the map in the book lacks any sort of 3-D quality (as you note below), and that planets may not be on the same side of the Sun - it would be a bigger trip to get from Mars to Earth than Mars to Mercury if Mercury was on the same side of the sun as Mars, but Earth was opposite them both.

Personally, if it had been me, I would have told those guys to go figure it out themselves, if they were so damn worried about it.  Then again, I've never been the social type.  But if what you're saying about the table being that wrong is true, then I might as well do it up myself, yes?  Don't worry, I'll try and be reasonable about how long it takes - going from Mercury to Saturn in a week just isn't happening - but I'm not going to have this campaign start 10 AF and end up finishing 8 years later.

Well, they are trying to stay afloat as a business. That means while they might score some rep with some people by going 'No, asshole, we've said a thousand times that you can't even MAKE a simple table because orbits are complex, go educate yourself.' in the long run they will do better by being polite and attending to demands that are repeatedly thrown at them by customers. Personally I think I would've put a note under the table explaining how it was convenient but also horribly, horribly wrong and done so in a fashion MUCH stronger than "Distance and times are averages, subject to current orbital positions." ;)

More Crazy Travel-Time Crap
Just for fun, if you ever want to go nuts on it, the last time Mars and Earth directly aligned with each other on the same side of the sun (opposition) was April 14 of this year. On April 8, Mars was visible from dusk til dawn if you were in the northern hemisphere. Here's a real map of approaches showing the 'offset' of the Earth and Mars orbits around the Sun through 2018. So we are in the late-middle of a 15-year period between closest approaches and in 2018 Mars and Earth will be nearly as close as they ever get. It's worth noting that Earth goes around the sun almost twice for every orbit of Mars (687 days), so if you were really bored you actually could calculate out closest approaches for some time to come.



Another fun thing to think about is that while EP gives travel times for various ships (including a MAM courier that moves 4x the speed of the 'standard' in the table) the real limiter is the fuel you carry. In theory if you had infinite fuel, you could accelerate 50% of the way, skew-flip and decelerate the remainder, and cut this time dramatically (constant acceleration). Realistically, that would take hundreds (possibly thousands on long trips) of times the vessel's mass in fuel. But in an emergency, in theory, if somebody were catapulting fuel bladders from various points in the system so they matched your speed...Well, I'd hate to fuck up a mid-flight refueling at those kinds of speeds. At least it'd be over before you knew it. >_> If you could somehow get enough fuel to maintain 9.8m/s^2 of constant acceleration (utterly insane and ridiculous amounts of fuel that somehow had no mass, haha) then at closest approach you could make the Earth-Pluto run in 15 days. That's getting more into the realm of Star Trek sublight speeds than anything like even vaguely 'hard' SF, though.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#62
Just for the sake of fiddliness and to see if I can tweak the character to manage the combat hacker role...And since I know some GMs do and some don't agree with it in terms of "how much of hacking is analysis/planning?" (My personal belief is that analysis is a huge part of hacking) Do you count the Instinct sleight (EP p.224) as a 90% or a 30% reduction when it comes to hacking?

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

To me?  It depends on the situation.

90% Qualifications: You are executing a preplanned sequence of events (note I don't say how preplanned this can be), you are utilizing your own installed mesh implants (which work via thought alone); you have previously probed the target.

30% Qualifications: You are working on the fly; you are utilizing an ecto or other similar external interface.

A 30% Qualification will usually override a 90%.  But I will not say that it always does.  For example, if you are executing a preplanned sequence of events, but you're using an ecto to do your hacking, normally the ecto usage overrides, making the action 30% reduced.  However, there can be exceptions made.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#64
I was more looking at the 'analysis' than the 'planning' elements. An awful lot of your work is analyzing the hostile firewall and incoming/outgoing data traffic. But I can run with 'it's situational.' And obviously BFH is going to be 30%.

Okay, consider us to have a more-or-less combat hacker. But damn is she brittle.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ReijiTabibito

You mean like setting up your Sniffer & Spoof programs and watching the resulting data flow?  Yes, that would certainly be a 90% qualification.

How brittle?  Because I haven't heard from Muse in a while, and if we've lost him, then I'm going to be subbing in the Experienced Sentinel Rules.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#66
Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 25, 2014, 06:11:27 PM
You mean like setting up your Sniffer & Spoof programs and watching the resulting data flow?  Yes, that would certainly be a 90% qualification.

How brittle?  Because I haven't heard from Muse in a while, and if we've lost him, then I'm going to be subbing in the Experienced Sentinel Rules.

Brittle like EXTREMELY min/maxed, with an unbuffed SOM of 5. If you look at her hard in a morph with no SOM bonuses she'll break. ;)

I actually PM'ed MUSE earlier, haven't heard back.

EDIT: Also, oh hey I just realized we're starting the only place in the system my character actually has a real arrest warrant against her. Hooray, false ID! It does get you more than drinks.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Heard back from Muse. He is still interested and working up a fighty type.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

GloomCookie

Every time I see a new post my brain just kinda kicks itself and says, "Fuck it, just focus on what you know, which ain't much"
My DeviantArt

Ons and Offs Updated 9 October 2022

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: Linna on June 26, 2014, 06:45:26 AM
Every time I see a new post my brain just kinda kicks itself and says, "Fuck it, just focus on what you know, which ain't much"

...And me going round and round with Reiji about particulars probably isn't helping. Sorry.

If you need help with any number-twiddling or otherwise are having trouble finishing out a character points-wise, I'm happy to have a look at it. I'm nearly done with my own re-work or I'd have posted the spreadsheet for Tickle by now.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#70
Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 19, 2014, 09:11:40 PM
EDIT: Also, if it helps people narrow down their character concepts, the one character we've got solid right now is a Hyperelite Socialite who has the crew's legal, Inner System aspects covered as far as Rep and Networking.

Tickle is pretty solidly done, I'm just reworking her Cr expenses to cover necessary hacking tools and the like. I'm using Kin's 0.94 sheet. So add to that a Lost/Scum combat hacker/drug/nanotech specialist with near-systemwide infamy as a petal designer who will be able to help with Autonomous networking to some extent. Should have sheet completed tonight or tomorrow.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

Eobelle

After reading this thread, I picked up the EP book, and I must admit that I LOVE the setting.  I would be interested in making a seriously psychosurgically-hacked character who is being trafficked by a scum swarm as sex slave for extreme tastes, but in reality is a hacker who breaks into private isolated systems (well, she is ACTALLY a trafficked sex slave against her will... the best lies are truths, yes?).  The worry that I have is that she will most likely be not very good at combat... will that be a serious drawback in a Firewall game? 

I like this world very much, and am trying to crunch the numbers in order to make a useful and efficient character, but many of you seem to be intimately familiar with this system, so any help with creation would be greatly appreciated.  I am usually not concerned with making the most efficient use of my points, and focus on character; often times making what many gamers would consider to be "bad decisions".

But if there is room, and CarnivalOfTheGoat doesn't want to have to do the re-hash of Tickle to be a hacker, I'd be happy to play one.  I don't know if this concept will work in EP however, it's a LOT of background to process.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#72
Quote from: Eobelle on June 28, 2014, 02:20:16 AM
After reading this thread, I picked up the EP book, and I must admit that I LOVE the setting.  I would be interested in making a seriously psychosurgically-hacked character who is being trafficked by a scum swarm as sex slave for extreme tastes, but in reality is a hacker who breaks into private isolated systems (well, she is ACTALLY a trafficked sex slave against her will... the best lies are truths, yes?).

I think we're closed at this point, but you'd have to check with Reiji. He posted that we were about a week ago. You might also consider trying to set up another game, I know we had one player drop early on who didn't want to be part of a Firewall campaign.

Also, I think you may've misunderstood what Scum are. While indentures, wage-slavery and real slavery are found in the EP setting, you probably should be looking more at the inner system - the Hypercorps, the TTO, and the Criminal/Guanxi groups. The Scum are hedonistic autonomists with communal/equality of opportunity/resources/rights being a cornerstone of their society and a great deal of respect for personal/morphological/mental freedom. Think gypsy/free-love/open-source black-marketeers. Slave-owning isn't very much in keeping with autonomist values or the Outer System reputation network. While Scum'd be all over roleplaying power exchange in a hedonistic/sexual fashion, actual slavers would probably have their asses handed to them in a Scum swarm. Like most autonomists, someone owns their personal possessions, but nobody owns 'property' in the sense a Hypercorper thinks of it. If you want slavers in this setting (who aren't just running egos as infomorphs), you should probably check up on Nine Lives and the Night Cartel.

Quote from: Eobelle on June 28, 2014, 02:20:16 AMBut if there is room, and CarnivalOfTheGoat doesn't want to have to do the re-hash of Tickle to be a hacker, I'd be happy to play one.  I don't know if this concept will work in EP however, it's a LOT of background to process.

Oh I'm pretty much done with Tickle except for finalizing decisions on a few minor gear purchases and a last check of everything, thanks for the concern. :D She's already set up as a hacker-first, drugs/nano specialist secondary capability. Took a TON of fiddling to make it all work out, I don't think I've ever spent so much time tweaking a character in this game.

My O/Os. My A/As.
Games I seek:
Savage Worlds of My Little Pony <- Just what it says. Free supplement for SW. (Or any other MLP RP!!! :D)
Eclipse Phase <- Posthuman grit SF, open source, downloadable from their web site. VERY deep worldbuilding.
Cold City <- Espionage meets the Lovecraftian supernatural. Allies in post-war Berlin chasing down the results of secret Nazi experiments
a|state <- Post-apocalyptic sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-high tech roleplay in a massive, decaying, broken-down city-state.

ChaoticSky

Yea.... a Slaver in a scum swarm is probably going to get shoved out the nearest airlock. At best. After messing with her head that much? They probably hand him over to their more interesting members and tell them to have fun with him.

Muse

Hi everyone. I've had a busy few days. 

If there's still room/time for me, I'll be trying to throw together a character now.  Carny has been a huge help so far. 
A link for all of us who ever had a shouting match with our muse: http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

How to set this Muse ablaze (O/Os)

When the little angel won't appear no matter how many plum blossoms you swirl:  https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=135346.msg16474321#msg16474321 (Major update 5/10/2023)