Interest Check: Eclipse Phase

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

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CarnivalOfTheGoat

Just as an update, I have managed to make custom factions/backgrounds work in Kindalas 0.94 spreadsheet. It requires setting the flag that makes it okay to use in two separate cells, and unlike the custom morphs, this does not happen automatically when you fill in the blanks under custom faction.

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

Yes!  Okay, Carnival, tell me what I have to do to make it work.

ChaoticSky

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 04:18:48 PM
Yes!  Okay, Carnival, tell me what I have to do to make it work.
Hey Reiji, out of curiosity, do you mind if i use Agency to make a character? It only uses the background package method from transhuman though.

ReijiTabibito

Agency?  Is that something new?  Haven't heard of it.

ChaoticSky

#79
Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 04:41:51 PM
Agency?  Is that something new?  Haven't heard of it.
Its a character creator program, still in beta, but other than a small bug (negative traits subtract instead of add) it seems to be in fine working order. Downside is that it only supports the background package method of character creation at the moment.

For a long time i actually thought it was the character creator promised in the Transhuman kick starter but i just looked it up and turns out it isnt. *shrug*. But i am interested in transhuman stuff since im playing a uplift, so my options are that, or doing a sheet manually.

*which, mind you, i have no problem with in its self, ive done it before.

ReijiTabibito

Hmmmm...I dunno.  What browser do you use?

ChaoticSky


ReijiTabibito

http://eclipsephase.oook.ch/Creator/version4/index.php

That's an online character creator.  I don't use it myself, but it's got *everything* on it, including the stuff from TH.

ChaoticSky

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 05:01:28 PM
http://eclipsephase.oook.ch/Creator/version4/index.php

That's an online character creator.  I don't use it myself, but it's got *everything* on it, including the stuff from TH.
ooh, dont mind if i do!

ReijiTabibito

Sorry for the long quiet, everyone.  I was on vacation.

I need a sitrep from everyone on where their character is.

Carny?  I want to work with you, see if I can't get that elephant that is being the group hacker in addition to being a drug dealer off your back.  I'd like a character with a little more durability.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#85
Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 04:18:48 PM
Yes!  Okay, Carnival, tell me what I have to do to make it work.

This is using Kindalas' version 0.94 spreadsheet.

Down at the bottom of the 'Variables' page set up the new custom background (284c) and faction (359c).

On the same page, under the 'Custom Backgrounds' marker at 148J set it to 'Yes' next to the faction you just created.

Still on the same page, under the 'Custom Factions' marker at 173J set it to 'Yes' next to the faction you just created.

Now the custom background and faction will show up in the pulldowns on the Ego page (D12 and D20) along with the normal ones, and when you select them any appropriate Moxie, skills or player-selectable skills will be added and will show up as modified settings on the Skills tab and on the Printable tab.

You're welcome.

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 05:33:15 PM
Sorry for the long quiet, everyone.  I was on vacation.

I need a sitrep from everyone on where their character is.

Carny?  I want to work with you, see if I can't get that elephant that is being the group hacker in addition to being a drug dealer off your back.  I'd like a character with a little more durability.

There is no elephant.

Then you'll see, that it is not the elephant that bends, it is only yourself.

But seriously, no, she's finished and she's pretty damned awesome.

Me and two of my longterm players (both with 3+ years of EP experience) went over her sheet and design ideas carefully and tweaked it up, shifted things here and there for maximum efficiency (except for the one system-wide famous Expert skill *cough* I sort of threw out efficiency on that one, but it's a Knowledge skill so those points needed spending on a non-active skill anyway!... and since it's drug design it's perfect for her) so she's now oriented as a primary hacker but her skills with drugs and nano have NOT taken any significant hit. She is probably the most carefully tweaked character I've ever seen in the game.

Additionally, her Durability and DR are both higher than ANY of the bio or pod sample characters in the corebook except for the Scum Bodyguard (and the Barsoomian Freelancer and Extropian Smuggler both have a lower DUR but a higher DR...But they're SYNTHS so that's just a thing). And that's including the Ultimate Merc. The only sample biomorph character that matches her (and matches her exactly, as it happens) is the Oversight Auditor in Sunward.

And she's designed to be a ranged indirect-fire/hacker/swarm attacker, not a melee type. She's tremendously over-rugged for that job (but Jenkins are supposed to be "the ultimate survivor’s morph", after all!).

She'll be fine.

I'll post her sheet 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.

Empyrean

#86
I think Sachiko's done, given what we worked on. :) I'll take a look at the new generator and see if there's anything I want to add though.

ReijiTabibito

Quote from: CarnivalOfTheGoat on June 30, 2014, 03:51:20 AM
This is using Kindalas' version 0.94 spreadsheet.

Down at the bottom of the 'Variables' page set up the new custom background (284c) and faction (359c).

On the same page, under the 'Custom Backgrounds' marker at 148J set it to 'Yes' next to the faction you just created.

Still on the same page, under the 'Custom Factions' marker at 173J set it to 'Yes' next to the faction you just created.

Now the custom background and faction will show up in the pulldowns on the Ego page (D12 and D20) along with the normal ones, and when you select them any appropriate Moxie, skills or player-selectable skills will be added and will show up as modified settings on the Skills tab and on the Printable tab.


Then I must be doing something wrong, because while I can get the Custom Background to work (and even in the Background box it says 'This is a custom background, ask GM for details), the Custom Faction pulls its description from one of the existant factions, as well as the 'Faction Skills' you get.  Maybe my sheet's corrupted, I'm not sure.

Walk with me through this - I went down and named a new faction: the 'NeoHumans.'  I gave them 2 +10 to Tech/Acad/Prof Skills, and  flat +20 to Networking: Ecologists.  I turned on the faction, selected them...and the text box that popped up for the new faction as for the Mercurials, and interestingly enough, that's what skills appeared, too.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

#88
Nope, looks like I blew it on this one by ridiculous chance and late-night lack of awareness. Bother.

I saw that the text box was wrong but didn't pay attention to that because there was no place for entering text, and it doesn't appear in the 'printable' sheet anyway. So I expected it would be wrong and discounted it. And unfortunately for my test case, since I wasn't trying to duplicate anything I just threw my test faction two +10 'of choice' (since I wanted to see if the pulldowns would appear) and a +20 NW (because networking uses a different pulldown-set) as a rush test and since it seems to have also popped up the mercurial text (which I didn't really pay attention to)...So I inadvertently duplicated what Mercurial gets you. So it faked me out. :6

In theory, given a few weeks of dissecting what Kin has done, I could fix this, but god no. I'd need to be paid well for the headaches of reverse-engineering that sort of work, and there's no point doing it when there's a working TH-ok generator online.

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

Just to check, you dont mind if we expand on the setting do you Reiji? I am thinking about crafting a solarian raven flock for her backstory... the whales might claim to have gotten there first, but everyone knows it was a raven who stole the sun!

ChaoticSky

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on June 29, 2014, 05:33:15 PMI need a sitrep from everyone on where their character is.

Ooh, sorry, i missed this; I'm making good progress on my end, i wasted a couple days by going insane and trying to build a Flexmorph manually, but alittle electroshock therapy cleared that right up

ChaoticSky

*throws hands up* Okay, I'm out. Sorry everyone (especially you Carni  :-( ) I seem to be the only one who isnt done and that online char sheet just somehow permanently glitched its self... restarting my computer, clearing cache, dumping RAM, you name it, nothing fixes it. And in so doing, it ate a couple hours of fiddling with skills (ironically, first and only time its crashed on me). I could do it manually, but that would take a couple days at this point, and youve already been waiting for a few days  -_-. So rather than continue to hold you up i think im just going to bow out.

Dont get ate by a TITAN  :P

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: Darkling on July 02, 2014, 10:21:23 PM
*throws hands up* Okay, I'm out. Sorry everyone (especially you Carni  :-( ) I seem to be the only one who isnt done and that online char sheet just somehow permanently glitched its self... restarting my computer, clearing cache, dumping RAM, you name it, nothing fixes it. And in so doing, it ate a couple hours of fiddling with skills (ironically, first and only time its crashed on me). I could do it manually, but that would take a couple days at this point, and youve already been waiting for a few days  -_-. So rather than continue to hold you up i think im just going to bow out.

Dont get ate by a TITAN  :P

I am beyond certain that you are the only one not done, hun. In fact, as best as I can tell, nobody, myself included (I admit it, I've been fiddling more) has posted a 'finished' character.

If you want any help, let me know. I'd miss having you in the 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.

ReijiTabibito

Dark.  Don't give up.  Literally no one has posted a sheet, or PMed me one, or anything like that.  Carny's been doing this game longer than I have, and she's not finished yet.  Muse is still learning pretty much everything about the game world, he's barely started in terms of the mechanics.

To everyone, I will say, if you are facing struggles with your character, talk to me or Carny about it.  I don't want to lose anyone.

ChaoticSky

.... Oh, really? >.>

For some reason i had assumed that people where sending you sheets through other means (since obviously you couldnt post a Kin spreadsheet on here in any form comprehensible to mortals). Well nevermind then i guess... i just didnt want to keep holding things up.

ReijiTabibito

You're not.  Trust me.  Trust us.  Given what I'm looking down on, here, I don't expect this game to get started for another couple of weeks.  It's certainly not starting before the end of next week.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: ReijiTabibito on July 02, 2014, 11:10:20 PM... talk to me or Carny about it.  I don't want to lose anyone.

Seconded, PLEASE talk to me if you're having any difficulty and that includes questions about 'should I/shouldn't I' or ratios of what to what or any-dang thing.

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.

Muse

*hugs Darkling* 

Lord knowes I'm still working on it! 

(doesn't help that I just had one of my 24 hour sleep binges.  *Groans* ) 

Glad I'm not the only one way behind! 

Team muscle in progress: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o3a09my0UDbgjsBSKCHbDv--PvFQlblg4mtgI_dkQ94/edit
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)

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote from: Muse on July 03, 2014, 11:17:10 AM
Team muscle in progress: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o3a09my0UDbgjsBSKCHbDv--PvFQlblg4mtgI_dkQ94/edit

I quickly moved this into one of Kin's sheets (v.95) since that will make it easier for Reiji to validate point expenditures and for me to assist you. Here's the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9XtVqX473esQ3g2c2RwX2hZdzA/edit?usp=sharing

You can download it using Ctrl-S and edit it using Excel or OpenOffice Calc. I don't like editing live on Google Drive especially multipage spreadsheets because two people might be fiddling with it at once and (as Darkling noted) online editing software that complicated can easily screw up your sheet.

The first thing I want to point at is your Black Mark. I assumed it was 'Hypercorp,' based on the sound of the fellow who Rindi used to work for. If he was able to edit her he's pretty powerful and probably had her indenture or something. If you DON'T intend it to be Hypercorp, that's something to note. It has to be a faction, Black Mark doesn't apply to individuals.

Secondly, you've got a pretty good start as far as your SOM, COO and REF boosts but for a character who is a 'fighter', I would put more of your points into COG. Faces need to boost SAV but very few characters who aren't faces have more than 10 SAV-based skills and almost everyone has 10+ COG-based skills. Why does this matter? Because when you buy a point of an Aptitude (COG, COO, INT, REF, SAV, SOM, WIL) it automagically raises your baseline in all the skills which use that Aptitude as a base. It costs 1 CP to raise a skill by 1 point (at least until it reaches level 60) but 10 CP to raise an Aptitude by 1 point. Ergo, if you have 10 or more skills that use a given Aptitude it's more economical to buy 1 point of Aptitude than it is to put individual points into Skills. If you have less than 10 skills that use an Aptitude it's more economical to put the points into the individual skills themselves. And you'll have a lot of COG skills. Why? I know they don't look very useful to a fighter-type at first, but, well, for starters...

You're REQUIRED to. You must spend a minimum of 300CP on Knowledge skills (Academics, Art, Interest, Language and Profession skills). But when are you going to use those if you're a mean, nasty fighter type? All the time!

When generating a character, one of the biggest things people new to the system miss is that there's this game concept called 'Skill Complements' which lets you use your strengths in one skill to assist a roll with a related skill if the assisting skill is applicable to whatever you're trying to do. You can find more about it on p.173 of the core rules, but basically a 1-30 in a complementary skill lets you add +10 to a die roll, 31-60 lets you add +20, and 61+ lets you add +30. Let me toss some examples out there:

Academics: Astrophysics used as a complement to Pilot: Spacecraft (just about always).
Academics: Geology used as a complement to know when to expect a canyon to end when zipping down it with Pilot: Aircraft and trying to lose the guy behind you in classic cinematic style.
Academics: Botany used as a complement to Profession: Gatecrashing to look for plants that resemble Terran plants with carnivorous features and help you avoid them.
Art: Architecture used as a complement to Demolitions to know how to bring down a bridge or building most efficiently.
Interest: Criminal Groups used as a complement to Profession: Bodyguard to know how to find safe paths through the more gang-infested areas of an arcology or habitat, or how to contract a reliable guide and which gang to go to to get through what zone.
Academics: Military Science used as a complement to Profession: Military Ops to look for the most efficient way to handle storming a building full of hostiles.
Interest: Military History used as a complement to Profession: Military Ops to figure out backup plans that go against the grain of what's recommended but have been known to work in the past...And aren't maybe the most efficient method (because the most efficient method is probably the one the defenders have planned for).
Interest: Sci-Fi Aliens used as a complement to Profession: First Contact to help try and figure out how to deal with a species that doesn't seem to be making any sense...Writers have been coming up with everything under the sun for at least a century, maybe something you read will help you...
Academics: Memetics used as a complement to Profession: Spin Control to convince a bunch of witnesses that what they just saw was a bunch of artistes-terroristes filming a particularly nasty XP on site without permits...Rather than your team stopping an exsurgent virus outbreak.

These are all examples using Academics, Interests, Professions, and the like possessed by the example characters in the main rules. If you look at the Skills page of the sheet you will see that there's a column for 'Custom' which lets you make up your own. For example, Tickle Pink has 'Art: Designer Drugs' because she literally has the skills and know-how to mix different neuro-activators to get a given mental state the way a bartender mixes different liquors to produces a drink with a given flavor. Her specialization in that Interest is 'Petal Design'. Profession: Chemical Engineering and Medicine: Pharmacology give her the means to produce what she designs using the 'Art' skill...And if appropriate the Art skill could be used as a complement to either of those.

Consider that even a 33 in a skill that you can use as a complement is going to let you do things like add +20 to specific rolls (but the complement you're using has to make sense. If you can explain how the two skills are both related to what you're doing, and how the complement skill is enhancing the primary one you're rolling, you're pretty much golden...It's how the system is meant to work). This is one reason Firewall agents are meant to have such broad backgrounds (the designers haven't ever really justified the 300-Knowledge requirement for non-FW agents...But since we're playing FW agents it doesn't matter). It's not just 'being able to shoot a gun,' it's 'knowing where and when to shoot (and who to shoot)' to most efficiently stop whatever's going on. Or who to bribe and how much and in what type of currency (Persuasion with Protocol or possibly an appropriate Networking skill as a complement).

So optimally, the majority of the time you'll be rolling with one complement or another. It's good to have a wide range of potentially related but not identical skills for this reason. Instead of, say, Profession: Chemical Engineer with Academics: Chemistry and Interest: Chemistry (...) you might do something like ACD: Chemistry, PRF: Habitat Engineering (Spec. Atmospheric Maintenance), INT: Newly Discovered Elements or INT: Exoplanetary Elements or Demolitions (Improvised Explosives) or Art: Pheromone Design or...

Play around with it. Feel free to toss in crazy science-fictiony ideas for Interests or Professions (Academics are a little bit more constrained). If it isn't clear what it's about, add a few lines of what it means to you and how you think it could be useful. Reiji'll weigh in on whether it works for him or not.

Languages might not seem all that useful, but it's implied that while everyone's Muse can network through the Mesh to do on-the-fly translation to everyone else's Muse, even in EP's time, translation software doesn't possess the same 'sound' or euphemisms to a native speaker that someone more familiar with the language will have, so if you have a language in common with someone actually using it rather than machine software might be worth a few extra points on a persuasion or other social role. Again, Reiji's call, but that's really the ONLY justification for multiple languages (well, that and the possibility of getting stuck somewhere with no Mesh...).

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

#99
This is not the sheet you are looking for. *wave*
(I decided to toss this up, based on what i could remember of my almost-finished sheet that the character creator ate, it will get much better by the end, in terms of formatting and such, and hey, you can see my progress. Dont bother commenting for now. Its a mess.)


Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name: Merrow
Background: Corvid Uplift
+10 Navigation/Perception, +20 Flight/Scrounging. Hoarder, Social Stigma Ego (Uplift)
Faction: Solarian
+10 Navigation/Perception, +20 Freefall.

Bio

Appearance

[9:25:41 PM] K H: Merrow is one of those 'werid' clades that EP mentions constantly but rarely gets into details about. Shes a part of a solarian raven uplift faction that loosely draws from native american lore (raven stole the sun). The short version is that they want to develop a true avian version of the Surya so they can live on the sun without having to use the whale morph XD, and so they are generally scattered around trying to gather resources, money, rep, favours, etc, so they can get the morph designed and a hab built... solar habs are silly expensive i imagine XD. They mark themselves apart from other ravens with a red patch across their eyes (and beaks for those still in neocorvid morphs), and on the backs of their hands (or feathertips). Very passionate about their desire to soar through the sun, but they arnt really political or anything, just trying to carve out a niche for themselves.  Merrow herself is friendly and loyal, but she tends to be the sort thats hard to trust in return since shes very sneaky. Of course, like most ravens, shes a helpless hoarder and not-so-occasional purveyor of the five fingered discount, but shed never steal from her friends. *nod


Aptitudes
StatEgoMorphAugTotal
COG15+520
COO15+1025
INT1515
REF15+520
SAV1515
SOM15+520
WIL15+520

Rep Networks


Traits:
Hardening
Skills



StatTypeAptitudeBonusPointsTotal
Academics: KCog:200020

Academics: Biology
Academics: Botany
Animal Handling
Art
Art: Dancing
Beam Weapons
Blades
Climbing
Clubs
Control
Deception
Demolitions
Disguise
Exotic Melee
Exotic Ranged
Flight
Fray
Freefall
Freerunning
Gunnery
Hardware
Impersonation
Infiltration
Infosec
Interest: Exoplanets
Interest
Interfacing
Intimidation
Investigation
Kinesics
Kinetic Weapons
Language: English
Language
Medicine: Nanomedicine
Medicine: Biosculpting
Medicine: Paramedic
Medicine: Trauma Surgery
Medicine: Mercurial; Octomorph
Navigation
Networking: Autonomists
Networking: Criminals
Networking: Ecologists
Networking: Firewall
Networking: Hypercorps
Networking: Media
Networking: Scientists
Networking: Gatecrashers
Networking
Palming
Perception
Persuasion
Pilot: Aircraft
Pilot: Anthroform
Pilot: Exotic Vehicle
Pilot: Groundcraft
Pilot: Spacecraft
Pilot: Watercraft
Profession: Gatecrasher
Profession
Programming
Protocol
Psi Assault
Psychosurgery
Research
Scrounging
Seeker Weapons
Sense
Spray Weapons
Swimming
Thrown Weapons
Unarmed Combat



Progress

CP: 1000
>1000
-Hardening [Trait -10]
-Heightened Instinct [Trait -10]
-Killer Instinct [Trait -15]
-Animal Empathy [Trait -5]
-Ambidextrous [Trait -10]
>950
-Ghost [Morph -70]
>880
-72000$ [CR -72]
>808