Interest Check: Eclipse Phase

[Empyrean]

Hi! I've been reading about Eclipse Phase lately and I was wondering if there was any interest here on E for getting a game going. I wouldn't be the GM as I've yet to actually play in the setting. I already have a character idea in mind if there's any interest and we can find a GM. :)

[Crash]

I'd be interested in a sandbox style game, but I am already running a game (not Eclipse Phase) here already so I would only be a player.

[ChaoticSky]

Huh, everyones crawling out of the woodwork. I am planning to run a game towards the end of Aug. EP is one of the three gamelines im considering, pending a IC to judge interest in the three lines. However its about a month too early to start that discussion, so for now ill add myself as a player (and note the names of anyone who shows interest here so i can poke you all later)

[Empyrean]

A sandbox game might be fun.

Also, there's a very good Eclipse Phase wiki out there for character creation: http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/

With thanks to Carnival of the Goat for showing me to it in the past. :)

[ReijiTabibito]

Or, alternately, there's a handful of other things you can access...hey, Empyrean.  Been a while.  Not since that Scion game, right?  Well, what if I told you I have EP, and might be able to run your game for you...

[Empyrean]

Oh? Do tell. :)

[ReijiTabibito]

I've got a campaign I've been working on for a little while, plus a couple of pre- or during mini-arcs that we could follow.  It's you, Crash, and Darkling ATM, yes?

[Empyrean]

And anyone else who's interested. :)

I've started work on a character. A hyperelite socialite who's trying to find meaning beyond the party lifestyle but doesn't know what she wants to do or be.

[ReijiTabibito]

Right.  For sake of the campaign, I would ask that the party be limited to 4, maybe 5 Sentinels.  (Yes, this is a Firewall campaign.)  So, what we have now, plus another individual or two.

Also, does anyone need resources to make their character?  The EP website has an excellent character generator Excel spreadsheet - though it lacks the background/faction/morphs introduced in Transhuman - on hand, and since EP is made under the Creative Commons License, people are allowed to share resources (such as those, or books) without worrying about IP or copyright or anything like that.

[Empyrean]

I did PM Carnival yesterday since she's a big EP fan and I thought she might be interested.

Would they all have been working for Firewall before the adventure starts or would they be new sentinels that are recruited in-game?

[ReijiTabibito]

They'll have been working on Firewall since prior to this adventure - for this group, if we only get 4, I'm applying to character creation a set of rules I call 'Experienced Sentinel' creation.  If we get 5, we'll have the usual.  If it's just the 4 of you, you've done 2d5 missions for Firewall, if 5, then only 1d5.  Also, you will have other Firewall Sentinels in the group at certain points if you lack a certain attribute, background, or so on.

And before you go asking, this campaign will span pretty much the entire range of planets - Sunward, the Main Belt, Rimward, probably even a couple of exoplanets.

[Empyrean]

Okay. So I'll work into her background how she went from jaded dilettante to Firewall operative. :)

[ReijiTabibito]

Please do.  By the fact that she's a hyperelite, I assume she's Sunward?  Where abouts?

[Empyrean]

I'm not exactly certain. I haven't thought too deeply past her background. All I have for her so far is that she comes from the family of one of the gerontocrats, probably a younger child. Knew she wouldn't inherit the family fortune and before the Fall did typical spoiled rich kid/debutante/socialite stuff. I figured that seeing all the death and destruction during the Fall got to her, and later when she saw stories of the clanking masses trying to better themselves, she got to wondering where her own life was headed. I haven't actually come up with she wants to do, only that she wants to achieve fame and success on her own terms, not always in the shadow of her family.

I did have in mind that she was aboard Paradise, the luxury resort station in Earth orbit when the Fall happened. But other than that she is Sunward, I'm not exactly sure where yet. Though Elysium on Mars does sound interesting. I would need to refine the character more before I could tell you where exactly she is.

[ReijiTabibito]

Okay.  So Hyperelite Socialite, then?  Specializing in Culture and Media Ops and all that stuff?  Good sources of C & F-rep?

Emp, jump this over to PM to talk with me, leave the thread open for volunteers.

[Crash]

Sorry my interest lays more away from Firewall and more in a sandbox game.  Good luck with it though.  Eclipse phase is a fun game.

[GloomCookie]

Or, alternately, there's a handful of other things you can access...hey, Empyrean.  Been a while.  Not since that Scion game, right?  Well, what if I told you I have EP, and might be able to run your game for you...

*tugs on Reiji's sleeve*

Can I join it?  Please?

[ReijiTabibito]

Sure.  Got a character design in mind?

[GloomCookie]

Sure.  Got a character design in mind?

Yup yup!

Probably gonna spend a bit of time fleshing the character out and all, but then I'll be able to give lots more details.  I want to see what works first and what doesn't.

[Muse]

If you have time for me to get a grip on the game, and don't mind a newb, I'd be itnerested? 

[ReijiTabibito]

Sure.  PM me, or Skype me, whichever way, so we can talk.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

My computer's been dead, sorry for not responding earlier Empyrean.

Tentative interest, presuming it isn't overloaded.

[ReijiTabibito]

It's not.  And considering how slowly people have been trickling in to volunteer interest, I'm going to cut off recruiting for the story here.  4 people seems to be enough.  If anyone wants out, they can tell me and I'll free up their space, but I want to keep this moving.

Also, one other thing.  The character spreadsheet done by Kindalas does not cover the new backgrounds/factions/morphs from Transhuman.  This is true...for the most recent version.  An older version does allow for the creation of custom backgrounds/factions/morphs (IE, the Transhuman ones).  That being said, unless you can demonstrate to me that you can utilize the spreadsheet, I am limiting ONE of our four people to have access to the Transhuman backgrounds, factions, and morphs/

[ChaoticSky]

..Argh, i suppose that doesn't include me does it? Since i havnt been around  :-X

[ReijiTabibito]

You expressed interest earlier.  I just hadn't heard from you in a while, so I assumed you weren't interested anymore.  I still technically have space for 1 more player, to bring us up to 5.  But that doesn't extend beyond the group we have now - Darkling, Empyrean, Goat, Linna, and Muse.  If one of you drops out, but someone else wants in, then my answer is no.  If someone outside the 5 wants in, then the group will have to drop two people.

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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Okay, confirming so it's all in one place:

You have some special 'bonus system' for veterans other than 'here have X more CP to throw at things.'
You only want one person to be using Transhuman because of the problems it poses with checking due to Kin's spreadsheet not handling its systems/components.
PCs will be Firewall veterans of 2-5 missions and veterans as a TEAM, together. Which probably means that it will be a team of specialists used to working together.
We already have a Hyperelite Socialite who is a legal type. Does that include face/schmoozing duties?

I'm looking at the far opposite end of that, an outer-system type, possibly Scum. Not planning to utilize TH.

[ReijiTabibito]

You have some special 'bonus system' for veterans other than 'here have X more CP to throw at things.'

Yes.  And no.  Yes, I have one.  No, we may not be using it because we might be getting 5 players.  The only way I'll use the system is if we have 4 or less.

You only want one person to be using Transhuman because of the problems it poses with checking due to Kin's spreadsheet not handling its systems/components.

Yes.  Also because I don't know who is capable of working the spreadsheet myself, and I have no desire to hand-build 5 characters working with the player.

PCs will be Firewall veterans of 2-5 missions and veterans as a TEAM, together. Which probably means that it will be a team of specialists used to working together.

Yes.  PCs will have been working in Firewall for some time.  Whether or not you all start out as a team, I won't guarantee, but I will guarantee that each one of you will have worked with at least one of the other PCs in the past.  If characters allow, then yes, you'll have worked together as a team for a handful of jobs.

We already have a Hyperelite Socialite who is a legal type. Does that include face/schmoozing duties?

Yes.  They're a Sylph who has cornered the market on social-type skills, Networking (Social Butterfly Trait), and Social Engineering (Profession).

I'm looking at the far opposite end of that, an outer-system type, possibly Scum. Not planning to utilize TH.

Okay.  So noted.  With you, have 4/5 players forwarding character ideas - none of them involving TH.


EDIT: Update for character concepts - another player is going to be an Argonaut techie, focus on Hardware skills and the like.

[GloomCookie]

Name: Katie Larson
Background: Original Space Colonist
Faction: Argonaut
Primary Morph: Neotenic
Gender Identity: Feminine
Actual Age: Unknown
Motivations: +Exploration +Discovery
Roll on the team: Engineer, Bomb Tech

Brief Biography: Katie doesn't remember having a family.  She doesn't remember much beyond the training, the preparation, the fierce competition.  She remembers seeing the colony ship for the first time, the wonder of being onboard.  Of being with so many people trying to be the firsts to push the frontier.  That was a long, long time ago.  Back before the Fall.  These days, she still wakes up, still feels the wonder of poking at new things, but she misses the days when everything was new and exciting.  She wants to relive those days, to feel like they're doing something new and unique for the first time.

Quote: "Ok, ok, I got it, don't panic, I got this.  Ok.  Uh... ok um, slight change to that.  Go ahead and panic."

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Okay.  So noted.  With you, have 4/5 players forwarding character ideas - none of them involving TH.

Well, if it comes down to it, I've hacked the spreadsheet before, back before Kin had updated for Rimward. and can easily do so again.

And I confess, I was looking through TH just to verify I didn't want anything and had an LMAO moment with the Jenkins. Just because Scum and the sexual characteristics of male rats. ::) >_> I might play a male character. I've been experimenting with it a bit of late.

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more hilarious the idea of a Jenkin biochemist becomes.

Particularly one with built-in glands.

EDIT EDIT: OMG I MEANT DRUG GLANDS GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER.

[Empyrean]

Name: Sachiko Yamafuku
Background Hyperelite
Faction: Socialite
Primary Morph: Sylph
Gender Identity: Feminine
Actual Age: 34
Motivations: +Family, +Personal Career, +Hedonism
Role on the team: Social networking/face duties

Brief Biography: Sachiko was born on Earth before the fall, the daughter of Kassi Yamafuku. She grew up in a life of luxury, but it was a controlled life. Not specializing in any one thing, always aware that her mother was wealthy but she'd never control, Sachiko drifted aimlessly in her early years. She established herself as a party girl and socialite, made several successful movies pre and post-Fall, and did all the things a bored child of privilege does. Now she seeks to make her own name for herself and enjoy life her way.

Quote: "Hope this is more fun than an Earth orbital party!"

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

As this is an 'experienced' team, can we ignore starting morph restrictions for faction/background? Shaping up to be Lost/Scum and I really don't think it's at all sensible that some of the most-hunted people in the system (Lost) would be sleeved into a Futura after multiple missions (really, not after one...Too much like painting a giant target on yourself).

[ReijiTabibito]

Probably.  Work on everything else first.  We'll talk bodies in a bit.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Just as an aside, Linna, your motivations are actually used in Eclipse Phase to regain Moxie and to earn experience (Rez). Your character should have three. :) If you're working on thinking up a third or having trouble doing so, just say so. :) An easy out for almost any Firewall agent is '- X-threats.'

"...count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedst to three. Five is right out."

Character is shaping up to be a mindfucker. Not in the 'face' sense, but in the 'designs recreational drugs as a hobby/profession (and is an Async)' sense. So if smiles and kind words don't work, there's always psychoactives and brain-twisting.

The nice thing about Async capabilities is that they have very little (not quite nothing) to do with the morph a character is in. The not-so-nice thing is that Asyncs are about as stable as a hatfull of mercury fulminate.

[Empyrean]

Sachiko is an Async too, so they should have plenty to talk about. :)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Sachiko is an Async too, so they should have plenty to talk about. :)

Crud, I didn't see anything in your posting that suggested that. Sorry. Hopefully Reiji isn't concerned about having more than one Async in the party. I note your character is a Hyperelite, how'd she get exposed? (I'm working up a Lost, so the 'how' is actually a part of the background).

[Empyrean]

She was on Paradise, a resort station in Earth orbit when the Fall happened. She got infected while she was stuck in there with all the refugees that swamped the place, but didn't realize it until after her family paid to get her removed to a private habitat. I imagine that she doesn't advertise about this. Her family would have taught her not to blab it about for her own good and the good of the clan.

[ReijiTabibito]

Given the size of the crew, you could all be asyncs and I wouldn't care.  (Okay, I probably would, but at least you guys aren't my IRL crew.)  Besides, you being an async is an opportunity for me to exploit when it comes to you, especially in the body department (Morph Feverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!).

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Yup, Asyncs are very easy to fuck with. Stick'em in a can...And have their opponents be in cans, as most Async powers won't work against a synthetic mind. Either way works quite well.

[ChaoticSky]

...belated thought, i dont think a neotenic morph (linna's character) is allowed by Es rules (characters have to be mentally and physically over 16)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

...belated thought, i dont think a neotenic morph (linna's character) is allowed by Es rules (characters have to be mentally and physically over 16)

Neotenics aren't children. They're short, fully mature creatures. Hmmm. But I think Elliquiy disallows 'chibi' characters, too. It might be safer not to go there.

[ChaoticSky]

Neotenics aren't children. They're short, fully mature creatures. Hmmm. But I think Elliquiy disallows 'chibi' characters, too. It might be safer not to go there.

They are children in every sense that matters, they are short, prepubescent and undeveloped, perpetually suspended in a childlike state while being capable of reproduction. Thats both the real-life literal definition of Neoteny and the EP definition of Neotenic Morphs. Like human children they are extremely intuitive, creative, and learn quickly, while using less space, food, water, and air. Those qualities make them ideal for low budget space colonies.

However, as the book stresses, they are very frowned upon in sexual professions, since even in EP people are not okay with that kinda thing, atleased not for mass consumption (considering that they occasionally mention of the darker tastes in the setting i wouldn't be surprised). If they were merely short, intuitive adults, then there would be no such stigma, it might be considered extremely niche (like current-day 'midget porn'), but there wouldnt be a broad condemnation of the practice.

Neotenics are transhumans modified to retain a child-like form. They are smaller, more agile, inquisitive, and less resource-depleting, making them ideal for habitat living and spacecraft. Some people find neotenic sleeves distasteful, especially when employed in certain media and sex work capacities.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I did say, it might be safer not to go there. :) That was me agreeing with you.

[ReijiTabibito]

Yup, Asyncs are very easy to fuck with. Stick'em in a can...And have their opponents be in cans, as most Async powers won't work against a synthetic mind. Either way works quite well.

True indeed.  From where I stand, though, the only async abilities worth having are a handful of the Chi-level passives, which operate regardless of your opponent's body.  But Active abilities...yes, no dice.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I know we've got at least one person new to the game, so I hope the rest of you will forgive me if I write this bit like everybody is. :) I find it's often useful to go over this stuff when putting a party together anyway.

Even though EP isn't really a 'class-based' game, there are some skills which are pretty darned useful in a Firewall team and others which are just about mandatory, and we've got two characters on the table already. I mention this because I realized that I was assembling a niche character which would be useful if the big 'gotta have it' skills were pretty well taken care of, but who probably wouldn't be a front-runner for any of those 'critical roles.' So I'm still working on her but I'm going to be flexible about it.

Things that it would benefit every character to have at least in the 30s (parentheses represents a skill specialization that's particularly useful):

A ranged weapon skill,
Fray (higher is better),
Kinesics,
Perception (higher is better).

Things the party would benefit from having at least one character with the skill in the 60s-range (parentheses represents a skill specialization that's particularly useful):

Academics: Chemistry, Cryptography, Memetics, Nanotechnology, Psychology, Xeno-Archaeology and Xeno-Linguistics if you're Gatecrashing which we probably aren't
Deception (Bluffing or Fast Talk),
Hardware: Armorer, Electronics (Nanofabrication Devices), Implants, Industrial (Habitat), Robotics
Infiltration (Sneaking, Shadowing),
Infosec (Brute-Force Hacking, Sniffing),
Interfacing (Forgery, Stealthing),
Investigation,
Medicine: Paramedic,
Persuasion,
Profession: Security Ops, Police Procedures, Squad Tactics, Habitat Admin, Habitat Ops,
Programming: (Malware, Nanofabrication)
Protocol,
Research,
Scrounging (Habitats)

You can sort of create some roles by seeing what fits together well (an AGI party hacker with all of the computer/intrusion skills is a very stock combination, and it's usual to have a face/social "hacker" as well as a hardware type and a "dedicated fighter" with every combat skill under the sun). Having said that, it's often good if everybody has kind of a primary role and one or two things they can do 'adequately' outside of it...Not just because it sucks if a dragon eats the cleric, but also because in Eclipse Phase teamwork can really add up.

Anyway, where I was going with all this is that it might be useful to discuss roles (and secondary roles) just to be sure we've got a good spread and nothing is missing.

So far I see:

Empyrean's Sachiko Yamafuku who is a Social Networking/Face type with a Hyperelite/Socialite background
Linna's Katie Larson who is an Engineer/Bomb Tech with an OSC/Argonaut background.

That looks like a lot of the social stuff is covered (but it's nearly impossible for one character to have high rep scores and networking scores in EVERYTHING so it's good to have solid rep/networking with whoever your main faction is), and I'm guessing most of the Hardware stuff as well as Demolitions.

So despite how much I was enjoying the idea of a walking drug factory/addict (who would've been bringing a wide array of chemical and nanotech support to the party, including chem/nano combative tricks and swarms for area denial as well as medicine and secondary hacking/nanofab skills), I recognize that that is a kind of a niche character (EP is odd in that you really can wander around without a healer, assuming fairly common nano), so I'm going to temporarily shelve her until it looks like the party has a pretty solid spread of the 'gotta-haves.'

Without knowing what-all exactly is out there, it looks like we might need a dedicated butt-kicker and a dedicated hacker.

If those don't fit what you were looking at, Darkling and Muse, let me know. If needed, I have a few such characters just lying around. For that matter I can do just about whatever (which is one reason I gravitate towards less-specialized secondary-niche characters, I've played EP pretty much since its release, been in several long campaigns and myriad short ones and I can handle just about any 'position.')

(I will add, Muse, that if you're worried about the complexity of the game, just like in most systems 'fighter' is the easiest role to pick up...but you sure don't have to if you don't want to! Just letting you know in case you're drowning in details.)

EDIT: Oh yeah. While I don't advocate buying much besides blueprints for a FW character, pretty much everybody should spend the lucre for a False Ego ID...Unless (like some GMs I've known do...And some don't!) Reiji is one of the folks who believes that this paragraph from p.357 of the EP core rules is literal.

New sentinels are given a code name and fake
identification. Outside of the proxies, the real-world
identity of a given sentinel is a closely guarded
secret. Sentinels are even discouraged from sharing
such information with members of their own teams,
though this line is often crossed. Additionally, each
sentinel is required to upload a backup to Firewall’s
secure servers and to update this backup regularly.
This backup serves a dual purpose, enabling all sentinels
to be retrieved should they die, but also putting
a copy of the sentinel in Firewall’s hands should they
ever need to interrogate them.

(Heck, you still might want to, it's nice to have burnable identities...Oh, and bear in mind that your fake ID needs its own points spent on rep if you don't want it to be a 'nobody.')

[ReijiTabibito]

Things that it would benefit every character to have at least in the 30s (parentheses represents a skill specialization that's particularly useful):

A ranged weapon skill,
Fray (higher is better),
Kinesics,
Perception (higher is better).

And most of these, it's better to have them in the 40s+ range.  Technology can make up a lot of distance, though - if you invest in Kinetic weapons and carry a Firearm, you can take smart ammunition, the best of which is probably Accushot (unless you're carrying some form of rifle, in which case Homing/Zero is best).  And all weapons come with a smartlink, which grants an automatic bonus.  A person who has, say, Kinetic Weapons 40, with the Pistol Specialization, and gives themselves Accushot ammunition has an overall effective skill of 60 that isn't affected by range, meaning you can shoot out to max distance with no penalty.

The other major weapon category that is similar is Seeker Weapons - Seekers are also smart ammunition capable, and they've got an enormous range - the smallest missile has a short range of 70.

Kinesics is another skill that you can easily make up for.  The Personal Interaction Sensor and the Kinesics Software (each cost 1000 credits) grant a +20 and +10 bonus to Kinesics tests, respectively.  So someone with an average SAV stat (15), can have a skill of 45 in Kinesics with just these simple pieces of equipment.  Unless you're going to be a dedicated social-type, like Empy, you don't really need a Kinesics skill much higher than 50-ish.

Things the party would benefit from having at least one character with the skill in the 60s-range (parentheses represents a skill specialization that's particularly useful):


Academics: Chemistry, Cryptography, Memetics, Nanotechnology, Psychology, Xeno-Archaeology and Xeno-Linguistics if you're Gatecrashing which we probably aren't
Deception (Bluffing or Fast Talk),
Hardware: Armorer, Electronics (Nanofabrication Devices), Implants, Industrial (Habitat), Robotics
Infiltration (Sneaking, Shadowing),
Infosec (Brute-Force Hacking, Sniffing),
Interfacing (Forgery, Stealthing),
Investigation,
Medicine: Paramedic,
Persuasion,
Profession: Security Ops, Police Procedures, Squad Tactics, Habitat Admin, Habitat Ops,
Programming: (Malware, Nanofabrication)
Protocol,
Research,
Scrounging (Habitats)

In terms of Active skills, everyone should have Interfacing and Research - the former because it's the 'use electronics' general skill, and the latter because you use it to look up anything.  Hardware: Electronics is usually pretty useful (but I think Linna's character has that covered).  As for the Knowledge skills, yeah, most of those are pretty useful, though I will say that there is a possible Gatecrashing component to this story, but don't feel as if you have to go overboard on the Xeno skills.

Without knowing what-all exactly is out there, it looks like we might need a dedicated butt-kicker and a dedicated hacker.

I've said this once, and I'll say is as long as we're playing EP - building a dedicated hacker is not hard in EP.  In fact, adding 'hacker' to your list of descriptives is probably the easiest thing to do in the EP system.  To be a powerful hacker, you just need 3 good skills, and 1 so-so skill.   The 3 good skills you need are: Infosec, Interfacing, Programming, and the so-so skill you need is Research (but almost everyone should have that, anyways).  And since everyone's Muse comes loaded with all 4 skills, you can always benefit from a Teamwork bonus on those tests.

EDIT: Oh yeah. While I don't advocate buying much besides blueprints for a FW character, pretty much everybody should spend the lucre for a False Ego ID...Unless (like some GMs I've known do...And some don't!) Reiji is one of the folks who believes that this paragraph from p.357 of the EP core rules is literal.

(Heck, you still might want to, it's nice to have burnable identities...Oh, and bear in mind that your fake ID needs its own points spent on rep if you don't want it to be a 'nobody.')

I was always under the impression that whatever identity you have now is the fake one that Firewall set up for you.  That whoever you're creating is the fake Firewall ID, and who you really are is somewhere buried.  That's just my opinion.

[GloomCookie]

In regards to my playing a neotenic... the character picture is how the character looks.  Neotenics are made to be small, and that's the idea.  She looks old enough, and that's that.

[ReijiTabibito]

To all players - anyone interested in doing one of the new Factions from Transhuman...the setup is going to need some work.  For some reason, the character spreadsheet done by Kindalas doesn't correctly function for 'custom' factions.  It instead, for some reason, substitutes in one of the canon (IE, pre-Transhuman) factions, going with seemingly randomly selected one.  This does not apply, however, to custom backgrounds or bodies.

...but it doesn't really seem like we'll have that problem...

[Empyrean]

If it helps Carnival, Sachiko's muse has the following skills:

Academics (Psychology) 60, Academics (Network Science) 40, Interest (Cutting Edge Tech) 40, Profession (Mesh Engineering) 40, Profession (Accounting) 60.

It might not cover all you were saying, but it might help a little. :)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

And most of these, it's better to have them in the 40s+ range.  Technology can make up a lot of distance, though - if you invest in Kinetic weapons and carry a Firearm, you can take smart ammunition, the best of which is probably Accushot (unless you're carrying some form of rifle, in which case Homing/Zero is best).  And all weapons come with a smartlink, which grants an automatic bonus.  A person who has, say, Kinetic Weapons 40, with the Pistol Specialization, and gives themselves Accushot ammunition has an overall effective skill of 60 that isn't affected by range, meaning you can shoot out to max distance with no penalty.

The other major weapon category that is similar is Seeker Weapons - Seekers are also smart ammunition capable, and they've got an enormous range - the smallest missile has a short range of 70.

I agree that it's better to have them in the 40s. :) I was suggesting encouraged minimums. The only reason I am a little averse to seekers is that sometimes you're having to fab stuff on the fly, and seekers take considerably more time to produce.

Kinesics is another skill that you can easily make up for.  The Personal Interaction Sensor and the Kinesics Software (each cost 1000 credits) grant a +20 and +10 bonus to Kinesics tests, respectively.  So someone with an average SAV stat (15), can have a skill of 45 in Kinesics with just these simple pieces of equipment.  Unless you're going to be a dedicated social-type, like Empy, you don't really need a Kinesics skill much higher than 50-ish.

I wouldn't suggest that a non-social-engineer type needed a 50...That's just me, I suppose. Specifically because it's so easy to get cheap gear to boost it.

In terms of Active skills, everyone should have Interfacing and Research - the former because it's the 'use electronics' general skill, and the latter because you use it to look up anything.  Hardware: Electronics is usually pretty useful (but I think Linna's character has that covered).  As for the Knowledge skills, yeah, most of those are pretty useful, though I will say that there is a possible Gatecrashing component to this story, but don't feel as if you have to go overboard on the Xeno skills.

Bearing in mind that your Muse has Interfacing 40 and Research 30, and I do believe those are skills where the teamwork or 'complement' bonus is pretty easy to justify. Generally speaking, one reason to have quite a few skills down around 31+ is just so that they can be used as complementary skills to other things. And you only need to roll Interfacing when you're doing problematic stuff with your electronics, you don't need it for normal button-pushing.

I've said this once, and I'll say is as long as we're playing EP - building a dedicated hacker is not hard in EP.  In fact, adding 'hacker' to your list of descriptives is probably the easiest thing to do in the EP system.  To be a powerful hacker, you just need 3 good skills, and 1 so-so skill.   The 3 good skills you need are: Infosec, Interfacing, Programming, and the so-so skill you need is Research (but almost everyone should have that, anyways).  And since everyone's Muse comes loaded with all 4 skills, you can always benefit from a Teamwork bonus on those tests.

Okay, I think we're using the same words to mean two different things. When I say 'dedicated hacker' I mean either an Async with Instinct/Multitasking Sleights or an AGI with Intuitive Cracker...To me, a 'dedicated hacker' means the character you can count on to break into the enemy TacNet in one round, then plug in a backdoor for everyone else to play with using their less-developed skills. I agree that most characters should be able to do adequately. In the same way that lots of people will have Networking and Persuasion or will have a Hardware skill or two, but you expect your Face character or your dedicated Techie to have aaaall that stuff at high levels. :)

I was always under the impression that whatever identity you have now is the fake one that Firewall set up for you.  That whoever you're creating is the fake Firewall ID, and who you really are is somewhere buried.  That's just my opinion.

Well, when it all comes down to it, you're the GM, so I have a feeling your opinion counts. ;D

If it helps Carnival, Sachiko's muse has the following skills:

Academics (Psychology) 60, Academics (Network Science) 40, Interest (Cutting Edge Tech) 40, Profession (Mesh Engineering) 40, Profession (Accounting) 60.

It might not cover all you were saying, but it might help a little. :)

Because EP is confusing in how it uses the term 'networking,' is 'Network Science' meant to be something like 'Mesh Communications' or 'Interpersonal Interractions?'

Also, to everybody, as we're a 'known team that has worked together', is anyone else investing heavily in blueprints? It might be good to avoid having too much duplication, if so.

Muse, Darkling, what've you got so far on character-sorts?

[ReijiTabibito]

I agree that it's better to have them in the 40s. :) I was suggesting encouraged minimums. The only reason I am a little averse to seekers is that sometimes you're having to fab stuff on the fly, and seekers take considerably more time to produce.

Right.  But I was just giving examples.  By and large, kinetic weapons are the more favored system, unless you plan on fighting up close, in which case go with Shard Pistols/Shredders because they get that extra die of damage at short range.  There's no doubt in my mind that kinetic weapons are generally cost-effective and versatile.

I wouldn't suggest that a non-social-engineer type needed a 50...That's just me, I suppose. Specifically because it's so easy to get cheap gear to boost it.

Well, look at it this way.  Average SAV of 15, +20 Personal Interaction Sensor, +10 Kinesics Software, and that's not even counting if you've got the Enhanced Smell mod (+20 on Kinesics tests if you're within 5m of your target) or have Infrared vision (would Enhanced Vision cover that?; also grants +20).  If you manage to stack all those bonuses together, you've got a Kinesics skill of 85, without a single point invested into the skill, and entirely average SAV.  For me, I would probably invest a few points into the skill, relying on only having the Sensor and the Software around.

Bearing in mind that your Muse has Interfacing 40 and Research 30, and I do believe those are skills where the teamwork or 'complement' bonus is pretty easy to justify. Generally speaking, one reason to have quite a few skills down around 31+ is just so that they can be used as complementary skills to other things. And you only need to roll Interfacing when you're doing problematic stuff with your electronics, you don't need it for normal button-pushing.

Right.  If you're doing something wacky with your electronics, that's when you need Interfacing.  Still a useful skill to have at a modest level.

Okay, I think we're using the same words to mean two different things. When I say 'dedicated hacker' I mean either an Async with Instinct/Multitasking Sleights or an AGI with Intuitive Cracker...To me, a 'dedicated hacker' means the character you can count on to break into the enemy TacNet in one round, then plug in a backdoor for everyone else to play with using their less-developed skills. I agree that most characters should be able to do adequately. In the same way that lots of people will have Networking and Persuasion or will have a Hardware skill or two, but you expect your Face character or your dedicated Techie to have aaaall that stuff at high levels. :)

Maybe.  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.

Because EP is confusing in how it uses the term 'networking,' is 'Network Science' meant to be something like 'Mesh Communications' or 'Interpersonal Interractions?'

Yes.

http://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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Maybe.  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.

http://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?

[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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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?"

[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]

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.

What'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?'

[ReijiTabibito]

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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 where.  Most 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.

• 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.

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.)

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.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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;

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 ;)

Both of these sound like fun to me.

[ReijiTabibito]

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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]

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?

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*

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.

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:

The 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.

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.'

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?

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.

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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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?

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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

[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"

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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.

[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]

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.

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.

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.

[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. 

[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.

[ReijiTabibito]

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

[ChaoticSky]

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]

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]

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

Browser? FF. Why? o_o

[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]

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]

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.

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.

[Empyrean]

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]

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]

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.

[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]

I 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]

*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.

[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]

... 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.

[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

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

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...).

[ChaoticSky]

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

Stat	Ego	Morph	Aug	Total
COG	15	+5		20
COO	15	+10		25
INT	15			15
REF	15	+5		20
SAV	15			15
SOM	15	+5		20
WIL	15	+5		20

Rep Networks


Traits:
Hardening
Skills

Stat	Type	Aptitude	Bonus	Points	Total
Academics:	K	Cog:20	0	0	20

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

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Name: Tickle Pink Mnemosyne

Crunch (Not Finalized)

Background: Lost
Faction: Scum
Morph: Jenkin
Gender ID: Female (usually)
Actual Age: 24 (Time-Dilated)
Motivations: +Hedonism, +Better Living Through Chemistry, +Thrill Seeking

Positive Ego Traits: Ambidextrous (Level 1), Expert (Art: Designer Drugs) (Level 1), Psi (Level 2)
Negative Ego Traits: Addiction (Sex) (Level 1), Black Mark (Tharsis League) (Level 3), Mental Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder), Mental Disorder (Impulse Control Disorder (Sexual Exhibitionist)), Mental Disorder (Alien Sensory Disorder), Neurochemical Imbalance (Euphoria) (Level 1), On the Run (Tharsis League) (Level 1)

Positive Morph Traits: Exceptional Aptitude (WIL)
Negative Morph Traits: Social Stigma (Unattractive) (Level 2)

	COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL
Base	25	5	10	10	20	5	30
Morph*			5	5		15
Total	25	5	15	15	20	20	30
Stats	TT	LUC	IR	WT	DUR	DR
	11	60	120	9	45	68
	MOX	INIT	SPD	DB
	3	9	1(1)/3	2

* After all implants are included

Skills:

ACD: Computer Science	66	NW: Criminals (Conduit)	34(44)
ACD: Nanotechnology	66	Perception	44
ACD: Chemistry	33	Persuasion (Seduction)	34(44)
ART: Designer Drugs (Petal Design)	88(98)*	PLT: Spacecraft	33
Blades (Wasp Knife)	45(55)	PRF: Chemical Engineering	33
Control	44	PRF: Dealer (Petal Dealing)	67(77)
Fray	44	PRF: Bioware Design	44
Freefall	33	PRF: Smuggling Tricks	33
HW: Implants (Bioware Hacks)	34(44)	PRF: Social Engineering	33
Infosec (Brute Force Hacking)	67(77)	Programming (Nanofabrication)	50(60)
INT: Drug Culture	55	Protocol (Triad Etiquette)	34(44)
INT: TITAN Technology	55	Research (Tracking)	45(55)
Interfacing (Stealthing)	45(55)	Scrounging	33
LNG: English	85	Seeker Weapons (Indirect Fire)	45(55)
MED: Paramedic	33	Sense	44
MED: Pharmacology	44	Spray Weapons	40
NW: Autonomists (Scum)	45(55)	Unarmed Combat	44

* Yes, this is a skill at which she has systemwide notoriety in drug circles per p.174 of the Core Rules. Fortunately, it's the sort of thing where your name comes up in association with the field but your face probably isn't on Hypercorp XP channels.

Optional Muse Skills:
PRF: Inner System Law 40
PRF: Security Systems 40
PRF: Police Procedures 40

Morph: Jenkin

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Bioweave Armor (Light), Chameleon Skin, Claws, Drug Glands: Comfurt, Drug Glands: Drive, Drug Glands: Hither, Drug Glands: Klar, Drug Glands: Kick, Eelware, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Respiration, Grip Pads, Hibernation, Neurachem (L1), Poison Glands: Oxytocin-A, Poison Glands: Twitch, Prehensile Feet, Prehensile Tail, Temperature Tolerance, Toxin Filters, High Gravity Adaptation, Hearing Filter, Smell Filter, Access Jacks, Ghostrider Module, Mnemonic Augmentation, Hardened Skeleton, Medichines, Mental Speed, Nanophage, Skillware, Digestive Symbiotes, Possum Cache, Brain Box

Gear: Fiberoptic Cable, Laser/Microwave Link, (2x) Ecto, Specs, Personal Interaction Sensor, Nanodetectors, Anonymouse Account, Backup Insurance (mod), Fake Ego ID, Simulspace Subscription, AR Illusions, Encryption, Exploit, Facial/Image Recognition, Firewall, Sniffer, Spoof, Tactical Networks, Tracking, Kinesics Software, Radio Motion Detector, Security AI, Standard Muse (Leary), Skillsoft: Spray Weapons, Gnat, Manipulator Cuff, Survival Belt (GC. p160), Second Skin, Smart Skin, Smart Vacsuit (light) (w/Ablative Patches, Chameleon Coating, Fireproofing, Immunogenic System, Lotus Coating, Offensive Armor, Refractive Glazing, Shock Proof, Faraday Mod), Wasp Knife, Shard Pistol (w/Smarlink, Safety System), (100x) Shard Ammunition

Cr: 1750

Psi χ:
Cognitive Boost, Enhanced Creativity, Instinct, Multitasking, Predictive Boost
Psi γ:
Charisma, Deep Scan, Drive Emotion, Empathic Scan, Subliminal

I'll post the actual spreadsheet once I've finalized everything.

[ReijiTabibito]

Arg.  My brain.  So many uneven skills...okay, guys, keep working at it.  Post the sheets to me somehow when you're all finished.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Since Reiji asked about it, I figured I'd best highlight some things.

Specifically, all of those "uneven skills."

Any time you roll doubles in EP on a percentile roll (11, 22, 33, etc.) it's a critical. The sole exception is 99 (00 is a success).

Therefore, on ANY roll of the dice, you have 10 possibilities for a critical. If the double is under your target, it's a critical success. If not...Oops. Well. Critical failures in the presence of hard vacuum, plasma, and TITAN machines can be very, very bad for your health.

So by spending 3 points, turning a skill of 30 into 33, we not only gain a chance of getting a critical success, but we deny the possibility of a critical failure.  It costs more as you go up, especially over 60, but you will have far more skills in the 33-44 range than in the 55 and 66 range.

Okay, so that explains the 33, 44, etc. Why then, so many 34s, 45s, and 67s?

For 5 points, you can get a specialization in a skill. Any time that specialization is being used, it boosts that skill's value by 10 points. So in a sense you're spending 5 points against the eventuality that you'll be able to use it the way you want, frequently, and thus boost the skill by 10. A 33 boosted by 10 gets us...43. Spending one more point lets us take control of another double on the dice and secure a crit in our favor.

So someone with math-brain who has looked through the EP rules is liable to churn out a character with a lot of 33, 44, 66 skills rather than 30, 45, 65. Someone with a math-brain who has looked even more closely will probably end up with a bunch of 34s and 67s...At least on skills they've purchased specializations in.

(As to why an 88 on that outrageous Expert skill...99 is always a critical failure, no exceptions! And 00 is always a critical success. So the specialization kicks it up to 98...99 is a critical failure...and 00 is a critical success. Tickle Pink mixes stimulants and anxiolytics to create specific moods the way a bartender mixes different alcoholic beverages to create specific flavors. I am assuming the ubiquity (at least in certain crowds and clubs and parties) of programmable Makers and at more upscale (or downscale) installations of tincture sets a la Sterling's Holy Fire, where skilled users can concoct anything from specific chemical compounds (ketamine) to things which clearly have far more esoteric impacts on the brain including possible nanotechnology (p.59 “Sure, that’s what they all say. You get some of these guys and they take lexic tinctures and they can read like a thousand words a minute! But still, they don’t ever do anything! They just read about doing things. It’s a disease.”)...Rather in the same fashion that coffee shops with living individual barristas are seen as more upscale or more fashionable than coffee vending machines. So she's a world-class (or in this game, system-class) mixologist/entertainer, whether it's biochemical or nanotech, capable of concocting things on the fly (and who gets most of her practice by constantly trying to meddle with her own state of consciousness). Better living through chemistry. That was sort of a core concept of the character when I started.)

Before you begin throwing points into skills, it's useful to have some idea of what your baseline Aptitudes will be, as well as what common morph capabilities you can rely on. Due to the 300/400 Knowledge/Action skill requirements, most characters will end up with gobs of points spent in Knowledge skills (which are all COG and INT based), and not so many in COO, REF, SAV or SOM skills.

One point of an Aptitude raises all of the skills it's based on by one point, but it costs 10 CP to buy one point of an aptitude, and only 1 CP to buy one point of a skill (up to 60). This means that if you have more than 10 skills based on a given aptitude (COG, I'm looking at you, because very few people burn all of their points in the INT-based Language and Arts Knowledge skill groups), it's worth buying a point of the Aptitude rather than elevating all of those skills individually. If you have 10 COG skills you're at the break-even point, as it were...But you might add another COG skill later. Sinking 10 CP into your 10 COG skills won't help that, while sinking them into a single point of COG will cover either eventuality adequately. The only time this is liable to turn around and bite you is when you have a COG in excess of 30 and find youself sleeved into something that can't handle all of that brain. For this reason, in most EP games I tend not to exceed Aptitudes of 30. YMMV!

And as I think I have talked about before, keeping useful Skill Complements which aren't 'identical' in mind when building a character can be very helpful.

[GloomCookie]

I'm still in, just gotta finish the character.  Been depressed a bit lately and it seems to be getting worse, but I'm trying.

[GloomCookie]

Ok finally got off my ass and finished the sheet.  Yay.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name: Katie Larson
Background: Original Space Colonist
Faction: Argonaut
Morph: Neotenic
Gender ID: Feminine
Actual Age: 36
Motivations: +Exploration; +Discovery

	COG	COO	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL
Base	15	15	15	15	15	15	15
Morph	5	5	5	5
Total	20	20	20	20	15	15	15

Stats	TT	LUC	IR	WT	DUR	DR	MOX	INIT	SPD	DB
	6	30	60	6	30	45	1	8	1	1

Skills
Academics: Computer Science 75	Networking: Firewall 15
Academics: Mathematics	Networking: Hypercorps 15
Animal Handling 25	Networking: Media 15
Art: Drawing 40	Networking: Scientists 55
Beam Weapons 65	Networking: Gatecrashers 15
Blades 50	Networking: Ultimates 15
Climbing 15	Palming 20
Clubs 15	Perception 85
Deception 15	Persuasion 15
Demolitions 55	Pilot: Aircraft 55
Disguise 20	Pilot: Anthroform 20
Flight 15	Pilot: Exotic Vehicle 20
Fray 20	Pilot: Groundcraft
Freefall 20	Pilot: Spacecraft
Freerunning 15	Pilot: Watercraft
Gunnery 20	Profession: Asteroid Prospecting 50
Hardware: Aerospace 60	Programming 70
Hardware: Electronics 70	Protocol 15
Hardware: Robotics 70	Psychosurgery 20
Impersonation 15	Research 55
Infiltration 20	Scrounging 20
Interest: Science Fiction 50	Seeker Weapons 20
Interest: Gambling 45	Spray Weapons 20
Interest: Spaceship Models 45	Swimming 15
Interfacing 20	Thrown Weapons 20
Intimidation 15	Unarmed Combat 40
Investigation 20
Kinesics 15
Kinetic Weapons 20
Language: English 90
Language: German 80
Language: Dutch 65
Language: Cantonese 25
Navigation 20
Networking: Autonomists 15
Networking: Criminals 15
Networking: Ecologists 15

Common Aptitude Tests

Brute Strength	45	Catch Thrown Object	60
Composure/Resolve	45	Escape Artist	35
Idea (COG)	60	Idea (INT)	60
Memorize/Remember	60	vs. Social	45
Integration	45	Close Combat Fray	20
Continuity	45	Ranged Combat Fray	10
Alienation	60	vs. PSI	30
Resist Intimidation	45	Resist Persuasion	45

Melee Weapon	Skill	DV	AP
Unarmed	40	1d10+1	0
Monofilament Sword	50	2d10+3	-4
Extendable Baton	15	1d10+3	0

Ranged Weapon	Skill	DV	AP	Modes	Ammo	Range	Shots
Laser Pulser	75	2d10	0	SA		30/100/150/250	100
Thrown	20	0d10	0	SS		0	Special

Muse Name: Tanzerin
Type: Standard Muse

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	TT	LUC	IR	INIT
10	10	20	10	10	10	10	4	20	40	6

Active Skills		Knowledge Skills
Hardware: Electronics	30	Academics: Psychology	60
Infosec	30	Profession: Police Procedures	40
Interfacing	40	Academics: Cryptography	40
Programming	20	Art: Writing	40
Perception	30	Profession: Accounting	60
Research	30

Implants: Basic Biomods; Basic Mesh Inserts; Cortical Stack; Hibernation; Medichines

Gear: Mission Recorder; Radio Beacon; Scrapper's Gel (5); Tools (kit); Standard Battery (3); Nuclear Battery; Solar Recharger (2); Dust Repellent (2); Metal Detector; Blueprint: Superthermite; Backup Insurance (mod); Facial/Image Recognition; Standard Muse; Electronic Rope; Emergency Distress Beacon; Flashlight; Shelter Dome; Breather; Emergency Rations (40); Recon Flyer; Body Armor (light) (w/Faraday Mod); Monofilament Sword; Extendable Baton (2); Laser Pulser (w/ Smartlink; Safety System)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Heya hon! Katie looks great.

Some quick things I spotted in my initial pass. Three of them are 'needs repair or validation':

First, there's no value next to Academics: Mathematics. It's blank.

Second, you have Perception at 85 and it doesn't look as if you took the Expert Trait.

Third, you didn't link any Rep scores for the various networks. (You get 50 Rep points for free, then can buy more at 10Rep per CP, so you need to at least spend your starting Rep points.) My guess is that you will put it all on R-Rep but I could be wrong.

Okay, so, after that, moving on and just quickly glancing around:

First, I notice you don't have any Specializations at all. Is that intentional? By spending 5 on a Specialization, it nets you a 10-point buff any time that spec is useful. So if you have a skill for doing one primary specific thing, and you don't expect to use it much otherwise, it's often worth dropping it by 10 points and then putting a Spec on it to do 'the thing.' Which saves you 5CP to put elsewhere (maybe some other skill you want to put a spec on).

Second, besides burning knowledge points, what do you expect the following skills to do for you, either as main skills or as complements to other skills (i.e., "I will use Spaceship Models as a complementary skill to Gunnery to help me know where to shoot to disable the drive system of the target.")? (Actually, now that I think of it, this'd work with your Demolitions skill nicely.)

• Academics: Computer Science (most useful with Infosec, Interfacing, and Programming...You only have Programming.)
• Academics: Mathematics (useful, but mostly with skills Katie doesn't seem to have, such as Navigation)
• Interest: Science Fiction (a bit vague...There's a listed skill 'science fiction aliens' which is useful in dealing with, well...aliens or alien artifacts or ruins, but 'science fiction'...Well, everything in EP is arguably science fiction even to the people living in it, given how fast technology is moving in the game.)
• Interest: Spaceship Models (arguably will work well as a complement to HW: Aerospace, as well as Demolitions...anything else?)
• Profession: Asteroid Prospecting (Usually this leverages off of something like Academics: Geology or Academics: Mineralogy and it also implies a certain amount of Pilot: Spacecraft...You don't show points in any of those skills)

The vast majority of the time, in-game, unless you are doing pure experimental research (i.e., developing new technological concepts and theories as opposed to designing actual things which use them) Academic skills end up being used as Complement sources for other skills.

When a skill is primarily going to be useful as a Complement-source, it's useful to note that skills of 30 or less provide a +10 bonus, skills of 31-60 provide a +20 bonus, and anything over 60 provides +30. So if you're pretty sure a skill will only be useful as a Complement (taking ACD: Philosophy as an example, unless you're trying to create a new philosophy, this will almost always be a Complement. If you were trying to convince someone/thing to change their philosophy it would be a Complement to Persuasion. If you were trying to understand what a clade's weird philosophy was it would be a Complement to Research. But it'd be a rare and unusual game where you just rolled ACD: Philosophy on its own), you probably want to either have it at 31 or 61 (or 33 and 66 for those weird and rare times you DO need to roll it on its own and want to Crit-grab), because those are the values which give you the best bang-for-your-CP as complement skills.

By comparison, consider INT: Spaceship Models, this is sort of the EP equivalent of 'Trainspotter.' Using it on its own will let you identify specific ship designs and variations, possibly know about deck plans or modifications made to certain well-known variants, etc. While this doesn't come up that often (EP isn't a space-to-space combat game and if you're infiltrating a hostile ship you can come up with similar information via Research if you aren't on board it yet or get an actual deck plan using computer skills if you are), it is far more likely to see actual use as its own 'What kind of ship is that and what are its capabilities and most especially is it faster than us?' than, say, using ACD: Philosophy to generate a new world view.

As an example of what I mean, looking at Tickle's currently posted sheet (which I need to update as I've twiddled things around some), she has ACD: Computer Science at 66. If she has to try to make guesses about the computing power of a Matrioshka Brain (it's happened) or some other weird system, that's a nice roll...But really, most of the time it's going to be a Complement giving a +30 bonus to use of things like Infosec, Interfacing, Programming, and potentially Research if I'm trying to leverage a bunch of distributed systems to push my Research up, although that's twitchy. Usually you find Knowledge skills being Complements to Active skills (though sometimes it does work out reasonably to use them with other Knowledge skills, just as sometimes you can boost one Active skill with another). So for Tickle to be a powerful hacker, ACD: CompScit is an awesome skill worth pumping up for that +30 bonus.

Make sense?

If you got any of those skills purely on a 'need to buy Knowledge skills what sounds cool' basis but don't see how they will fit your character, let me know and maybe we can think of something together.

Also, would it be okay if I posted this publicly so others can read the advice in it?

[Muse]

I have 750 spent on Rindi.   

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

Once I figure out what's missing and can spend a little bit more, I might go back and put in some of the non-divisible-by-five numbers I took taking Carney's advise and then dropped on account of being 100+ over where I wanted to be.  :) 

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I have 750 spent on Rindi.   

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

Once I figure out what's missing and can spend a little bit more, I might go back and put in some of the non-divisible-by-five numbers I took taking Carney's advise and then dropped on account of being 100+ over where I wanted to be.  :)

I'm sicky and half awake, so I apologize in advance for any shortness.

Let's see...Definitely have a look at the message I posted yesterday to Linna, it will help a great deal, I imagine.

Unless Rindi has the Psi Trait, she doesn't have Control and Sense. Demolitions, Infosec and Programming are other skills you can't use unless you have put points into them (no defaulting to Aptitude score).

You haven't listed Rindi's Reputations. It's likely that you should focus on one or two Networking skills rather than three or four.

Not entirely sure why you went with a focus on Climbing (which Rindi has quite high for a skill she will rarely do under fire).

Recommended Fray specializations (since you put a ???) are: Blades, Clubs, Full Defense, Unarmed (I would likely go with Unarmed or Full Defense).

Free running seems a bit high, as do Kinesics and Persuasion. Rindi probably isn't a social tank. In the same vein, I wouldn't have bothered with 5 points in Protocol.

In the same fashion I mentioned to Linna (and I explained more thoroughly in my reply to her), you should look for skill Complements. This is particularly the case for your Knowledge Skills. Neither your Academics and Interests nor your Profession make particularly useful complements for your Active Skills. I would strongly urge looking at the Professions of the Scum Enforcer, Ultimate Merc, and Direct Action Merc sample characters and considering how their professions and academics work as possible skill complements. I would also be in favor of reducing additional languages to instead sink those points into Professions.

Gear-wise, I would recommend looking at (but not necessarily purchasing all of!) the following. You'll note that some of them boost your Aptitudes dramatically, which might let you shift Aptitude points around with concurrent changes in skills (if you so choose):

Bioweave Armor, Second Skin, and Smart Skin, as well as either a Light or Standard Smart VacSuit with all of the trivial options

Adrenal Boost,
Eelware,
Endocrine Control,
Grip Pads,
Muscle Augmentation,
Neurachem,
High Gravity Adaptation,
Hardened Skeleton,
Medichines (Mandatory),
Nanophages (Mandatory),
Specs,
Survival Belt,

and whatever else interests you.

[Empyrean]

Feel better Carny! :)

Reiji, if you'd like I can try and post here what we worked up for Sachiko.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

How're we doing folks?

Reiji, I think Empyrean is waiting on you.

[ReijiTabibito]

Sorry, I've been running everywhere recently.  Yes, Emp, go ahead and post.  With you, that makes Carny, Linna, you...I'm not 100% on Darkling, and I know Muse isn't done, either.  Plus, wasn't there a #6 who wanted to play?

[Empyrean]

As I recall some of her skills are a bit higher due to things she has, but I don't recall exactly by how much.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Sachiko Yamafuku
Background: Hyperelite
Faction: Socialite
Morph: Sylph
Gender ID: Female
Age: 34
Motivations: +Family, +Hedonism, +Personal Career

Energy Armor: 27
Kinetic Armor: 20
@-rep: 80
C-Rep: 80
E-Rep: 30
F-Rep: 80
G-Rep: 0
I-Rep: 80
R-Rep, U-Rep, X-Rep: 0

Base: COG: 15, COO: 15, INT: 15, REF: 15, SAV: 15, SOM: 15, WIL: 15
Morph: +5 COO, +10 SAV, +5 WIL
Total: COG: 15, COO: 20, INT: 15, REF: 15, SAV: 25, SOM: 15, WIL: 20
Stats: TT: 7, LUC: 40, IR: 80, WT: 8, DUR: 40, DR: 60, MOX: 3, INIT: 6, SPD 1 (1), DB: 1

Credits: 7800
Ego Traits: Psi (Level 1), Right at Home (Exalt) (Level 1), Social Butterfly (Level 1), Addiction (Zoo Suit) (Level 1), Black Mark (Jovian Republic) (Level 3), Stalker (Level 1)
Morph Traits: Striking Looks (Level 1)

Academics (Mimetics, Psychology): 80, Animal Handling: 25, Art (Performance) 60, Beam Weapons: 60 (70), Blades, Climbing, Clubs: 15. Deception: 70, Disguise, Flight: 15, Fray: 60, Freefall: 40, Freerunning: 40, Gunnery: 15, Impersonation: 70, Infilitration: 20, Interest (Hypercorp Politics): 40, Interest (Mesh Gaming): 40, Interfacing: 40, Intimidation, Investigation: 25, Kinesics: 90, Kinetic Weapons: 20, Language (Japanese): 85, Language (English-Mediaspeak): 50 (60), Language (Russian-Mediaspeak): 50 (60), Navigation: 15, Networking (Autonomists): 70, Networking (Criminals, Ecologists): 25, Networking (Firewall, Hypercorps, Media): 70, Networking (Scientists, Gatecrashers, Ultimates): 25, Palming: 20, Perception: 60, Persuasion: 70,  Pilot (Aircraft, Anthroform, Exotic Vehicle, Groundcraft, Spacecraft, Watercraft): 15, Profession (Social Engineering): 60, Protocol: 50, Psychosurgery: 15, Research, Scrounging: 25, Seeker Weapons, Spray Weapons: 20, Swimming: 15, Thrown Weapons: 20, Unarmed Combat: 15.

Standard Muse: Natsumi
COG: 10, COO: 10, INT: 20, REF: 10, SAV: 10, SOM: 10, WIL: 10, TT: 4, LUC: 20, IR: 40, INIT: 6

Academics (Psychology) 60, Academics (Network Science): 40, Interest (Cutting Edge Tech): 40, Profession (Mesh Engineering): 40, Profession (Accounting): 60, Hardware (Electronics): 30, Infosec: 30, Interfacing: 40, Programming: 20, Perception, Research: 30.

Common Apititude Tests: Brute Strength: 45, Composure/Resolve: 60, Idea (INT) (45), Memories/Remember: 45, Integration: 45, Continuity: 60, Alienation: 45, Resist Intimidation: 65, Catch Thrown Object: 55, Escape Artist: 35,  Idea (COG): 45, vs. Social: 65, Close Combat Fray: 60, Ranged Combat Fray: 30, vs. PSI: 40, Resist Persuasion: 65
                                         
                                         DV                  AP     Modes                                                      Range                              Shots
Laser Pulser      70   2d10      0   SA                              30/100/150/250         100   
Microwave Agonizer 70   2d10          -5   SS                              5/15/30/50                  50   
Stunner         70   1d10      0   SA                              10/25/40/60                 200   

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Direction Sense, Echolocation, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Vision, Polarization Vision, Ultraviolet Vision, Bioweave Armor (light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Endocrine Control, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Respiration, Neurachem (L1), Toxin Filters, Anti-Glare, T-Ray Emitter, Hearing Filter, Smell Filter, Vision Filter, Mnemonic Augmentation, Medichines, Nanophage, Oracle, Respirocytes, Zoo Suit

Gear: Holographic Projectors, Micrograv Shoes, Standard Battery (10x), Nuclear Battery (x2), Solar Recharger, Personal Interaction Sensor, Nanodetectors, Fur Coat, Guard Dog, Anonymous Account (x3), Backup Insurance (mod), Active ID Protection, AR Illusions, Facial/Image Recognition, Behavioral Psych, Kinesics Software, Relationship Mapping, Standard Muse, Crasher Truck, Go Cycle, Gnat, Guardian Angel, Morph Brokerage (high), Fur Coat, Second Skin, Smart Skin, Heavy Body Armor (with 6 Ablative Patches, Chameleon Coating, Immunogenic System, Fireproofing, Lotus Coating, Offensive Armor, Refractive Glazing, Self-Healing, Shock Proof, Thermal Dampening, Faraday Mod), Vacsuit (standard) (w/ x4 Ablative Patches, Chameleon Coating, Immunogenic System, Fireproofing, Lotus Coating, Offensive Armor, Refractive Glazing, Self-Healing, Shock Proof, Thermal Dampening, Faraday Mod), Smart Clothing, Laser Pulser (w/Smartlink, Safety System, Shock Safety), Microwave Agonizer (w/Smartlink, Safety System, Gyromount), Stunner( w/Smartlink, Safety System, Gyromount).                                                    
                                                   
PSI: Ambience Sense, Downtime, Emotion Control, Filter, Superior Kinesics

[Muse]

I finsihed Rindi's histoyr.  Maybe it'll give an idea of why I took some of the skills Carny didn't understand. 

Anywyas, I could use a little help with the rest.  I'll be goign over Carneys sugestions next. 

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

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I finsihed Rindi's histoyr.  Maybe it'll give an idea of why I took some of the skills Carny didn't understand. 

Anywyas, I could use a little help with the rest.  I'll be goign over Carneys sugestions next. 

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

Just as an FYI: the skills suggestions I listed weren't about 'doesn't make sense' or anything else related to history, they were purely about numeric optimization and skills which were useful (or not so useful) as complements with other skills. ;) Basically, ways to make Knowledge skills useful with Active skills.

Now if you want recommendations based on what you wrote for her history, I'd throw in something like Interest: Small Unit AR Tactics (representing what she learned from AR gaming, as opposed to Profession: Small Unit Tactics which would suggest she was actually a full-time paid soldier/SWAT type). You could leverage that as a skill complement to free-running for mobility in a firefight, to Seeker Weapons for second-guessing the enemy, possibly Fray in the sense of moving around like a videogamer ping-pong ball instead of a rush-to-cover-and-hold soldier, etc.

[Empyrean]

Carny, any recommendations on Sachiko? :)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

It takes a while for me to sort through a character, sorry. I will try to get to it before Tuesday.

At a glance, did you mean 'Mimetics'? Or did you mean 'Memetics?' Also you have listed the Intimidation skill without a value. You have duplicated a few items and a few skills, it seems (as in, you list them more than once). There's nothing against it in the rules but one thing that eyehooked me was the 80 I-Rep. It's the sort of thing that makes one wonder how many times you've saved the galaxy? ;D With the sorts of AIs in charge of Firewall's rep network, it's probably a stone bitch to try to cheat/game rep in it, IMHO. Which suggests that a really high rep score is REALLY A HUGE DEAL. :) And there's nothing wrong with that (from the lady playing one of the top hundred psychedelic drug experts in the Solar System...I'm in no position to point fingers) so when I say I'm curious I don't mean 'JUSTIFY YOURSELF YOUNG LADY.' I mean 'Whoa, wow, what'd she do? I really want to hear this story. :D'

[ReijiTabibito]

Carn, I helped Empy build Sachiko, so I can answer you with a few things on that.  It's supposed to be Memetics.  I don't know how that difference got in there, considering she was built on Kin's character sheet.  And I suggested that she start with a lower i-Rep, given that while it's easy to justify high rep in the other circles (since you are pretty much born into them, whereas Firewall is a recruited org), to me, having much higher than i-Rep 60 probably means you're a Proxy or major figure.  Intimidation doesn't have a value listed because it shares the same value as the next skill, Investigation, which both have 25.

[Nicolae]

I'm extremely interested in Eclipse Phase (and the new character builder at http://eclipsephase.oook.ch/Creator/version4/index.php though it's a little buggy). If a space opens up, I would love to fill it. I've got an Emergent AGI Uplift Singularity Seeker that I'd love to use, though I could put another character together pretty quickly if necessary.

[ReijiTabibito]

Did you express interest in this game before now?  Also, Emergent AGI Uplift...I think that's not quite right.

[Nicolae]

Did you express interest in this game before now?  Also, Emergent AGI Uplift...I think that's not quite right.

I hadn't yet, no. Also, the "Emergent AGI Uplift" is one of the New Backgrounds from Transhuman, page 78. It's an infolife/infomorph, just with a little added flavor.

Edit: Just in case there was any confusion, I realize that the game is most likely full. I just wanted to make sure that I made my interest known now in the event that a space is free in the future, with the full knowledge that I'd likely be at the bottom of the waiting list. And I'm cool with that because an Eclipse Phase game is worth waiting for. ;)

[Empyrean]

I can lower her i-Rep to 60 then. I'm just not sure where to put the rest of those points I invested in reputation. I'm open to suggestions. :)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Calrond! Very nice to see you! Hope you are doing well?

I can lower her i-Rep to 60 then. I'm just not sure where to put the rest of those points I invested in reputation. I'm open to suggestions. :)

As you cllimb higher in a given faction-Rep, you get closer and closer to being somebody 'everyone has heard of because of ______.' and while I have no issue whatsoever with having a crazy-high i-rep, it does raise the questions of 'what did you do to get so famous/popular?' and although that's true of EVERY rep network, and I feel anyone with anything over 60 should have at least a jot of an explanation as to why and what people in that network know about them, particularly because of what Firewall IS that suggests having some pretty crazy X-threat stories! :)

Sadly I still have not had time to do a full top-down dissect of Sachiko, I'm sorry!

[Nicolae]

@Carnival: Doing well, how have you been?

[Empyrean]

*poke*

[ReijiTabibito]

Don't worry.  This game is still alive.  I just know we've got a couple of people still in the mix, as it were.

[GloomCookie]

I'm still here >.>

[Muse]

Ack!  I'm lagging behind again! 

*Gets back to work!* 

[Muse]

Where do i find the specs and survival belt?  ) 

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Where do i find the specs and survival belt?  )

Specs = core rules, p.326 top left column
Survival Belt = Gatecrashing, p.159 lower right column

The belt is basically a cheap 'package deal' for a bunch of other stuff.

Okay, have some time right now (almost unheard of lately) so I'm going to go digging a bit more through characters which have been posted.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Finally had time to convert Sachiko to a format my brain was more used to and which did all the math for me, and here is what I came up with:

You appear to have purchased a specialization for Beam Weapons but you have not listed what the specialization IS. Since she's carrying a Laser Pulser, Microwave Agonizer and a Stunner one of those is probably a good choice.

Sachiko has Kinesics: 90 but has not purchased the Trait: Expert (Kinesics) (See core, p.146) to allow that skill to be boosted over 80 in chargen. I also note that at level 90 Sachiko becomes Nobel/Olympic/grandmaster level (see core, p.174) which means unless she has worked extremely hard for it to never be noticable, she's going to be something of a celebrity in the field. The only thing I can think of is that you mean this 90 to include your gear bonuses in which case the ACTUAL skill is only 75? Because the character is very over-spent otherwise.

Sachiko's Muse, Natsumi, has "Interest: Cutting Edge Tech" this seems a bit broad for me...She's up to date in the latest technological advances in pocket tools, cryptography, paper-clip tracking and fusion drives? I would encourage narrowing that down if I was a GM. I might allow 'Popular Cutting Edge Tech' in the sense of 'subscribes to newsfeeds about awesome and cool technology,' with the 'popular' putting a bit of a limiter brake on it.

6+4 ablative patches: Just to be clear, they don't stack, she's carrying replacements. Right?

Heavy Body Armor...This is what riot cops and bomb disposal teams wear. Not very fashionable, bound to attract attention downtown, and a load to carry around if you aren't wearing it. For characters who are meant to look 'normal' while being well-armored, I prefer to take a Smart Vac Suit (normal) since it can reconfigure to look like Smart Clothing...and you can put armor mods on it. Just an opinion/stealth performance tradeoff thing. :)

Off the top of my poor tired head, I don't see what you've bought/taken that's giving you WT 8, DUR 40, DR 60. When I punched everything into a sheet it came up WT 7, DUR 35, DR 53?

Additionally...Zoo Suit? I googled "Eclipse Phase" and "Zoo Suit" and got nothing.

Overall, the character looks entirely workable. There are many things which I would've done differently in terms of skill selection (putting points in Disguise as well as Impersonation, buying more professions and interests rather than super-high academics, for example) and in mechanical efficiency terms (11-multiplier skill values, paying attention to the 31 and 61 complement thresholds) but the skill selection overall is appropriate to the character's role as a social face.

There's just one thing...It seems as if the character may be over-spent by around -60 or so CP. I have a hunch this is due to not multiplying values over 60 by two when calculating CP cost.

For example: COG base is 15, Academics: Memetics & Academics: Psychology at 80 will cost you 85 CP each to get there, not 65 CP each. It's Base 15 + 45 to get to 60, then 40 more to get to 80.

So here are the CP values I'm seeing, shown as Skill Value ## (CP).

ACD: Memetics 80 (85)
ACD: Psychology 80 (85)
ART: Performance 60 (45)
Beam Weapons 60 (40 + spec = 45)
Deception 70 (45)
Fray 60 (45)
Freefall 40 (25)
Freerunning 40 (25)
Impersonation 70 (45)
INT: Hypercorp Politics 40 (25)
INT: Mesh Gaming 40 (25)
Interfacing 40 (25)
Investigation 35 (10)
Kinesics 90 (105 and overvalue without Expert Trait...Or are you counting Gear bonuses? If you are counting gear bonuses then it's 75 (40))
LNG: English 50 (35 + 5 spec = 40)
LNG: Russian 50 (35 + 5 spec = 40)
NTW: Autonomists 70 (45)
NTW: Firewall 70 (45)
NTW: Hypercorps 70 (25)
NTW: Media 70 (25)
Perception 60 (45)
Persuasion 70 (35)
PRO: Social Engineering 60 (45)
Protocol 50 (5)
Research 25 (10)
Scrounging 35 (10)

Are the skill value totals you posted including gear bonuses or something? That's likely what is throwing it off.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Muse, other than equipment purchasing, where is your character at in terms of being finished, and do you need any further help with it?

[Empyrean]

I'll have to go back over it in a little bit, but yeah, I was including the gear bonuses in with her skills.

[ReijiTabibito]

Carn, I helped Empy build Sachiko from the ground up, so I can help answer some of the questions you have here.

You appear to have purchased a specialization for Beam Weapons but you have not listed what the specialization IS. Since she's carrying a Laser Pulser, Microwave Agonizer and a Stunner one of those is probably a good choice.

I actually take a slightly more liberal approach to Beam Weapon specializations - if you read the description of the Stunner, it reads that the Stunner is an "electrolaser," which to me qualifies it as being included under the Laser Weapons spec for Beams.  Unless I'm completely off and an electrolaser is no more similar to a real laser than a cashew is similar to a peanut.

Sachiko has Kinesics: 90 but has not purchased the Trait: Expert (Kinesics) (See core, p.146) to allow that skill to be boosted over 80 in chargen. I also note that at level 90 Sachiko becomes Nobel/Olympic/grandmaster level (see core, p.174) which means unless she has worked extremely hard for it to never be noticable, she's going to be something of a celebrity in the field. The only thing I can think of is that you mean this 90 to include your gear bonuses in which case the ACTUAL skill is only 75? Because the character is very over-spent otherwise.

Sachiko's Kinesics value shouldn't read 90.  It is 90 after all her Gear bonuses.  Here's how it breaks down - base SAV 25, +25 CP for the Skill, +10 because she's an Async and purchased Superior Kinesics, +20 for the Personal Interaction Sensor, +10 for the Kinesics Software.  The +10 from being an Async would show up on Kindalas' spreadsheet, so it should read Kinesics 60.

Sachiko's Muse, Natsumi, has "Interest: Cutting Edge Tech" this seems a bit broad for me...She's up to date in the latest technological advances in pocket tools, cryptography, paper-clip tracking and fusion drives? I would encourage narrowing that down if I was a GM. I might allow 'Popular Cutting Edge Tech' in the sense of 'subscribes to newsfeeds about awesome and cool technology,' with the 'popular' putting a bit of a limiter brake on it.

Carn, check out TH, page 24, Extropian faction - Cutting-Edge Tech is one of the Interests put into that book.  It's also on the Field Skills section of that book, page 43.  That was my suggestion.

6+4 ablative patches: Just to be clear, they don't stack, she's carrying replacements. Right?

They don't.  I've played around with Kindalas' character sheet to make sure of that.  The extra ones she's carrying are replacements.

Off the top of my poor tired head, I don't see what you've bought/taken that's giving you WT 8, DUR 40, DR 60. When I punched everything into a sheet it came up WT 7, DUR 35, DR 53?

The base Sylph has DUR 35.  She also bought the Respirocytes nanoware, which grants +5 DUR.

Additionally...Zoo Suit? I googled "Eclipse Phase" and "Zoo Suit" and got nothing.

The Zoo Suit is a custom piece of equipment I added into the character, as part of the deal we struck for her to have a (really nice) spaceship that can serve as the group's base/carrier.

[Muse]

Muse, other than equipment purchasing, where is your character at in terms of being finished, and do you need any further help with it?

I need to refactor her skills based on the atribute buffs I got when I bought equipment.  I need a bit more equipment (mostly those two things you sugested and guns.) 

I would really apreciate help with repuations.  I think i can do the rest myself.  :) 

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Carn, I helped Empy build Sachiko from the ground up, so I can help answer some of the questions you have here.

I actually take a slightly more liberal approach to Beam Weapon specializations - if you read the description of the Stunner, it reads that the Stunner is an "electrolaser," which to me qualifies it as being included under the Laser Weapons spec for Beams.  Unless I'm completely off and an electrolaser is no more similar to a real laser than a cashew is similar to a peanut.

Any other house-rules you'd like to share with the rest of us?

Taken to an extreme, the only technical difference between a chemically-propelled solid slug and an electromagnetically-propelled solid slug is speed/flatness of trajectory, which isn't a factor except at extreme ranges, and any rifleman worth their salt knows the 'drop' of a given rifle's projectile over range as well as their rifle's point blank ranges (contrary to what Hollywood has to say, a given long-arm can have TWO point blank ranges, particularly when using optical sights with high parallax, where a projectile crosses the sight-line twice...Once 'rising' and once 'falling'.). A person who is only trained to shoot with a solid projectile weapon using 'battle zero' or 'near point blank' would do just as well with a laser...Even 'sweeping fire' per EP's rules is the same as 'walking fire onto target.' On the other hand, a plasma gun is not (strictly) a line-of-sight weapon as a laser is, but fires a superheated mass which will have drop over range.

For bonus fun, shooters whose weapons are affected by gravity and who don't have microgravity experience may have to deal with coriolis force over range, resulting in lateral corkscrewing. Whee!

I could similarly argue that being a dodgy target and knowing how to rapidly shift your center-of-mass (Fray) is not something which should have specializations based on unarmed or other weapons, because getting out of the way of an incoming blow doesn't change much whether it's an open-hand or a knife inbound. On the other hand, knowing how to dodge close combat attacks has very little to do with knowing how to be a janky hard target for someone trying to take pot shots at you from range...

But it'd be to the benefit of all parties to know about what house rules you're using, particularly when those rules affect character building, n'est ce pas?

Sachiko's Kinesics value shouldn't read 90.  It is 90 after all her Gear bonuses.  Here's how it breaks down - base SAV 25, +25 CP for the Skill, +10 because she's an Async and purchased Superior Kinesics, +20 for the Personal Interaction Sensor, +10 for the Kinesics Software.  The +10 from being an Async would show up on Kindalas' spreadsheet, so it should read Kinesics 60.

Right, the breakdown isn't as apparent when handed a set of 'totals'...And it looks like I may have a damaged spreadsheet copy that isn't correctly incorporating gear modifiers and need to re-download, because the DUR bonus from respirocytes wasn't showing up, either.

Carn, check out TH, page 24, Extropian faction - Cutting-Edge Tech is one of the Interests put into that book.  It's also on the Field Skills section of that book, page 43.  That was my suggestion.

Still haven't got TH memorized, sorry (and I still think it's a bad idea for the aforementioned reasons, but ehhhhh...).

They don't.  I've played around with Kindalas' character sheet to make sure of that.  The extra ones she's carrying are replacements.

Right, I know that and figured you knew that, but I wanted to be sure everybody understood it and was on the same page.

The base Sylph has DUR 35.  She also bought the Respirocytes nanoware, which grants +5 DUR.

Yeah, I re-downloaded Kin's sheet and plugged stuff in and this time it worked. At some point, somehow, I must've mangled something in the previous 'blank' and saved over it.

The Zoo Suit is a custom piece of equipment I added into the character, as part of the deal we struck for her to have a (really nice) spaceship that can serve as the group's base/carrier.

Got it.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I need to refactor her skills based on the atribute buffs I got when I bought equipment.  I need a bit more equipment (mostly those two things you sugested and guns.) 

I would really apreciate help with repuations.  I think i can do the rest myself.  :)

Er...What sort of help do you need? Which ones to pick? How much of what (guidelines on rep values can be found in the core book, by comparing the kinds of favors on p.290 (sorted by 'level') with the levels on p.287, which lists the score ranges for each level (basically rep score / 5 rounded up = rep level).

[ReijiTabibito]

Any other house-rules you'd like to share with the rest of us?

But it'd be to the benefit of all parties to know about what house rules you're using, particularly when those rules affect character building, n'est ce pas?

I know.  I know it sucks learning about all of this in situ, but I don't yet have a comprehensive list of house rules that I use for EP.  I do, technically, but they're all little scribbles here and there that are flung to far corners.  I'm working on consolidating them, but that hasn't happened yet.

Still haven't got TH memorized, sorry (and I still think it's a bad idea for the aforementioned reasons, but ehhhhh...).

No, I'm with you.  I have a character I designed - an Ultimate Iconic - that has the Cutting-Edge Interest, but for him I winnowed it down to Cutting-Edge Arms Tech, meaning if it's not meant for killin' or the prevention of, it's not relevant to the Interest.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I know.  I know it sucks learning about all of this in situ, but I don't yet have a comprehensive list of house rules that I use for EP.  I do, technically, but they're all little scribbles here and there that are flung to far corners.  I'm working on consolidating them, but that hasn't happened yet.

Okay, can we count on you (this may sound silly but I have seen it happen) to alert us if we try to do something you have a houserule for and say 'Actually, I do that this way, so you may want to handle it like this...And if you built your character with that in mind we can talk about it,' rather than 'GOTCHA SUCKA!' (again, I have SEEN a GM do that :6 )?

[Muse]

Can someone send me the price and specs on the survival belt? 

I'm considering spending a 100 points to raise will by 5 and Cognition by 5.  Any thoughts? 

[Empyrean]

And I'm puzzling over Sachiko. Specifically how to modify her skills to better fit in and help the team.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Can someone send me the price and specs on the survival belt?

When I don't have access to my searchable PDFs, this is my favorite go-to site: http://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Survival+Gear

I'm considering spending a 100 points to raise will by 5 and Cognition by 5.  Any thoughts?

Okay, here's how to think about this:

To buy a skill up by 1 point costs 1CP (2CP if it is over 60).
To buy an attribute up by 1 point costs 10CP.

Ergo, unless you have at least 10 skills which use that attribute (or 5 skills already over 60) you will probably want to put the points into skills rather than the attribute.

The attribute which has the most skills linked to it is COG.
The attribute which has the fewest skills linked to it is WIL.

Odds are that your character has a lot of COG skills and very few if any WIL skills.

Think about this as well:

If your character has 10 skills in COG, and 5 skills in INT, it's "cheaper" to pay the points on the INT skills. Look at some of your other attributes. Are there any of them you'd be willing to drop 5 points and put those 5 "free" points into WIL, then buy up all the skills for? Because in many cases it will be far cheaper to do that.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

And I'm puzzling over Sachiko. Specifically how to modify her skills to better fit in and help the team.

Not sure what to suggest here. You'd want to look at everyone else's capabilities, see if there are 'gaps', decide if you want Sachiko to fill those gaps and if that'd be appropriate to her character, etc...

[Muse]

Let's see if I can figure otu reputation. 

*Cracks open his book* 

[Empyrean]

I've done some initial revisions. If I understand everything right (and I freely admit I might not), I have about 247 CP left to spend, minus the cost for her gear. I know she starts with 15000 due to background/faction. But I'm not sure exactly how much what I have costs so I don't know how many CP to assign to gear and how much is left for augmenting skills/buying specialties/etc.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Academics (Mimetics, Psychology): 44, Animal Handling: 25, Art (Performance) 55, Beam Weapons: 55, Blades, Climbing, Clubs: 15. Deception: 55, Disguise: 26, Flight: 15, Fray: 55, Freefall: 40, Freerunning: 40, Gunnery: 15, Impersonation: 35, Infilitration: 20, Interest (Hypercorp Politics): 40, Interest (Mesh Gaming): 40, Interfacing: 40, Intimidation, Investigation: 25, Kinesics: 60, Kinetic Weapons: 20, Language (Japanese): 85, Language (English-Mediaspeak): 50 (60), Language (Russian-Mediaspeak): 50 (60), Navigation: 15, Networking (Autonomists): 55, Networking (Criminals, Ecologists): 25, Networking (Hypercorps, Media): 55, Networking (Firewall): 55, Networking (Scientists, Gatecrashers, Ultimates): 25, Palming: 20, Perception: 55, Persuasion: 55, Pilot (Aircraft, Anthroform, Exotic Vehicle, Groundcraft, Spacecraft, Watercraft): 15, Profession (Social Engineering): 55, Protocol: 55, Psychosurgery: 15, Research, Scrounging: 25, Seeker Weapons, Spray Weapons: 20, Swimming: 15, Thrown Weapons: 20, Unarmed Combat: 15.

Standard Muse: Natsumi
COG: 10, COO: 10, INT: 20, REF: 10, SAV: 10, SOM: 10, WIL: 10, TT: 4, LUC: 20, IR: 40, INIT: 6

Academics (Psychology) 60, Academics (Network Science): 40, Interest (Cutting Edge Tech): 40, Profession (Mesh Engineering): 40, Profession (Accounting): 60, Hardware (Electronics): 30, Infosec: 30, Interfacing: 40, Programming: 20, Perception, Research: 30.

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Direction Sense, Echolocation, Enhanced Hearing, Enhanced Smell, Enhanced Vision, Polarization Vision, Ultraviolet Vision, Bioweave Armor (light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Endocrine Control, Enhanced Pheromones, Enhanced Respiration, Neurachem (L1), Toxin Filters, Anti-Glare, T-Ray Emitter, Hearing Filter, Smell Filter, Vision Filter, Mnemonic Augmentation, Medichines, Nanophage, Oracle, Respirocytes, Zoo Suit

Gear: Holographic Projectors, Micrograv Shoes, Standard Battery (10x), Nuclear Battery (x2), Solar Recharger, Personal Interaction Sensor, Nanodetectors, Fur Coat, Guard Dog, Anonymous Account (x3), Backup Insurance (mod), Active ID Protection, AR Illusions, Facial/Image Recognition, Behavioral Psych, Kinesics Software, Relationship Mapping, Standard Muse, Crasher Truck, Go Cycle, Gnat, Guardian Angel, Morph Brokerage (high), Second Skin, Smart Skin, Smart VacSuit (with 6 Ablative Patches, Chameleon Coating, Immunogenic System, Fireproofing, Lotus Coating, Offensive Armor, Refractive Glazing, Self-Healing, Shock Proof, Thermal Dampening, Faraday Mod), Smart Clothing, Laser Pulser (w/Smartlink, Safety System, Shock Safety), Microwave Agonizer (w/Smartlink, Safety System, Gyromount), Stunner (w/Smartlink, Safety System, Gyromount).

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

Found out that my hours at work are being cut for the next semester (one of my classes got dropped due to lack of student interest). Needless to say, not happymaking.

This actually does not free up time for me. It means that I will be devoting a lot more time to jobhunting to find additional income for the next several weeks (or, well, until I find it) in the form of tutoring, etc. Those often create more collateral time-trouble than actually teaching a class does, because for the classes I have the vast majority of my curriculum and the like laid out in advance, and homework is predictable. Tutoring someone changes drastically based on their needs and hours with inevitable rescheduling and no way to predict what will be needed two weeks hence.

I will be active but slow for the foreseeable future.

[Empyrean]

*hugs* Good luck Carny.

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I am mostly back and around, by the by. May still occasionally be slow, but will be active.

[ReijiTabibito]

Thanks, Carny.  I'm still working with Muse to get him up to speed on things, but we should be able to start not long after we're done.

[Muse]

I have my reps now. 

Could still use some help with my equipment.  (Most noticeably weapons and their accessories.) 

Then I need to figure out how to factor stuff, and spend the last of my points. 

Can someone talk me through Moxie?  Most importantly, does your starting rating indicate a pool that refreshes?  Or does it rise and fall irregardless of starting pool? 

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

[Muse]

*peeks* 

We still doing this?  :) 

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I was certainly hoping so. It has been taking quite some time to pull together.

I was busy when you last posted your help request, Muse, has anyone gotten back to you about that?

[Muse]

Not yet. :)

[CarnivalOfTheGoat]

I have my reps now. 

Could still use some help with my equipment.  (Most noticeably weapons and their accessories.) 

Then I need to figure out how to factor stuff, and spend the last of my points. 

Can someone talk me through Moxie?  Most importantly, does your starting rating indicate a pool that refreshes?  Or does it rise and fall irregardless of starting pool? 

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

For starters, you must spend at least 300 points in Knowledge Skills and 400 points in Active skills. That's one of the core requirements of generating characters in the game, which means you may need to pull some of the points you have spent elsewhere.

Rindi has reasonable Kinetic and Seeker weapons skills, so I'd recommend choosing one of those. Pistols are always useful because they are a little easier to conceal, but rifles have their place as well...Consider that we'll be starting in an urban area of a somewhat nastily fascistic government (Planetary Consortium). Either a kinetic or seeker pistol and perhaps a rifle would probably be handy. Going with railgun rather than chemical propellant increases base damage but reduces the types of ammo you have available, so it's kind of your call. I'd recommend getting regular ammunition for use against biomorphs and AP for synthmorphs if you use a railgun, or hollowpoint and RAP if you use a regular chemical propellant kinetic weapon. If you decide to go with seeker weapons, again either a pistol or rifle is a good investment, but bear in mind they are more like grenade launchers (no shooting someone who has a hostage, you WILL affect the hostage). Ammunition-wise I'd probably go with Concussion, EMP and HEAP unless you're feeling really nasty in which case you might swap out Thermobaric for HEAP with the understanding that it does massive area damage and is even less directed than most Seeker rounds.

Moxie can usually be regained whenever your character has significant downtime to rest (sleep, whatever) or if your character achieves something notable relating to one of their three Motivations (which is why Motivations matter in the game as something other then 'character belief fluff').

Note that you can spend Moxie as follows (from p.122 of EP):
• The character may ignore all negative modifiers that apply to a test. The Moxie point must be spent before dice are rolled.
• The character may flip-flop a d100 roll result. For example, an 83 would become a 38.
• The character may upgrade a success, making it a critical success, as if they rolled doubles. The character must succeed in the test before they spend the Moxie point.
• The character may ignore a critical failure, treating it as a regular failure instead.
• The character may go first in an Action Phase (p. 189).
Only 1 point of Moxie may be spent on a single roll.

Note that there is no guaranteed way to turn a normal failure into a success, only a critical failure into a normal failure. :) I say 'guaranteed' because sometimes 'flip-flopping' the numbers will save a roll, but not always. Rolling a 98, for instance, with a target of 90, will not be recoverable using Moxie.

Hope this helps!

[ReijiTabibito]

Just so people don't think this game is dead - it's not.  I've just been really, really busy with the start of my new job (IE, the school year), and I am still doing a little bit of planning for the story.  This story isn't dead until I say it is.  And right now...it's not.