Interest Check - Eclipse Phase Naughtiness

[Re Z L]

So. One of my absolute favorite settings for a roleplaying game is Eclipse Phase. And one notable fact about Eclipse Phase is that with the introduction of immortality and a rapidly changing morality after a near extinction event for humanity, there is a lot changing from our modern world, like a loosening of repression of sexual ideas in the public eye, no doubt. Couple this in with cosmic horror, throw in some robo-tentacles, and you have quite an interesting setting for a smut game!

So, the question is: would anybody be interested in playing (or running, I would not be opposed to being a PC) an Eclipse Phase game with a particularly smutty bent? My initial thought is that the PCs would fit well as newly resleeved infugees in the slums of either Mars or Luna, where they could get in all sorts of trouble from there. Perhaps ultimately becoming a member of an organization known as Firewall. Could be great fun.

Nah. I wouldn't assign bodies to people. It musses a bit too much with how character creation goes out.

I would create a scenario which might motivate people's choice of bodies and how they justify it. I'm still thinking of a story to start from - I was just poking to see if there was even interest in Eclipse Phase to begin with and was QUITE pleasantly surprised.

It seems like your original idea was for the group to start "down and out" on their luck, maybe they banded together to make what they could for themselves (immortality is nice but shovelling moon rocks for the next few thousand years isn't really a good use of it...), obviously the intent is to move them along to real movers-and-shakers (to some degree) via joining up with Firewall, or some other major faction.  And then there's the significant focus on smut as well.

A Lunar group could be interesting, they could all be recently resleeved (and perhaps owing some money to people and thus are where they are) and forced into being reclaimers.  The various mysteries of journeying to Earth on a regular basis could certainly open up opportunities for strange "encounters".

Gatecrashing offers a similar opportunity as a Lunar group I'd say, just with a different emphasis.

A Scum Pleasure Barge of sorts could work.

There's also classier places to start out too.

Those are just a couple thoughts on where to start.

In terms of gear or what-have-you, if we really are starting at the bottom of the barrel we could easily probably start off with very little cash to spend on stuff until we get "access" to things we may have stowed away elsewhere for safe-keeping...like after a major adventure/event we all get around 5000 credits for purchasing some gear (with no carry-over of credits, ie spend it or lose it).  Or, similarly, it's being held by whoever our employer is only to be given over to us when we "prove ourselves" or whatever.

[Ace Flyer]

Voted!

And sorry for my silence in here. Still (slowly) reading through the core rule book again to get all nice and familiar-ish with the setting ^^; Still checking in and still interested, though!

[AnneReinard]

Study all you want! It's a fun setting!

I'll admit, I won't be going with Gatecrashing. It is not really my thing, because I think the moment you move to Gatecrashing you lose out on a lot of opportunities to explore how humanity has changed since the Fall and coped with immortality. Also, I feel some of the cosmic horror gets toned down a tiny bit.

Scum barge is one possibility, though part of my reasoning behind going after Mars or Luna is that they have a lot more familiarity with people than some of the more exotic locales. Locus and the scum barges you have to deal with the fact that it operates under the reputation economy. Also, having to describe everything in micro-grav always ends up with odd inconsistencies, because of the way we think of the world.

Mars and Luna have enough similarities that it is easier to ground ourselves in them to move forward from. Especially Mars. I am fond of Mars.

[wander]

I do like Mars, waaay more than Luna. ^^;

There's also Parvati on Venus, but's that's just my personal preference...  ::)

[ReijiTabibito]

There's only a small handful of places in the system you can, IMO, have a whole campaign staged from start to finish without ever needing to go somewhere else.  Mars is one of them - Jupiter and its various moons are another - and the habitats of the Belt are the third and final one for me.

You might be able to squeeze out whole campaigns from Titan or Venus, but they can't beat those three.

[Re Z L]

I'm not particularly attached to any idea, just throwing around some possibilities  ;D

Mars would be neat, reminds me of the Mars from Cowboy Bebop

[wander]

So I read over the Transhumanity's FATE playtest and I really liked it. :)

I wouldn't mind playing it so much now. The only things I noticed were it didn't mention every morph available, though I think you get a fair bit of variety and you could probably custom make a canon morph not in the playtest just fine.

Important gear as Stunts suit me just fine, based on the playtest as written. Though it'd be hard to pick the smaller number going into a game, it does seem with more focus on character concept, it should be easier to think on what useful item(s) specifically that character will have going in.

[AnneReinard]

I think Egocasting actually has less impact on players in the FATE ruleset versus the normal ruleset in terms of how it affects their usability. The more gear dependent your character was, the more a sudden egocast would be a swift kick to the junk. Even assuming you go around carry fabber blueprints, there still is the matter of having to get access to a fabber, likely an unrestricted one, and the time on top of that. I must admit - that particular knowledge is based off playing in a campaign where just bout after every adventure we were shunted off somewhere else, doing time restricted missions, where we never were able to get our fabber queue finished off.

Venus is pretty interesting as well, I find, since it has an interesting conflict between the Planetary Consortium and the Morningstar Consortium. Not to mention all the other factions vying within the power vacuum. That being said, I do not think that I need to set the game in Space Las Vegas to infuse some naughtiness! ...though who knows where my mind will lead us at this point? Still trying to decide precisely what I intend.

As for 'setting a whole campaign in one location', I am in a degree of agreement. Mars is by far the easiest. Every faction has a presence on the planet fairly intuitively and it even has the TITAN Quarantine Zone right next door AND one of the Pandora Gates on top of that! What more could you ask for? Playing in the Jovian Junta, to me, seems harder than playing something out on Titan or the Main Belt. Mostly, this is due to the discrimination the Junta has as bioconservatives. Not that it rules out interesting stories.

[wander]

For me, if we were restricted to Inner system, I'm in agreement, with perhaps the odd egocast to Parvati (because that's smut central! ^^) and also Mitre, the Argo base over Luna is pretty awesome, though Luna isn't a happy place. Mars has Valles-New Shanghai, Nytrondheim, Noctis-Qianjiao (especially Renraku brug) and also Elysium's South Chinatown is a pretty awesome place, these can all be reached through the Martian railroads too. That on what you already mentioned makes it a prime place for gaming.

One place I'll mention for a possible egocast in the future is Whiskey, the western-themed bar asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, 37AU outwards. They likely have a cred economy along with a rep one because it's mentioned corp reps go there for weekends away and it seems a fun place. :)

That said, there are certain outer system places I wouldn't mind seeing later in the game, if peeps get their head round the rep economy, such as Europa, C-Squat (the 24/7 anarchist warehouse squatter nightclub!) and then Meathab (just because!), the Scum swarm of Phelan's Course for the gasoline fuel alcohols they sell and for some proper redlight, a visit to Oulo's Ecstacy District on Titan, with perhaps a weekend spent over at Stykkisholmur, because vikings sailing in methane lakes in proper longboats. ^^

What I like about the Stunts now with FATE is you have less Gear to worry about. Potentially you could have a character with three stunts, which could be all Ego and Morph based-ones, making egocasting much less a kick to the round ones and the varied economy based skills can quickly sort someone out.

[AnneReinard]

I am ashamed at you for using that dirty slur of a name!

It's "Turn Yourself Into a Giant Mass of Space Meat for Art!" Get it right!

...doesn't Titan have a news show featuring a literal giant cock? I forget the details on that and don't have the books on me at the moment.

[wander]

Ha, excuse my naivety of their lifestyle choice! ^^

Yeah, Titan does have that.  XD They don't know what exactly it is either, whether a holo of Muse, an infomorph or what have you. Which apparently is part of the fun of watching, along with the banter of the two hosts. Reminds me what Zone News on youtube could be if it was a real news show.  ;D

Titan has those great things I mentioned too, though voting literally over all kinds of shiz every half hour or face drops in rep is hella pedantic in my book and turns me off the locale a little bit. That's not mentioning the laundry list of security and insurance you need to hire if going there... It's basically redtape the moon at it's worst. But it's damn fun for a quick visit. :)

[AnneReinard]

I will say this interest check IS reaching the natural end. I see that there is a lot of interest (yay! Eclipse Phase is great!) and have some idea bubbling away. I'll probably hold it open for a bit to see what people are interested in from the setting and the like. Somebody brought up to me that it might be a little awkward to have terribly much light-hearted smut whilst working for Firewall - which is a valid point, perhaps. Part of the advantage to being on the adult side though is that any natural smut that goes with the setting comes without as many associated problems to other forums.

Anywho. So. Quick nuts and bolts.

1. I am heavily leaning toward the FATE ruleset at this point. I personally want to give it a shot, in part so I can throw feedback at Posthuman Studios. I also think that the high roll density of standard EP might bog things down more than is optimal for PBP. Also, I love Aspects. Like so much.

2. Similarly, I am leaning toward Mars as an initial environment. One thought process in my head at the moment is that the PCs would be people with unique skill sets that ran pretty afoul of criminal elements in some fashion. Firewall agents could comb through this cold storage of stolen souls (think the Nine Lives cartel and the like) to find potential new Sentinels, resleeving them with promises of a better life and fighting the good fight. I think this blends a start that could be intrinsically tied to the seedier elements of the setting (and thus the seedier smut), while still allowing a lot of openness for character designs. Thoughts?

3. Another quick question for people - is there any particular kinkiness that comes to mind to people when they think of a smutty Eclipse Phase game? Just out of curiosity.

[Crash]

I would like to try out FATE and love aspects as well.  I have no particular kinks and prefer to just explore transhumanity and its effect on sex and sexuality.  I am not a huge fan of Firewall to be honest and find the setting more interesting without it, but that is just a personal preference.

Mars is a fine location to start.

I was thinking an old school noir-ish PI.  Could be used as both a firewall or non-fire wall character.

Other idea is a blogger of some kind.  I do like this second one too.

[Ace Flyer]

I...admit, I'm for once having trouble thinking of a good character idea. Aside from using a female/female-seeming body, I'm...really not sure what I want >_< Would a Lost Generation character be alright?

[ReijiTabibito]

I think Egocasting actually has less impact on players in the FATE ruleset versus the normal ruleset in terms of how it affects their usability. The more gear dependent your character was, the more a sudden egocast would be a swift kick to the junk. Even assuming you go around carry fabber blueprints, there still is the matter of having to get access to a fabber, likely an unrestricted one, and the time on top of that. I must admit - that particular knowledge is based off playing in a campaign where just bout after every adventure we were shunted off somewhere else, doing time restricted missions, where we never were able to get our fabber queue finished off.

True, but consider that groups of sentinels traveling across planets isn't precisely SOP for Firewall - remember, only the proxies work full-time for Firewall; sentinels are jobbers - they have everyday lives that they go about and live until Firewall calls for them.  The Rimward book notes that sentinels operating on Titan can't use doing secret Firewall missions as an excuse for not participating in the Plurality, and the Firewall book goes into detail how difficult it can be to balance both working in the public eye and working for Firewall.

Consider the nature of Firewall servers, too - servers are used to handle specific tasks.  Take the Rishi server; their job is to find, identify, and destroy pockets of exsurgents on Luna (and in the stations outside the kill cordon of Earth).  That's it.  That's all they do.  There are system-wide servers, but they're the exception rather than the rule.

As for 'setting a whole campaign in one location', I am in a degree of agreement. Mars is by far the easiest. Every faction has a presence on the planet fairly intuitively and it even has the TITAN Quarantine Zone right next door AND one of the Pandora Gates on top of that! What more could you ask for? Playing in the Jovian Junta, to me, seems harder than playing something out on Titan or the Main Belt. Mostly, this is due to the discrimination the Junta has as bioconservatives. Not that it rules out interesting stories.

If we're planning on doing the entire campaign in the same relative location, then doesn't that negate the 'Egocasting is a kick in the balls to the more geared' idea?  Let's say Mars ends up being the setting - then all you really need is a vehicle that can haul your equipment from point A to point B on the map, and that's assuming you're crossing great distances - if the entire story takes place in Noctis-Qianjao, then you don't even need that.

And when I said Jupiter, I didn't mean just the Republic.  Callisto, Europa, Locus, Casa Arturo, Exarchia, Lot 49...Jupiter has a lot to offer outside of the usual bag of idiots.


Also, just as a personal aside, I'm not really sure why people have this notion that regular EP has a ton of crunch and FATE doesn't.  The most noted difference I can see is in how the combat is handled, with the latter taking a bit more abstract approach, but as one of the more expert of us on EP (Carnival of the Goat) has pointed out, a good Firewall sentinel does their job, and no one knows they've been there until they're gone.  A great one?  What do you mean someone broke in a year ago?

[AnneReinard]

Indeed. Sentinels are indeed on-call agents who tend to work in a single local area with the exception of a few servers. That being said, I wouldn't call traveling across planets something that isn't SOP for one reason: minimizing information spread. If the trail of something leads off-world, that means Firewall has to choose between contacting other cells (and other servers) for follow-up which exposes the information to more people which exposes the conspiracy to potentially more people. Couple this with the fact that the servers often have rivalries with each other based on the dominant clique and it is frequent that you end up egocasting agents for follow-up rather than passing the information on.

That being said, knowing you'll always be going back to the same home does mean that you can have nice gear stashes at least.

...also, isn't it specifically said that people tend to have their Muses do all their voting on Titan for the most part? Sort of like how Muses basically handle all your rep votes for people, based on some initial pattern recognition.

...and yeah, it likely won't matter too much for what I have planned. I like to build up set pieces rather than go gallivanting around personally. I was just making an observation.

More stuff! I suspected that was the intent, but I don't really lump those all together in my head. The Trojans/Greeks are very distinct from the Jovian Republic, so I file them away in separate storage space. Also, the Junta isn't REALLY idiots. They're basically just expecting the BSG miniseries to happen any day now.

Anywho, for the big thing - why do I feel that FATE has less crunch? Well, EP is really a simulation system at the core. You have skills for every little detail and rules for every little space and equipment for every tiny detail. FATE tends to be somewhat more leaning toward rules medium. When you decide to Shoot something, for example, it is assumed that you have the equipment to do so just as a course of your character. Similar for hacking or the like. And most of the character differentiation, rather than boiled down into a hundred different choices, comes out in just the Aspects. Hacking and combat are definitely the two spaces with the most crunch removal admittedly, but you also have crunch removal from things like Resleeving, Reputation, and the like.

The biggest argument of crunch removal is I could make a FATE character nice and easily by hand. For the standard build, I need to keep a calculator or Excel spreadsheet handy.

And it IS true that a great Firewall Sentinel is never seen. But let's face it - just like in Shadowrun, it's more exciting when things go terribly, terribly wrong.

[ReijiTabibito]

...also, isn't it specifically said that people tend to have their Muses do all their voting on Titan for the most part? Sort of like how Muses basically handle all your rep votes for people, based on some initial pattern recognition.

The typical course of action on Titan is to have your muse follow along with the issues and debates that you are personally interested in, and keep you up to date on what's been happening there recently, and when an issue comes to vote, the actual person will communicate their vote to their muse, who then does the actual voting.

That being said, the fact that your muse is the one who does the actual voting doesn't really come into play when you're out in the Titanian wilderness, triple-digit km from the nearest settlement.  Not unless you're willing to either copy or divest yourself of your muse.

Anywho, for the big thing - why do I feel that FATE has less crunch? Well, EP is really a simulation system at the core. You have skills for every little detail and rules for every little space and equipment for every tiny detail. FATE tends to be somewhat more leaning toward rules medium. When you decide to Shoot something, for example, it is assumed that you have the equipment to do so just as a course of your character. Similar for hacking or the like. And most of the character differentiation, rather than boiled down into a hundred different choices, comes out in just the Aspects. Hacking and combat are definitely the two spaces with the most crunch removal admittedly, but you also have crunch removal from things like Resleeving, Reputation, and the like.

The biggest argument of crunch removal is I could make a FATE character nice and easily by hand. For the standard build, I need to keep a calculator or Excel spreadsheet handy.

It's not really fair to compare character creation processes when talking about crunch removal.  Character creation is something assumed to have been done prior to the game's start, whether it takes 4 minutes or 4 hours.  Unless a group is like mine, where we all sit around the table and take a 6-8 hour session to build all of our characters, character creation isn't what bogs down PbP games.  Eclipse Phase is pretty heavy on the chargen process - about the only other system I would even consider remotely in the same neighborhood is the Hero/Champions system - but the game isn't going to bog down mid-storyline because someone needs to make a character.

Combat, with all of its modifiers, could definitely benefit from abstracting, but a number of the others aren't all that heavy on the mechanics - hacking something, as a general rule, isn't all that difficult unless you end up in an Opposed test against a system's active security.  And even then, a good EP hacker really only needs 3 skill: Interfacing, Infosec, Programming.

And yeah, FATE abstracts a lot of things and leaves individual characterization up to the personal Aspects and stunts of the character - that's kind of my point.  Let's use your example about Shooting in turn.  Shooting means you're equally adept at using stunners as you are with SMGs, shredders, or seeker weapons - and its noted that nearly everyone in the EP universe has some skill with personal defense, due to the recent events of the Fall.  But not everyone's experience is going to be the same - kinetic weapons are noted somewhere as the most common weapon (unless you're going nonlethal, in which case LASERS) still being used in everyday life.

Do the different weapon skills mean that the game becomes more complex?  Sure.  But it also allows for greater variance and differentiation, whereas simply reducing all weapons to a single skill means you're (figuratively) painting with a broader brush.  EP lets you make someone who is a top marksman with kinetic weapons but can't find the front end of a seeker rifle to save their life, whereas FATE loses that distinction.

In theory, this can also apply to Gear (though Gear stunts can help mitigate that).  Yeah, Shooting again means you have weapons, bullets, and spare batteries on hand.  How do you simulate something like Reactive rounds, though?  Or the various smart round options?

[Kunoichi]

1. I am heavily leaning toward the FATE ruleset at this point. I personally want to give it a shot, in part so I can throw feedback at Posthuman Studios. I also think that the high roll density of standard EP might bog things down more than is optimal for PBP. Also, I love Aspects. Like so much.

Considering that they were working on finalizing text and working up their layout back in November, I get the feeling they're probably past the point where feedback on the rules would be helpful.  I have no comment on which version of the rules would be easier to run over pbp since I'm equally inexperienced with both, though.

2. Similarly, I am leaning toward Mars as an initial environment. One thought process in my head at the moment is that the PCs would be people with unique skill sets that ran pretty afoul of criminal elements in some fashion. Firewall agents could comb through this cold storage of stolen souls (think the Nine Lives cartel and the like) to find potential new Sentinels, resleeving them with promises of a better life and fighting the good fight. I think this blends a start that could be intrinsically tied to the seedier elements of the setting (and thus the seedier smut), while still allowing a lot of openness for character designs. Thoughts?

Hmm, that should allow for a rather wide variety of character concepts, then. ^^

3. Another quick question for people - is there any particular kinkiness that comes to mind to people when they think of a smutty Eclipse Phase game? Just out of curiosity.

Well, sex with your own forks immediately springs to mind.  Then there are cybersex simulspaces, and all the BDSM fun one can have with a puppet sock...  Also, everything about the Pleasure Pod morph.

[AnneReinard]

Well, I think ultimately that is the core distinction between rules heavy and rules light roleplaying systems.

A Rules Heavy system lets you take a character concept and boil everything into hard mechanical characteristics of the system. It can be interesting to see how varied you can make a character and how the flaws actually come up in gameplay in ways that you cannot anticipate.

A Rules Light system takes more and more of those mechanical representations of the character and strips them away in favor of addressing them through Aroleplay alone.

They both have their pluses and minuses. I think Rules Light works well if you have a clear vision of a character from the start. The less image you have a character in your head, the less easy it is to fill in the blanks. A Rules Heavy character gives you a thicker framework of what the character can and cannot do - which can help bring up some interesting roleplay to explain things. Fate is somewhat in the middle, ultimately! I'd call it Rules Medium. FAE is probably leaning more to Rules Light.

As for the direct question regarding ammunition, it would be a case-by-case basis. FATE Core, as I recall, gives PCs significant control over the fate of hostiles if they don't surrender - so choosing between lethal/nonlethal ammo on the fly is probably fairly safe. It'd be assumed that your character had that option, if he were the type to go around carrying smart ammo.

Something like Reactive Ammo I would probably treat like a Stunt. For example, it could be something like "Once per conflict, force your opponent to use a Mild Consequence instead of a 2-point stress box on a successful attack with reactive ammunition." Or perhaps it makes more sense to have be something simpler - like shots with this ammunition have "Weapon: 2." I'm not saying this for certain - I really would have to dig into some other FATE rulebooks to see if that is a reasonable Stunt in either case - but that is the general path you would take.

...it is true they are probably well into the typesetting phase, but they DID make substantial changes between first printing of EP and second printing. So it hasn't stopped them before!

[wander]

Alot's happened, so excuse how long this post may get;

Also, just as a personal aside, I'm not really sure why people have this notion that regular EP has a ton of crunch and FATE doesn't.  The most noted difference I can see is in how the combat is handled, with the latter taking a bit more abstract approach, but as one of the more expert of us on EP (Carnival of the Goat) has pointed out, a good Firewall sentinel does their job, and no one knows they've been there until they're gone.  A great one?  What do you mean someone broke in a year ago?

I'm good with the crunch, it's fairly simple actually outside possibly hacking and computery things (never done that aspect of the game though), gear buying pisses me off with the EP rules and doesn't with FATE. I don't mind either system and I actually like the EP one more, though it'll annoy me to have to sort gear out.

As an aside, I mentioned Europa above, it seems a great place... Though I do think you can get more game using Mars as a hub, with potential egocasts to that moon and the other places I gave mention to.

How do you simulate something like Reactive rounds, though?  Or the various smart round options?

I'd say the narrative can do that when a Gear Stunt can't. You could easily paint Reactive rounds as a specific Gear Stunt btw.

Another quick question for people - is there any particular kinkiness that comes to mind to people when they think of a smutty Eclipse Phase game? Just out of curiosity.

Seconded on fork smex and Pleasure Pods, specifically their augment that changes their gender (forgot the name right now). May I also jump in with that morphs can be cloned up to look like anybody if you have the duckets or rep to get that... Having your partner sleeve into a morph that looks like your celeb crush(s) is an awesome thing. :)

[Angie]

Well, anyone who knows me knows I love my synths...

[Aylinas]

Suppose I'll have to take part of this in some way.

[Hexed]

Yesh I always seem to miss the good chatter due to work. :(

System wise I fine with either as I've only been in one con Eclipse Phase game. I am reading the standard book at the moment but I keep getting distracted with those neat stories.

At the moment I'm planning to toss out some sort of techy character. Probably a build/repair with side order of sabotage. Or drones. Drones are fun.


As for kinks... Well given the sizes of the various bodies I'd say size play is a big thing.  Some of the swarm forms might make for  a very... unusual play time. And of course tentacles and drones. The staple of hentai everywhere.

[wander]

+1 tentacles and deep insertions. :)

Perhaps even tentacles with an eyeball glans, y'know... For the extra naughtiness of seeing inside.  ::)

[Re Z L]

1. I am heavily leaning toward the FATE ruleset at this point. I personally want to give it a shot, in part so I can throw feedback at Posthuman Studios. I also think that the high roll density of standard EP might bog things down more than is optimal for PBP. Also, I love Aspects. Like so much.

Frankly I hate the FATE system, so if that's the prevailing wind I'll probably not be joining you all.  Not that I'm concerned, it's your game run what you like, you certainly seem to have plenty of interest regardless  :-)