Eclipse Phase Pregenerated Characters

[rkarnes]

I would like to play Eclipse Phase at my LFGS, and to start I want to use pregenerated characters that I can provide people with. Going through the complicated character generation process is tough for a group of players who don't own the book, and don't know if they like the game.

But I can't find good, printable characters for Eclipse Phase. There are several with colorful glossy backgrounds that look faded and ugly when printed in black & white.

I think that the biggest problem with Eclipse Phase is being too busy. The book is good looking, but not organized as well as I would like. The PDF is worse, with all the images on every page slowing down my computer. The pregenerated characters provided in the book are too busy, and lack some basic functionality. There is no place to write down damage, stress, wounds or trauma.

Has anyone else who's played Eclipse Phase found a good resource for pregenerated characters?

EDIT: This post should be useful, too; Here's a link to Rob Boyle's blog, where he encourages people to download and share the PDFs and support their work if you enjoy it. Also, here's a compilation of all the (too busy) pregenerated characters.

 

[Treebore]

I just copy the pre gens over to the standard black and white character sheets.

 

[JustinAlexander]

Has anyone else who's played Eclipse Phase found a good resource for pregenerated characters?

Awhile back I used Adobe Acrobat to strip out the graphics from the pregenerated characters. Seeing your post, I've gone ahead and posted them over here on the Alexandrian.

There's still some color in those files, but based on experience I can testify that printing them in grayscale will give you something perfectly legible that won't waste a lot of ink.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A lot of the official Eclipse phase PDFs have layers you can turn off. You have to open the side-bar in Acrobat and you'll see an icon that looks like a couple of stacked rectangles. You can use that to turn off some of the images and backgrounds.

Be sure to check the official pregens. There was a rule change on initiative at some point and there are pregens with initiatives of 60 instead of 6. I noticed it this weekend. I also saw pregens that have the wrong skill points. The glaring flaw was native language being too low.

Some of the pregens have a fairly good amount of left over cash, up to 4,000cr. There's a lot of decent Low & Moderate items that can customize a character. Heck, ablative armor patches are Trivial and well worth the cash.

 

[rkarnes]

A lot of the official Eclipse phase PDFs have layers you can turn off. You have to open the side-bar in Acrobat and you'll see an icon that looks like a couple of stacked rectangles. You can use that to turn off some of the images and backgrounds.

I thought of that, and tried disabling layers, but not all the layers were labeled, a lot of the layers had vital stuff included, and it was a pretty inelegant solution. Someone with more PDF-fu could have figured out (and did), but not me.

Be sure to check the official pregens. There was a rule change on initiative at some point and there are pregens with initiatives of 60 instead of 6. I noticed it this weekend. I also saw pregens that have the wrong skill points. The glaring flaw was native language being too low.

Some of the pregens have a fairly good amount of left over cash, up to 4,000cr. There's a lot of decent Low & Moderate items that can customize a character. Heck, ablative armor patches are Trivial and well worth the cash.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll be sure to go over the five I choose for our demo with a fine-toothed comb.

 

[Karak]

Is Eclipse Phase actually fun? I admit I had the same issue with the book.

 

[Treebore]

Is Eclipse Phase actually fun? I admit I had the same issue with th ebook.

We had enough fun with it we played it every Friday for over 5 months and I bought all the books.

 

[JustinAlexander]

Is Eclipse Phase actually fun? I admit I had the same issue with th ebook.

It's a ton of fun, but it can be a tough nut to crack because it requires early player buy-in for them to really "get" the setting. It helps if your players are already familiar with transhuman ideas.

My suggestion if you're looking for an easy on-ramp into the setting: A gatecrashing campaign where each adventure has the PCs jumping through a Pandora Gate. It somewhat "isolates" them from the wider setting and its cultural implications, allowing the GM to slowly introduce those elements through the game play.

 

[rkarnes]

I will tell you that one of the major mechanics of the game requires players perform basic arithmetic, and that the arithmetic depends on what exactly you're trying to do. Players who want a fast, simple, and clean system that's easy to learn should look elsewhere. If you want a deep and flavorful game to be your group's main course, then this could do the trick.

 

[JustinAlexander]

I will tell you that one of the major mechanics of the game requires players perform basic arithmetic, and that the arithmetic depends on what exactly you're trying to do.

What mechanic are you thinking of?