Eclipse Phase: Sexy

[SkidAce]

I like idea #3. Can live with idea #1, kinda cool for a campaign twist.

Idea #2 is an ok idea for a single story arc with a reason for it, but I wouldn't like it for all campaigns.

Still, 2 outta 3 and all that.

 

[Cadfan]

Well, perhaps I'm the only person who doesn't like the "can just go ahead and restat" sort of thing.

But then, I don't see changing characters out to be much of a problem. a character should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. After the end, it is time to go on to something else, someone new in more than just what they can do tactically.

Normally, I would agree with you. But in a game about transhumans, the ability to download into a new body with new abilities is really appropriate. Its kind of like how I normally dislike characters easily coming back from the dead, but in a game about zombies, I'd be cool with it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Normally, I would agree with you. But in a game about transhumans, the ability to download into a new body with new abilities is really appropriate. Its kind of like how I normally dislike characters easily coming back from the dead, but in a game about zombies, I'd be cool with it.

Yupadoodle. It's all about the meta-justification for it, I think. If it's something that makes sense and is integral to the setting/genre/whatever, you can get away with it.

The neat trick would be to translate that into something that doesn't depend on the concept of transhumans to work, methinks, like the "Dream Game" above (kind of sounds like Psychonauts to me. )

I kind of like it because it solves a gameplay problem (players don't like it when they can't play their characters anymore) with an essentially fluff-based rule (your mind is independent of your body). It reinforces the feel of the fluff while simultaneously being an effective mechanic. I love it when a system comes together and works in harmony like that.

 

[coyote6]

Yeah, downloading consciousness is a pretty common part of transhuman settings. I want to see how well you could run an Altered Carbon-style game with EP.

(Hmm, in EP, do you get EP or XP?)

 

[weem]

This cool - been looking (recently) for a good sf game so may need to give this one a whirl - love the OGL aspect as well

 

[Fifth Element]

Save points?! Blargh! Video-gamey!!!

Sounds neat.

 

[Cadfan]

I also should give props to their "sci fi writers to watch" section. Usually these suck. Theirs doesn't. They picked up on Robert Morgan, which was pretty necessary. Takeshi Kovacs almost defines the sleeve-jumping transhuman subgenre. They missed Neal Asher, though. And John C Wright's "The Golden Age" series, which, while it has some serious flaws (creeping Ayn Rand-ism), is still a phenomenally well done effort at designing and describing a universe that isn't just post singularity, its post singularity at least eight times over, each one of which gave birth to at least one totally new form of human derived sentience.

 

[avin]

Similar to the above, but solving the problem of character death. 4e just tries to not kill you very often (and provides easy resurrection when you can die), FFZ has Safe Crystals, and EP has boot-able characters. I like the trend.

If I remember well GURPS had rules for that for a long time already... (?)

I like it anyway. Lots of Ghost in the Shell in it.

 

[Crothian]

Paranoia give you Clones so the idea of having rules to solve character death has been around a while.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Someone on this forum recommended a book to me called Altered Carbon, which has a lot of really neat ideas about a world where your mind can simply be translated into electronic form and then downloaded, both into other bodies but also into computer systems and even synthetic bodies. I thought it was really fascinating, and this looks to have some similar ideas in it. The only thing is that their sample character sheet was a bit...daunting. On the plus side, uplifted animals!