Eclipse Phase (I have it)

[Alikar]

So I managed to be one of the lucky few at Gencon to pick up the Eclipse Phase book. Here is my short review of the game, but please note I have not yet had time to fully read the book and this mostly consists of skimming.

I've also done a Character Creation Thread here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/260785-eclipse-phase-character-creation.html

Base Mechanic:
In the most basic terms you could look at Eclipse Phase as a redone version of Shadow Run, but the more you look into the book the more that starts to fall away. The first major difference between the two is the dice mechanic (d100), which is a roll under system. You score crits with double numbers (11,22,33) and they are considered a success or failure depending on if you would have normally succeeded with that number. A 00 is always a success and a 99 is always a failure, oddly enough both are crits.

Character Creation
Tthere are no races in Eclipse Phase, since you can change bodies at will it doesn't matter what you were born as only what you are at the moment. With that in mind backgrounds such as Drifter, Lost, Hyperelite, Infolife, Lunar, Socialite, etc give you your advantages and disadvantages. These basically effect positively and negatively your skills. You then get 105 points to distribute among your 7 aptitudes which make up your mental stats. After you have determined these you get 1000 Character points for everything from skills to credits to Moxie. Moxie is basically edge, but it does a few more things. Next a character will choose which Morph (body) to use at the start of the game. Each of which grants you certain advantages, but cost various character points to own. Finally you can then purchase traits which are your normal things like Ambidextrous, danger sense, faster learner and stuff like that.

Sub Systems
Eclipse Phase does not contain subsystems like Shadow Run, instead Psi and Hacking are built into the main system. Psi is Eclipse Phase's version of magic, which can only affect people at a short range or touch. It also primarily affects the mind of an opponent or self. Don't expect to summon monster or throw fire balls with this, its very subtle. Hacking is no longer a separate subsystem you simply use your same stats on the net as in person, which is very nice.

Fluff
Overall the fluff seems to be pretty solid. Following a darker path of a singularity humanity was nearly wipped out by Sientiant AIs called TITANs (Which the USA made (Which is terribly unoriginal.)) and now hovers around only 500 million people in the solar system. Now humanity is trying to recover from what they call the Fall, which was ten years ago. Most people live either on the Moon or Mars with various other colonies out in the solar system. These consist of City States run by corporations. (What is interesting is how similar this fluff is to the Alpha Omega RPG, but instead of being on Earth its in space.) The main point of the game is that your character works for a secret organization called Firewall which is supposed to protect humanity from internal or external threats. So instead of running for one of many corporations the fluff is more orientated for you working for Firewall, but it does outline many other organizations and city states so it doesn't limit you to just Firewall.

There is currently one Alien race that humanity has encountered, a race of fungus snail like creatures that claim to represent a large number of other races. The race is currently peaceful and does not appear to have craft faster than the speed of light, but their frequent appearances lead many to speculate that they have the technology. Mostly the Factors, as the are called, try to steer humanity away from high level AI otherwise they seem content to simply watch humanity grow.

There are a few small issues with the fluff, such as the author's bigotry against certain religious groups showing through and the strange and unexplained dissapearance of major nation states when the fall occurred, but most of these fluff issues are easily ignored and replaced with less inconsistent ideas.

Summary
Overall its a good book with some slight rough edges. Ironically I may just not run with the main fluff at all since this book is nearly perfect for a Mass Effect conversion all I need to do is replace morphs with races and its basically all done for me.

If you have any questions just ask and I'll see if I can answer them.

 

[kitsune9]

So I managed to be one of the lucky few at Gencon to pick up the Eclipse Phase book. Here is my short review of the game, but please note I have not yet had time to fully read the book and this mostly consists of skimming.

Base Mechanic:
In the most basic terms you could look at Eclipse Phase as a redone version of Shadow Run, but the more you look into the book the more that starts to fall away. The first major difference between the two is the dice mechanic (d100), which is a roll under system. You score crits with double numbers (11,22,33) and they are considered a success or failure depending on if you would have normally succeeded with that number. A 00 is always a success and a 99 is always a failure, oddly enough both are crits.

Character Creation
Tthere are no races in Eclipse Phase, since you can change bodies at will it doesn't matter what you were born as only what you are at the moment. With that in mind backgrounds such as Drifter, Lost, Hyperelite, Infolife, Lunar, Socialite, etc give you your advantages and disadvantages. These basically effect positively and negatively your skills. You then get 105 points to distribute among your 7 aptitudes which make up your mental stats. After you have determined these you get 1000 Character points for everything from skills to credits to Moxie. Moxie is basically edge, but it does a few more things. Next a character will choose which Morph (body) to use at the start of the game. Each of which grants you certain advantages, but cost various character points to own. Finally you can then purchase traits which are your normal things like Ambidextrous, danger sense, faster learner and stuff like that.

Sub Systems
Eclipse Phase does not contain subsystems like Shadow Run, instead Psi and Hacking are built into the main system. Psi is Eclipse Phase's version of magic, which can only affect people at a short range or touch. It also primarily affects the mind of an opponent or self. Don't expect to summon monster or throw fire balls with this, its very subtle. Hacking is no longer a separate subsystem you simply use your same stats on the net as in person, which is very nice.

Fluff
Overall the fluff seems to be pretty solid. Following a darker path of a singularity humanity was nearly wipped out by Sientiant AIs called TITANs (Which the USA made (Which is terribly unoriginal.)) and now hovers around only 500 million people in the solar system. Now humanity is trying to recover from what they call the Fall, which was ten years ago. Most people live either on the Moon or Mars with various other colonies out in the solar system. These consist of City States run by corporations. (What is interesting is how similar this fluff is to the Alpha Omega RPG, but instead of being on Earth its in space.) The main point of the game is that your character works for a secret organization called Firewall which is supposed to protect humanity from internal or external threats. So instead of running for one of many corporations the fluff is more orientated for you working for Firewall, but it does outline many other organizations and city states so it doesn't limit you to just Firewall.

There is currently one Alien race that humanity has encountered, a race of fungus snail like creatures that claim to represent a large number of other races. The race is currently peaceful and does not appear to have craft faster than the speed of light, but their frequent appearances lead many to speculate that they have the technology. Mostly the Factors, as the are called, try to steer humanity away from high level AI otherwise they seem content to simply watch humanity grow.

There are a few small issues with the fluff, such as the author's bigotry against certain religious groups showing through and the strange and unexplained dissapearance of major nation states when the fall occurred, but most of these fluff issues are easily ignored and replaced with less inconsistent ideas.

Summary
Overall its a good book with some slight rough edges. Ironically I may just not run with the main fluff at all since this book is nearly perfect for a Mass Effect conversion all I need to do is replace morphs with races and its basically all done for me.

If you have any questions just ask and I'll see if I can answer them.

Thanks for the info. Aaron Williams who does Nodwick mentioned this game though I couldn't gleam too much of it at the time. It looks really cool.

 

[Alikar]

Thanks for the info. Aaron Williams who does Nodwick mentioned this game though I couldn't gleam too much of it at the time. It looks really cool.

Sure thing. Also there are Prometheans (Holy Mass Effect batman) in the fluff. They are the good AI that were secretly built by other groups before the Titans trashed the earth. Apparently they are still around and trying to work with the major powers of humanity.

I should also note that alot of the fluff is open ended, they give a number of different possibilities for why the Titans left Earth which is nice to have.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

How are NPCs/Enemies handled? Are they basically done up like PCs and the GM has to determine on his own how balanced they are, or is there some amount of measuring in the mechanics?

 

[weem]

I'm curious about some of the combat mechanics...

...specifically, is it based on a grid system (like 4e) where you pretty much need a battlemat of sorts?

and also, how easy/difficult will 'encounter' building be? Is there help for that, for example?

Thanks!

 

[Andor]

Who are the generic foes set up to be and how do you deal with them? Can it run the gamut from stealth and guile to "This calls for the subtle approach. Use the tactical nuke."

 

[Alikar]

How are NPCs/Enemies handled? Are they basically done up like PCs and the GM has to determine on his own how balanced they are, or is there some amount of measuring in the mechanics?

As far as I can tell this does not exist. In fact NPCs in general are few and far between in the book. Most of the NPCs in the book are for strange things like nano swarms, advanced robots, and aliens. I'm guessing that they expect you to construct most of your NPCs from scratch. Which is rather unfortunate. As for how to balance them I'm guessing an NPCs death rating would be a good way to do so. Basically a death rating is how much damage an NPC can take before dying. For non combat since its a percentile system it would be fairly easy to simply measure what the players are capable of and giving NPCs stats around their general level.

I'm curious about some of the combat mechanics...

...specifically, is it based on a grid system (like 4e) where you pretty much need a battlemat of sorts?

and also, how easy/difficult will 'encounter' building be? Is there help for that, for example?

Thanks!

It looks like its a light grid system. Such that you could easily run without a grid, but it would definitely help if you had one. Encounter building is incredibly loose. To the point that I can't find rules for it yet, but I have not read the book in very great detail so maybe I'm missing something.

Who are the generic foes set up to be and how do you deal with them? Can it run the gamut from stealth and guile to "This calls for the subtle approach. Use the tactical nuke."

From what I can tell you will fight other characters built with the same system as the PCs. NPCs are mainly listed for weird things. Hopefully they will release an NPC book or at least something on their website for NPCs. As a GM expect to make many many characters from scratch for your PCs to fight/interact with. As for the types of foes themselves there is not reason why you couldn't do any of that, you just need to make it yourself.

 

[weem]

Thanks for those answers, much appreciated

Next and last question...

After you have determined these you get 1000 Character points for everything from skills to credits to Moxie.

I love having a lot to choose from / a lot of options - is there a large number of skills etc to choose from? It looks like this will be one of the major ways (as well as your background selection) to differentiate one character from another, so I'm curious just how many options there are (don't need a specific number... "a lot", or "not many" is fine, etc).

Thanks again!

 

[Hjorimir]

I'm very interested in this game. Thanks a ton, Alikar.

On the topic of generating PCs/NPCs. Have you created one from scratch yet? If so, how long do you think it takes? I'm talking just base mechanics here (I know players can spend countless hours fleshing out personalities and such).

 

[Alikar]

Thanks for those answers, much appreciated

Next and last question...

I love having a lot to choose from / a lot of options - is there a large number of skills etc to choose from? It looks like this will be one of the major ways (as well as your background selection) to differentiate one character from another, so I'm curious just how many options there are (don't need a specific number... "a lot", or "not many" is fine, etc).

Thanks again!

There are over 70 skills to chose from and a decent number of Backgrounds, Morphs, Talents, and Psi powers. It should not be hard to make a unique character.

I'm very interested in this game. Thanks a ton, Alikar.

On the topic of generating PCs/NPCs. Have you created one from scratch yet? If so, how long do you think it takes? I'm talking just base mechanics here (I know players can spend countless hours fleshing out personalities and such).

I have not yet. It looks like a fairly easy process though. I'll see if I can try and do it within the next few days, I got to get out of this crazy Gencon place first.