Eclipse Phase (I have it)

[Alikar]

So it is possible to correct the left bent without too much trouble, then?

Well on the religious thing its a snap.

As for the Jovian Republic that is another matter. They are a large faction of the system and are assumed to be Authoritarian Neocons, who hate modern technology. Personally I'm going to have them simply be a surviving branch of America where each moon was once its own state. That would at least fix the fluff up a bit. As for Titan being the fault of American's Military, I think that making it a general AI intelligence explosion an easier way to do this.

The authors themselves basically believed that the nation states of earth wouldn't have much influence on the areas in the outer solar system because they were two far away. However, when you look at the past of our own history of colonization we see that even small nations can control large swaths of land with little effort. Look at how long Brittain controlled America, I think with the near instantaneous communications that we have now it would be even easier to do this. So my personal plan is to remove some of the governments and factions that exist and replace them with the nation states that would have existed or even better simply add them to the universe as major players.

"I wanted Ben to help me on this mission!"
"But sir...we ARE Ben!"
"What, all of you?"



Though politics and religion are taboo here, I will note that sci-fi by its nature involves itself in the muck of that more than a lot of fantasy does. I can buy Islam as a future monotheism, being currently the second-largest religion and also the fastest-growing...

There are actually numerous claims as to what the world's fastest growing religion is: Claims to be the fastest growing religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, if you are to count different demoniations as their own thing then Pentecoltalism would be the world's fastest grow relgion: http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060424/NEWS/604240374/1039=

Basically they have grown from 1 church to around 1/2 a billion followers in 100 years. Its a very under reported story that many people don't know about because its been a subtle growth. The sad thing is that I just found this out in less than 5 minutes of research, why the authors of EP couldn't do the same thing boogles me.

That's speaking broadly about the genre, though. Totally possible that an EP author had a bit of an axe to grind; certainly they wouldn't be the first.

Agreed and I wish it wasn't the case. I don't wish the author ill will, but I do believe sales will suffer because of these choices. I don't want real world politics in my RP there is too much of that in the real world as it is.

 

[Agamon]

This is a good thread, but you might want to reign the religion and politics talk in (even as civil and game-related as it might be).

This game looks really nifty. I'm not a big into sci-fi RPGs, but I may have to check this out.

 

[Alikar]

This is a good thread, but you might want to reign the religion and politics talk in (even as civil and game-related as it might be).

This game looks really nifty. I'm not a big into sci-fi RPGs, but I may have to check this out.

Well the only reason I brought it up is because its an important part of the game. Personally I wish that they has simply mentioned that the religions existed without degrading them or that the Jovian Republic existed without linking it to modern politics. It would have been very easy to do.

 

[Kez Darksun]

Odd, after reading another thread on the game over at the RPGnet forums it would seem over there it isn't all that big a deal in the game other than just a bit of background material. I think I'll wait until I read the book for myself to judge how the topic is treated and in what context.

 

[Agamon]

Well the only reason I brought it up is because its an important part of the game. Personally I wish that they has simply mentioned that the religions existed without degrading them or that the Jovian Republic existed without linking it to modern politics. It would have been very easy to do.

Yeah, bringing it up was a good idea. Debating specifics is the problem. But I'm no mod, so take the warning with a grain of salt.

And yeah, it maybe would have been more accessable to more people if they'd left such things more open-ended and allowed individual GMs to do with it as they will. Like you say, that can still be done (more so with the religion than the faction), but it's always easier to do an addition than an addition by subtraction.

 

[RobBoyle]

Hey everyone, I'm one of the co-creators of Eclipse Phase. I just wanted to make the quick note that it is now available for PDF and pre-orders. See EP Pre-Orders, PDF, and Bundle | Eclipse Phase

Also, Alikar, I wanted to say thanks for the review. I can't say I think it's all that accurate or respectful to characterize some of our material as "bigotry" or a "hate piece" (you're talking about a couple hundred words in a 400 page book, which is hardly a pervasive theme), but I'm glad that you took the time to write up your thoughts both positive and negative.

While I certainly don't expect everyone to agree on subjects related to religion and politics, this is one of the great things about games like EP and the sci-fi genre and RPGs in general in that they allow for the exploration of serious material if this is what the GM and players want. If people care to discuss this further I made a blog post over at our website about some of the issues Alikar (and others have) raised, so as to allow players to discuss these types of issues without violating any rules on sites like EN World that discourage religious and political themes:
Religion and Nations in EP | Eclipse Phase

Ultimately of course, if you don't like the way we did things, by all means change it in your game, and post your version using our Creative Commons license