[Actual Play] Eclipse on Extropia
Players: Me, Basil, Leon, and Silas
System: Eclipse Phase
GM: Mike Parker
So you know what's not brilliant? Trying to write Actual Play content almost a week after the play.
That's me all over.
I've been intrigued by Eclipse Phase since I saw the first marketing for it online. As I think I've mentioned before, it covers lots of science fiction material that I find endlessly fascinating - transhumanism, post-humanism, animal uplifts, brain-taping, approaches to immortality, post-scarcity societies, terraforming, and of course everything that can go wrong with those things.
In Eclipse Phase, a bunch of AIs hit the point where they were smarter than humanity, and tried to wipe us out. They almost succeeded. But humanity has been through worse (literally, though not as planned out or tactical), and so we survive.
The normal character in Eclipse Phase has a "cortical stack," a small, grape-sized device in the base of their spine that allows them to transfer their consciousness from body to body. Most also have a "back-up" of this stack, in case it is destroyed or lost (or stolen. . .)
Characters normally work for a group called "Firewall," that wants to ensure humans don't become extinct, regardless of what form they may take.
And so . . .
We were a Fury (an Amazon type body, the stereotype from bad movies, not the real life one breasted kind; and the gun bunny); an uplifted Ocotpus (not quite certain what his specialty was); a Menton (a body with maximized intellectual capacity); and an Olympian (as awesome as it sounds.)
We were sent to investigate a company on a habitat called Extropia. We didn't have much data beyond that, except that Firewall thought they were up to something. There was a lot of info gathering - not my character's strong point, since I was the gun bunny. I did accompany them on a few trips, even when they created duplicates of their psyches (called "Forks") and sent them off on a pure info/digital mission.
Our group discovered a zombie virus sort of nanotech on a distant laboratory that had been digitally transmitted back to the Extropian company. (Things like this happen in Eclipse Phase.)
Long story short, before we were done some kind of terrorist attack happened on Extropia, causing three of their nuclear reactors to become unshielded. (Radiation, btw, causes the nanotech to mutate more quickly, and to evolve more quickly). We raced to save the remaining reactor, and found a contact of mine trying to organize security forces. One of his underlings incapacitated him, so I took out the gun I had and combat broke out. Someone shot our Olympian (who had, in their defense, shot first), so I liquidated him (literally), and later, when one of them ran away, I destroyed his leg.
We saved my contact ("Stan"), and eventually discovered we had to abandon this habitat (which apparently houses 100 million people) to the plague. We did get the cortical stacks of many of the terrorists, including some who we thought were leaders. And we managed to warn Firewall about the dangers in Extropia. So in many ways, it was a pyrrhic victory, rather than a total loss.
What Rocked
1. Early on, we made connection rolls to see if we knew anyone on the station who could help us. I rolled and then made up "Stan," who worked security on Extropia. Mike let me continue to use Stan, and even worked him into the plot at the end, which is awesome. (I hate the "Okay, you meet nameless contacts" outcome. I try to not use that as a GM, even though sometimes I do for brevity.)
2. Mike knew the system, and used all of it, so that even though it looks like we had very low skills in some places, we were all hypercompetent in our areas of expertise and in related fields. It was awesome when I pulled out my big gun and realized that I was the badass on the field.
3. I don't know about the others, but I had skills in things like "Psychosurgery," which was manipulating other people's "Egos" (digital personalities) directly, and got to use it to help others.
4. I have a better feeling for Eclipse Phase, now.
What Could Have Been Better
1. Game intro seemed to go on forever, but I'm not sure how to fix that either. I sometimes do this as well. It must be the plague of not using super popular systems that have any degree of complexity.
2. Apparently, one of the players had recently received bad medical news. A related topic came up, he tried to share (looking for connections and such, like people do in times of tragedy), but it just served to make the game briefly uncomfortable. Not out of calloussness, more just like it felt we were blind-sided. (At least I did.)
3. The story itself seemed aimed to either be a tragedy or a pyrrhic victory - which I don't mind, but . . . I dunno.
System: Eclipse Phase
GM: Mike Parker
So you know what's not brilliant? Trying to write Actual Play content almost a week after the play.
That's me all over.
I've been intrigued by Eclipse Phase since I saw the first marketing for it online. As I think I've mentioned before, it covers lots of science fiction material that I find endlessly fascinating - transhumanism, post-humanism, animal uplifts, brain-taping, approaches to immortality, post-scarcity societies, terraforming, and of course everything that can go wrong with those things.
In Eclipse Phase, a bunch of AIs hit the point where they were smarter than humanity, and tried to wipe us out. They almost succeeded. But humanity has been through worse (literally, though not as planned out or tactical), and so we survive.
The normal character in Eclipse Phase has a "cortical stack," a small, grape-sized device in the base of their spine that allows them to transfer their consciousness from body to body. Most also have a "back-up" of this stack, in case it is destroyed or lost (or stolen. . .)
Characters normally work for a group called "Firewall," that wants to ensure humans don't become extinct, regardless of what form they may take.
And so . . .
We were a Fury (an Amazon type body, the stereotype from bad movies, not the real life one breasted kind; and the gun bunny); an uplifted Ocotpus (not quite certain what his specialty was); a Menton (a body with maximized intellectual capacity); and an Olympian (as awesome as it sounds.)
We were sent to investigate a company on a habitat called Extropia. We didn't have much data beyond that, except that Firewall thought they were up to something. There was a lot of info gathering - not my character's strong point, since I was the gun bunny. I did accompany them on a few trips, even when they created duplicates of their psyches (called "Forks") and sent them off on a pure info/digital mission.
Our group discovered a zombie virus sort of nanotech on a distant laboratory that had been digitally transmitted back to the Extropian company. (Things like this happen in Eclipse Phase.)
Long story short, before we were done some kind of terrorist attack happened on Extropia, causing three of their nuclear reactors to become unshielded. (Radiation, btw, causes the nanotech to mutate more quickly, and to evolve more quickly). We raced to save the remaining reactor, and found a contact of mine trying to organize security forces. One of his underlings incapacitated him, so I took out the gun I had and combat broke out. Someone shot our Olympian (who had, in their defense, shot first), so I liquidated him (literally), and later, when one of them ran away, I destroyed his leg.
We saved my contact ("Stan"), and eventually discovered we had to abandon this habitat (which apparently houses 100 million people) to the plague. We did get the cortical stacks of many of the terrorists, including some who we thought were leaders. And we managed to warn Firewall about the dangers in Extropia. So in many ways, it was a pyrrhic victory, rather than a total loss.
What Rocked
1. Early on, we made connection rolls to see if we knew anyone on the station who could help us. I rolled and then made up "Stan," who worked security on Extropia. Mike let me continue to use Stan, and even worked him into the plot at the end, which is awesome. (I hate the "Okay, you meet nameless contacts" outcome. I try to not use that as a GM, even though sometimes I do for brevity.)
2. Mike knew the system, and used all of it, so that even though it looks like we had very low skills in some places, we were all hypercompetent in our areas of expertise and in related fields. It was awesome when I pulled out my big gun and realized that I was the badass on the field.
3. I don't know about the others, but I had skills in things like "Psychosurgery," which was manipulating other people's "Egos" (digital personalities) directly, and got to use it to help others.
4. I have a better feeling for Eclipse Phase, now.
What Could Have Been Better
1. Game intro seemed to go on forever, but I'm not sure how to fix that either. I sometimes do this as well. It must be the plague of not using super popular systems that have any degree of complexity.
2. Apparently, one of the players had recently received bad medical news. A related topic came up, he tried to share (looking for connections and such, like people do in times of tragedy), but it just served to make the game briefly uncomfortable. Not out of calloussness, more just like it felt we were blind-sided. (At least I did.)
3. The story itself seemed aimed to either be a tragedy or a pyrrhic victory - which I don't mind, but . . . I dunno.