Game Review: Eclipe Phase RPG (minimal review, more later)

Eclipse Phase is a transhuman sci-fi horror RPG set in the far future after the Fall of Earth. It features cyber- and nano-technologies, conspiracy, politics, and horror as well as interesting examinations of what conciousness is, about what identity is, and the meaning of mortality, and about what means anything in a world where you can 're-sleeve' into a new and very different sort of body. It also tackles Existential Risk.


In reading Eclipse Phase http://www.eclipsephase.com/, I did find the themes interesting.


It seems to be a game of the far future, where humanity's factions had a little war with some AIs. I'm not sure anybody won, but it resulted in turning Earth into a wasteland, leaving the remains of humanity scattered beyond.


It is a transhuman game, which is another way of saying the mind is data - it can be hacked, uploaded, memory wiped, etc. Bodies are a matter of money and form is much less limited than you'd think. There are also uplifted species like octopi who play a role in the transhuman society of the future.


Transhumanity, what's left of it, is under threat from various alien, human, and perhaps supernatural threats, as well as the AIs and their nanos. Your characters take the role of agents of Firewall, an agency ostensibly devoted to saving what is left of transhumanity from various threats. Of course, the game has a conspiratorial feel, so maybe you can't even trust Firewall or your team-mates entirely.


One of the interesting aspects of being able to 'resleeve' (have your mind downloaded into a new body) is that the game can have a high mortality rate and still not actually kill a character. This is interesting from a gaming perspective. You might lose experience or memories since the last backup, you might get a different or crappier body, but you are back and ready to roll.


This also goes well with the horror part - many of the ways to die are gruesome or a bit scary conceptually. Another of the game's themes is horror. There are nanos that can disolve a body, there are headhunters bots looking for your cortical stack, and there are things far worse than that out there in the dark or in the messed up remanants of Earth.


The game is based on the Unisystem RPG system. I have not yet had much time to look closely at the mechanics, mostly just theme and atmospherics, but I am told that Unisystem is a bit crunchy and detail oriented.


From a GMing perspective, its interesting to envision a game other than Paranoia where mortality is frequent, but not all that limiting to story advancement or player development. It is a dark world, with dark undertones and overtones. But it could be a lot of fun to play.


For some background on Transhumanism:

An article

Wiki



I think if you like Stephen Barnes, Richard Morgan, or William Gibson, there's something in here for you. A little Lovecraft thrown in for a good measure.

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Session Report: Jambo and Factory Manager

Had a chance to play Jambo Monday night. It's a two player card game involving buying and selling wares for $. There are also a variety of cards that help you build and engine to get and sell the wares you need to make a profit - some allow spelunking the deck for demand cards, others cycle cards, others trade cards for wares or vice versa, some trade wares for wares of another type, some trade money for wares, and so on. Your objective is to have the most money.

You need to play a game to see the cards to get a feel for what is possible. The game ends when someone has $60, but the other guy gets a turn and may snatch victory from the person ending the game. I got to $52, then had a bit of very bad luck with a card auction (I drew three cards, the package of which would constitute a possible net gain of about $41 minus purchase price to my foe and which did virtually nothing for me.... but once they were out there, it was necessary to bid high to prevent him getting them).

So, some cards can be pretty swingy under the right/wrong circumstances, but if I hadn't played the offending card and drawn demand cards my opponent was most ready to fill, I think I'd have won, even with a smaller market stand (he drew most of the auxilliary market add-on cards).

Worth another play anyway. More depth than Lost Cities, longer to play, maybe more fun or maybe not.

Then we played Factory Manager, from the Power Grid folks. This is a game about growing your factory's capabilities (more units of output, more and better automation, energy and manpower management) through purchases of better robots, better machines, power management systems, control rooms, and additional warehouse space. Meanwhile, the prices of energy rise and your turn-by-turn income will tend to as well (as you increase warehouse and industrial output).

It is interesting because the energy rate of increase is a bit hard to predict, some of the most expensive systems you can buy late in the game may not pay themselves off (Lorry actually had a final turn where the best action for him was to operate as-is with no further changes), and your income is determined by the lesser of your warehousing and your industrial output (so managing this balance is key).

You also have manpower management, to install new machines, to remove old ones, to operate machines (but not robots, power systems, or control rooms), and the available labour pool (unallocated) controls the number of new machines/systems that come available in the progressing market turn-to-turn.

So you have to manage in such a way as to coordinate your output, your power requirements, your manpower usage, the need to keep men free for equipment buying/installing, and do all of this with an eye to profit optimization.

I managed to handily beat the daylights out of my foe as he tried to snatch up all the cheap warehousing. That did mean I had to buy the expensive warehousing, but it has high capacity and doesn't eat up much of your factory space. In the end, the fact he had inefficient systems he needed to demolish (consuming actions) was the death of him.

I do not believe this is a game (in two player, 5 player has a different dynamic) where running the market on a particular type of system ends up being wise. This game is all about dynamic balance and building your own best engine. Don't worry much about the other guy, except for keeping an eye on the systems he puts into the market for purchase.

The other dimension is initiative is bid upon with available labour from the pool. First initiative buys first from the market. Later initiatives may get cost discounts when shopping. So figuring out where you want to go (especially in multi-player) is an interesting dilemna.

It seems to be a well thought out game capable of being played in about 90 minutes (the 60 minutes they claim is optimistic). It probably takes 15 minutes to setup though.

Neverwinter Nights 2: To Game or Not To Game? I think I'm in!

I have a friend who lives in the rural areas near my folks place and plays NWN2 online in a persistent world. Said friend, Chris, is interested in the idea of adventuring with some other folks including me and any friends I care to convince. He is willing to roll a new PC just for the purpose and I am sorely tempted.

The General information he has provided:

WN2 version: 1.023 (1765) MotB and SoZ expansions.
 

I also use:
Client Extension version 1.0.0.13 - built Jan 19 2010 23:57:39
Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Skywing.

This release is paired with game build 1765.
 

see: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Other.Detail&id=231

I play on Baldurs Gate the Sword Coast Chronicles

forum: http://bgtscc.fomwaa.com/forum/
my forum name is cwhit

Server is in gamespy RolePlay... sort by module and go to the one with Module name BG_BETA_9
The server name is always blank for me I dunno why.
The "Direct Connect" address is 216.18.23.82
my login/Character names are: cwhit/Dante Rader. 
I am a human 29th level Rog 18 Rgr 9 SD 3

On nightly, 10-12 pm EST. 

To do this, I would need to:

1. Acquire new hard drive (necessary for storage space anyway). 
2. Acquire compatible copy of NWN and expansions.
3. Arrange times to be online for some group questing with 'The Party'. 

So, the question is:

Who is in for some online adventuring?

My time frame for initiating this plan is probably late third/early fourth week of May.

So, let me know if you want in. If so, I will work on organizing a group of us and trying to see people get the right software in place.

TomB

The Art and Science of Gamemastery: Lesson 1 - Playing What Motivates You

Having played RPGs for the better part of 28 years now (wow....), and having run about a dozen long running campaigns (one upwards of 20 years, but mostly active for about 15, the others in the 0.5 - 4 year range, not counting piles of little died-a-borning versions), I think I've developed some insights into Game Mastering.

So I'm going to do a series of brief musings on things I've learned along the way.

Lesson 1 - Play What Motivates You

The GM is the person with the most invested (emotionally, financially, and temporally) in any campaign. He has to be to spend the time required to put on a good campaign. If his interest wanes or his will falters, the campaign may well collapse.

The GM has to want to spent easily 200% extra time over and above playing the game to work on events, to track things that happened, to supervise book-keeping, etc. Of course, you can cut that if you use a pre-written story arc in some modules, but even then you'd better spend time familiarizing yourself with the material, the enemies, etc.

Players can show up without a character sheet, without dice, be half asleep (or entirely asleep if they are a Bugbear) at the table, and the GM is supposed to handle these situations without batting an eyelash. The GM, on the other hand, had better not show up groggy, unprepared, without dice, without his modules, etc. or there will be a ruckus.

So on the GM falls the larger part of the burden. I'm not saying that a campaign can work without motivated and involved players. It can't. The players are critical to the success of the campaign and if they are into the game, it is far more fun for everyone including the GM. But the GM has to be as into it and commit more time and effort.

So, the GM has to love the game he's putting on. He may not love everything about it (GMs never do - they think they could always do it better, differently, or in some more exciting fashion or they have this or that gripe with the rules, often tweaking to remedy the supposed flaws). But he has to, overall, love the game.

My observation has been that I always end up GMing the sorts of games I would want to play in. I think that is true of most GMs, allowing for a certain amount of flexibility to accomodate some of the wishes of the players.

So, GMs will end up running games they'd like to play. And that is mostly a good thing as long as it is not taken to extremes. It's a necessary thing to maintain the enthusiasm and the work session after session, some of which are guaranteed not to come up happily for all and not everyone is a home run. Some end up triple play blowouts.


The GM will always see his world more clearly and be more interested in it than his players. This is not to say the players will not be interested or cannot grasp some of what the GM is trying to convey to them, but the image can never be transferred whole cloth.

The GM's style of running a game is as much derived from this truth as his storyline is. This includes pacing, the role of NPCs and players in the World, how Epic or Gritty the game is, the subject matter of adventures, the sorts of characters he encourages, the sorts of scenes that he sets, and the general tone and flavour of everything in the game.

If the GM likes Space Opera, you may get a dose of Star Wars or Dune. If he like something pulpier with a common touch, you may get Serenity. If he enjoys huge empires and little people in them, you might get Traveller. If he likes high fantasy, Lord of the Rings might make sense, or Elric. If he likes rules crunchy fantasy that has a familiarity to everyone, you'll get some flavour of D&D. And so on.

The game sessions can be languid crawls with a lot of emphasis on the minutae of tasks like bargaining with a merchant for a new water skin or how the players are going to pack their backpacks. The games can be frenzied and somewhat forced chapters where the GM wants to get through encounters at a certain pre-conceived rate. The games can feature many side chats or those may be forbidden to speed up play and maintain focus.

The game can have frequent casualties or few to none. Advancement may be swift or glacial. The game can be realistic or fantastic, encouraging either sensible choices or exciting and cinematic ones.

All of this will be derived form the sort of game that the GM wants to play, how the GM sees PCs and NPCs, and so on. And this all ends up being the best experience when the GM loves what he is doing.

When he loves what he is doing, a GM can convey some of that emotional truth through the narrative. His players will sense his love for the material and his interest in it. ideally, they'll also sense his engagement with them and his interest in their goals within his world.

So, Lesson One: Run What You Love. Play What Motivates You. It might or might not work out, there are no guarantees, but it is more likely to succeed than any other alternative.

World Crossfire Day

An interesting campaign idea where, in the space of 31 hours, a campaign was played involving people from around the world in a linked series of events. In each case, an event's results fed into the next event and to the overall campaign.

The setting is WWII generic (not a particular historical battle, but generally run with historical types of units).

I have never tried the Crossfire rules and have nothing to say about them, but as a campaign idea, this is a smashing idea. I'd love to do something like this sometime for a different game system. Even if they do this again next year, it might be interesting to participate.

World Crossfire Day

WWII Aerial Maps Archive

Huge historical archive of WWII Aerial Maps. 

Good resource for those interested in history or gaming.

Have you ever wanted a geek gaming table?

Check out the Sultan and the Emissary.

The Emissary is your 'dining room table replacement' and at $1500, is in the realm of reasonable for a high quality wooden dining room table. Mind you, you still have to buy good quality chairs and that could cost as much as the table.

The Sultan is more of a game-room/lounge type replacement for a billiard table. I shudder to imagine the cost on that product given it start with Black Walnut as the raw material. There's also significant effort involved in the large number of dovetails, drawers, etc. The price must be huge, but it would be the gaming table for the ages, no doubt about it.

 http://www.geekchichq.com/

Here's some other cool stuff like a crib board and some really awesome dice towers....

http://www.geekchichq.com/Co_Store/From_The_Labs/From_The_Labs.html

GZG ECC XIII: Rough Men

At Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention XIII this year, in Owego, NY, I ran an event titled "SG-21: Rough Men" which was a Stargate Universe-themed skirmish action between members of the Canadian SGC Team SG-21 (and some Russian Covert Ops Team members) against a bunch of Jaffa and Goa'uld in an Ancient ruin on a desert planet. 

Team SG-21 moves down the riverbed as it approaches the Ancient Ruins, searching for the missing Russian covert operations team and trying to avoid immediate contact with Goa'uld or Jaffa presumed to be in the area. The team entered the board through a stargate located behind the butte visible on the right side of the top image.

In the second image, a Russian team member tries to link up with SG-21 in the river bed while everyone tries to avoid the attention of a Jaffa patrol.

This linkup was successful and the Russian indicated there were other Russian team members somewhere around and that they had been watching the Goa'uld digging around the area and doing something in the big Pyramid structure....

The team kept spotting more and more Jaffa and realized that to thwart whatever the Goa'uld were doing on the planet, they'd have to engage the Goa'uld and the Jaffa. They setup along the river's edge with their team's sniper to the rear and with Darren McPhail covering the flank from the river from a stand of trees.

Major Allen, the team leader, gave the word and volleys of gunfire and grenades ensued, with Jaffa going down, more Jaffa appearing, and then more Jaffa joining the first waves lying dead or seriously wounded on the sand or in the riverbank. This is reflected in the third picture.

As the battle rages, the Russians reveal themselves in the ruin and begin engaging the Jaffa up in the ruins with the intention of planting a demolition charge in the pyramid.

SG-21, meanwhile, engages all the Jaffa from the front section of the ruin plus those moving in from nearby patrols. They find themselves attacked by a swarm of Jaffa accompanying a Goa'uld (fourth picture). At this time, things look a little tight for SG-21 with team members narrowly avoiding staff blasts, using up their luck, and being faced by the arrival of a staff cannon on a tripod.

The battle continues to rage, the Russians manage to mow down a bunch of Jaffa in the ruins and gain access to the Pyramid, planting a bomb and having their Demolitionist launched bodily from the Pyramid by a Goa'uld Hand Device. Fortunately, he had layed the charges and they started to extract towards SG-21 and the Stargate.

Meanwhile, at the riverbed, SG-21 had found some of its mojo, downing most of the Jaffa in the riverbed with some very accurate fire (some of it from the lone Russian with the team). The Goa'uld sent one of his last Jaffa to activate the Stargate so he could leave and he followed more sedately in the wake of the Jaffa after stopping dead a lethal volley of bullets from the Russian operator with his personal shield.

The Russian suffered a bit of a fit when his fine shooting was ineffective, cursing profusely in Russian and hauling out his vodka flask, which he promptly drained, interspersed with more cursing in Russian. The air was positively blue...

Recognizing the threat posed by being cutoff by a Goa'uld dial-out, Captain Hunter legged it back towards the gate in time to do some good, shooting the last of the Goa'uld's escort Jaffa in mid-dial, with his body falling cinematically onto the partially-dialed DHD. See the fifth image of this article.

That left the Goa'uld to deal with and he moved to take shelter from Captain Hunter's fire behind the DHD. What he did not reckon with, nor honestly did any of the SG-21 team members expect, was the Russian operator they had linked up with to enter some form of blind rage, partly spurred by the power of Vodka and partly spurred by his great anger at the unexpected presence of a Personal Shield on the Goa'uld.

The angry Russian slapped his bayonet on his AK-74, reasoning that if bullets moved to fast and were stopped by the Goa'uld's Personal Shield, then perhaps a simply spearing would prove sufficient! Motivated by rage and well-endowed with liquid courage, the Russian sprinted right up to the Goa'uld and engaged him in melee, jamming his bayonet into the neck of the Goa'uld and putting his whole substantive body weight behind it to see it lodged there. The Goa'uld's host was instantly killed, despite the powerful healing powers of the Goa'uld symbiote. See the sixth image for the shot of this climactic melee.

With the Goa'uld down, everyone flees for the Stargate, with the Pyramid blowing up behind the fleeing Russians and then the alien device inside imploding in a way that suggests perhaps a small singularity is about to form. This encourages everyone to flee quickly.

The Russian Colonel remains heroically behind to seal the gate, ordering his demolitions expert to get back to the SGC. In doing so, he ensures his own demise and the safety of the SGC. Posthumously, he was awarded the Hero of the Russian Federation.

What went unnoticed in all the adrenal rush of the escape was the fate of the Drunken Russian operator. The Goa'uld host was killed by the bayonet, but the symbiote was not. While celebrating his success, the Russian Sergeant-Major was taken by the Goa'uld symbiote as a host and returned through the gate to the SGC....