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Eclipse Phase General (also Self-promotion)

Chloe Sullivan said:
Honestly, i'd like to see the time period when people born/made after the fall are starting to come into their own, like 25 AF. More generational issues to play with - social change is slow and often works on generational time frames, you get some interesting things there.
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I'm not sure that's true, at least in the kind of environment Eclipse Phase creates. The suddeness of the Fall means that generations of social shock are happening right now, combining technology shock, with culture shock from close contact between different groups, with the utter destruction of government authority, with strange economic pressures and paranoia and...Eclipse Phase is a mess. Part of my issue is that it feels like much less of a dynamic mess than it should be.

EDIT: Also, I really don't think transhumanity makes it past 15AF, 20AF tops. Extinction, as they say, is approaching.
 
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Acatalepsy said:
EDIT: Also, I really don't think transhumanity makes it past 15AF, 20AF tops. Extinction, as they say, is approaching.
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Because you expect that some of the Species-Scale Threats That Our Heroes Face will some day not be averted? The parts of the corebook that I read seemed to be ambiguous whether people were moving towards a decline or a resurgence, and while I haven't been tempted enough to buy and read all the books, I'm still curious about the broad strokes.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Because you expect that some of the Species-Scale Threats That Our Heroes Face will some day not be averted? The parts of the corebook that I read seemed to be ambiguous whether people were moving towards a decline or a resurgence, and while I haven't been tempted enough to buy and read all the books, I'm still curious about the broad strokes.
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A couple of reasons.

First, everyone else seems to have failed to survive the singularity. Transhumanity...is unlikely to be the exception.

Second, as you suggested, if you roll the dice often enough sooner or later something is going to give. The very rebuilding / resurgence of transhuman civilization is a source of weakness, as it multiplies points of failure and interdependence.

Third, because the basic premise of EP means that hard takeoffs are possible, and therefore essentially inevitable short of technological extinction or effective global oppression. A bunch of Seed AIs took on the rest of civilization and won. If there are more of them, the only way to avoid being stomped into oblivion is to have your own. Firewall's intentionally limited Seed AIs aren't really up to the task of stopping all AGI or intelligence explosion related research. So, sooner or later we're gonna get Fall 2: Fall Harder; cue Exsurgent and that's all she wrote for most human life.
 
Acatalepsy said:
A couple of reasons.

First, everyone else seems to have failed to survive the singularity. Transhumanity...is unlikely to be the exception.
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Are all of the aliens pre-singularity? (Not rhetorical; I just don't know.)

Acatalepsy said:
Second, as you suggested, if you roll the dice often enough sooner or later something is going to give. The very rebuilding / resurgence of transhuman civilization is a source of weakness, as it multiplies points of failure and interdependence.
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I certainly agree that if dice are rolled often enough, they end up rolling three sixes sooner or later. However, I think this is also an observation that should be taken with a grain of salt, because RPGs tend to have a certain level of story-and-gameplay setting-and-campaign segregation. What I mean is that a conspiracy campaign set during the historical Cold War, dice would be rolled often enough that the world doesn't reach 2012 without WWIII. So in one interpretation the observation can be true, but in another it fails to account for the way RPG scenarios are written and results in a "Gem City from Exalted's Creation (and likely the whole Creation) will be destroyed within a week from the campaign start one way or another".

Acatalepsy said:
Third, because the basic premise of EP means that hard takeoffs are possible, and therefore essentially inevitable short of technological extinction or effective global oppression. A bunch of Seed AIs took on the rest of civilization and won. If there are more of them, the only way to avoid being stomped into oblivion is to have your own. Firewall's intentionally limited Seed AIs aren't really up to the task of stopping all AGI or intelligence explosion related research. So, sooner or later we're gonna get Fall 2: Fall Harder; cue Exsurgent and that's all she wrote for most human life.
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What are the chances that a method will be develop that will allow the majority of transhumanity to become the new singularian infomorphs, leading to a transformation into something vaguely along the lines of Orion's Arm?
 
vicky_molokh said:
Are all of the aliens pre-singularity? (Not rhetorical; I just don't know.)
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With one exception all of the aliens are dead or prehistoric. As far as transhumanity knows at least.

That being said while Acatalepsy's views are one entirely valid way of interpreting the setting, it also supports more hopeful narratives.
 
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Acatalepsy said:
A couple of reasons.

First, everyone else seems to have failed to survive the singularity. Transhumanity...is unlikely to be the exception.
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Except for the Factors, the dudes sending the hunches, etc.

Second, as you suggested, if you roll the dice often enough sooner or later something is going to give. The very rebuilding / resurgence of transhuman civilization is a source of weakness, as it multiplies points of failure and interdependence.
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Okay... I'm not sure how that would work. Isolated pockets are far more likely to be wiped out than a coherent civilization which can protect its weakness.

Third, because the basic premise of EP means that hard takeoffs are possible, and therefore essentially inevitable short of technological extinction or effective global oppression. A bunch of Seed AIs took on the rest of civilization and won. If there are more of them, the only way to avoid being stomped into oblivion is to have your own. Firewall's intentionally limited Seed AIs aren't really up to the task of stopping all AGI or intelligence explosion related research. So, sooner or later we're gonna get Fall 2: Fall Harder; cue Exsurgent and that's all she wrote for most human life.
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That's not actually what happened though. Like, there's Seed AIs around right now and humanity is not dead.

Further, why would AGIs or other transhuman entities continuing to boost their intelligence make human survival less likely? The problem of the fall was the inequality of intelligence between the Titans and everyone else. (actually the problem was the Titans became infected with exsurgent viruses. The Prometheans don't seem to want us dead.) If you have a strata of better transhumans and AGIs protecting transhumanity that can only be to transhumanity's benefit.
 
vicky_molokh said:
What are the chances that a method will be develop that will allow the majority of transhumanity to become the new singularian infomorphs, leading to a transformation into something vaguely along the lines of Orion's Arm?
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Transformation into post-human infomorphs is one of the extinction events. Whatever came out of the process would be sufficiently inhuman that we would count humanity extinct in the same way we do dinosaurs, even if birds still exist.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Transformation into post-human infomorphs is one of the extinction events. Whatever came out of the process would be sufficiently inhuman that we would count humanity extinct in the same way we do dinosaurs, even if birds still exist.
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I suppose that's one of the possible ways of interpreting it / looking at it. But definitely not the only one.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Transformation into post-human infomorphs is one of the extinction events. Whatever came out of the process would be sufficiently inhuman that we would count humanity extinct in the same way we do dinosaurs, even if birds still exist.
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Sidebar: Attenuation Threats

Technically, a fifth x-risk category exists. Attenuating dangers are those that might not wipe transhumanity out, but might irrevocably and severely change it. For example, a danger that wipes out our biological presence, but allows transhumanity to survive in a postbiological state, or perhaps the assimilation of transhumanity into some sort of collective or hive-mind state. Though these risks might fundamentally change the outlook, nature, and historical course of our species, it is a question of debate whether such risks are desirable or potentially even inevitable. To the bioconservative mindset, all of transhumanity is already an attenuating threat to their concept of "natural" humanity; whereas certain transhuman clades would welcome a postbiological or posthuman future. Firewall's assessment and response to attenuating dangers is complicated and rife with conflict; as a result, risks of this sort are not actively guarded against or even addressed in our categorization schemes. Sentinels should not be surprised if their server
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So, yeah - that's taken into account but not in the same way as other threats.
 
blast flame said:
That being said while Acatalepsy's views are one entirely valid way of interpreting the setting, it also supports more hopeful narratives.
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vicky_molokh said:
What are the chances that a method will be develop that will allow the majority of transhumanity to become the new singularian infomorphs, leading to a transformation into something vaguely along the lines of Orion's Arm?
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I should clarify that I don't necessarily think this leads to an inevitable Bad End, just that when 25AF rolls around, it's not going to look like most of the stuff going on in 10AF. The terraforming, the political blocks, the emerging cultures on different worlds and habs? Toast; perhaps not irrelevant, but as irrevocably changed as heavily as pre-Fall nationality and and government and culture were changed by the Fall. More changed, maybe.

There are different versions of this. Maybe transhumanity goes fully post-human? Maybe the Seed AIs take over but are mostly benevolent? Point is, I don't see transhumanity making it to 25AF without more big shocks that make a lot of the ongoing issues of 10AF unrecognizable.

FBH said:
Except for the Factors, the dudes sending the hunches, etc.
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The Factors are also super shifty and mysterious and have clearly been through some shit. They are enough of a black box - and very clear about how bad the whole 'seed AI' thing is - that I'm okay with saying that the win/loss rate for civilizations facing down the singularity isn't encouraging.

FBH said:
Okay... I'm not sure how that would work. Isolated pockets are far more likely to be wiped out than a coherent civilization which can protect its weakness.
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No safety in large unity or small isolation. Isolated pockets are more likely to be destroyed by force or by their inability to coordinate a coherent response, larger more unified civilizations create weaknesses that can be leveraged against that civilization by a more sophisticated adversary via interdependence and networking. It might be possible to get big without building in exploitable opportunities for attack, but transhumanity isn't coordinated enough to actually do it.

FBH said:
That's not actually what happened though. Like, there's Seed AIs around right now and humanity is not dead.
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The Prometheans are very much intentionally limiting their growth and not going full TITAN. Which is great, but if TITANS 2.0 (a Cognite brand product!) come around, we have a problem. Ditto with a return of TITANS (original flavor). Even doing Seed AI right shakes up the paradigm sufficiently that I don't think transhumanity sticks around 'as is'.

Also, the "causes seed AIs to self destruct nastily" virus is pretty much all over the place, so even if we do it right it could still bit us in the ass. And we're probably not gonna do it right.
 
Acatalepsy said:
The Factors are also super shifty and mysterious and have clearly been through some shit. They are enough of a black box - and very clear about how bad the whole 'seed AI' thing is - that I'm okay with saying that the win/loss rate for civilizations facing down the singularity isn't encouraging.
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Finding at least 2 (Factors, Slouch Builders) extant alien civilizations is honestly pretty good, and implies a lot of races get through the great filter. Like, consider how long it took humanity to come into existence on Earth. The fact that we've run into 2 other civilizations in only a few years of interstellar contact, that seems pretty good odds. The factors maybe themselves a remnant, but their light hugger systems say they've considerably in advance of humanity as is.

Frankly, the fact that we run into them so soon after the fall implies all kinds of things, but a strong great filter is not one of them.

No safety in large unity or small isolation. Isolated pockets are more likely to be destroyed by force or by their inability to coordinate a coherent response, larger more unified civilizations create weaknesses that can be leveraged against that civilization by a more sophisticated adversary via interdependence and networking. It might be possible to get big without building in exploitable opportunities for attack, but transhumanity isn't coordinated enough to actually do it.
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Only part of the system, and potentially dropping, as the morning star coalition gradually approaches the new economy, is stuck up against the hyper-capitalist X-risk which would weaken the ability of a large, cosmopolitan civilization in EP has the potential to develop a great deal of redundancy and emergency preparation. Large amounts of the system (Titan for instance) are well prepared to leverage the technology they have against potential extinction events, and those systems that aren't are not themselves autostable and may well develop along more productive lines.

The Prometheans are very much intentionally limiting their growth and not going full TITAN. Which is great, but if TITANS 2.0 (a Cognite brand product!) come around, we have a problem. Ditto with a return of TITANS (original flavor). Even doing Seed AI right shakes up the paradigm sufficiently that I don't think transhumanity sticks around 'as is'.

Also, the "causes seed AIs to self destruct nastily" virus is pretty much all over the place, so even if we do it right it could still bit us in the ass. And we're probably not gonna do it right.
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My impression was the problem with the Titans wasn't just that they were seed AIs, it was they did something to cause themselves to become exsurgent infected. My fall chronology is

1: Global emergency occurs, causing the USA to rush through it's Seed AI project
2: Titans in the course of their investigations encounter. . . something
3: Titans become infected with the exsurgent virus, go mad and start to destroy humanity
4: As the exsurgent virus grows stronger, the Titans grow more and more mad, things go wrong for them and they fall apart and leave.

To be honest, I think Transhumanity sticking around as is is meaningless. Transhumanity already stopped being as is the moment most of the human population became informational ghosts you can download into clone bodies. There's no proof that any of the things human value about their sapience are actually a problem in eclipse phase, so I don't see why superior augmentation should be seen as inherently worrying.
 
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Anyone ever get much mileage out of the Entrepreneur trait?
 
Conjured Blade said:
Word on rpg.net is that Eclipse Phase is getting a 2nd Edition
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Word on the Eclipse Phase Website too

Posthuman Studios is pleased to announce: Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, will be released this year, after a Kickstarter project and Open Playtest. The Kickstarter and Open Playtest will go live very soon, with the new edition planned for release in October.
We've been working on Eclipse Phase, Second Edition for a while now, conducting private playtests and refining our approach to the game, the book, and the product line. We're really excited about folding in the lessons we've learned and addressing feedback from Eclipse Phase fans.
We have made five key changes to the game:
  • Faster Character Creation — package-buy character creation lets people build characters quickly without overlooking necessary items. Point-based character creation and tweaking is still available.
  • Streamlined Resleeving — an aptitude-linked pool system means that skills don't need to be recalculated when a character resleeves.
  • Updated Gameplay — number of skills reduced, necessary skills made easier to acquire, gear costs eliminated.
  • Four Sample Teams — pre-fabbed teams can be dropped right into a game and serve as examples of balanced parties.
  • Redesigned Book — a spread-based organization keeps material close-at-hand with less page-flipping.

The Eclipse Phase universe is largely the same, with a few tweaks. We'll go deeper into the changes during the Kickstarter campaign and Open Playtest!
Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, Releases
Following the print release of Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, we have a lineup planned of support products, starting with a Gamemaster's Screen, and then followed by the Solar System Gazetteer.
For more in-depth questions, we have created a FAQ.
The Creative Team
Eclipse Phase, Second Edition is developed by Rob Boyle and Jack Graham, with Adam Jury's graphic design. Authors include Simon Berman, Rob Boyle, Katherine Cross, Nathaniel Dean, Jack Graham, Travas Gunnell, Sarah Hood, Marc Huete, Jason Mical, Ross Payton, and Evie Smith. The cover art is from Stephan Martiniere and featured artist are Christina Davis, Maggie Ivy, Kate Laird, Mitch Malloy, Mark Molnar / Pixoloid Studios, Andy Wright.
Stay Up to Date
If you want to know exactly when the Eclipse Phase, Second Edition, Kickstarter and Open Playtest launches, subscribe to our mailing list!
Thanks for your support of Eclipse Phase and Posthuman Studios—we look forward to making more great games and telling new stories in the coming years! If you have any questions or comments, you can always reach us at info@posthumanstudios.com.
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Jiven said:
Mind to elaborate ?
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Basically, if you are fighting people with only one speed a turn, having two speed from neurachem, MRDR or whatever other methods there are will allow you to cream them. If you have three speed, you can face several times your numbers in one speed opposition without losing. Speed is, basically, far too powerful and dominates all other advantages you can bring to bare.
 
Estro said:
Basically, if you are fighting people with only one speed a turn, having two speed from neurachem, MRDR or whatever other methods there are will allow you to cream them. If you have three speed, you can face several times your numbers in one speed opposition without losing. Speed is, basically, far too powerful and dominates all other advantages you can bring to bare.
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Game has rules for dumping speed (convert to effectively +1 Initiative) tho.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
Game has rules for dumping speed (convert to effectively +1 Initiative) tho.
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That doesn't change the fact that the baseline combat system is broken. If an inexperianced GM puts a pair of three speed people vs their one speed players expecting it to be a fair fight, they will be surprised. You should not need to modify the baseline game to make it playable.
 
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I'll be interested to see what setting changes come out of this, but I'll be sticking to Transhumanity's Fate for mechanics.
 
Estro said:
Basically, if you are fighting people with only one speed a turn, having two speed from neurachem, MRDR or whatever other methods there are will allow you to cream them. If you have three speed, you can face several times your numbers in one speed opposition without losing. Speed is, basically, far too powerful and dominates all other advantages you can bring to bare.
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Well, Speed IS supposed to be a broken stat. It's the impression i had years ago on my first reading.
 
Jiven said:
Well, Speed IS supposed to be a broken stat. It's the impression i had years ago on my first reading.
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Speed is about the best representation of bullet-time or other overcranked perception I can think of in a tabletop RPG (barring Palladium and its 2-3 vs. 7+ actions a round). Given that it's In a Future, Where Man and Machine have Become One... need to get better at that movie trailer voice...​ it's fairly appropriate to employ.
 
As a GM, I dial my oppnents around my player's party. If one of them is an overstimmed, cyber enhanced Speed 4 killing machine, I'll increase the difficulty of combat.

If not, I'll drop some hints to the Face player, that they can avoid the Spec Ops mercenary and go another route that happens to be defended by a bunch of Speed 1 mooks...
 
Jiven said:
Well, Speed IS supposed to be a broken stat. It's the impression i had years ago on my first reading.
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Logically, someone who can act twice as fast as another person, while having the same efficiency of actions, is pretty broken in combat in real life.
But in real life, people rarely are just faster, so comparisons are hard to come by.
And in a game, such speed should be very expensive in terms of what it takes to get and maintain it - "it should cost 100 points worth of unfair advantage", to paraphrase a certain game designer, i.e. the speedster should forego some significant advantage in exchange for being such a speedster, to the point that the cost invested in something else should provide a similarly devastating effect, and the speedster and the other-devastating-effect-purchasing character should be comparable in combat.
 
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