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KickStarter Eclipse Phase, Second Edition RPG

Havoc

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507486226/eclipse-phase-second-edition/description
What’s New in EP2?
We’re focusing on improving and simplifying the existing Eclipse Phase system, not re-inventing the wheel. Changes include:

  • Faster Character Creation — A package-buy character creation system lets people build characters quickly without missing essentials.
  • Streamlined Resleeving — An aptitude-linked pool system means that skills don’t need to be recalculated when a character resleeves (switches bodies).
  • Updated Gameplay — We've reduced the number of skills and made them easier to acquire. Gear costs are replaced with a system that works the same whether you are buying gear, acquiring it with rep favors, or nano-fabbing. Combat, hacking, and other systems are also updated.
  • 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.
Most first-edition source material is compatible with EP2.

Maybe no more Jovian trololo cartoon evil? No? More far left bullshit? Okay... maybe the rules will be better?

 

clemens

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Never really had a problem with the oh so complex character creation. (Then again I've never had a problem with developing characters for Ars Magica or, once upon a time, Rolemaster...)
Reducing skills number and streamlining some systems can't hurt (8 different medicine or hardware fields was probably not something necessary...)
Stretchgoals are not particularly exciting though. I guess the "Whispering Muse" stuff could be fun, but 4-6 pages sourcebooks will probably turn out as something that won't be very exploitable directly for GMs. Bits and pieces of story seeds and and anecdotal setting details can be enjoyable blog posts but might not make for great sourcebooks. I would have liked to see something a little more significant if I'm gonna back a new edition. I guess I'll go for the new corebook since I like Posthuman studios and the way they do business.
 
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Can't wait for an even less ergonomic and GM-friendly core rulebook.
I hear Shadowrun 5th is still on print.

I like the Eclipse Phase setting a lot, but its setting is so niche that it's rather hard finding players willing to get into it. I'll keep an eye on this one anyway, as I already received my hard copies of the Unknown Armies 3rd core books and Kult 3rd & Interface Zero 2.0 for Pathfinder should be coming out later this year, and I feel compelled to keep yet another RPG in my queue.
 
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Lol they complicated the rules even more. What world do these authors live?
"Even more" would imply they were complicated in the first place, which they weren't. IMHO, character creation is a good benchmark of system complexity - it lets you know how many subsystems and derived stats and shit you have to check to make a character.

MERP/Rolemaster aren't that complex; the biggest hassle is the amount of tables you have to check, many of which are in the same sections, which is easily solved by a homemade GM's screen. You can make a character in 15 minutes flat (the first one you make will take somewhat longer), which is account given how deadly the RM system can be.

OTOH there's Shadowrun (I've been playing it since 2nd ed.) which takes 2-3 hours even with a spreadsheet to help you calculate and keep track of things (it's more on the 3 hours end if you're making a mage or decker).

EP has a rather simple system, character creation takes about as much as in D&D 3.5 (which is way longer than in MERP, tbh, but you wouldn't say that D&D 3.5 is complex, would you?)
 

Silva

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FritzedProcess , any game that asks me to allocate 1.000 (one thousand!) points to create a character, distributed between differently valued stats/skills/traits, some going as far as being decimal (0.5 ?), is fairly high on my complexity scale. Add in Shadowrun-like combat with dozens of situational modifiers + free/simple/complex actions that make a 2 min in-fiction combat take 2 hours of real time, AND convoluted recalculation of stats and skills for resleeving (a core game concept), and you have a fairly complex system that is also slow as fuck. Oh, and add in meta-currencies to manage (which will be expanded in the new edition - see Pools).

Eclipse Phase setting is amazing. But it's system, sadly, is not. It's complex, slow, and even incoherent on parts. It's clearly a sibling of Shadowrun, for good and bad.
 
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Add in Shadowrun-like combat with dozens of situational modifiers + free/simple/complex actions that make a 2 min in-fiction combat take 2 hours of real time, AND convoluted recalculation of stats and skills for resleeving (a core game concept), and you have a fairly complex system that is also slow as fuck. Oh, and add in meta-currencies to manage (which will be expanded in the new edition - see Pools).

Shit, you're right. I had repressed memories about the last EP game I played a few years ago now - no resleeving involved as the GM wasn't willing to open that can of worms, a rare moment of clarity in a man who always wanted to run games with complex rules, such as Spycraft 2nd edition, without reading or understanding the rules, with characters (that took over 1 hour to generate, without counting the background and story) dying as a result, and him refusing to rollback the results when his BS was called by players who had read the rules (for example, a level 2 NPC doing a 1/day level 10 maneuver 3 times in a chase, resulting in the wheelman's death, in Spycraft).

He also always ad-libbed the whole thing, even if he was supposedly running a module that he had read (he hadn't) and didn't have the common sense to run a hard-sci fi game (or any game where you can't claim that a wizard did it), case in point: airlocks without manual override that can only be operated by wireless connection that we have been asked not to use because there was a strain of the exsurgent virus about, and it didn't matter anyway because noone had computer skills. Also his idea of combat involved a single corridor with a couple of crates in either end: literally PnP popamole.

I'll cut this short before I further derail it into a "Bad GMs' tales" type of thread, and to put it shortly: yes, you're right.
 

Silva

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One thing that makes me optimistic for the 2nd edition is clarity of game premise. Since Firewall and X-Risks supplements came out, I find it got much more "playable". Firewall has detailed info on how sentinels live and operate, and X-risks even has a monster list with pretty cool pictures. If the 2nd edition includes contents like these it's sure buy from me.
 
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The KS was predictably successful. Some stretch goals were reached, such as the ambient soundtrack (that's something I can use it in my other games in lieu of the Fallout & Shadowrun videogames soundtracks, and endless loops of Remove Kebab), some NPC files, a player's guide, adventures supplements and all that stuff.
 
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I wouldn't hold my breath.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/6br4qn/minor_drama_when_table_top_role_playing_game/

"Ultimates have indeed been dropped as a PC faction. As you noted, we pushed them more in the fascist/x-threat direction, and we don't want to be encouraging people to play fascists." - Rob Boyle

No problemo! Just try Walküre. Transhumanism (if you use the future setting, which is the main one), intrigue, action, a comprehensive tactical system, gun porn, you can roll bona fide nazis - the designers don't give a shit as it's none of their business, and it's all there in the character generation and templates. One of my friends wants me to run a campaign just so that he can be a Space Nazi. It's also under the Creative Commons license and the PDF is free to download.

The downside for most of you is that it's only in Spanish. No English translation that I'm aware of (one was supposed to be in the works by Nocturnal Media).
 

Dayyālu

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No problemo! Just try Walküre. Transhumanism (if you use the future setting, which is the main one), intrigue, action, a comprehensive tactical system, gun porn, you can roll bona fide nazis - the designers don't give a shit as it's none of their business, and it's all there in the character generation and templates. One of my friends wants me to run a campaign just so that he can be a Space Nazi. It's also under the Creative Commons license and the PDF is free to download.

The downside for most of you is that it's only in Spanish. No English translation that I'm aware of (one was supposed to be in the works by Nocturnal Media).

Walküre is a far better designed RPG than EP (even if the mechanics are derivative), even if the setting is shlock. It get points for being good shlock, like Gear Krieg. While EP was sometimes annoying to even read (and I say this a a left-wing man) because IN UR FACE, UR FACE, Walküre at least tries to be neutral.

And it's one of the few alt-history WW2 settings that takes into consideration Axis minors such as Italy and Spain (even if the Italian names are hilariously mispelled). The vehicle rulesets are also a complete and utter mess of failed research and improvised data, but whatever. I am waiting for Walküre english edition, as I can't force people to read spanish.

http://therpgpundit.blogspot.it/2016/02/rpgpundit-reviews-walkure.html
 
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Walküre is a far better designed RPG than EP (even if the mechanics are derivative), even if the setting is shlock. It get points for being good shlock, like Gear Krieg. While EP was sometimes annoying to even read (and I say this a a left-wing man) because IN UR FACE, UR FACE, Walküre at least tries to be neutral.

And it's one of the few alt-history WW2 settings that takes into consideration Axis minors such as Italy and Spain (even if the Italian names are hilariously mispelled). The vehicle rulesets are also a complete and utter mess of failed research and improvised data, but whatever. I am waiting for Walküre english edition, as I can't force people to read spanish.

http://therpgpundit.blogspot.it/2016/02/rpgpundit-reviews-walkure.html

Oh, yes, that constant nagging about the anarchists being the nicest faction and how reputation is the best currency and all other factions have inferior potassium, and the Jovians being a bunch of puritan inbred hicks -every single one with a potentially fatal genetic disease- run by a "Junta", even though they are technically a democracy. I still have to meet a non-teenage anarchist that I don't want to force-feed castor oil after hearing them spew bullshit for longer than five minutes. Whenever I played EP we'd tend to ignore all the political bullshit. And to be honest, after reading the internet drama linked by Luckmann above I'm having a bad feeling about having backed this.
 

Havoc

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Darth Roxor

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you get what you deserve for supporting shit systems

also really, you are somehow surprised by this when EP is leaking librul/commie bullshit everywhere?
 
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I did count of some of that BS, as it was there in the 1st edition. I did not count on them going full retard, and I have too much to do and read to waste my time lurking the communities/"social" media shit specific to each of the games I buy, tbh.

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I didn't like the setting, it's too high tech and has too much stuff in it (I'd rather it was just earth, moon, mars and disparate space stations instead of this kitchen sink of settlements and factions). I felt like it required a good deal of hand waving and GM lenience to be able to achieve anything as a stealth ops in a setting with this much surveillance and affordable technology.

And ofc it's as lefty aligned as it gets which is p. disgusting at times.
 

Mynon

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I'd kill for a cRPG based on this. I've heard nothing but high praise for their setting and system, and themes and authors cited as major inspiration (Peter Watts, Ian M. Banks, Greg Egan) make one salivate profusely.
 
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I'd kill for a cRPG based on this. I've heard nothing but high praise for their setting and system, and themes and authors cited as major inspiration (Peter Watts, Ian M. Banks, Greg Egan) make one salivate profusely.
TBH, the setting is pretty good, the problem is the authors' political ramblings influencing the setting and system, which apparently in the new edition will go as far as removing a playable faction because casting them in a negative light in the first edition isn't bad enough, and being transhuman is only good if you also are a hedonistic degenerate.

Also, I think Walter Jon Williams (the whole forks system is lifted off "Voice of the Whirlwind", a pretty good novel) and Richard K. Morgan (the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy) are far greater influences than Iain M. Banks, but there's definitely a big Watts influence in there.
 

Mynon

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Well, Banks definitely wrote politically charged stuff, so maybe that is where their admiration for him lies? Tho, just going by comments like ones in this thread, they appear to lack his subtlety and nuance.
 

Darth Roxor

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Tho, just going by comments like ones in this thread, they appear to lack his subtlety and nuance.

you think so huh

The rigid structures and dogmas enveloping Christianity and Judaism prohibited these religions from adapting to the cultural, philosophical, and especially scientific/technological changes transhumanity underwent. Today, they are mere shadows of their former glory, with many practitioners seen as pitiful individuals unable to let go of their earthbound delusions. Islam, while still holding some controversial views and values, managed to adapt by accepting a more liberal and even secular view.
 

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