I've had that happen before. I came up with a pretty simple solution. I now lay out guidelines for every game I run. Example from my current Werewolf the Apocalypse game: No Red Talons, Wendigo, or Uktena. No Metis or Lupus PCs unless you are X or Y (the only two players with any prior experience out of 5) Starting at Rank 1 going to 5. Each Rank will have an overarching story arc associated with it. Game will be set outside of Anchorage, Alaska. I'm found laying out basic guidelines like that help facilitate running the game because the players know what's expected out of them. I should also mention that I sat down with the players and asked what they wanted to play as well. What sorts of stories they wanted to play through, and so on, and haven't had a problem with my players going "outside the lines" or objecting too much. If you lay it out to start, work with your players a bit, you can reach something that'll satisfy everyone.

babayaga wrote:

Thunderwave wrote:

I've had that happen before. I came up with a pretty simple solution. I now lay out guidelines for every game I run.

Thunderwave, do not misunderstand me - I'm not complaining. I do not mind that the PCs did not join the Eye, as I said. I'm just somewhat surprised that they didn't - or, perhaps more correctly, that the default setting is sentinel PCs when all my PCs found the notion so unappealing (and, in part, I agree). And I was wondering whether I'm the only one on the forum. From Maswand's reply, it would seem I am not.

Never said you where. Just putting in my $0.02 on the "problem". I've had PCs do that to me more times then I care to think about with other games, and a few times it threw the entire campaign off the tracks. In your case, it did not. And I agree with Madwand's assessment. Firewall, as written, could be the most horrible thing in the solar system or it's savior.

Faced the same problem. One PC was in it because he didn't care much about X-threats but firewalls network was just too good a chance to "sell" off some artifacts from the TQZ on Mars. The other just wanted to abuse the relationships so he could find his mother (and since he was a Lost, he had a very loose definition of mother) In our second game, i said "Know what, decide it for yourself and i use it as a plot-hook. Standardized settings suck anyway."

Babayaga the simple answer is if you're players aren't into being Firewall agents and are willing to do other things and still have fun in EP then there's no reason to force them into it. The original idea with Firewall was to provide an easy to understand motivation in what, to many players unfamiliar with all the weirdness that a setting like EP may have, might be at a loss as to what to do. It's the default but there's nothing that says that's the way you gotta go. As for why players would want to join Firewall keep in mind that bodies, be they morphs or shells, are still commodities, even being able to mass produce shells doesn't get around the space problem present on many habitats. Firewall is assumed to provide their Sentinels with the gear needed to do their jobs, and this gear often includes a body to do the job in. Also, as mentioned by others, i-rep gets you in with anyone. Firewall is owed a lot of favors around the system and i-rep represents the ability of the characters to trade on those favors.

Firewall allows access to extremely valuable information and resources not otherwise available. If the PCs feel they can make it on their own without, that's okay too.

My players never read the book (I didn't allow them) so when they met Firewall members they didn't know what they were looking at. Still, probably they would join them, as they like existencial threats. They are just fighting them from their own side (and, currently, starting in the Valles-New Shangai Secret Service).

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One PC was already a Firewall agent, another was a weekend warrior. Another PC's backstory included flat-out quitting Firewall and doing a couple of things to ensure that they would not try to make use of her in the future. Another PC mistrusted Firewall and would probably have tried to space the full-time operative if he had known who he was working for.

Sounds like a nasty bunch of customers, I like it.

From what you read about certain modern day agencies Firewall just seems like a futuristic version of the CIA or MOSSAD. Their methods are more extreme but it's been scaled to the threat.

I agree with you completely about something born out of so much chaos and pain should be ruthless and fierce. The only problem is getting the players to get on the boat. The trouble is that as written Firewall just isn't trustworthy, why would anyone in their right minds sign up and give their Ego over to a bunch of semi-desperate people who believe that the ends justify the means. I mean even Project Ozma has a better reputation! At least with them you run a chance of getting a medal pinned on your chest and a piece of Martian outback when you decide to retire... With Firewall the best you can hope for is that they leave your childhood memories intact. I mean let's be honest, they suffer from what can only be described as a terminal image problem. That's why a "kinder, gentler" Firewall is needed. Aside from pure selflessness or an overblown sense of duty for the species the players have zero impetus to join. The CIA/Mossad agents at least have a paycheck and maybe even national identity. Not only is firewall as described volunteer work but it's volunteer terrorist work at that! Chances are if you went and did a sufficiently important job they will erase your experience and you won't even get rez for it...Which is kinda crazy because it makes firewall truly a zero sum game (you may not even be getting character advancement from it!). The only thing that Firewall has going for it is the fact that they have pan factional resources that no one else has since they are more worried about humanity as a whole than specific slices of it. Which is why I was thinking it should really capitalize on that aspect to make themselves shine and be attractive.

[Possible spoilers within] Firewall doesn't have an image problem. Well, I guess it does, but its not because of their methods. Its because no one outside of top level military/corporate circles knows anything about them, or perhaps that they even exist. The same goes for Project Ozma. They are the very blackest of the black ops, to the point that, even within the Planetary Consortium’s government only the very top brass have the clearance to know about them. Firewall is essentially a terrorist organisation. They go into other nation states territory, they perform sabotage and surveillance, and occasionally they set off extremely high grade explosives. But noone is ever made aware that it was Firewall that did all these things. The Social Engineers and the Vectors make sure of it. And so, lets say that you are an average person living in the Inner System. I say average, you work as a project leader in a biological research group and you hold numerous doctorates. You survived the Fall, but you lost most of your family and friends, and you despise the TITANs because of it. And then one day your research station is infected by some batshit crazy virus that begins turning your new friends and colleagues into living monsters that can throw things about with their fucking minds. You manage to lock yourself in a secure safe room, but not before you are forced to put a bullet through the head of the woman you had been dating because she started to grow tentacles. You stay like that for a few days. Every few hours you hear banging on the door, sometimes you think you can hear cries for help but really you are not sure, you shouldn't be able too, the room you are in is air tight. And then it all stops, for what seems like weeks but could actually only have been hours. And then it all starts up again. The entire station seems to ring with gunfire, explosions and the alarm system begins to go off. After a few minutes off that the security door that is the only thing keeping you out of the reach of whatever is still out there begins to be cut open. The blindingly blue arc of light makes quick work of the door, something you find quite disturbing, and you are confronted by a small group of individuals who look like they are decked out to fight a war. Down the hall you hear the steady Thwack-Thwack-Thwack of gunfire and inhuman screams. A small neo-hominid wielding an arc cutter tells you that the station has been lost, that they have been sent to recover anyone still uninfected and to turn everything else still breathing on the station into a burning mass of sludge. If you want to live you will take this pistol, shoot anything that moves and keep close. You and your saviours manage to make it off the station and back onto the very fast courier ship that brought them there just in time to blast yourself away and watch the station explode in a thermonuclear explosion. On the long ride back to civilisation the group begins to tell you things that sound crazy. The TITANs are real of course. Everyone knows that. But what everyone doesn't know is what they left behind. What you have just seen is just a tiny fraction of what they did, and that scenes such as that happen with more regularity than any politician would ever want to admit. The TITANs might be gone, but transhumanity is most definitely still at risk. And they offer you the opportunity to help fight back. They offer you a chance to get vengeance for all the lives they have taken, all the families including yours they have broken. They offer you access to the most advanced research equipment known to man, to some of the greatest minds of your field and a network of information contacts that would make 21st century intelligence operations blush with embarrassment. And they offer all this on one simple clause. That you help the organisation when you can, that you submit to a fairly invasive background check and that you give them a fork of your Ego. They promise that the fork is only for security reasons, so that if you are ever killed on mission they can bring you back good as new. And who are you to argue that that wouldn't be their intention, these men and women (and in betweens) just saved your ass from becoming a pawn of the TITANs. So you agree. And before you know it you are in a clique, all your friends are in the clique, everyone you really trust is in the clique. Why would you ever want to betray them? You save lives everyday, you help fight the good fight! Firewall recruits those who have no other choice. Before you know it you are so wrapped up in the secret spy games they perform that going back to your old life seems naïve and silly. Once you are in the Org, it is very, very difficult to leave. And on how Firewall managed to coalesce into such an organisation so quickly after the Fall, remember that this is not just some ragtag group of extremists who are having some fun shooting things. Firewall literally has the most powerful minds at work behind it. They possibly have the backing of the only remaining Seed AI in the System. To compliment that they have contacts throughout the System, contacts in very high places who owe them very large favours. The Org didn't suddenly just appear, it is the result of numerous agencies collecting together into a whole for their own benefit. They already had the backbone to get started, all they had to do was build on it.

I have to admit that is awesome! But the guy rescued while hiding in a broom closet for heaven knows how long and whisked away is a corner case and I'm pretty sure he isn't the average recruit. I mean he already owes everything to Firewall. Without them he would be dead so his critical thinking may be a bit off (not to say that it wouldn't make an great beginning for a book or an adventure mind you.) The guy I'm talking about is the homicide detective who's being fed some anonymous tips via his computer on a serial murder case he's working on. He's trying to arrest or stop the killer and because the killer is an exsurgent the whole thing is on Firewall overwatch. So while he's calling up SWAT teams because he's got this guy cornered the Firewall team gets there first swooping down from on high to put an end to what the detective has been working on. They fill the killer full of holes with overwhelming firepower, inform the detective that there is evil nastiness out there and he did good for humanity. Pat him on the back, say they will be in touch and jet away on an unmarked flying APC while the SWAT team is still setting up outside. What does our detective think of Firewall? Imagine he thinks that Firewall is a bunch of vigilante yahoos with a funny interpretation of due process.

Quincey Forder wrote:

Personnally, I view Firewall as something akin to ME2's Cerberus. They're the major element of the "Conspiracies" For one things, I think the PC who agree to join only know a very few things -That Firewall DOES actually exist, and that it's not some crackhead conspiracy theorist nutjob's pipedream -That they're contacted by a proxy (likely someone they've know from before, who they trusted) who give them a mission, often in veiled terms, and it's up to the Sentinels to figure it out -and that their proxy gets his order from higher up. from where, and from whom, they aren't told. -and most worrisome, Firewall knows stuff about them that they sometimes didn't know themselves!

Yessss. First post, and you already stole my suggestion. Great minds think alike. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Firewall probably has some very top quality researchers amongst various groups, especially the Argonauts, in their pocket through anonymous, incremental research grants. Delicious grants. Remember the facilities where they were experimenting with Rachni and husks on the equivilent of Exosolar worlds in the first Mass Effect? I imagine it's something like that for those researchers Firewall has working full time.

[quote] For one things, I think the PC who agree to join only know a very few things -That Firewall DOES actually exist, and that it's not some crackhead conspiracy theorist nutjob's pipedream -That they're contacted by a proxy (likely someone they've know from before, who they trusted) who give them a mission, often in veiled terms, and it's up to the Sentinels to figure it out -and that their proxy gets his order from higher up. from where, and from whom, they aren't told. -and most worrisome, Firewall knows stuff about them that they sometimes didn't know themselves![quote] Yes! And these are not selling points! :P This puts them firmly under the paranoid sociopath heading.

Rhyx wrote:

I agree with you completely about something born out of so much chaos and pain should be ruthless and fierce. The only problem is getting the players to get on the boat. The trouble is that as written Firewall just isn't trustworthy, why would anyone in their right minds sign up and give their Ego over to a bunch of semi-desperate people who believe that the ends justify the means.

I think that you are downplaying a human drive that seems to be headed out of fashion (unfortunately): altruism. There are some people out there who would lay it all on the line for people they may never know simply because they think it would be the correct course of action to take.

All true what??? *blinks in confusion* no, more seriously, my group tend to play character at the very least morally ambiguous and ambivalent. I can't really predict if they'll accept to join Firewall when they know for a fact it exist and gets to talk to a someone who can recruit them.

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We never dealt with domestic. With us, it was always war. We won the war. Now we're fighting the peace. It's a lot more volatile. Now we've got ten million crackpots out there with sniper scopes, sarin gas and C-4. Ten-year-olds go on the Net, downloading encryption we can barely break, not to mention instructions on how to make a low-yield nuclear device. Privacy's been dead for years because we can't risk it. The only privacy that's left is the inside of your head. Maybe that's enough. You think we're the enemy of democracy, you and I? I think we're democracy's last hope. Thomas Reynolds, Enemy of the State (movie)

This speech could be made by someone in EP, with more gravitas. I think its about how the world is portrayed, the motivations of the players and how credible the feel of impending doom is. I would portray Firewall as a cold war combatant that is in a ongoing conflict with a couple of other organisations. Some of the opposition isn't out to eradicate transhumanity. But they are deadly opponents of Firewall nevertheless & quite influential with operatives of their own. Regardless these opponents seek to discredit & curbstomp Firewall + those affiliated with them.

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Spoiler: Highlight to view

Agent Smith: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice. Neo: Yeah. That sounds like a really good deal. But I got a better one. How about... I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call? Agent Smith: Mr. Anderson... you disappoint me. Neo: You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call. Agent Smith: Tell me, Mr. Anderson... what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?

Matrix

Rhyx wrote:

However remember that Neo did not take the deal and ended up taking down Smith's totalitarian "agency".

Yes and from the general publics belifs inside the matrix, it could be said that Neo joined a terrorist organisation. Sort of what's said about Firewall. Project Ozma, Titan cultists or some highly influential singularity seekers could be the first group that "courted" the PCs, then presenting Firewall membership as one of their few plausible escape routes. Such a campaign could be about the daunting tasks for the PCs to reclaim "their" lifestyle & perhaps the task to get even with those that kicked them out of their old. Its not much of a stretch to present the particular cell of Firewall that the Players join as a resistance movement against oppressive opponent, in addition of its Good Samaritan deeds. A opponent thats powerful, influential & well connected into rest of society. Then again that opponent could be another Firewall cell that has another opinion on what must be done.

One of the classic tropes of agent stories is that the different sides are not that different: when an agency don't even trust its own agents it can be just as cold and ruthless to them as the enemy. Paranoia is insidious and makes any secret organisation dangerous and somewhat sociopathic. It doesn't have to be that it is corrupt, just that in the world of shadows everybody is an expendable asset (and in EP, they are *reusable* expendable assets!) If you look at many of the classic agent stories the heroes are often fighting for "the good guys" of western democracy, but their methods and the local events are anything but nice, and the fight comes at a great personal cost. This is why I like to keep Firewall a pretty hardcore organisation - but with a very nice, fuzzy veneer in normal interactions. Sure, we are a democracy with internal dissension and discussion on the Eye. Sure, your proxy will give you great leeway to act - we trust you. Do not mind that James Kong and Little Boy are standing ready somewhere in the vicinity with a warhead and sociological disruption material, that is just a precaution. Oh, and we are sorry we cannot tell you why your previous instance disappeared.

I disagree that Firewall [i]wants[/i] to be nice. they're not a philanthropic organisation. Hell, if they could remove the knowledge of their existence from all but their own personnel, they would. Their goal is to preserve the transhumanity's continued existence from ANY and ALL threat. the TITANs is but one of the threats they're fighting. In the meanwhile, if they have to sacrifice tenths of thousands souls to preserve nearly one billion, hesitation wouldn't even begin to enter the equation. They're willing to mold the psyche of their own agents through psychosurgery to fit their goals, for crying out loud! they'll torture, they'll kidnap, they' d lie and manipulate... Could an organisation with such method and memes really care about looking nice? they're rather not be known of, period my key models for Firewall are Cerberus and Checkmate. I'm not gonna force my players to join. Firewall might twist their arms some but me, as GM, won't force them.

Just have firewall get a copy of the players' Egos after the players screwup. Make it so that the players know that they owe firewall for re-instantiating and have firewall just ask for a small favor in the future. and then gets the players hooked on the benefits of i-rep. Also since firewall would have a copy of their Egos have Firewall offer missions that cater to the PCs desires.

My PCs only joined firewall because Firewall has certain bits of information about them that would be disastrous if they were to get out. After showing the stick Firewall also gave them the carrot of solving any "problems" they currently had and they all joined up. Unless you are a "must save the universe at all costs" type then I would not see Firewall as being a group you voluntarily join.