Hi all,
First post here - I've not purchased EP (yet!) but it's one of those games I really want to get my hands on. I've been looking it over for months and I think I've got the player interest to justify getting a copy.
I'm a huge fan of the down-and-dirty sci-fi films of the 1970s/1980s, like Alien , Outland and that sort of thing. How well would this game run a campaign like that? I want to keep the transhuman elements as that'd be the goal of these blue collar-type characters, to be able to do such things. Right now, though, they've got ore to ship, or starships to clean. In other words, I want to keep the transhumanism to a minimum to begin with and have the players build towards it, like a goal.
Could I do that with this game? Can you create unmodified humans?
Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.
Blue collar adventures
Fri, 2011-03-18 17:06
#1
Jontheman
Blue collar adventures
Fri, 2011-03-18 17:13
#2
sjmcc13
Re: Blue collar adventures
Yes, they are called Flats.
Fri, 2011-03-18 17:13
#3
Googleshng
Re: Blue collar adventures
Fairly easily, yeah. I'm not sure if it's the best possible system to do it with since the rules lend to pretty darn high PC mortality (as having your body chopped into a fine paste is something you can recover from), but that's easy enough to keep down. In the default setting there's actually a number of large population centers who reject a lot of what's available, living as vanilla unmodified humans on worn-out spaceships or hollowed out asteroids, with stats provided. Just restrict half the equipment, lower character creation points, and either of those examples would be plenty easy to replicate.
Fri, 2011-03-18 19:26
#4
Parisa
Re: Blue collar adventures
I recently played in a game in Jovian space, where they don't like much advanced technology at all. A lot of the population doesn't have mesh inserts (which is basically internet access directly from the brain). If you want to create people that are not immersed in the high tech world of EP, I would say Jovian Space is a good place to start. That is where a lot of flats, and splicers (the morphs without large modifications) would reside. You can give the characters ectos (like palm pilots, or iphones) to access the mesh but they wouldn't rely on that aspect of tech as much.
If you are having them work on ships, scum barges are good too, because you can mold that ship how you want. For example, you can run a campaign a bit like Firefly (people don't die there too much!), or at least use that type of ship. Or of course you can do the same type of thing with the ship from Alien, Pandorum, etc. The opportunities are limitless!
Sounds like an interesting way to introduce the team to transhumanity!
Fri, 2011-03-18 21:43
#5
Yerameyahu
Re: Blue collar adventures
Of course, scum barges are primarily associated with Scum, who embrace radical augmentation as much as anyone in the game.
Sat, 2011-03-19 01:01
#6
Parisa
Re: Blue collar adventures
Yes I think it is true that scum barges can be radical. I feel like anyone could be on a scum barge, and given the diversity of the setting, there are probably scum barges where a large potion of the population is unmodified. Perhaps the captain has a preference towards flats and splicers (perhaps after a bad experience with augments or synthetic workers).
Mon, 2011-03-21 10:50
#7
nezumi.hebereke
Re: Blue collar adventures
Beautifully. Twice as well as most because resleeving means you actually have to regularly kill your PCs to maintain your Evil GM membership.
That guy who died when the alien burst out of his chest? He had it easy. He didn't get brought back and have to review the security footage.
Bear in mind though that 'blue collar' and 'transhumanism' are not mutually exclusive. If you're really going for blue collar, I would embrace the negative sides of transhumanism, and let them strive for the positive aspects.
Most blue collar workers have basically 'sold' their bodies. They work in old robotic shells. Not requiring sleep or space, they work for twenty or forty hour shifts, and have less than a closet to call their own. A case can't even drink or smoke - they have to 'license' access to their own sensory suite from their employers to artificially create the feelings of being drunk.
You certainly can play a flat human (Jovian Republic), but I think you're missing out on the full transhuman experience - that those blue-collared workers are still alive and well in this crazy new world, and they're still getting crapped on just as much by their employers.
Mon, 2011-03-21 13:02
#8
Arenamontanus
Re: Blue collar adventures
I just ran a blue collar game, where the PCs were salvage people doing the dirty job of de-orbiting infested habitats.
Backups became an interesting and useful plot point: one PC choose to use an emergency farcaster to "escape" back to L4 (where he had a stashed backup body) from a solar orbit, hoping to get the jump on picking up some incoming treasure. And at least two villains (independently!) didn't feel so bad about planning to destroy the whole ship and crew since they all had backups elsewhere.
Blue collar is not the same thing as low tech. After all, current blue collar workers use smartphones, computers and cars every day. They might not have the best gadgets or know how to hack them, but they use devices that are actually very advanced. The diffusion of technology is speeding up.
The Fall simply removed most of the kind of person who did not have backups. Survivors are very likely to have backups, and it is relatively cheap. The real issue is of course whether you can afford a nice morph - several of the PCs in the above game had morph problems and were *outraged* that the sneaky guy wasted a morph.
—
