@CodeBreaker: I think that the tendency to have more uplifts is cheapening the setting. The first thought I had after reading about owls and pigs was "What comes next, owlbears?". Just getting a feeling that the devs are taking the D&D route and soon we will have tens of bizzare creatures that were created only to bring more diversity at minimum cost. And answering your last question: I think we already have enough morphs.

Here's a radical idea - if you don't like the new morphs *don't allow them in your campaign*. It's a sourcebook, not a bible. Me, I love them. But I think the best of the lot is the Ocopoid Synthmorph.

I rather liked the "Identity Monitoring" sidebar. Good to see a little humor sneaking in. I can almost hear the PersonaNoctis voice speaking in the same tones of my credit card's Fraud Detection automated system.

I am still reading the Surveillance part of the book, but so far it has been incredibly enlightening. I am waiting for people like Arenamontanus to comment on the scientific feasibility of the technologies used, but insofar as I can suspend disbelief and say 'yeah, okay, they have all of this stuff' it fits together quite nicely.

That takes care of my worries, now that I've looked over that again.

Ok, what recreational drugs where people on when they decided to include a bipedal owl and where can i send the funds to keep them going?! ;) Still, right now i am torn between said owl, the hypergibbon and the synth-squid :D Also, seeing the orca with manipulators reminded me that this game can pull a blue planet setting via the pandora gates. Hell, now that i think about it i could even pull a Dirty Pair. Specifically the one with the extra-legal space port housed in gigantic hollow trees. Edit: Oh, i completely forgot about the neo-pig! I wonder if i can custom order one with tusks and a greenish skin tone ;) It also brings to mind "long pig"...

750 wrote:

Hell, now that i think about it i could even pull a Dirty Pair. Specifically the one with the extra-legal space port housed in gigantic hollow trees. Edit: Oh, i completely forgot about the neo-pig! I wonder if i can custom order one with tusks and a greenish skin tone ;) It also brings to mind "long pig"...

I wonder if Proust grenades would count as memetic attacks. Gods, I loved Run from the Future.

I think, like that idea about a Eclipse-Phase-version of Animal Farm! You could also easily bring in some elements of 1984. Imagine a gouvernment, that uses all those fancy transhuman mesh-technology for controlling the citizens in an oldfashioned, totalitarian style. A corrupted, failed "uplift-paradise", ruled by some neo-pigs who just love the ancient ways of KGB, STASI and Securitate (and combine them with modern technology) sounds like a faszinating hell. :D But I must admit, the neo-pigs reminded me of something entirely different, when I read about them first: http://media.photobucket.com/image/pigs%20in%20space/RonNButler/Motivati...

Hmm....why not? Of course, the "muppets" would perform live on stage in a theatre somewhere in Elysium. And of course, the "muppets" are no mere puppets - the actors are sleeved in muppet-synthomorphs!

Either that, or Statler and Waldorf are retired members of the martian hyperelite. Immortal, bored, cynic...

Dragging this back OnTopic: Morphs: We got the Chickcharnie, but there's this tantalizing mention of the Vodyanoy morph (p.131) that isn't repeated or elaborated on. Having a little knowledge of the topic, the surveillance section was intriguing and fun reading. I was pleased to see that the majority of sneaky futuristic things my nanitic surveillance spook already had going were reflected nicely under the new RAW. Things that would bear further inquiry: personality emulation AIs, both as a predictive surveillance-related modeling system, and as a means to give an identity-thief an edge? Some thoughts on the severity of Counter-Surveillance by diverse hypercorps would also seem helpful. I'm picturing a 'standard warning symbol' stickered on various shops doors that warn that said shop 'provides the free service' of destroying all surface nanitic 'infections' of those entering, and takes no responsibility for the simultaneous destruction of the swarms you wanted to have active. Bugs check in but they don't check out. A trick I've suggested in-game is 'flypapering': bumping into a target while holding something sticky enough to ensure capture of nanoswarm elements. This permits examination of a target's nano-level defenses (or infestations), and potentially allows the programming of your own swarms to mimic the signature of the target's defensive swarm, hopefully permitting you to infest someone with taggants or other surveillance nanites despite their guardian swarms. Alternately, one can explore known recent loopholes with common nanitic designs just as one might any other out-of-date security. Such a bump might also pick up genetic material, allowing the acquisition of the exact make/model/serial number of an 'off-the-rack' morph and perhaps allowing it to be traced to its provider and purchaser. It seems reasonable that morph makers will have their own serial numbers and identifiers (and copyrights!) buried in the genetic code of their morph lines, entirely separate from identitats and other such systems which are put in place after the morph leaves the 'factory vats'. Surveillance AI combined with input from multiple surveillance systems in public/crowd areas to note patterns of behavior. "That entity, there, is deliberately following that entity, there, while trying not to be seen. They aren't moving 'with' the crowd in a transit or shopping pattern." etc. We were presented with a 'spectrum', as it were, of habitat surveillance patterns, with a few examples listed of notable habitats that matched each pattern. It would've been nice to have seen some generalities applied. Luna tends towards _______, Corporate Mars tends towards ______, etc. Similar notation as to habs where uplifts were not tolerated or were second-class citizens would also have been handy. I am wholly unsurprised that the Jovian habitats are portrayed as poorly managed cesspits of microbial/fungal outbreak. I recognize that there are significant chunks of the text written from the POV of specific in-setting characters, but it would still be nice to see less stereotypically 'bad and ignorant' characterization leading to cartoon opposition. Fear of nanites, AI, engineered humans and uplifts does not necessarily equate to 'unable to orchestrate a sustainable micro-ecology'. Feral Robot certainly has their work cut out for them!

I can totally understand it: people asked for dolphins (God knows why), so they sarcastically gave them like 6 varied-but-nearly-identical aquatic mammals. :) Killing with kindness, classic.

Quote:

My wish list of Panopticon vol.2 is : spacecraft. It's the only real aspect of the setting that I think is underdeveloped.

I´d agree on that. I also hope, we will get more information on AIs (and AI-characters) in Panopticon vol.2. How do AIs see the world, are there different AI-factions, different kinds of infomorphs, etc.pp.

Habitat morphs. We want one.

hehe that reminds me of that segment in Green Lantern Emerald Knights With a guy looking for the strongest being in the universe to defeat him and take his place. He hears about Mogo and his coordonate. He lands in a pristine planet, lush with vegetation but with signs of nobody. And so he waits, and waits, and waits, but no trace of that Mogo For he didn't know he was ON Mogo himself When I was reading that chapter about habitats as Morph, that's exactly what came to my mind the PC are on the trail of a Fall War Criminal, and through investigation, find out about his possible hideout on a habitat of post human Argonaut symphatizers. Oh they find dangerously mad scientist and enough potential Xrisks to give a proxy a big i-repgasm...but no trace of the criminal. And that habitat who seems to be dangerously malfunctioning wherever they go... Addendum if you want a good inspiration for surveillance and policing, I recommend the new anime N°6. REally good ideas of npc and visuals for habitats

Can you give a link or something for that "anime N°6"? My google-fu turns up nothing. And I'd love a new cyberpunk movie to watch.

Monican wrote:

It's too bad they did the same thing as with Sunward, lumping all the game info that people will need to flip to into one lump-chapter called "Game Information". Is this a conscious choice, not to have tabs for "Gear" and other sections? Gear is the #1 thing my group flips to during play, to get the stats on equipment and the costs. Lumping everything useful into "Game Information" defeats the point of having tabs.

Its purpose is only defeated if you only check the book for gear, I'd say. As for me, I really prefer having all the "crunch" in one site for me to check, thank you very much ;)

Yes; I never had issues with the Game Information being all in one place.

I have to say, I like the way the Game Information section is handled. Gear is a part of it. It's all clearly broken down in the ToC at the beginning, so page-lookup is not really a problem (as opposed to game information buried in flavor-text, where one has to differentiate between 'Fluff about blah starts on pg. 191 but the actual rules for blah are on pp.197-8). It makes reading the background far more interesting and entertaining than having to wade through occasional page-blocks of stats and tables, IMHO. The only valid reason I can come up with for having all of that information interspersed erratically through the text is 'Other games have done it that way before there were good systems for organization in game-writing.' If you look at most modern manuals on engineering, chemistry, et al., tables, formulae and other such information are stuck at the back in one nice large section. That has been true for quite some time: "The prudent text-books give it In tables at the end 'The stress that shears a rivet Or makes a tie-bar bend- 'What traffic wrecks macadam- What concrete should endure- but we, poor Sons of Adam Have no such literature, [i]To warn us or make sure!"[/i] - Rudyard Kipling, [i]Hymn of Breaking Strain[/i], 1935 I believe PH have struck a good balance here in terms of format.

Yerameyahu wrote:

One thing that jumped out at me is the negligible cost (Low) for a mod that utterly negates camouflage effects. I understand that the stealth arms race is the point, but I was surprised.

I'm guessing your referring to polarization. The entry is a little confuseing. Does it only work underwater (under certain light conditions)? It seems to have some very specific conditions under which it works..

CodeBreaker wrote:

Looking more closely at the art. Page 22, the dolphin profile. Interests: Rope Play, Economy Theory, Historical Femenists and [b]Fish[/b] Hehehehe.

It has some fun tidbits. So.... Decepticons, huh? :D

As an old cypherpunk, I was very impressed with the Surveillance chapter, best treatment of future transparency issues I've seen. My infiltration-themed campaign will be making a lot of use of it. And the character names shout-outs were great..John Perry Schneier indeed ;)

I've bought most of the Meat-Space books and this ones on my wish-list but from reading my digital copy I'm both elated and saddened. Elated in how high quality the book is and just how much condensed awesome the Studio managed to inject into the book. Upset becuase no Canide Uplifts. :( Or mention of any Wolf-Uplifting plans for that matter. I can understand Uplifting Dogs but why not trying to uplift their intellectually superior Ancestors. (Wolfs are for the most part more intelligent then dogs...Human breeding practices over the ages really did a number on them.) Of course on the other hand I love the info on Smart-Dogs. (And loved the snippet on cats and Swarm Cats. :3 ) And knowing their are Smart Wolves in the setting really helped brighten things up. But still bummed out over no Canine Representation among Sapients.

I understand this. As mentioned in the material all the current Uplifted Species represent the 'Low-Hanging Fruit' in Upliftment Science. And yeah the Pig thing took me by surprise. :p I know their smart but I would never have put them on the same level as Ravens, Octopi or Dolphins. And yeah people on this site have made some rather Impressive Canide Morphs. (The Skinthetic Beowulf and Fenrir Varient, Neo-Canine, Alpha Varient and others.) One person included an interesting take on Uplifted Wolf 'Culture' in the EP Setting. I guess I was just hoping for some more Canide Stuff...I loved the Robot Octo-Morph though. Stroke of Genius.