Maybe it's just me, but the taboo factor really isn't here for a lot of these. -Dietary restrictions are easily bypassed via fabbers. -Incest is a meaningless topic, as long as the person's face is different, and I can't imagine anyone's lover or friend being so insensitive as to keep the face of someone else's relative. If someone looks like a relative of yours, it'll weird you out, whether they really are or not. Someone looking like a relative but not being them is far more bizarre and probably takes much more to get used to. -Bodily functions are squicky but no different from modern day issues. -Racism/sexism are non-factors in Eclipse Phase. Everyone is stronger, smarter, more motivated, etc. Speciesism is a potential issue, but the truth is, anyone can get an upgrade or even change species for a lark. Suicide is a particularly nasty issue and one I think that would be discussed often. On a similar note, I ponder the question of a Delta Fork left over from someone who has been perma-killed or who has committed suicide. Imagine a relative or spouse whose only remnant of someone they once loved is this unfeeling, unthinking machine. It talks like them, it has their face, but it's like a statue or mask, except that it isn't; it taunts them by being able to pretend to be alive, even if the illusion only holds up for a few seconds. Of course, you can't delete it, because that's all that's left...

Arenamontanus wrote:

KULT could be good for that, although it was easy to make players jaded (there was a serial killer PC... let's just say that the bodycount on his personal quest for enlightenment was *amazing*, but his main problem was that mass murder was no longer a thrill) Obvious "strong" topics EP already deals with involve sex, death, madness, identity and drugs. But other common taboos might be interesting to play with: dietary restrictions (just what horrific things can you get the PCs to eat?), incest (how to treat relationships between forks? or having sex with your sibling's original morph inhabited by your spouse?), bodily functions (can be played for yuck, as body horror a la David Cronenberg, or with weird cultural twists - if you have good enough immune system you never need to wash), racism/sexism/speciesism (what if the prejudice actually had a factual basis?)...

That actually reminds me of a couple of things that happened in our games. In one, the PCs dealt with the madame of a fetish brothel that pretty much covered everything under the sun. From neotenic prostitutes to sleeve-swinging and even murder fetishes (rent a cheap biomorph and allow someone to brutally murder you) were all allowed in this place. It was quite interesting to see how the players were made uncomfortable about the concepts being addressed. The other one that made people uncomfortable was when I created a character who was in love with itself... pretty much literally. It basically used forks and variants of its own ego for most of its purposes; deltas for muses, betas for lovers, and alphas to maintain a presence everywhere. I could actually see their faces of horror when my character would rent a pod for the night.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

-Racism/sexism are non-factors in Eclipse Phase. Everyone is stronger, smarter, more motivated, etc. Speciesism is a potential issue, but the truth is, anyone can get an upgrade or even change species for a lark.

I disagree with this. As long as people are unique in some way, there is room for them to discriminate. Whether it's discriminating based on political bloc (like scum vs consortium citizens; if nationality discrimination is a form of racism, political bloc is pretty much the same), choice of gender ("Female morphs? Typical for someone of your intelligence.") choice of ethnic style (someone might discriminate against morphs with Chinese features because it reminds them of Barsoomians) or even clade pride ("It's either Remade or unmade, your choice!"), there's still room for things that are essentially the same as racism. It just takes on a new form. And in the Junta, it's probably still alive and well.

Suicide has come up in our game. It wasn't as emotional or compelling as Arenamontanus' example but it also touched on the idea of "right to euthanasia". My character has an addiction to XP (we've written rules for addiction to XP). Eventually it became a moderate addiction with it's negative modifiers to skill tests. Mostly it just made my character late to work and unavailable a lot. Later, at a critical juncture my character failed a roll that he should have made easily and nearly got the crew of our ship and all the passengers killed. At that point he decided he had a problem. Soon as we were back to home base, (Nectar), He left a current life log with the captain and asked for vacation time to get his head strait. Then he went into his Ego Bank and had them "re-boot" him from a backup before the addiction got so bad. When he showed up again as an old-new version of himself and apologized for fucking up, the other character's (and players) were pretty disturbed. From the other character's perspective he basically committed suicide instead of dealing with his issues. It's obvious to them that he's more fragile than they thought and they treat him differently now. (which has been a bit frustrating to play) From his conscious perspective he traded 30 days of his memories for a mulligan, but now he woke up "Yesterday" and everyone is treating him differently. It just kind of highlights the fact that suicide in EP is in some sense more futile than in contemporary times. Weather the action is motivated from self-loathing or desperation Digital Consciousness might not allow you to escape your problems. It also kind of brought home the perspective that any interruption of consciousness; Resleeving, Ego Casting, restarting from backup is a kind of death. [b]Edit[/b] I'm not sure if it's exactly pertinent but there are some Sexuality and Sexual ID Role issues in our group that aren't specific to EP. One Male player would like to play a female character that he's made, but he can't because his wife hates it when he plays gender opposite. Her current character is an any-thing-goes party girl who's always looking to hook up. When I GM I cut the sex scenes cause I'm not interested in exploring my buddy's wife's sexuality. I can only play female character's as a GM because that's the only way I get sufficient separation from the character to be able to identify with being female. One of the most difficult thing's I've ever tried to GM is an NPC trying to rape a female character. I had to fudge die rolls cause I just couldn't pull the trigger on that one. Well this has been quite the Expose on our group. Sorry if I made anyone uncomfortable.

It always comes back to sex and violence, and less so, group loyalty, purity, fairness, harm (or care), and respect (especially for authority). The dirty sex is 'sensitive'. Rape goes too far for most groups (thankfully). Death is sensitive. Suicide, infanticide, non-consensual torture get rough. Loyalty to the species, to self, to family, create tough conflicts. A lot of pre-conceived notions pop up and cause fissures in the group. Purity is sort of a weird one. It's coded into the game to a degree, with biomorphs being preferred and exhumans being 'too far'. Players hit across the spectrum. But there's always something that's 'too freaky' for the players to be comfortable with. Fairness and justice is always uncomfortable, but there's not a lot of especially new topics unique to EP. Respect of authority is another tough one. Players don't like to feel their religion or political beliefs are attacked, or people they look up to (and understandably so), but EP by its nature does at least test these values. Oh, also, entomology. Quickest way to make players blanche is to take something insects (or squid) do as a normal part of their day to day, and subject the PC to it.

OneTrikPony wrote:

Not really. In the first place her character is always teasing his character, it's natural that their RL relationship is carried into the game. In the second part I have no issues with anyone saying; "If you do this it will make the game un-fun for me." My buddy is absolutely BANNED from playing any sort of halfling in any sort of fantasy game I GM. He's also banned from playing any sort of Otaku or Technomancer in Shadowrun. I don't hate halflings, otaku, or technomancers... well I kinda hate halflings, but I can't stand it when he plays a child archetype.

Oh I see. It's not because she's mean, but because he's terrible at it. I get it. We have a player in my old group that was banned from all chaotic and evil alignments for the same reason. I know how that goes.

OneTrikPony wrote:

Back to the original point: I wanted to also mention that the idea of Infolife and, to a lesser degree, synthetic life is very uncomfortable for me. I'm in love with the physicality and sensuality of my biological body. Even though I can only look forward to it's eventual failure the idea of giving that up before it happens to live in a "Dream world" governed by software that can be re-written on a whim is abhorrent. While I like the idea of replacing some of my weaker parts with easily reparable mechanical systems I hate the idea that, as a synth, going to the gym would be useless and having sex with a woman would be pointless.

Depends on your definition of pointless. In accordance with the tech levels in Eclipse Phase, a synthmorph can enjoy recreational sex with just as much sensation (if not more thanks to sensual enhancements) has a meaty human can. Combine that with a synthetic mask, and you could probably fool anyone into believing that your cyber-wang is as real as your original one was. Hell, I know that if given the chance, I would not only replace my... uh, organ... with an improved cybernetic version, I'd probably get a few spares attached as well. Then no normal human could possibly enjoy sex as much as I could. "Hey ladies, up for some group play? I have the parts necessary to satisfy up to 5 of you, and I never fall asleep...."