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Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)

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Libertad Libertad's picture
Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
On page 25 of the Core Rulebook, the Terminology section has several entries that reveals way too many secrets. New players looking it over may ruin the setting's many surprises if they look through it. Of concern are the entries of bracewell probe, ETI, exsurgent virus, and prometheans. Aside from telling new players to not look at the Terminology entries altogether, is there any way to deter new gamers away from certain sections without revealing too much?
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Need Help: Spoilers in the Terminology section!
Libertad wrote:
Aside from telling new players to not look at the Terminology entries altogether, is there any way to deter new gamers away from certain sections without revealing too much?
Are you asking for some clever con you can pull on players so they won't read it, because if you tell them outright not to look at something it will only pique their interest?
Libertad Libertad's picture
Re: Need Help: Spoilers in the Terminology section!
I didn't mean to imply that this would be my first course of action; that would be counterproductive. But I don't want players to accidentally stumble onto descriptions which reveal important plot information.
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
Marek Krysiak Marek Krysiak's picture
Re: Need Help: Spoilers in the Terminology section!
I'd say your players shouldn't read chapter 12 of core EP (or any 'Game Information' chapters in the subsequent releases), as well as majority of chapter 8 (paragraphs about psi and the entry at the very end: "The Lost"). If you have EP core hack pack, you could prepare special censored version of the book for your players.


Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Talk with the players. Or even better, tell them outright. Another option, of course, is to give them (or force them to buy) some points into Knowledge: Firewall or Knowledge: transhuman conspiracies, or ask them to start with at least 20 e-rep. Knowing there was some Bracewell Probe, by the way, is not uncommon. It is one of the theories about the reason behind the TITAN causing the Fall. So you can simply say those are rumours, and "Bracewell Probe" is a term used for an hipothetical alien probe that infected the TITANs. And the Prometheans? AGI-rights baseless propaganda. As for the ETI and the Exurgent Virus, they are widely known. ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence? The Factors. Which are known. Exurgent Virus? TITAN Quarantine zone in Mars, all of Earth, etc... are kept isolated not only because the headhunting drones, but because they have memetic infections that can make you crazy. That is the best way to dissuade people from going there, since when you see your body as a mere sleeve (gear), dying is not a problem. To lose your mind forever? Hell on Earth. My motto is not to forbid the players, but have a good answer and to remember them that anything they can do, I can field a dozen NPCs that can too.
nerdnumber1 nerdnumber1's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
You can put some variations and secrets specifically for your game. In fact, some of the secrets are intentionally open to GM interpretations. Also, any of the in-character dialog side-bars are limited by the knowledge of the participants, so they could be wrong. Much of the information is rumored or known by a minority anyway, so even those who don't know about asyncs might know rumors. As a final note, Firewall has information about most x-threats and, while they may keep a lot of information need-to-know, they will probably give new agents a brief overview of x-threats (don't stick your ego in alien computers, avoid TITAN strobe-lights that hurt your brain, etc.)
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
And of course, sometimes it is fun to show "evidence" that the standard story is entirely untrue. The TITANs were a completely human-originated threat. The exsurgent virus showed up *after* the Fall, about the time the Factors showed up. The gates were invented by ARAGO, a physics obsessed seed AGI just before the Fall. Firewall has been around for a *long* time, fighting the organisation currently called Ozma over certain alien intrusions. A sizeable fraction of Fall evacuees and everybody who has ever egocasted have evidence of memory tampering: someone has rewritten history on a huge scale. Naturally, these could be red herrings, misinformation or conspiracy theories. But there are so many clever groups out there willing to obscure the truth that anything not experienced directly could be a forgery (and your current experience... well, it could be a simspace).
Extropian
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Libertad wrote:
Aside from telling new players to not look at the Terminology entries altogether, is there any way to deter new gamers away from certain sections without revealing too much?
I sat down with my players and told them thus: "Look, I cannot stop you from reading the GM's section of the corebook, but I would rather you did not because you would spoil some parts of the plot I have in mind." It seems to have worked.
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
http://www.mediafire.com/?vvs2l8260h2caa8 Here's the newest version of the player's censored copy of the Eclipse Phase core book. I actually deleted the 12th chapter of the book, along with it's references in the table of contents. That's the best I can do to help you.
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Ah, cutting the Gordian knot. A smart, simple and practical approach.
Extropian
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Arenamontanus wrote:
Ah, cutting the Gordian knot. A smart, simple and practical approach.
I created this pdf a while back when someone very similar thread to this one. This is an updated copy of that (that request was from sometime last year, I think). Oddly enough, it has served a secondary purpose at my tables... making the Creative Commons license more palatable to people who are uncomfortable getting a free copy of the core book. Apparently there are some who are weirded out by the idea of selling something while simultaneously giving it away for free. They find my "For Players" version to be like a shareware copy of the game... and that makes them more at ease with the idea of taking it. Crazy, huh? Are there any secret parts of the later books? I'm too lazy to look right now. If so, I can probably start working to strip those out too.
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Well, the idea of making a censored version is good, but that won't stop a player from finding the complete book (that is something that happens even with campaigns, so there is no easy solution but to ask the players not to). As for other supplements, that will depend on the particular GM, but I'd say all of them (but for maybe Panopticon) include spoilers in one way or another, so I'd play safe and expugne all but the rule/gear chapters included in each one. So if the players want to see something, they can roll and you can answer, or you can copy/paste the info and send it to them using other media. A year or two ago, I ran a Deathwatch game (just 3-4 sessions, it becomes boring rather quickly when you only go into the field to kill stuff) with heavy computer support: we had the laptops with a private network and a shared folder, and I placed there the documents when it was time for it (player handouts, images of the stuff they were facing, etc...). And yes, it was quite unrealistic, since in Warhammer 40k dead-tree version of stuff is more common than the digital one, but for an EP game it can be great. Even better if you can use your laptop and a second screen facing the players instead, so they cannot look into other stuff during the game, by the way... XD
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Xagroth wrote:
Well, the idea of making a censored version is good, but that won't stop a player from finding the complete book (that is something that happens even with campaigns, so there is no easy solution but to ask the players not to).
Well, of course, but at least a small deterrent will go some way to preventing the leaking of spoilers. I think of this version of the corebook as like a locked car... it won't stop the most determined car thief, but it'll keep the average person honest. If you have a player that [i]absolutely must see what's in that chapter[/i], there's probably never going to be any way to stop that person from doing it. This is true for any game, unless you homebrew it wholecloth.
Xagroth wrote:
As for other supplements, that will depend on the particular GM, but I'd say all of them (but for maybe Panopticon) include spoilers in one way or another, so I'd play safe and expugne all but the rule/gear chapters included in each one. So if the players want to see something, they can roll and you can answer, or you can copy/paste the info and send it to them using other media.
I was just wondering if there were key parts of those books that, like chapter 12 of the core book, were definitely intended for GM's eyes only. If so, I can mod those books to be missing those sections as well. I'm just too lazy to take a look myself. I probably will in a little bit.
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Libertad Libertad's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Decivre wrote:
http://www.mediafire.com/?vvs2l8260h2caa8 Here's the newest version of the player's censored copy of the Eclipse Phase core book. I actually deleted the 12th chapter of the book, along with it's references in the table of contents. That's the best I can do to help you.
Thanks! This is greatly appreciated! How do I give you @-rep?
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
Libertad wrote:
Thanks! This is greatly appreciated! How do I give you @-rep?
You know, there really should be an implementation of a basic rep system on this forum. They could call it ep-rep. We should really pitch this to the site admin.
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Libertad Libertad's picture
Re: Need Help: Want players to avoid spoilers! (Spoilers within)
I figured that it was an official system, seeing as how some folks had +3 C-rep, +5 E-rep and other variations in their signatures.
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950