New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Thu, 2012-05-31 04:30

#2

Smokeskin

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

The looks and quality seem skyhigh! I haven't read through it enough to give feedback on the content yet, but very sleek work indeed.

Thu, 2012-05-31 05:43

#3

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Smokeskin wrote:
The looks and quality seem skyhigh! I haven't read through it enough to give feedback on the content yet, but very sleek work indeed.

Ditto! I really like how it fleshes out Olympus further - I am finishing up an adventure partially set there too, so this is very useful. It is not just a neat little intro adventure, but a kind of mini-sourcebook for a part of the city. (My hard sf side of course complains about the energy conservation problem of making biological explosives, but it can be made to shut up if one assumes the energy demands are satiated by strong hunger - it is impressive how much energy there is in food)

—

Thu, 2012-05-31 08:55

#4

MrPrim

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Whoa, the production values are amazing! Has Posthuman released some product with all of their backgrounds/fonts/design elements or did you have to manually dismantle a pdf to make something look so perfect? Haven't read it yet, too much work to do - but later!

Thu, 2012-05-31 10:15

#5

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

MrPrim wrote:
Whoa, the production values are amazing!

Yes, I am feeling a bit envious too. It looks good - not just layout-wise, but sidebars explaining what to do if the PCs get stuck and other useful help. Also, if the other adventures in this trilogy work as well then it might be a very good start for a campaign. Seems to be a bit local and low-level, which I generally like - it is so hard to de-escalate a campaign once you have saved the Saturn system.

—

Thu, 2012-05-31 10:29

#6

MrPrim

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Seeing this has inspired me to actually do some Eclipse Phase homebrewing myself. Right now I've got the Newborn Evil Seed AI "CENTIMANI" (the acronym is meaningless), and the hilarious Culture pastiche "The Society", in mind. :D

Thu, 2012-05-31 12:59

#7

TadanoriOyama TadanoriOyama's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

This is a great looking adventure. Fittingly scary and overwhelming for the players and with that potential for dread. Excellent layout and interesting NPCs across the board. I am very impressed.

—

[img]http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/9730/reintsuserbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/4205/nightcartelbanner.jpg[/img]

Thu, 2012-05-31 13:24

#8

Tyrnis

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Very nicely done. I've only skimmed it thusfar, but as others have said, outstanding production value and looks to be a nicely written adventure.

Wed, 2012-08-22 08:21

#9

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

@everyone, Thanks for the positive feedback :) @Arenamontanus

Arenamontanus wrote:
My hard sf side of course complains about the energy conservation problem of making biological explosives, but it can be made to shut up if one assumes the energy demands are satiated by strong hunger - it is impressive how much energy there is in food.

It is indeed impressive how much energy there is in food: 1 gram of TNT = 1 Calorie (by definition, actual TNT has more energy) 1 package of Skittles = about 220 Calories 1 hand grenade = around 200-250 grams of TNT So over a week (the time it takes to fully build up the explosives), the energy obtained from eating food should easily be enough to create the explosives :) @MrPrim

MrPrim wrote:
Has Posthuman released some product with all of their backgrounds/fonts/design elements or did you have to manually dismantle a pdf to make something look so perfect?

I extracted the background images for the pages and the sidebars using pdftoppm, then I recreated the rest of the page elements manually using libreoffice Draw. There were a lot of problems with the transparencies doing it that way, which is why the file is so big: I had to flatten everything down and edit it in gimp to make it look right. Edited: Fixed the Quote blocks.

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Fri, 2012-06-01 01:30

#10

OldSchoolGM OldSchoolGM's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

This is outstanding work! Even for the NPCs alone it would be valuable, but this looks like a fascinating scenario. As others have pointed out, the production values are excellent. My hat is off to you!

Fri, 2012-06-01 06:47

#11

Muetdhiver Muetdhiver's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Just stopping by to say this is very impressive work. Thank you for sharing.

Wed, 2012-06-06 12:11

#12

Foucault

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Dude, that is a pretty sweet adventure. I really like the concept of the disease. Though I do wonder, how large are the flechettes? Could you feel them under the skin? What are they made of? Would they show up on a metal detector, xray or Tray? Never the less, I love the unknowing suicide bombers aspect. It should make living on Mars terrifying. This could work really well if the GM makes sure to change how he describes the city of Olympus as the arc progresses. It starts with packed streets and lots of bustle. As the attacks proceed the city gets more empty as the citizens get paranoid. Also, might you be willing to share the base files that allowed you to give it the real Eclipse Phase look? I've got an adventure I'm working on and I'd love to be able to make it look like the books.

—

R-Rep: 2

Wed, 2012-06-06 14:59

#13

crisaron

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Is it your face? or you just took a random one?

Sat, 2012-06-09 23:01

#14

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Foucault wrote:
Dude, that is a pretty sweet adventure. I really like the concept of the disease. Though I do wonder, how large are the flechettes? Could you feel them under the skin? What are they made of? Would they show up on a metal detector, xray or Tray?

The flechettes are very small cylinders typically less than a micron in diameter and up to hundreds of microns long. They cannot be felt by touch. They are made of organic polymers and will not show up on metal detectors or x-rays. T-rays will not penetrate the skin.

Foucault wrote:
Also, might you be willing to share the base files that allowed you to give it the real Eclipse Phase look? I've got an adventure I'm working on and I'd love to be able to make it look like the books.

Sorry, but I am not willing to share right now: 1) My files are a horrible mess not fit to be seen by human eyes. 2) Part of creating the finished product is a process not a file. 3) I want to concentrate on writing my next adventure instead of cleaning up my files. 4) There are several things wrong with the current formatting that I want to fix. However, if you are willing to wait one to two months, I can create a clean (well cleaner) version of the files and a guide for how to use them when I do the formatting for Dance with the Devil (assuming you are using Libreoffice, Gimp, pdfimages, pdftoppm, and have access to a hex editor). Or if you just want the backgrounds you can use pdfimages to extract them from either Chain Reaction (flattened backgrounds with some of the page elements included) or any of the eclipse phase pdfs (straight images). edit: I confused pdftoppm (used to flatten the backgrounds) with pdfimages (used to extract images from pdfs)

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Sat, 2012-06-09 23:06

#15

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

crisaron wrote:
Is it your face? or you just took a random one?

Are your referring to the cover? That is actually an image from page 44 of Panopticon. I will make sure to add that to the credits in the next version to avoid future confusion.

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Tue, 2012-07-10 02:51

#16

EccentricOwl EccentricOwl's picture

Re: New free adventure: Chain Reaction

Without reading anything or any of the comments let me first applaud you in every way possible for the production values and the work you went to to make this adventure. Thank you. You have reminded me that I should get on sharing some of my own adventure frameworks.

Tue, 2012-08-21 15:01

#17

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Adventure is amazing. I

Adventure is amazing. I hijacked it and altered it for my own campaign, my players were stunned (and one was 'truly inspired' by Chimera. Both Chain Reaction and Hyperdrive were found to be very disturbing. My player's Paranoia level is increasing steadily, haha. Will you be creating a sequel?

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Wed, 2012-08-22 08:17

#18

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Response to NewAgeOfPower

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Adventure is amazing. I hijacked it and altered it for my own campaign, my players were stunned (and one was 'truly inspired' by Chimera. Both Chain Reaction and Hyperdrive were found to be very disturbing. My player's Paranoia level is increasing steadily, haha. Will you be creating a sequel?

Thanks, glad you liked it :D. I am working on the sequels right now but I have come down with a bad case of sequel anxiety so it's taking longer than expected to write them :(. Since you ran the adventure would you mind providing some feedback in order to help me to create a better adventure next time? Some specific things I want to know (and feel free to completely ignore any or all questions, I don't want to seem demanding) are:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

0. About how long did it take you, real time, to run through the adventure? I was shooting for a time of about 4 hours and was wondering how close I got :) 1. Chain Reaction used a fairly short deadline and timed events (the explosions) in order to create tension and keep the characters moving. Did you use the scripted events and/or the deadline and if so how did it work out for you? I was wondering because I was thinking of using similar scripted events and a couple of short deadlines (triggered by the characters talking to certain people) in the sequel. 2. Did you make use of the random encounters sidebar in RLS? I am thinking of using random encounters in several areas of the sequel (one of which is more detailed and contains potential combatants during an infiltration) and was wondering if I should bother. 3. Julia serves as a bottleneck for the adventure, and offers a red herring that may derail the adventure as the characters waste their time in Fuxingmen. Did you have any problems with the bottlenecking (as opposed to having multiple paths to proceed like in the earlier parts of the adventure) or the red herring? 4. The adventure included an optional combat encounter with Gwin that was intended to serve as a kind of punishment for the players for being noisy when asking questions. Did your players fight Gwin and would you like to see a similar 'punishment' encounter in the sequel? If you did fight Gwin did any of your characters mistake him for David (who as far as they knew was also wearing an invisiblity cloak) and try to negotate with him? 5. The Smoke Lions could be negotiated with which would make the combat with Chimera easier. Did your players attempt to negotate with the Smoke Lions? Do you think in general I should take the time to include ways to avoid/bypass or make combat encounters easier? 6. How was the combat difficulty? Did you make use of the tactics described in the character section (particulary the use of moxie for the non-mook characters)? Also did you find the written out bot stats useful or would you prefer that they just be listed in the owning characters gear list? 7. In the research lab I tried to create a sense of dawning horror as the characters realized what Chain Reaction was, that it was loose, and that they may have been infected (from the Smoke Lions, from Gwin's shard pistol, etc.). I also tried to use the stress damage rules to reinforce this. How well did this mechanically reinforced horror actually work in play? I am asking because in the next adventure I am going for a personal horror vibe and I was wondering if I should spend the time trying to create a similar mechanically reinforced horror setup. 8. Did you use Wrasslar in HLS? I am trying to decide whether to include it in the next adventure as a fully fleshed out area or just keep it confined to a sidebar. 9. Is there anything you/your players particularly liked (other than Chimera :) ) or disliked about the adventure? I know this is somewhat general but if there is something you want to see more or less of, tell me and I will see what I can do.

Once again, thanks for playing my adventure.

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Wed, 2012-08-22 13:39

#19

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

0. Overall playtime ~ 6.5

0. Overall playtime ~ 6.5 Hours My players are very new, out of 4 players, I have 3 players who have never touched a Tabletop before my EP Campaign, and one who has only played D&D before. This was the second session, and 2 players missed the first session as well; thus this review will be slightly out of norm. Additionally, I modified your story a bit... 1. Yes. My players slacked off a little halfway through, so their muses (and then Firewall Proxy) informed them of more people exploding, with video feeds, and I had their muses help them connect the dots. This caused some panic. 2. They took the entire adventure down a tangent, so using the random encounter as a base I punished my players most hilariously... 3. My players quickly deduced this was a red herring. I was surprised, actually, I thought they were completely inept at first. 4. LOL! At a Thousand Candles, my players managed to brute force their way around, barring the door behind them, and kidnapping a hooker! After grabbing Sammy they sneaked around and managed to perform a quick get-away, then tortured her for all her information (a scorcher will do that) in simulspace (one of the players is walking around with a TON of cash, and can afford to rent/buy things). After enough torture she just gave up the truth as she knew it. 5. 3 out of 4 players were Stealth Characters; the Hacker/Combat Ninja AGI wearing a ghost with effective 99 infiltration, the Combat Ultimate Isolate wearing a ghost with effective 99 infiltration, the goddamned async FACE wearing a Sylph but chameleon cloak'd for effective 99 infiltration. They made some incredibly good rolls, snuck into the factory, ONE of them got noticed, the Face and the AGI got to surprise 3 people, AND rolled higher initiative (I know) <.<. However, the face went first, Kinesic'd the non-Surprised guy out (guy holding the Shredder), and the AGI sniper wiped all the gang members out in 3 seconds at speed 4 with lucky called headshots, doing JUST enough damage to put 2 of them to 0 DUR and the others took 3 wounds and failed SOMx3 rolls. They had some troubles with Chimera, which I will explain... 6. Chimera scared the crap out of them. One of the players tried to sneak around her but was IMMEDIATELY spotted. The other Ultimate qualified for Ducti (Rimward, High Ultimate Rank), so Chimera and Laciel (the PC ultimate) had a nice long chat. I had her covered with a few Combat Drones, basically modified and up-armored Guardian Angels (quadruple Turbofans, 12/80 movement, Speed 3, 20/20 Armor) with 1 Articulated weapons mount. Chimera had them loaded with MGs. The players nearly died, the Ultimate reaching 71 damage/75 death rating. His teammates dragged him out. 7. Yes, the players had a moment where they convinced themselves "ITS AIRBORNE!" and the AGI, who invested nearly 100K into his Ghost freaking the hell out. And then seeing a gang member explode in their faces, which one character barely dodged getting splattered by, caused some stress. They never did open the heavy vault door though, with all the random body parts, so I didn't get to deal Traumas. However, they were already traumatized enough by the first adventure (exsurgent run-ins, haha) The Async/Face, upon meeting David, IMMEDIATELY figured out the true nature of HyperDrive, and was profoundly disturbed. 8. Nope, was running out of time and had to cut things out. 9. My AGI Sniper/Hacker player wanted to become Chimera. He was super impressed by having 3 egoes teamwork and cover each other so well. I responded: "So, you want to install 2 NPCs into your body? That sounds fine with me..." He declined. LOL! My players really liked the uncanny feeling of HyperDrive, especially the Async. They all flipped out at Thousand Candles, their reactions going from uproarious laughter to the Face facepalming (he is pretty religious). I just smiled.

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Wed, 2012-08-22 21:04

#20

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

Reading this adventure right

Reading this adventure right now. It's bad ass. Bravo! P.S. I could see how this bravura adventure could cause sequel anxiety. That's a very high bar you've set.

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Thu, 2012-08-23 08:52

#21

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

@NewAgeOfPower

@NewAgeOfPower Thanks for the more detailed info, it will really help in writing the next adventure :)

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Thu, 2012-08-23 11:08

#22

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Sequel anxiety: just realize

Sequel anxiety: just realize that the sequel is never going to be as appreciated as the first, but eventually people will start claiming it was the best in the trilogy.

—

Thu, 2012-08-23 18:45

#23

Antirrhesis Antirrhesis's picture

This looks and reads great.

This looks and reads great. Job well done!

Fri, 2012-08-24 08:36

#24

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: Arenamontanus

Arenamontanus wrote:
Sequel anxiety: just realize that the sequel is never going to be as appreciated as the first, but eventually people will start claiming it was the best in the trilogy.

Sure, if you're Star Wars... but what if I am The Matrix? WHAT IF I AM THE MATRIX! (breaks down crying)

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Sat, 2012-08-25 05:22

#25

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

Oh yeah, the Alteration

I heavily altered your quest, but the end had a dramatic twist: At the end, they had 15 minutes before demo charges would go off. David's research was 99% done, and prepared 3 precursor serums, one of which would probably be able to form into the cure, but couldn't haste up the process... unless... He stopped, staring at the players. "What?" "I need to infect 3 people. *there were 3 pcs there at that time, then inject them each with a different precursor serum..." My players gulped, then stared at each other. "I must mention, that the precursor serums are quite peculiar in molecular structure- all of them counter the Chain Reaction nano-virus, but statistically speaking, two of them should kill the infected, while one would cure him without severe side effects." My players stopped, then stared at me. I held in some laughter, before adding one more thing. "No, no, need two test subjects.. I will volunteer myself" My players stared at each other. I couldn't help but laugh my ass off. I'll finish describing the end of last session tomorrow.

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Sun, 2012-08-26 14:26

#26

NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture

So, while the Face/Async

So, while the Face/Async attempted to mind control the AGI Combat ninja, the Ultimate had a out-of-the box ideal I never considered. Go out, kidnap a few Triad members, and use them for the tests. I applied a very difficult driving/locating test (they had a 5 minute clock, effectively) but they pulled it off. No team members lost.

—

As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.

Sun, 2012-08-26 18:31

#27

Desdemona

This is just awesome, The

This is just awesome, The best looking eclipse phase free adventure I've ever seen. Production vallue is amazing. I know it's CC but I'd buy this if it was in print

—

Live fast, Die never...

Wed, 2012-08-29 12:49

#28

CruiserSailor CruiserSailor's picture

From out of nowhere, your

From out of nowhere, your handle speaks volumes. I've only ever seen it when I was doing research on local Exoplanet systems for a Near Future game using Traveller. I'm gonna take a good look at this, this week.

Wed, 2012-08-29 15:30

#29

Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture

Pretty awesome! Easily on the

Pretty awesome! Easily on the same level as many rpg products by established companies.

—

[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]

Sat, 2012-09-01 18:23

#30

twcrone

Nice

Haven't read through it yet but looks nice. Has a very professional look. Thanks!

Thu, 2012-09-13 00:30

#31

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Update to v1.1

I have updated the adventure to [url=http://awdaberton.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/eclipse-phase-chain-reacti.... The only thing that really changed is that I have improved the formatting. If for some reason you want v1.0 it is [url=https://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]here.[/url] I have also created a pdf containing [url=http://awdaberton.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/ep-cr-maps-no-key.pdf]the maps without the keys.[/url]

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Wed, 2012-11-28 05:47

#32

ottomancer ottomancer's picture

Great adventure, great use of

Great adventure, great use of EP layout styles too - as a fellow designer I have to ask - are your blank templates available? I have a couple of EP adventures set on Mars I would love to drop into the house style and share on here.

Mon, 2013-04-22 09:42

#33

Gnothi_Sauton Gnothi_Sauton's picture

Great adventure!

Very good job! When are the other parts coming up? You write so good so you should keep doing it.

—

Mon, 2013-04-29 20:30

#34

atamajakki atamajakki's picture

This is incredible! Once I

This is incredible! Once I get my game up and running, I may have to use this.

Fri, 2013-06-21 03:52

#35

EccentricOwl EccentricOwl's picture

I finally ran the adventure

I finally ran the adventure and my players loved it. ...and of course, I love the awesome product! Art, design, and writing were all great. Wow. that must have been a lot of work to get all the components ready and looking good. Do you think you'd be willing to share your results?

Sun, 2013-06-23 22:06

#36

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Thanks

EccentricOwl wrote:
I finally ran the adventure and my players loved it. ...and of course, I love the awesome product! Art, design, and writing were all great.

Thanks, but I can't take credit for the art: I took it from panopticon.

EccentricOwl wrote:
Wow. that must have been a lot of work to get all the components ready and looking good. Do you think you'd be willing to share your results?

Not sure what you mean, do you want me to share how I got it looking so good? If so try my blog, I have the first part (setting up libreoffice styles) written out there. I plan to put the rest up after I finally finish [i]Dance with the Devil[/i], which will hopefully be on the first.

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Tue, 2013-06-25 03:51

#37

Grinder

Hyperdrive?

NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Both Chain Reaction and Hyperdrive were found to be very disturbing. My player's Paranoia level is increasing steadily, haha. Will you be creating a sequel?

Where can I find Hyperdrive?

Wed, 2013-06-26 12:45

#38

hhexo

Currently running it...

... and after two sessions the players haven't got to Thousand Candles yet. :-) We are playing online by chat though, so it's all much slower, and my players also tend to be very thorough when investigating. I've adapted the backstory so that David's disappearance was reported by Marie Danielson (who in this version is his girlfriend, not just a friend), and the missing person case was assigned to the Martian Rangers because the OIA has its hands full with the mysterious explosions (which they believe to be terrorist suicide bombings) and is outsourcing all the cases it can. This is to accommodate the fact that my players' characters are Martian Rangers because some time ago I ran Arenamontanus's "Lurking" with the "rangers investigating the murders" hook and they wanted to keep playing the same characters. :-) Anyway, things are going well and they seem to be enjoying the scenario a lot. A point of note:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

They had some 'smart dust' (which is just Moderate cost), so the whole investigation scene at David's apartment was over in a matter of a few minutes. Once the dust had found and reported the red hair, the traces of leather in the shoe box, and the secret compartment with the pills (it's not airtight, and smart dust is nano), they immediately went "oh, he's disguised himself to go and buy more drugs". Then they spent some time trying to confirm that, so that was ok, but be advised that smart dust can potentially solve the apartment search scene pretty quickly. Next time I run the adventure, I'll add a vacuum cleaner robot in the apartment so that at least they have to try and stop it before it sucks all the dust. :-)

They have however been a bit careless with asking stuff to their g-rep informers...

Spoiler: Highlight to view

... and this has attracted the attention of Julia who is already preparing the fake XP.

Sun, 2013-06-30 19:42

#39

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Re: Hyperdrive

Grinder wrote:
NewAgeOfPower wrote:
Both Chain Reaction and Hyperdrive were found to be very disturbing. My player's Paranoia level is increasing steadily, haha. Will you be creating a sequel?
Where can I find Hyperdrive?

NewAgeOfPower is referring to the drug, Hyper-Drive, and the pathogen, Chain Reaction. Both are found in the adventure [em]Chain Reaction[/em]. The next adventure is [em]Dance with the Devil[/em] and it can be found here: http://eclipsephase.com/new-free-adventure-dance-devil

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Sun, 2013-06-30 21:05

#40

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Thanks

hhexo: I am glad you are enjoying it :) , and thanks a ton for the detailed feedback. About the...

Spoiler: Highlight to view

...smart dust. Yeah, I totally forgot about smart dust when I was writing it. It does IIRC take 20 minutes to spread out though, so having David's servitor bot vacuum it up (at least I did remember to give it a vacuum cleaner) is a great idea. And of course the bot triggers a security alert when it sees the characters, not a big deal for Rangers but pretty serious for people who aren't supposed to be in the apartment :) .

and..

Spoiler: Highlight to view

... the fake XP. Hopefully, they fall for it. I love the ambush with Gwin: so simple yet so effective, at least against players with pregens who are convinced he is David: they are both wearing invisibility cloaks after all, and one person in an invisibly cloak looks a lot like another, and they can't see him that well anyways thanks to the grenade :) . Also possibly the only time you will ever see someone deliberately using the multitargeting capabilities of a shard pistol at range. And of course there is the kicker later when... ...they realize that Chain Reaction is spread by shard ammunition. :)

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Tue, 2013-07-02 16:03

#41

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Lalande21185 wrote:

Lalande21185 wrote:
It is indeed impressive how much energy there is in food: 1 gram of TNT = 1 Calorie (by definition, actual TNT has more energy) 1 package of Skittles = about 220 Calories 1 hand grenade = around 200-250 grams of TNT

A quick question - when you make the assertion that one gram of TNT (hello, PRISM) has within its chemical bonds one calorie, do you mean one dietary calorie (which is equivalent to 1,000 calories) or one calorie? One package of Skittles, you note, has about 220 dietary calories (or kilocalories).

Lalande21185 wrote:
So over a week (the time it takes to fully build up the explosives), the energy obtained from eating food should easily be enough to create the explosives :)

I wonder how many spooks in eastern Maryland are playing Eclipse Phase now...

—

[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...

Tue, 2013-07-02 16:38

#42

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

calories and Calories

The Doctor wrote:
A quick question - when you make the assertion that one gram of TNT (hello, PRISM) has within its chemical bonds one calorie, do you mean one dietary calorie (which is equivalent to 1,000 calories) or one calorie? One package of Skittles, you note, has about 220 dietary calories (or kilocalories).

A quick reply - I mean dietary calories; when Calorie is capitalized it refers to large calories (kg calories, kilocalories, dietary calories, etc.) or at least it is supposed to.

Quote:
I wonder how many spooks in eastern Maryland are playing Eclipse Phase now...

It does sound suspicious, doesn't it? All this talk of explosives and timeframes :) Also... Albatross. That is all.

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Tue, 2013-07-02 17:30

#43

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

If you like your EP extra

If you like your EP extra hard sci-fi there's a problem with the game stats for...

Spoiler: Highlight to view

...smart dust. The game description has them as around a 50 micron sphere (should be about 50 micron sphere - size of human hair). Then it has them going 5cm/sec - which is 1000 body lengths per second. That's roughly 20x too fast. So the smart dust bots need to either be much bigger (say 1mm spheres) or else much slower(2.5 mm/sec) and in that case would take them 400x longer (133 hours per room). Its also wholly unreasonable to expect a bot to be able to fully scan something while hauling ass at full speed. Any way, smart dust as is = not hard sci-fi

—

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto

Fri, 2013-07-26 09:55

#44

hhexo

Still playing...

... and it's getting quite interesting.

Spoiler: Highlight to view

One of the players pretended to be a lover of David's when they went to see Julia. She played the part really well, so Julia thought that she was probably the one who had clumsily looked for information among her g-rep contacts, and considered her a stupid jealous b*tch but harmless. She didn't even bother to give her the fake XP and just played ignorant. However, the player character then proceeded to pay for a... "session of fun" with Julia at the Thousand Candles, and in the middle of the act she stuck a tracking bug in her hair, unnoticed. So they're now going to follow Julia around. I'm planning for Julia to go and see Gwin anyway, so maybe the PCs will meet him too, but instead of an ambush in that case the PCs will have the advantage...

I have a question though, related to this:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

The PC who talked to Julia bought and took a pill of Happy Thoughts, and neutralized the drug immediately with Medichines. But the Happy Thoughts sold by the Shui Fong gang is tainted with Chain Reaction.

Shouldn't standard Medichines be able to stop Chain Reaction? They do give a +20 bonus according to the adventure description but the Medichine description says they can stop any disease or drug "unless it's nano". To be pedantic, virii are in fact nanomachines... natural, organic nanomachines. But if that was true, then Medichines would not be able to stop even the common cold or the flu, which doesn't make much sense. Medichines can counter drugs made of just a small molecule! (e.g. caffeine) I admit it would be more interesting if Medichines stopped the bacterial part of Chain Reaction (reporting an increased antibiotic activity to the user) but missed the viral part, so that players would be on edge ("something happened to me but I don't know what... have my medichines actually worked?"). Would it be a good justification to say that Medichines would need a... "software update" to be able to completely stop the virii?

Spoiler: Highlight to view

That could also be part of the cure that David is developing, although he mainly focuses on bio agents and probably sees the software patch as just a side project.

Fri, 2013-07-26 14:15

#45

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Awesome...

Regarding the first spoiler:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

Interesting approach... Julia will probably need to see Gwin to bring more drugs to him, as an apology for not needing his services after all.

hhexo wrote:
Shouldn't standard Medichines be able to stop Chain Reaction? They do give a +20 bonus according to the adventure description but the Medichine description says they can stop any disease or drug "unless it's nano". To be pedantic, virii are in fact nanomachines... natural, organic nanomachines. But if that was true, then Medichines would not be able to stop even the common cold or the flu, which doesn't make much sense. Medichines can counter drugs made of just a small molecule! (e.g. caffeine)

Medicines can stop most viruses, but they can't stop all of them. Specifically, they have trouble with state-of-the-art and engineered biowarfare agents such as trigger (see p. 324, EP). As for viruses vs. drugs: virions, though bigger than small molecules, can (and many do) have defense mechanisms to avoid detection or destruction until they can infect a cell making them more difficult for medichines to deal with than the small molecules.

Quote:
I admit it would be more interesting if Medichines stopped the bacterial part of Chain Reaction (reporting an increased antibiotic activity to the user) but missed the viral part, so that players would be on edge ("something happened to me but I don't know what... have my medichines actually worked?").

That is exactly how Chain Reaction is supposed to work! Except without the dread part: the medicines destroy the bacterial carrier and report it to the user as MRSA (which I misspelled as MSRA, darn typos :( at least it isn't as bad me having two Stage 5's or misspelling Eos as Eros in [em]Dance with the Devil[/em]). The user then says: Oh I am safe the medichines protected me, and then goes about their normal lives until about a week later, BOOM!

Quote:
Would it be a good justification to say that Medichines would need a... "software update" to be able to completely stop the virii?

Absolutely. Though regarding the spoiler...

Spoiler: Highlight to view

David doesn't have the correct skills to work with medichines, which is why he is creating a vaccine (basically an update to Basic Biomods) instead. Though it should be pretty easy for someone with the correct skills to create a medichine patch that provides improved protection (if not outright immunity) based on David's vaccine. Getting people to install the patch is a different story however.

Note also that if a skilled genehacker/terrorist got their hands on Chain Reaction, they could probably modify the basic design so that it could bypass the updates (and then a new patch could be developed, then the modified Chain Reaction modified again to get around the new patch, and so on).

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]

Mon, 2013-08-05 12:41

#46

Lalande21185 Lalande21185's picture

Updated to version 1.2

Just letting everyone know, a new version (1.2) of Chain Reaction is available and I have updated the link in the opening post to point to it. You can also find the new version, along with the old versions and all my other adventures, [url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]on my blog[/url].

—

[url=http://awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/]Eclipse Phase Adventures[/url]