I was having a look at the new season's anime and I stumbled on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv8u5bY8Now&feature=player_embedded So, for what I caught in the video, the premises translated to EP would be: - You are a normal AF10 person that bought a simulspace game, like a lot more people. - The simulspace game is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, with a magical fantasy setting. - Like everyone else, you went online the day of the great presentation, and was present when the creator of the game gave the inauguration speech. - The speech informs all players that they are trapped into a high-speed simulspace, with the only way out being to clear the game. - Dying in the game will send a fatal neurosignal that will corrupt the ego both in the brain and the cortical stack, and release a virus in the Mesh that will hunt all backups of that ego that connect to the Mesh after that (backups that won't have any idea of what is going on, because it is more than likely they were made before the purchase of the "game"). - "Morphs" are get depending on the race. Elfs are Sylphs, Dwarfs are Dverger, halflings/hobbits are neotenics, Humans are Splicers, battle constructs (Warforged for D&D connosieurs) use Synths or Steel Morphs, etc... And the monsters use the less human morphs out there (novacrab, reaper, etc...). Just as stat value, thought, appearances are different. - To make melee combat "doable", all damage received is applied at the end of the turn, as a "single attack", so armour and Wounds Threshold only apply once. - Asyncs work as sorcerers here. They get a "mana pool" equal to their "sanity points" (but its a separated pool) plus all their Async skills and can use spells that work like weapons in the core book or gear effects. They need to "buy" the spell or learn it by adventuring, using this "spells" follows the same rules regarding Stress Value that Async powers do (using, not having), and each "spell" costs a number of mana points equal to 1/100 credits per use (in the case of "buffs" like T-Ray vision, each use costs that per minute, per user: yeah, you can "buff" your party members). Of course, you can find "Mass buff" (they cost the same as the normal version in mana) versions of the gear spells during missions, never in shops. You decide the duration of the buff when casting the spell. - Recovering mana can only happen using taverns or special items, like "mana potions", or "tents" that allow you to set camp (you better keep guards, or monsters will attack!). One tent allows 1 night of rest to everybody in the team, once, regenerating both life points and mana points, but not curing injuries. - Injuries need to be taken care off in hospitals, in towns. And of course they have to pay rupies to get treated! - Magical damage works as firearms in the RAW: each one is an independant attack that will work like it does, instead of accumulating until the end of the turn. Also, you cannot cast more than once spell per turn no matter what (monsters, on the other hand...). - Most of the combat is melee. Ranged non-magical attacks deal too low damage to matter... - Monsters also prefer melee, but some will have "magical attacks" (firearms). They have unlimited mana (and yes, a player can "exploit" this by finding a drain mana spell). Behind the cameras: one of the possible truths. This is in really an experiment being made with several illegally obtained 9lives backups. It is very likely that Xperia or Cognite (or both) are behind this, and the "login part" is just a personalized simulation for each "player". It is obvious things are messed up: so many people (hundreds, and the background information is that there were dozens of servers, but it doesn't need to be true) can't remain connected for weeks in real time without some sort of alert going on, even with their mesh inserts being hacked: it is very likely that some people would live with others that would notice he won't disconnect. Also, so many deaths would call the attention of other people, like Firewall or some sort of "neighbourhood brigade" in the case of Autonomists. the object of the study is, of course, an investigation into Asyncs, with some extra data for other projects. So, with this here... let the discussion begin!