The practical utility of restoring long dead egos as opposed to using existing refugees is questionable. Those who have been in cold storage since the fall will only be about 10 years behind everyone else. Egos that have been dead for over a century would be 100 years behind everyone else. The long dead egos would need some serious re-education and possibly psycho-therapy to catch up and become functional. They might find it simpler to join a brinker hab, or side with the Jovians than it would to simply catch up. If I recall correctly, one of the other members of these boards (I believe his name was Arenamontanus) had an interesting idea for a story. He said that for one group he GMed, he had a bunch of heavily edited egos (modified by psycho-surgical means) think they were super heroes. They were kept in a simul-space server where they act like heroes. They were the local entertainment on a criminal hab. Their story involved them being "freed" by rescuers into the "real world", which was much different from anything they knew. You could borrow that idea to make characters from a Gundam, or Star Wars universe be "freed" into the real world. Edit: I suppose the one advantage they would have is they would also be 100 years behind all the racism, intolerance, bigotry, ideologies, bad blood, etc... They might be unbiased in regards to everything, and would probably have no connections left in the world. Untainted if you will. It might also be possible that an old hyper-elite with immortality blues might decide to revive people from the "good old days"...

I'm opening my current Eclipse Phase game in somewhat the same fashion, albeit not restricting the Players to Flat morphs. In my own interpretation of the "Awakenings" trope, the PCs are all crew aboard a very experimental colony ship, which set out in the early 21st century (around 2050's CE). The ship never arrives at it's destination, because of some unknown reason. It is later captured circa 9 AF with the entire ship and their original bodies, which were placed in cryonics for preservation, being seized by a Conspiracy (Firewall, Project Ozma, somebody else). They're given back-up insurance and bodies of their choice along with heavily edited memories and basically told to go somewhere else. The only thing that unites the Crew are their ego IDs and Conspiracy nano-tattoos. So far, I haven't had any complications, but I also gave the Players a year to build a "backstory"/prologue (without the system) in the Eclipse Phase 'verse.

One thing we did with a few new players in an already-established game was go with a matrix-esque origin where they were born on a brinker hab that tried to virtually represent the 21st century (slightly past our own time, right around the earliest modifications). They effectively had a simulspace that tried to fool most of its citizenry into believing that the world hadn't changed much since (like the Shyamalan movie The Village). The veteran players played a scenario in which they were freeing them and getting them off the habitat due to an exsurgent outbreak. It was an interesting way to portray a hard injection into the vastly transhuman setting. Pre-fall adventures are also a useful way to introduce players, and I did that in another campaign as well; letting them portray people that were living in the last months of Earth helps to set the backdrop for the world as present in 10 AF. I allowed the players to make hobbled PCs (I only gave them 750 points) and portray fairly young characters alive just before the TITANs start attacking humanity. Our last scenario before fast-forwarding to 10 AF was one where we portrayed one of the evacuations (and a fairly crazy one at that). A few of the characters (those that wanted to portray characters that were space colonists or other people that were probably already living in space once we were playing 10 AF) acted as fodder characters that died in this final event, while those that weren't survived barely. The one that was playing a re-instantiated survived only as a cortical stack. It was surprisingly fun too. Because some players knew their characters weren't going to make it in that final scenario, they got to portray their characters as big damn heroes that went down with a fight. The other characters were just trying to get off-world, knowing the others were going to keep them safe. The early scenarios played somewhat like Shadowrun, which allowed the players to get used to the setting in a context they already knew. That last scenario played like a futuristic war epic. It was pretty awesome, and gave them a hard injection into the game.

A cryogenically frozen walt disney would be an awesome villain for people born in the 50s.

I think the initial idea works fine. There are plenty of reasons to resurrect someone from 1912. They hold a wealth of historical and cultural data (especially after the Fall wiped out so much). Additionally, if these people were wealthy enough to be biotech pioneers, it's quite reasonable they're already remarkable for some other reason. I wouldn't give them the full complement of points to work with at chargen. Instead I'd limit them to a flat and a handful of skills (and points) to spend. Then when they're brought back, I'd say they're getting picked up for a lot of work so suddenly they have a lot more rep/resources to spend. I'd also increase how fast I award rez (perhaps say that it's an aftereffect of whatever tech they used to repair neurological damage, that they learn crazy fast). I don't know that the premise is the most exciting story seed I've ever heard. And you'll still be fighting with futureshock detracting from player enjoyment. But I certainly think it's doable. If you're interested in making the adventure a little more interesting, I'd consider running the PCs with a pre-Fall mission, and establish a big bad guy (or motivation), which carries over to the EP setting.

Minor thread necromancy, but it's something I've been thinking about recently. I think the problem isn't necessarily playing a character of an exotic origin, but that the setting itself is overwhelming to new players. Giving the players 20th century characters helps them understand their characters, but not the exotic cultural and technological elements of the setting, nor the factions, nor the multitude of exotic choices and courses of action available to their characters. I think that's where the real stumbling blocks are. Drop Abraham Lincoln on Titania ca 10 AF, and everyone will know who he is, but they still won't have the slightest clue what's going on. One solution I've thought of is to somehow introduce the setting gradually. Play a session or two as people on pre-Fall Earth, where the setting is somewhat grounded in tropes that most people already understand and where at least the planet itself is recognizeable. From there, you can gradually introduce elements like helpful AIs, the Mesh and Simulspace, big corporations and ideologies going off into space, a few crazy people uploading themselves or switching bodies, the TITANS... Drop Abraham Lincoln on Earth ca 1 BF, have him slowly come to understand that time period as he goes on adventures and battles rogue AIs, and then eventually wind up on Titania ten years later, and people will have a pretty good idea what's going on. The other way is to run a very focused, almost linear game. There's still all that crazy stuff out there, but the player characters have a definite goal to accomplish, and have there always be a straightforward, fairly simple way to do it. The craziness is easier to accept if there's a clear path through it, and they will eventually start to pick up on what's going on. Drop Abraham Lincoln on a space-snowboard going down Messina Chasma, and people will understand enough that they can enjoy the experience. Then, in the after-ski, during the shootout with the terrorist pirate octopi, have Woodrow Wilson mention that they are on Titania, and the year is 10 AF. Finally, there's always the Jovian Republic. The PCs are Flats, most of the fanciful technology is controlled, most people will already understand the surveillance and police state tropes, and the crazy Transhuman stuff can be gradually introduced in the narrative, as something foreign that the characters slowly come to understand, and hopefully the players with them.

Arenamontanus wrote:

One interesting idea is to have a PC or a group of PCs who are historical characters. Yes, Abraham Lincoln and Nicolai Tesla (together they fight crime)... they are as confused as everybody else about this. The real cause is:

To add one to that list: Say you're a Reclaimer, and you absolutely, positively need to reclaim the Earth. You need a strong political and spiritual leader, who's not afraid to get his hands dirty. Someone who can unite the clanking, downtrodden masses, drive off the exurgent occupiers and secure the homeland for all time. Who do you call? This guy.

I think there is a lot here to grasp without givng the players a "History Lesson" session. I'm still trying to find players, but when I find them I plan to introduce the campaign setting in broad, shallow Venn Diagram portions of what the universe is, sketching / suggesting until they meet it. Tougher than a "D&D" intro, because there are no EP films (yet). The Basics I want to cover: You have 20th century skills, but you are all awake, together, on some sort of spaceship. You have a human body, but it looks "slightly different" from what you remember. You "Can't remember" a lot of specific things about your past, how you got here. Introduce a human "Doc" that explains it's the far future from what they remember. They were all more or less dead or dying, but have been revived... by a corporation / faction. I've been in games as a player where the next part was mishandled - some guy comes into the room and basically says, Join us, in our mission, or you'll be killed. I admit my first responses yearned to be "Fine, kill me." I think it will be a key at that point to then have them shown images of destroyed earth. The Eiffel tower pic from one of the books, particularly... "We'd like to send you out there to strike back at those ultimately responsible for destroying our planet. We need heroes." All of the time, using that kind of yes, yes, buy decision language, and them assume the sale. If by this point the group en masse decides to walk, okay, it's the wrong group of players. Time to go Back to D&D. But I do not want to be the GM that proposes [insert all the tropes and weirdness that is EP here], pleasepleaseprettyplease joinmy game? I'm barely able to handle it, and I've run Traveller, Spacemaster, Cyberpunk, Conspiracy X, and Alternity for decades. I think in this case, easy does it.

Kyorou wrote:

"Now is YOUR chance to have sex with Madonna".

That can backfire in so many fun ways! The problem is of course that any AGI good enough to be really believable as any celebrity is likely going to be fairly self-willed.