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Beyond Transhuman

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Mon, 2012-08-13 16:23

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Beyond Transhuman

While I tend to like the Eclipse Phase game system, something I do not like is the inability for the system to portray any ability beyond the transhuman range. Posthumans and Exhumans are relegated to simply having skill ratings of 99, beyond which fidelity is impossible. This is even more noticeable with alien intelligences, such as the TITANs, who are impossible to portray using the system. Thinking on this last night (and the last few weeks in general), I have come up with something that may be usable as a solution. I have not yet had a chance to try this in an actual game though, so these are literally untried ideas. The point of this thread isn't to release anything, more as a 'What do you think?' and a chance to crowdsource finding the points of failure. As such, no CP/Rez costs on the traits yet. I imagine that they would need to be high, though. I think I explain my intentions better in the actual traits, so if you would, have a read and post your thoughts. Note: All aptitude/skill requirements should be calculated without temporary bonuses, such as those provided by morphs or external sources (drugs/implants). When I use the term 'Base aptitude/skill rating', this is what I mean. It is essentially the aptitude/skill rating the character would have if sleeved into an entirely unmodified infomorph. [b]New Trait (Ego)[/b] – Posthuman Potential [Aptitude] [b]Requirement:[/b] Base aptitude score of 30+ This character has developed an aptitude to such heights that their abilities verge on posthuman. This trait is required to buy the Advanced Skill trait, which grants extra dice rolls on particular skills (see below). If a characters modified aptitude score is ever dropped below 30, that character temporarily loses access to this trait until their aptitude is raised back above 30. During this loss the character also loses access to their connected Advanced Skill traits. [b]New Trait (Ego)[/b] – Advanced Skill [Skill] [b]Requirement:[/b] Base primary skill rating of 80+, Posthuman Potential in skills connected aptitude This character has trained a skill to such perfection that they surpass the vast majority of transhumanity, beginning to approach the territory of post and ex-humans. On purchasing this trait the character gains access to a second roll at its own skill rating, beginning at 00 (modified by aptitude scores). Any time that this skill is rolled, the player also rolls a second d100 with the exact same modifiers as the first. The player may choose from either result rolled. Increasing this secondary skill rating costs the same number of rez points as raising a primary skill rating. The only restriction applied to this secondary skill rating is that it may not be raised above its associated skills primary skill rating. For ease of use, the recommended method of portraying this secondary skill rating is to simply write its rating next to the skills primary skill rating, separated by a forward slash. For example, a character with a kinetic weapons skill rating of 80 and a COO aptitude of 30 purchases this trait. Their new skill ratings would be displayed as; Kinetic Weapons (COO) – 80/30 [u]Current Issues[/u] Increases complexity of the game. Eclipse Phase is a fairly easy to play game. Beyond character creation there isn't really that much that a player needs to remember. This change adds more complexity to that system. Some might see this as an issue. Dice pools and bell curves. The standard probability of Eclipse Phase is incredibly simple. Have a skill rating of 60 and want to succeed? You have a ~60% chance of success. Adding a second skill rating at a separate value removed this simplicity. Your chances of success, failure, and the degrees of both are skewed horribly by adding dice pools.

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Mon, 2012-08-13 19:18

Lorsa

The game is made to play

The game is made to play transhumans, not aliens or Titans. As such, while some of your ideas are pretty good (am too tired to give feedback right now) I wonder if it is really necessary? Titans are storyteller devices, you don't really need any numbers for them. Exhumans are just that... exhumans, they can hardly be forced into a system that is, as you say, designed with transhumans in mind.

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Tue, 2012-08-14 01:42

Thampsan

@CodeBreaker, I like this

@CodeBreaker, I like this idea. I've been thinking this same idea over. Your current issues surmises the problem well - the EP mechanics don't work with Posthuman scale. What I think would work is turning the game into a narrative style format. Complete rules rework. Maybe some sort of trait based system with spendable action chips that enforce actions determined by the player. I mean how else could you reasonably simulate Matrioshka brains, or alien intelligences that exist within folds in space, or really any sort of mega-scale construction. The only logic I can see is that we would have to use a more narrative style ruleset. And while I normally don't much care for those, it makes sense here. Besides most conflict in this sort of post-singularity, post-human setting would scale over massive time frames and tests against anything other than other post-singularity intelligences would always succeed and against other intelligences have a 50/50 chance unless you got the drop on it with preparation. That's just my take on it anyway. I once saw a OGL d20 supplement that was dedicated to providing rules for god-like and post-god like beings and most of that supplement was taken up with very, very, very large numbers that rapidly grew into meaninglessness given that it was still trying to be d20 compatible. I can't remember what it was called, but it was a lesson in 'how not to do very large-scale' things.

Tue, 2012-08-14 05:22

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

I agree with Thampsan: the

I agree with Thampsan: the gunnery skills of posthuman entities are not going to matter much. Does anybody remember The Primal Order, one of Wizards of the Coast's very first products? It was a metagame for handling gods in rpgs, and it had some very nice ideas. It pointed out that in most games "if it has hit points, you can kill it", which completely ruins any attempt at portraying the divine within the rules. So it introduced a mechanics of primal power: gods have it, non-gods do not. Anything done with primal power trumps whatever done by non-primal means. The level 1000 wizard may cast an empowered toxic fireball of doom at the little godling, but his wimpy magical defences will shrug it off because they have primal power - and his angry slap in response will go through any defences or armour the wizard has. Of course, the godling might not want to mess with bigger gods, who have more primal power. At least not without ganging up with other godlings or having some clever intrigue. I think the same could be used here, although the borders are not as firm. Posthumans tend to beat transhumans on nearly anything: they can download (or invent) skills to suit them, they can think faster, they can think *better* and so on. So when you try to out-lawyer Nomic her posthuman skill means that she will meet your challenge with little effort (unless it fits her plans...) - and when she sues you, your carefully crafted legal defences will turn out to have ultra-subtle holes she exploits. Maybe it is possible to set up a posthuman point system for handling this: advanced beings have something like Moxie they can use to win, and they regain it by doing posthuman stuff. But I suspect it is best handled by roleplaying.

Quote:
I learned much about the Entity's sense of Herself. Each moon- brain, it seemed, was at once an island of consciousness and a part of the greater whole. And each moon could subdivide and compartmentalise at need into smaller and smaller units, trillions of units of intelligence gathering and shifting like clouds of sand. I was given to understand that She manipulated whole sciences and thought systems as I might string words into a sentence. But Her 'sentences' were as huge and profound as the utterances of the universe itself. -David Zindell, Neverness

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Tue, 2012-08-14 06:47

Decivre

If you want a good example of

If you want a good example of what Thampsan is talking about with narrative style play, my favorite divine game system happens to be Nobilis. In it, no dice are ever used to resolve any competition between beings. Rather, you simply compare the sum of your attributes and expended miracle points to see who succeeds… the highest value simply wins. It doesn't make sense in the context of most tabletop games, but it makes sense in the context of the divine. Their attributes work logarithmically, not progressively. A noble (the series' name for the equivalent of a god) with an attribute of 4 is exponentially superior to another noble with an attribute of 3. With such a dramatic skill gap, no relevant random mechanic makes sense; no amount of luck should save someone from losing against a foe that is exponentially superior. Even a game with traditional mechanics, like Scion, tends to do that with the scale of godlike entities. Epic attributes in Scion effectively decide whether you succeed at something; they add automatic successes on a progressive scale. As a general function of the mechanics, you'd probably only need to roll when you have equal standing in the opposed epic attribute values… otherwise, that is largely all that is necessary to determine a winner in most tests. I do agree that the flat probability structure of Eclipse Phase isn't my usual cup of tea. One of the GMs in my area have basically replaced its mechanics with Shadowrun's, making a raw conversion structure of 1 die for every 5 points (aptitudes go from 1-6, or up to 8 with exceptional; skills go up to 20 dice total). The end-result is pretty fun, and a fairly simple conversion overall.

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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]

Tue, 2012-08-14 12:17

Unity

Seconding the suggestion of

Seconding the suggestion of using Nobilis as inspiration; Aspect 4-5, ahoy.

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Tue, 2012-08-14 16:23

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

One can mix the Nobilis

One can mix the Nobilis/Primal Order/Amber "highest wins" mechanics with a more point-like mechanics with some effort. My favorite example is the old Marvel Superheroes game, where stats had a logarithmic scale. If I remember right, this means that it was in principle possible to power up or band together enough to counter a greater entity, but usually not one that was too many steps up. The real problem for us is not whether you can outgun a TITAN: sure, with enough heavy firepower you can do that. The problem is that it can likely out-think the PCs, but hence also should be able to out-think the players. But the GM is just one person: it is very hard to handle super-smart entities. "Ah, you acted exactly according to my plans!" gets old fairly quick.

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Tue, 2012-08-14 17:45

Unity

Arenamontanus wrote:One can

Arenamontanus wrote:
One can mix the Nobilis/Primal Order/Amber "highest wins" mechanics with a more point-like mechanics with some effort. My favorite example is the old Marvel Superheroes game, where stats had a logarithmic scale. If I remember right, this means that it was in principle possible to power up or band together enough to counter a greater entity, but usually not one that was too many steps up. The real problem for us is not whether you can outgun a TITAN: sure, with enough heavy firepower you can do that. The problem is that it can likely out-think the PCs, but hence also should be able to out-think the players. But the GM is just one person: it is very hard to handle super-smart entities. "Ah, you acted exactly according to my plans!" gets old fairly quick.

I would say that, like the TITANs themselves, you should network with other people who aren't the players in order to think things through. You'll be able to account for more things that way than you could do on your own. Mind you, it's a crude approximation at best, but then any portrayal of a posthuman consciousness suffers from that problem.

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Tue, 2012-08-14 18:11

Decivre

Arenamontanus wrote:One can

Arenamontanus wrote:
One can mix the Nobilis/Primal Order/Amber "highest wins" mechanics with a more point-like mechanics with some effort. My favorite example is the old Marvel Superheroes game, where stats had a logarithmic scale. If I remember right, this means that it was in principle possible to power up or band together enough to counter a greater entity, but usually not one that was too many steps up.

My only problem with the tri-color system was that it only worked logarithmically in scale; the actual mechanic was progressive. So it really had an inversion of what we were talking about… the resolution mechanic for a being that had a 1000 in an attribute only made them slightly more capable of success than someone with a 500 in an attribute.

Arenamontanus wrote:
The real problem for us is not whether you can outgun a TITAN: sure, with enough heavy firepower you can do that. The problem is that it can likely out-think the PCs, but hence also should be able to out-think the players. But the GM is just one person: it is very hard to handle super-smart entities. "Ah, you acted exactly according to my plans!" gets old fairly quick.

One of my favorite recent games, Reign, had an interesting way to handle foresight and chessmaster-esque actions. In it, there was a spell that let you see one event in the future. But neither the GM nor the player actually had to relate the contents of the vision. Instead, they set aside a note that the spell had been used, and that there is an event coming up (you could only do this once, as the spell would show you the same event every time it was cast until the event actually occurred). As play goes on, the player can do things and declare that it is related to the event (like hire mercenaries and tell the GM "I am giving them the specifics they need to do, for my event"). The entire time writing down those things next to the note relevant to the supposed vision you have. In the end, it's a trigger mechanic. At any point in time, the player can declare that whatever is going on at that moment is the event they foresaw. Then they may use any preparations that they already set aside as if it was always what they intended ("suddenly, the mercenaries come running over the hillside, flanking their forces!"). It creates a system where the players can prep for something they don't know, while portraying a character that is in the know. A similar thing could be done for portraying such entities (or even just chessmaster-esque characters) in Eclipse Phase. The GM can set aside preparations that the NPC made, then trigger them as he deems appropriate. The best part is it creates a scenario in which the super-intelligence can still make a potential mistake; if the players do an off-the-cuff action, and the GM doesn't have a fiat preparation set aside that's relevant to it, they've effectively found a hole in the chessmaster's plan.

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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]

Thu, 2012-08-23 21:39

#10

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Unity wrote:Seconding the

Unity wrote:
Seconding the suggestion of using Nobilis as inspiration; Aspect 4-5, ahoy.

I was thinking more along the lines of how skills and attributes scaled in BESM. They amount to pretty much the same thing.

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Sat, 2012-08-25 20:08

#11

Teh_Az

Why not just use GM

Why not just use GM discretion and a good deal of White Wolf products for posthumanity? I've had this idea in my head for a long time now how to introduce White Wolf ideas into Eclipse Phase. I even did some research on Cyberpunk White Wolf and the ideas were there, just not as advanced as Eclipse Phase's thinking. What I'm suggesting, here, is to--well, not use stats at all for things that shouldn't have them. Look at Changeling: The Lost. Hell, look at the Cthulhu Mythos fan hacks of the White Wolf system. If the Fairy Masters or the Elder Gods had stats, what would be the entire point of it?