Generally I hate storyteller games except as one or two shot nuthin better to do mini games. I prefer more simulationist rule sets and like to use minis, terrain, etc. I really don't know anything about Fate or care to. If anything a storyteller conversion to Fate, DinV, ORC, or any of the rest would just be a sign the game does not fit my desires, the design team has a diffrent goal than i do, and I should look to a different system/game.

As I already commented over in the Kickstarter thread, I'd be absolutely thrilled to see this become a reality. The next campaign I run is likely to be either Eclipse Phase or Dresden Files (I'm going to let my players choose). They're both systems I finally got around to reading over the last half a year or so and I love both of them, so I'd really love to see some of the best elements of the two come together to form something that could be, hopefully, even greater than the sum of its parts.

I was invited to play a FATE game with the new rules provided by one of their Kickstarter backers, and personally it's not really my kind of system. I'm trying to stick it out for the time being, but FATE just doesn't really [i]grab[/i] me as a game system, and I say this as someone that likes trying out new systems all the time. Something about it just seems so ... I'm not sure. Slipshod? Haphazard? Regardless, I'm just not getting into it. That said, I'm still all-for this conversion because hey, it'll draw in FATE players, which means more money for Posthuman, which means more Eclipse Phase stuff! Everybody wins! :D So let's hit that 100k stretch goal, guys!!

I'm slightly take-it-or-leave-it about a FATE version of EP, personally. Having said that, if a FATE version gets more people playing EP and generates income for Posthuman Studios, and hence supporting EP as a whole, then I would consider this a Very Good Thing :-) I quite like the FATE system, so it will be interesting to see what the conversion looks like. But I don't really see our gaming group ever playing the FATE version, so I suspect I won't be racing to grab the FATE conversion. I'd be a bit disappointed if having a FATE conversion slowed down the release of new EP books for the core system. I'm hoping Adam's post above (about hiring experienced FATE people to work on this) means any slow-down would be minimal.

godmoney wrote:

two sets of rules in the books that would be annoying. for me that is wasted page count for more EP specific content.

There are absolutely no plans to do this. The stretch goal is for one book, a conversion guide. It doesn't add anything to any other books in the pipeline or change them.

SavageYinn wrote:

I know that Fate is far from everyone's cup of tea, but there are people who prefer the fiction to counting beans. Why not let them have fun in the Eclipse Phase universe too? You never know, they might just buy the whole product range and get into the native system.

I think that that is the important part. Although Transhuman is shaping up to be a crunch heavy book, Sunward, Rimward and Gatecrashing are all basically setting supplements. Same with most of the PDF supplements. All of those products could easily be bought by FATE customers. And that means reprints, faster errata printings, more money for Posthuman, more potential for products should the FATE line explode in popularity. All of that means more product for the people using the original system.

AdamJury wrote:

godmoney wrote:

two sets of rules in the books that would be annoying. for me that is wasted page count for more EP specific content.

There are absolutely no plans to do this. The stretch goal is for one book, a conversion guide. It doesn't add anything to any other books in the pipeline or change them.

good to hear! can I ask why the FATE system was the one chosen??? (unless I missed that bit somewhere?)

Firstly I'll apologise for the comment about counting beans It's odd that you pick d20 as that has about the same amount of history as the opposition of BRP/RuneQuest/Legend/RuneQuest 6 system that EP system is based around (look at Legend/RQ6 and you'll see the same kind of action system in the combat). I don't think anyone who loves EP would like to see class and level based EP and all that Pathfinder would entail in the same way that the fans of Deadlands didn't like the d20 version. Story telling games kill immersion? I'll have to disagree with you on that one, but then the group that I play with is able to have an awesome time with little reference to either character sheets or rules wile playing any system, including pathfinder, we can just role-play, not one dice being rolled all evening. I get that it's not what you want as a GM or a player (despite you having never tried it, I hate tomato and I've never tried them either) but does that mean that people that do want that shouldn't have it? Yes, fate core is a very robust system that focuses on the drama over focusing on rules for every eventuality. Once I've finished reading EP and supplements I will quite easily be able to make a Fate/Eclipse Phase hack, or I could just look at what someone has already done http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?596533-Eclipse-Fate-Hacking-System I'd like to see what the makers of the game will come up with, as they know the game better than I do and I'm sure will be able to make a much better hack than I could dream of doing. Can we agree at least that Eclipse Phase has an awesome universe and throwing cash at the creators (so they are able to pay the artists etc) is a good thing?

I've seen it go wrong a bunch of times in the industry, about half the times I've seen successful popular games add new or optional mechanics for resolutions it leads to a slow road to hell for the game company, ps love how Ryan Dancy pointed out white wolf is mostly a "legacy" game now with little or no market shares after all their rules juggling. Heck, for the best example look at 4eD&D, 3.5 was outselling everything, 4e comes around and now ALL D&D sales are getting left in the dust by a 3.5 clone and a Star Wars game, and from what I've seen from D&D Next that trend is going to continue, with "13th Age" sucking up all the dissatisfied and alienated 4e supporters. About the best thing for me to hear is that this is a supplement not a continued design revision. I guess it's not that much different than offering a fan written free conversion PDF but I will dread seeing "Fate core" EP games possibly replacing some standard EP games just because the option is easily available, (not to mention the ease at which system mastery in fate is only slightly more complex than coin flipping for task resolution, I didn't want to use the words "dumbed down" but they fit) and there's no doubt that will happen. Lastly about responding to demand... That's what piazo did one way and WotC did another. It nearly destroyed one game company and rocketed the other to the top of the market. Meanwhile pathfinder is has reached 300+ feats, and the exact same kind of system bloat and power creep that slowly corroded 3.5 is being repeated in PF, directly because they are too quick to "respond to demand." Sometimes the best thing you can do is not respond to demand for fear of eventually loosing your core support. Little decisions may seem innocent and unimportant, but I think a lot of RPG developers learned the hard way the devil is in the details. To savage yin- d20 does not require classes etc there are classless d20 systems, point buys, and everything else. But if the goal is just to make money and increase fan base to pay artists etc (not the stated goal here) trying to reach out to that Pathfinder market or better yet the World of Warcraft market makes infinitely more sense than the fate market. Generally, most gamers like rolling dice, they like rolling different types of dice. There are marketing studies that prove this. The most amazing and fun games I have been in were where the player went for broke, risked everything and lucked out making the impossible possible. That will always trump a witty and creative narration. Just listen to the "know evil" episode where the unarmed guy takes on the gigantic octomorph with the vibrokatanas in the death match. By the end of that scene everyone in that EP group are cheering laughfing and yelling their asses off. It was awesome and amazing and that couldn't have happened without dice and beating percieved insane odds. I bet that one event made that character one of the players all time favrotes. Narration can't compare with that for me, ever. Does that mean that players who want a different kind of play shouldn't have it? Mmmm... I'll say yes, they want wrongbadfun and I don't want to support it.

Baalbamoth wrote:

Does that mean that players who want a different kind of play shouldn't have it? Mmmm... I'll say yes, they want wrongbadfun and I don't want to support it.

Are all the folk here as frosty as you? If you really want to we could enter a dialogue regarding game design, but I don't want to cause thread drift. I also think that you repeating "I hate story games / fate is evil / don't do it / if you play fate you are stupid" or words to that effect isn't an argument, just blindly repeating your point of view. I get that you enjoy telling the tale of when you rolled a 4 and a 6 and a 5 and I think that's fine for you. Congratulations, you're having fun playing a game. It's the same kind of fun I used to have when I played rpg's when I was sixteen. I think we all get that you don't want any kind of drama in your games of eclipse phase, well not in the way that a fate powered game would supply. I get that for you a character is a list of numbers & equipment and not some strange unquantifiable "story elements" which go alongside a streamlined system. [b]AdamJury[/b] has attempted to re-assure you that they are not going to produce anything more than a guide on how to use Fate Core with Eclipse Phase. He has said there will be no dual systems and that they will be continuing to develop Eclipse Phase with their own system. You've just got five days to wait to see if the kickstarter can get another $25,000 Fingers crossed

I love the EP setting but I dislike the nitty gritty of much of it. Especially all the gear and implants, and especially when you load up on it. I was looking forward to Transhuman gear/implant packs, and I would love to just have Combat Morph 3 :) Ah, players who don't load up on cheap implants. There was a time when I found it extremely interesting that you had to choose between nothing, foregrip or bipod on you rifle's undermount. These days I couldn't care less about the mechanical details. I'm not implying that it is a sign of maturity (and even if it were that's a terrible argument - after all golfing sucks but that's just because I'm not at retirement age), but that both EP standard and EP FATE should exist. To the degree that I don't see the business sense in not doing a FATE conversion.

I've played FATE. It works for some things, not others. All I can really do is urge whoever writes the conversion to keep in mind that FATE is a metagaming system, and the BRP-core [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] is built on is not a metagaming system, and that FATE, generally, does not do horror very well. Other than that, I support it. System diversity is generally a good thing.

Decivre wrote:

My only worry is that this will put EP in direct competition with Nova Praxis, another Transhuman FATE-based kickstarter baby.

[i]Eclipse Phase[/i] won't face much competition from [i]Nova Praxis[/i] for the simple reason that the NP setting is extremely poorly written. If they received the same level of mechanical support, EP-FATE would be the vastly superior game about transhumanism, augmented bodies and uploaded humans brains in a nanofactory-assisted setting set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth was destroyed by runaway science, leading to a world where the Inner Solar System is ruled by shadowy, conspiratorial mega-corporations, and humanity has taken to the stars through FTL portals. Admittedly, games about transhumanism, augmented bodies and uploaded humans brains in a nanofactory-assisted setting set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth was destroyed by runaway science, leading to a world where the Inner Solar System is ruled by shadowy, conspiratorial mega-corporations, and humanity has taken to the stars through FTL portals is a narrow market, but [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] has cornered it.

LatwPIAT wrote:

[i]Eclipse Phase[/i] won't face much competition from [i]Nova Praxis[/i] for the simple reason that the NP setting is extremely poorly written. If they received the same level of mechanical support, EP-FATE would be the vastly superior game about transhumanism, augmented bodies and uploaded humans brains in a nanofactory-assisted setting set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth was destroyed by runaway science, leading to a world where the Inner Solar System is ruled by shadowy, conspiratorial mega-corporations, and humanity has taken to the stars through FTL portals.

I don't think Nova Praxis is that poorly written, it just has different themes. NP isn't a horror-themed setting, and tries to be a more "down to earth" style of transhuman sci-fi. There's no forking, no significant intelligence enhancements, and no significantly bizarre mindsets, like AGI or uplifts. It's like transhumanism through the lens of Star Trek. Admittedly not as vivid, but the setting is definitely more approachable. I know someone who ran the game, and unlike with EP he didn't need to give players a primer to get them ready for it. That says a lot to me.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Admittedly, games about transhumanism, augmented bodies and uploaded humans brains in a nanofactory-assisted setting set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth was destroyed by runaway science, leading to a world where the Inner Solar System is ruled by shadowy, conspiratorial mega-corporations, and humanity has taken to the stars through FTL portals is a narrow market, but [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] has cornered it.

It is pretty sad that with such a disturbingly specific genre to fill, EP has actually found at least one other game to compete with it. Who knows? In 20 years, we might be watching a full-length feature movie with alien-esque uplifts, infomorphs, augmented transhumans and singularity level intelligences; and all of us will be saying "oh god, not another of THESE movies...."

Baalbamoth wrote:

Smokeskin- for the same reason you dont put out conversions for every game system that has ever existed, because the time and money spent making those conversions would be better spent on developing your core game rather than to alienate your core audience by developing versions of the game their not really interested in.

Nah, I'm pretty sure that it will mostly be other people doing the conversion, so time is unlikely to be an issue. And I only support it provided there's a business case that justifies it economically. Imagine that they actually manage to draw in more players, boosting future sales by even 10 or 20%. That could make a huge difference to the bottom line, which in turn has a good chance of meaning more content.

Decivre wrote:

Plus it's a smart move overall. A single conversion document is apparently all that will be necessary to make the entire Eclipse Phase universe, along with all of its other book properties, accessible to FATE players. Many other games don't get that sort of option, and require complete conversion of every bit of material around. It's almost foolish not to do it.

Decivre wrote:

The OGL doesn't hurt games. Fitting those games to the d20 engine with no modification is what hurts games. Despite Wizards' attempts to do so in the 3rd Edition Era, people don't see d20 as a universal system. So unless you reshape it so that people don't view the game as "game X shoved into D&D", it works. That's why L5R and Deadlands were failures, while Mutants & Masterminds or Spycraft cleans house. Furthermore, Deadlands D20 requires a complete repurchase of all material for the D20 setting. That's too much of an investment for a system shift. If FATE required the same thing out of Eclipse Phase, it would be just as grand a failure.

Also, Mutant and masterminds, and spycraft, where not really adaptions of existing games, as new games built with a heavily hacked version of the OGL ruleset. They worked to the strengths of the system, and altered it where needed to fit the conventions of the genre. You are right about the whole one of nature of this being the reason it is likely to be a positive thing. Duel stat/line splitting was a major part the catastrophic failure of L5R and Deadlands when converting material.

decivre wrote:

Despite Wizards' attempts to do so in the 3rd Edition Era, people don't see d20 as a universal system. So unless you reshape it so that people don't view the game as "game X shoved into D&D", it works. That's why L5R and Deadlands were failures, while Mutants & Masterminds or Spycraft cleans house.

d20 modern would have filled that spot, but it was left to die by the wayside.

Personally, I'm a fan of FATE, especially the Dresden Files RPG and the hard sci-fi Diaspora versions, so I'd love to see an EP FATE port, although, knowing me, I'll start cross-pollinating it with Diaspora as soon as I get my meaty mitts on it.

Decivre wrote:

bibliophile20 wrote:

Personally, I'm a fan of FATE, especially the Dresden Files RPG and the hard sci-fi Diaspora versions, so I'd love to see an EP FATE port, although, knowing me, I'll start cross-pollinating it with Diaspora as soon as I get my meaty mitts on it.

You know, a modified version of Diaspora's system generator might be an interesting way to populate the Jumpgate network. I'm just saying....

Been considering that, actually, but went with something more specific for prompts.

I have played FATE in several incarnations. One of these was a fantasy game developed by two friends of mine, and not only I have helped with playtesting it but I have occasionally contributed to the development effort as well. (they never ended up publishing it, but the game lived on locally and for example there's still a thriving group of players at the game society in the university here) My 2 euro-cents: I'm not sure that FATE mechanics would blend very well with the EP setting. I think it would be quite difficult (though not impossible) to convey all the feelings and themes of the EP universe in a FATE-based game. This might be a biased opinion - all the FATE games I played had a slightly comedic tone that is at odds with the horror/conspiracy feel that you find in EP. Maybe there are FATE-based games out there that handle these themes properly, and maybe I just don't know them. The reason why I'm saying this is that a cornerstone of FATE is that you get Fate points (read: Moxie) when your negative Aspects are compelled. This means that characters should have a few negative Aspects in order to collect points they can then use to invoke their positive Aspects. Often, this causes players to volunteer for "bad stuff" happening to their characters (I see it all the time!), and "bad stuff" usually tends to the comedic because that way it hinders but doesn't injure the character. Of course, it does not [i]have[/i] to be the case - but it often is. And there's nothing wrong with it [i]per se[/i], it's just a little bit at odds with the EP atmosphere. On the other hand, I agree with Jack Graham's blog post when he says that good Aspects in an EP setting would be linked to the political stuff. Any faction is a good Aspect in itself. The backgrounds can be too. This is because they can both have positive and negative connotations depending on the situation, and that's what makes a good Aspect, it can be used both ways. Most Traits would work too. The other problem I see is that the EP system has features that are based on a lot of values / skills / dice rolls, and these features are linked to the setting (think Integration/Alienation rolls - resleeving is essential to the setting, there's no way you can take it away). In FATE, you have a handful of skills and they usually vary in the 0 to 4 range (with a few really exceptional skills going up to 5 and 6). It's all very much lighter, and that is a core feature of FATE; also, you don't get many skill points at character creation. Although this is good for players who are intimidated by rules-heavy systems, I think that mapping all the concepts from the EP system onto FATE would either require to expand the FATE skill system, or it would require a simplification of several elements, otherwise it would be very hard to generate competent characters with the few available skills and skill points. Simplifying mechanical stuff is OK, in my opinion, but some of the elements of the EP system are tightly linked to the setting, and you would have to be very careful not to oversimplify, otherwise you would lose connection with the setting. I'm not saying it is impossible, I'm sure there are clever people out there who could pull it off, but I think it's quite a hard effort and I'm not sure how justified it is as a "stretch goal". I see it more as a project in its own right. Still, as Firewall teaches us, diversity and variability is a good strategy against existential threats - exploring new avenues like the FATE system might be good in the long run, who knows. Maybe the conversion effort will fail but you'll learn something that can be used to improve the game. I've backed the kickstarter and I'm happy to have done so, if you decide to invest in a FATE conversion, go ahead.

I registered and am posting because I have experience directly relevant to this discussion. I ran a mini-campaign set in the Eclipse Phase setting using FATE rules. I absolutely love the setting, but was/am frustrated with how annoying swapping out morphs can be 'on the fly' in a game session. My players in a another campaign that I ran using the Core rules were very frustrated making characters and were overwhelmed with the large number of skills, gear, and other assorted crunch. My FATE variety was cooked up from a combination of the Diaspora rules, (beta) Nova Praxis rules, and a bit of the FATE core rules. Heavy inspiration was taken from Martin Nerurkar's "Eclipse Fate" hack of Diaspora. Most skills were attached to the Ego, and a few were tied directly with the Morph. I also added quite a few skills to the 'generic' skill set to make sure that they fit the setting and offered enough variety for different character archetypes. I was very familiar with the FATE ruleset, having been in a 2+ year Dresden Files game, as was one player, but the other three had not played FATE previously. Pros: -Phase-based character creation was a huge hit and helped ease folks unfamiliar to the setting into their characters. -Super easy to swap out Morphs. One of the central conceits of the game was body-swapping, dealing with 'lemon' morphs, and assuming other's identities. This could happen multiple times a session with no messy recalculations needed. You swap into a new morph? *bam* here's your new skills and a few applicable aspects. No muss, no fuss. -Combat was fast and flashy. Cons: -Combat was a bit less deep than in the core rules. -Reputation tracks need a better designer than me to adequately port to FATE. The simple way (that I used) was to just treat each rep-type as its own damage track, but that took up a huge amount of space on the character sheet and seemed a bit clunky in play. There's probably a better way that I just didn't see. -EP has so much awesome gear that I wasn't able to port it all over while making sure that it didn't break the game. It didn't in practice, but I was worried about it. -Character sheets are hard to make. Wooof. This is mostly a problem with my limited visual design skills, but still. I ended up using a two-part landscape page and would hand out replacement 1/3-sheets when folks traded out morphs. Anyhow, here's my notes on this in Google Docs: Skills: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lG2qxiYM_qvsVkzxZEa7RjDAORRUOuIsDqit... Stunts and other stuff: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DB8jr-eHDT_KSCs_3p7zOcuyeWKlmFCAGIFY... It was a fun gatecrashing campaign, lasted 6-7 sessions of exploring new and hideously dangerous exoplanets. Mm! It ended when the PCs were finally able to get back to Portal to warn them about the encroaching Roritan army a few gates back.

A Tunnels and Trolls conversion would be cool, actually. ;-) Uploaded pixies. A game that used to be rather popular. Definitely more than 2 would be interested in a FATE conversion. Game supplements past not very many I can happily leave, especially if they are of the most obvious variety.

When your compel gets you mindblasted by the Lovecraftian entity while your colleagues get to try and do something. Or you charge down into a basement where a warp gate is opening and you have to stop the Old One from materialising. Both actual very recent examples, neither being funny. And multiple personality octopus people? :) Could definitely see that as comedy, so it all depends.