New ref going a bit cross eyed at the science

Wed, 2013-07-31 23:37

#2

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

The reality is that the

The reality is that the science is just the setting and as far as running a game it really doesn't have to come into play. The rules are complete enough and mostly consistent enough with current speculation to work and the science is just in the background. Go with the rules you'll be OK. Let me put it this way; I'd bet that 99.5 out of every hundred people who are playing fantasy RPG's right now have never saddled a horse. I'm certain that fewer than one in a thousand have ever hitched a horse to a wagon, far fewer than that have ever been in a sword fight, and no one has ever cast a fireball spell. That doesn't really stop any of them from having fun playing DnD. If you live in a first world nation you're life experience is probably a lot closer to the EP setting than it is to a medieval fantasy setting. Just because you've never egocast or sleeved into an octopus doesn't mean you can't play EP. :) As to the specific concerns you mentioned. You'll never really have to deal, mechanically, with Seed AI's or gravity wells. EP doesn't really do space flight and seed AI's don't happen unless you want them in your story. As a GM here are the main things to remember as you're reffing: #1, GRAVITY. Always remember the local gravity and play it up. This is the easiest way to get player's minds on the setting. The only habitable places with earth like gravity are the Aerostats on Venus and a few stations in Earth orbit. Everywhere else is a low or microgravity situation. For Example--Mars has about 1/3 Earth's gravity. You'll be able to jump 3 times higher, It takes things 3 times longer to fall, you can fall 3 times further without injury, You can lift something 3 times more massive than you normally could but it will have the same momentum so be careful. #2, Everywhere humans live is hostile to humans. Humans no longer have a native biosphere and cannot survive, or even live comfortably, without the support of very complex machines and infrastructure. People in meat bodies all live indoors nearly 100% of the time now. Any trip "outside" involves an Airlock and requires some very important and intricate preparation. It's easier for Rusters on mars but they still need breathers and other gear. Synth's, (people sleeved in mechanical bodies), have it easier but it's still not a simple thing. #3, Humans now have 6 senses; Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch and Electronic. When you're describing a scene or the effects of an action you need to consider the effects on the normal physical world and also what's happening in the electronic world that everyone is having beamed directly into their brain. If you have more specific questions about how to deal with specific subjects feel free to bring them up. I'll try to help and every one here is pretty cool about chipping in. There are lot's of very smart people actively posting here. Good luck. PS> on the off chance you're anywere in Utah. we're looking for more people for our F2F game

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Thu, 2013-08-01 02:16

#3

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Very good answer, OneTrikPony

Very good answer, OneTrikPony. I feel I have not much to add. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a nice one stop place to learn all the science. How I wish there was! My recommendation is to surf around Wikipedia and the web looking up stuff, ignoring the math. You will be surprised by how much you can learn when motivated by a game.

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Thu, 2013-08-01 06:44

#4

dark_knight dark_knight's picture

Thanks very much for the

Thanks very much for the replies, I'll have a look around Wikipedia. If I have anymore weird and wonder full questions I'll ask away Cheers Sorry OneTrikPony I'm UK based.

Thu, 2013-08-01 20:48

#5

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

shit is old school

We had to learn wtf "melee," "milieu," "puissance," and a whole bunch of other things were to understand Gygax's writing in AD&D. And we didn't have Wiki back then. Aaaaaaaand we liked it! ;)

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Thu, 2013-08-01 21:57

#6

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Haha! Yea, I miss figurin

Haha! Yea, I miss figurin THAC0... Wait, what?! No I don't! What ever else you can say about EP at least it doesn't have Thac0. Bless you, EP Devs.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Fri, 2013-08-02 01:27

#7

Gardensnake Gardensnake's picture

I want to also say thank you

I want to also say thank you for the post. I'm not the OP but I too hae trouble wrapping my mind around some of EPs concepts and found your post very helpful. William

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Han didn't shoot first. He was the only one to shoot.

Fri, 2013-08-02 03:32

#8

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Gardensnake wrote:I want to

Gardensnake wrote:
I want to also say thank you for the post. I'm not the OP but I too hae trouble wrapping my mind around some of EPs concepts and found your post very helpful.

Actually, it would be great if you and the OP listed the concepts you find the hardest to get.

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Fri, 2013-08-02 09:22

#9

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Please do post your questions

Please do post your questions. Some times they are questions that people want to ask, but for some reason don't. For those reasons I often try to ask questions I might not otherwise ask. There are probably others who want to ask the same questions but don't. Unfortunately, I tend to get lazy so I don't ask as many questions as I want or should. *Moans I should probably ask those questions I have about fork merging that I've been putting off for months now...

Fri, 2013-08-02 12:13

#10

dark_knight dark_knight's picture

Thanks once again for the

Thanks once again for the replies - I've been trying for years to forget the minefield that was working out Thac0 thanks for dragging that little gem back up ;). As to the concepts that are confusing me I'm slowly getting sorted with some of the old demons from before but still have a few points that I can get my head around, I'll try my best not to sound too dumb but here goes :- When you resleave into a new morph how does your muse follow you? cos if I remember rightly its wired into your brain pan etc etc...or is its info mapped along with yours in the upload/resleaving process? Also when you make a back up I assume your muse is also backed up at this point so if a resleave is required due to being the wrong side of a loaded gun and an airlock door your muse also reverts to the back up 'settings'. Or have I got that all wrong? Farcasting- when you far cast to a different habitat you need to hire/ acquire a new morph - is this a little like car hire on holiday? Why no spaceships? - a simple one but has confused me from day one. Don't get me wrong far casting sounds cool and all that....but who doesn't want a cool spaceship! Surely they're available - even if only for the super elite/ agencies. Possibly not looking for mass space warfare but a few inter habitiat flights would make sense I'm sure there are some deeper and more profound questions about the setting I need to ask but thought I'd start with the simple/dumb ones first :)

Fri, 2013-08-02 12:43

#11

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Arenamontanus wrote

Arenamontanus wrote:
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a nice one stop place to learn all the science. How I wish there was! My recommendation is to surf around Wikipedia and the web looking up stuff, ignoring the math. You will be surprised by how much you can learn when motivated by a game.

This is more for Sysop, but... Why not set up wiki.eclipsephase.com? That way, we [i]could[/i] put all of that stuff in one place.

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Fri, 2013-08-02 12:44

#12

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

jackgraham wrote:And we didn

jackgraham wrote:
And we didn't have Wiki back then. Aaaaaaaand we liked it! ;)

I will admit, cracking a dictionary while reading the DMG and PH to learn the word was fun...

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Fri, 2013-08-02 12:47

#13

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

dark_knight wrote:When you

dark_knight wrote:
When you resleave into a new morph how does your muse follow you? cos if I remember rightly its wired into your brain pan etc etc...or is its info mapped along with yours in the upload/resleaving process? Also when you make a back up I assume your muse is also backed up at this point so if a resleave is required due to being the wrong side of a loaded gun and an airlock door your muse also reverts to the back up 'settings'. Or have I got that all wrong?

The way EP seems to be implicitly written, everything inside a character's mesh inserts is backed up along with their ego. It seems that, in a world where what you know is really the most important asset you have, it would make little sense to not back up that data or take it with you. That would be like closing your bank account every time you travel to a different state or country.

dark_knight wrote:
Farcasting- when you far cast to a different habitat you need to hire/ acquire a new morph - is this a little like car hire on holiday?

It can be, yes.

dark_knight wrote:
Why no spaceships? - a simple one but has confused me from day one. Don't get me wrong far casting sounds cool and all that....but who doesn't want a cool spaceship! Surely they're available - even if only for the super elite/ agencies. Possibly not looking for mass space warfare but a few inter habitiat flights would make sense

That question is answered in the EP core book. However, there is now a trait 'Spaceship' in the player's guide.

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Fri, 2013-08-02 14:24

#14

Decivre

The Doctor wrote:The way EP

The Doctor wrote:
The way EP seems to be implicitly written, everything inside a character's mesh inserts is backed up along with their ego. It seems that, in a world where what you know is really the most important asset you have, it would make little sense to not back up that data or take it with you. That would be like closing your bank account every time you travel to a different state or country.

This is how I largely understood it. Even if that data was somehow magically prevented from going with my mind, I would probably find a way to hide it in my cortical stack backup as header or footer data anyways. I mean hell, my hard drive data is already crazy-precious to me today, I can only imagine how important it would be in 10 AF.

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Fri, 2013-08-02 15:01

#15

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

Well spaceships are not

Well spaceships are not practical for Firewall agents (or most PCs). There is no warp drive so any space travel between planets will take months at minimum. Reaction mass is expensive so ships try to orbit around planets, trying to make what ever micro-adjustments needed to orbit planets A & B in a continuous loop. Its incredibly wasteful to land and launch a ship on a whim, or slow down enough to dock at a station. Leave those jobs for smaller ships. Better yet, launch cargo containers and save reaction mass that would have been used to propel the ship(s). In Eclipse Phase, the fastest way to travel is ego casting, which happens at the speed of light. You can travel through most of the solar system within 24 hour (depending on distances and communication networks), as apposed to taking months or years to get anywhere. Also, having an expensive spaceship is worse than having an expensive morph, you can't ego cast it around with you. If most of your CP was spent on the spaceship, you wouldn't have much CP spent on character skills and stuff. That is what Firewall wants (its is stated in some of the new material in the Transhuman book), they want characters with skills. They have ways to get everything else like gears and morphs (within reason). ---- Most morphs are equipped with mesh inserts (those computers with wires going into your brain). They have enough processing power to run a muse (or any infomorph). So long as you have managed to bring your muse with you, there shouldn't be a problem with running it. As already stated, there shouldn't be any problem bringing your muse or any other personal data with you, so you shouldn't run into trouble except on rare occasions. If you lack mesh inserts, you can carry around an ecto instead. An ecto (core rulebook, p. 325) can do a lot of things that mesh inserts can do. They are like a tablet computer or cell phone.

Fri, 2013-08-02 16:21

#16

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

dark_knight wrote:

dark_knight wrote:
When you resleave into a new morph how does your muse follow you? cos if I remember rightly its wired into your brain pan etc etc...or is its info mapped along with yours in the upload/resleaving process? Also when you make a back up I assume your muse is also backed up at this point so if a resleave is required due to being the wrong side of a loaded gun and an airlock door your muse also reverts to the back up 'settings'. Or have I got that all wrong?

A muse is just software. Only software. It may be hosted on your Mesh Inserts or on an another external system such as an Ecto. Your muse is not 'hardwired' into your brain implants and can travel independent of your character. You can send a copy of your muse to do a task to an entirely different habitat if you want. If you create a fork of your character your muse can be forked also so your fork will have access to an independent copy. Your muse can be easily backed up at any time. In my game I include a "Data Vault" with an Anonymous Account (core p 330) for a nominal fee. This would be secure cloud storage for stuff like your LifeLog, Muse backup, and copies of all the software you own. Page 244 of the EP Core has information on Muses and other software entities. Page 166-169 of the new players handbook; Transhuman, has more detailed information on playing with your muse. It will be available as a PDF 8/7/13 on drivethru

dark_knight wrote:
Farcasting- when you far cast to a different habitat you need to hire/ acquire a new morph - is this a little like car hire on holiday?

What The Doctor said; + Info on Morph Brokerage and morph rental is available in EP Core p. 276 [i](Anyone else have another reference for morph brokerage and rental? Seems like there was more written somewhere else but I can't find it now.)[/i]

dark_knight wrote:
Why no spaceships? - a simple one but has confused me from day one. Don't get me wrong far casting sounds cool and all that....but who doesn't want a cool spaceship! Surely they're available - even if only for the super elite/ agencies. Possibly not looking for mass space warfare but a few inter habitiat flights would make sense

There are three answers to this question. A). There are spaceships. Or at least there where. Page 283 EP Core has basic information on Space ship travel. Page 346 of EP core notes the common spaceship modles. If you can find an old first printing, Catalyst Game Labs, edition of the core book you'll find quite a bit more technical data on spaceships such as their thrust and some stat blocks that have been removed from that section. [i](Anyone have a link for that one? I might seed that edition just to keep it on record)[/i] Page 183 of Rimward has information on average ship travel times from planet to planet in the inner and outer system. There's also a handy table. Two sections in Sunward, mention the Earth/Luna and Earth/Mars cycler ships that float in permanent orbits between the Earth, Luna and Mars. B). Space travel is incredibly boring. Travel on a ship between planets may as well be downtime for characters. It's much cheeper to stow the morph while the Ego plays, trains, or works in a Simulspace than it is to float around a ship with nothing else to do. C). Space combat is incredibly rare and still incredibly boring when simulated *realistically* in a game. The basic thing you need to realize is that Startrek and Starwars are complete bullshit. There are no random encounters in interplanetary space. When you consider how fast destinations are moving relative to each other and the distances involved you'll see that encountering another space craft on a trip between planets is next to impossible. Intercepting another ship is highly problematic because once you set yourself on a vector and velocity that allows you to intercept a ship it's unlikely that you'll have enough propellant left to course correct and reach a port. You can think of space ships like arrows or cannonballs. Once they're on a course it's extremely difficult to change course. They don't have wings and there is no air for them to fly in, so every course change uses up lots of fuel and Propellant. Intercepting another ship in interplanetary space and making it back to port is the equivalent of firing a cannon ball at another cannonball in mid flight, then having it bounce off that cannonball to land back in the barrel of one of the cannons. Only the biggest Antimater powered ships can do it and it's still the same problem, but you're shooting a rocket at a cannonball. That being said. Planetary orbital space can be exciting and there are places where space flight is common; Around the moons of Saturn and in Earth/Luna orbital space. My favorite EP campaign is my "Space Truckers" campaign but it's pretty much restricted to Cislunar space. Caveat: trying to calculate transfer orbits and propellant margins is fun for me YMMV :)

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sat, 2013-08-03 19:03

#17

Justin Alexander Justin Alexander's picture

dark_knight wrote:When you

dark_knight wrote:
When you resleave into a new morph how does your muse follow you? cos if I remember rightly its wired into your brain pan etc etc...or is its info mapped along with yours in the upload/resleaving process?

Your muse will either be running on your basic mesh inserts (internal) or your ecto (external). So they may not be directly wired into your brain pan. But it would be safe to assume that most people would back up their muse in some fashion, either through a link to their cortical stack or through a regular sync to a backup server. Other setups might also exist. For example, there's an EP module (title redacted to avoid spoilers) in which a character runs their muse off a central server at their house. Presumably the muse simply communicates with them through the mesh (and this is never a problem because the character in question doesn't travel interplanetary distances).

Quote:
Farcasting- when you far cast to a different habitat you need to hire/ acquire a new morph - is this a little like car hire on holiday?

Pretty much exactly.

Quote:
Why no spaceships? - a simple one but has confused me from day one. Don't get me wrong far casting sounds cool and all that....but who doesn't want a cool spaceship! Surely they're available - even if only for the super elite/ agencies.

Spacecraft, EP pg. 346. But for personal transport it's just a lot cheaper and a lot faster to egocast than it is to haul mass around. It's the same reason that when you want to talk to your friend on the other side of the country you're more likely to pick up a phone and call them than you are to hop on a plane and fly over to see them.

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The Alexandrian

Sun, 2013-08-04 06:11

#18

dark_knight dark_knight's picture

Thanks very much for the

Thanks very much for the replies. Have helped clear a few things up, I'll try and make any further questions less goonish but cant promise anything. Thanks again

Sun, 2013-08-11 00:06

#19

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

dark_knight wrote:Thanks very

dark_knight wrote:
Thanks very much for the replies. Have helped clear a few things up, I'll try and make any further questions less goonish but cant promise anything. Thanks again

Hey, don't take my earlier harrumphing as elitist or anything. As you've seen, we've got an awesome forum community here that jumps in & tries to answer stuff. EP assumes a certain familiarity with hard SF source literature, but it's not our intention for it to be inaccessible, either.

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Sun, 2013-08-11 04:14

#20

DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture

jackgraham wrote:EP assumes a

jackgraham wrote:
EP assumes a certain familiarity with hard SF source literature, but it's not our intention for it to be inaccessible, either.

I should make a thread on this. I don't have huge amounts of back ground information on this stuff either. I have to go out of my way to find games like Eclipse Phase. I don't know if it was bad luck for me on my end that I can't find this stuff, or that this stuff is sufficiently rare that it hard to find when I try.

Sun, 2013-08-11 04:21

#21

dark_knight dark_knight's picture

No worries Jack, didn't see

No worries Jack, didn't see it as elitist at all. I appreciate all the advice given and am glad you guys are as helpful to new comers to the system/setting - even if our questions can be a little goonish at times!. As to the game being inaccessible - its not that its just that some aspects I found required a bit more clarification from you guys to settle in my minds eye before working a game out to ref. Once again cheers for all the help and advice given now all I have to do is put it too good use