Hey folks,
New poster to the forums here. Been meaning to come on and introduce myself for a while, had school not been hectic for me. So hi!
I've been reading over the books lately, and wow. Talk about impressive. Intimidatingly so. Once done, I'm going to try and set up a game. Since there is such a depth to the entire system, what advice would you offer to someone new to the system?
Also, looking at the list of influences, which ones would be at the top of the list as having the most impact on the game, or most conceptually significant importance? For example, Warren Ellis's Global Frequency helped me immediately put Firewall in perspective.
Any other comments, tips, tricks, or whatnot would also be welcome!
Thanks,
Bohica
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A personal intro and a query
Fri, 2013-08-23 00:28
#1
bohica
A personal intro and a query
Fri, 2013-08-23 03:58
#2
Smokeskin
I think Richard Morgan's
I think Richard Morgan's Kovacs series has the most to offer regarding resleeving, changing bodies and such - and if you like the noir style they're absolutely awesome reads too.
Charles Stross' Glasshouse has some deep thoughts on mindhacking and resleeving too.
Your first adventure should be something where the players are VERY limited. Keep them in a building or small ship or station or something. You don't want to deal with the mesh, fabbers, reputation networks, sousveillance, and anarcho-capitalist legal troubles on top of everyone being new to the system.
Fri, 2013-08-23 04:14
#3
Lorsa
As Smokeskin said, starting
As Smokeskin said, starting slow and then gradually exposing them to more and more parts of the system/setting is usually the best idea. For my first adventure I started off with a combat simulation (in simulspace) and then had them resleeve for a mission (not a Firewall mission). That means they didn't had to worry about buying morphs, I gave them something fitting for their character / mission.
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Fri, 2013-08-23 07:43
#4
nezumi.hebereke
I'd recommend picking up
I'd recommend picking up Schismatrix. While it's not spot-on, it covers a lot of the world very quickly, plus is an excellent book.
There are a couple of adventures which are really made for beginning players. They have a limited scope and outline a lot of the issues for you.
Don't let things overwhelm you. Fortunately, most of the books are very well organized. If I were starting fresh, I'd look at Transhuman for the character generation (or use Kindalas's sheet, which is fantastic). Then stick to the core book + the setting book for where-ever you're focused on. You can fold in the other stuff later, when your players get their feet under them.
Fri, 2013-08-23 09:46
#5
Decimator
Don't try to do character
Don't try to do character creation on paper. It takes forever. Use the package system from Transhuman or Kindalas's excel sheet, which does all the math for you.
Make sure you fully understand the rules for fray; they are frequently misinterpreted. Specifically, you roll your fray score at half against ranged weapons. So if you had a fray score of 60, you'd have to roll 30 or below for a success, and that success would still have to be higher than what the opponent rolled to attack you. Against melee weapons you just roll normal fray.
In combat, ranged weapons are queen. Speed is king.
Don't take a whole bunch of gear during character creation. You can't take it with you, and it's a lot easier for you to get gear ingame than Rez points to increase skills.
If you want to design stuff to be nanofabbed, you need both programming and a relevant other skill(like hardware or demolitions).
Don't hesitate to kill the party. They have cortical stacks and backups.
Fri, 2013-08-23 15:52
#6
davethebrave
As another newbie GM (the
As another newbie GM (the game starts next month), I appreciate all this. I'm planning on running them through the quick-start adventure with premades (there's more than 4 players, so I'll just ramp up the difficulty and toss a few premades from Core and Transhuman their way as additional options...the Zone Scavenger or whatever from Transhuman fits the quick-start adventure pretty well, I noticed), but the first mission after they've all made their own characters is totally gonna be a combat/hacking tutorial within a simulspace training program now.
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Yours,
Dave the Brave
Wed, 2013-10-09 22:36
#7
bohica
Awesome advice, folks. Thanks
Awesome advice, folks. Thanks for the input. I apologize for the delay in responding, as real life matters have taken up more time then I expected.
Regarding influence suggestions, I've read Schismatrix and agree completely that it does a great job on the conceptual feel. This is in comparison to such influences as Cowboy Bebop and Firefly/Serenity. I was tempted to say as opposed to, but those enhance and accentuate what Sterling put forth.
Glasshouse and the Kovacs series will be on my list after this college semester is over. How does Stross's work compare to the Ghost in the Shell series when in comes to mind hacking?
Regarding character creation, it looks labor intensive. So I had planned on allowing only the pre-generated characters that come with the books. (It's not laziness, it's efficiency I promise!) In the interim, I plan on mastering the rules as written before making my players to go through the character creation process. The excel sheet will come in handy, so thanks for the pointer there.
As far as first mission, I prefer not to think of any scenario (module, prepackaged adventure, what have you) as being a limited train ride. It's more like creative constraints. Euphemisms aside, I like the hard work initially being done with a system new to the group. So I'm definitely going to use the idea of simulspace and then proceeding into an enviromentally constrained setting like a scumbarge.
So, thanks again for the advice folks.
Thu, 2013-10-10 05:25
#8
Baalbamoth
This game seems 80% kovacs 20% anything else to me.
Ok, big advice time...
The NPC booklet is your bestest friend, the system tends to be so fast/simplistic you can run weeks of adventures with a core book, that, and nothing else.
Also I friggin LOVE the "eclipse phase cheat sheet" you can find it here... (Ends most of the needs to look up rules etc.)
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/33780/roleplaying-games/eclipse-phas...
And two general words of advice 1) this system is easily rapeable by the Players, learn to say "no" have lots of good RP hooks you can use to influence the PCs choices that helps to stem the flood of "i wonder just how uber can i get" 2) as you start running you'll start finding some things make 0 sense, like why would anybody choose a mesh ID over an ecto, or a biomorph over a synth etc, just forget reason when those things come up and stick with the setting...
Ps I totally disagree with the other posters, the package system is more time consuming, andmore confusing, even to new players, stick primarily to the pre-made sample characters when ya start, but let the players deviate, and you'll have a much better time of it.
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"what do I want? The usual — hundreds of grandchildren, complete dominion over the known worlds, and the pleasure of hearing that all my enemies have died in highly improbable accidents that cannot be connected to me."
