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Sci-fi Touchstones for new players

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Wed, 2016-04-20 11:52

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

Sci-fi Touchstones for new players

Eclipse Phase carries quite a few dense concepts with it, and it's fairly grounded in real (or at least somewhat plausible) science. It's also, in my experience, potentially extremely alienating towards people that don't have a lot of exposure to this brand of transhumanism or cyberpunk. According to some other EP fans, the setting should only be played by "smart" people, ie if you intentionally "dumb down" some of the setting's concepts so it falls under more familiar sci-fi tropes (using spaceships more than egocasting, make nanofabrication more energy-consuming/difficult to use, etc.), you're playing the game wrong, and suddenly it's space opera, not Eclipse Phase. I completely disagree with this notion and I think it's incredibly arrogant and elitist, but I digress. I know I'm kind of speaking in broad, vague strokes here, but have you guys had the problem of explaining a setting that doesn't really have a lot of sci-fi touchstones for players new to the setting?

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"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Wed, 2016-04-20 22:43

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

If your players are readers,

If your players are readers, there's a ton of sci-fi (we list a bunch in the back of the core book) that's very close to EP. Schismatrix and the Altered Carbon novels between them cover almost all of it. I'm going to assume what you mean is a movie or show that everyone's seen, or at least a super popular novel like Neuromancer. So here's one to try (and I hate to admit it, but...): BSG. BSG can serve as a touchstone for EP because it covers: 1. humans: evac fleet post robot apocalypse 2. cylons: growing morphs in vats, body hopping/resleeving, forking 3. cylons: AGI, augmented reality, limited AI (the animal-like minds in Raiders) 4. cylons: cloning, psychosurgery (memory editing, &c.), post-scarcity economics 5. humans: technoconservatism as defense, precautionary principle, backup colonies, various political movements, power of crime syndicates & black/red markets Basically, the humans experience most of the social challenges experienced by transhumanity in the setting, while the cylons have all of transhumanity's technological advantages.

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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

Wed, 2016-04-20 23:08

boomzilla

freefall life

People in my games always seem to forget we're in freefall: that the built environment is designed for that fact, and that our characters aren't bound to the "floor". There are, sadly, not too many visual media that portray this sort of environment (off the top of my head: "Apollo 13", "2001", "The Martian", "Planets") [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heESAW2addo][b]Planetes[/b][/url] (the manga, but also the anime in particular) is, IMO, definitely the most Eclispe Phase-y of this quartet. The characters are all baseline humans and no AIs, *but* (besides the slices of life in space) it is a great exploration of what happens if/when megacorps begin to creep out of the gravity well.

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Thu, 2016-04-21 12:36

MAD Crab

Boomzilla, watch (and get

Boomzilla, watch (and get your players to watch) The Expanse. Most of the time they're stuck to the floor, but the care they take in noting the local gravity conditions is amazing. Also, it's a really good show.

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Fri, 2016-04-22 07:30

MrWigggles MrWigggles's picture

I just explain terms and

I just explain terms and concepts with analogs. "You dont use space ships, you email your Brain, because its digital. And like any digital file, it can be copied, edited, compressed, and emailed. Much faster then ships." And so on and so forth. The problem with playing with folks that are under read, in the firm sci fi stuff that eclipse phase, has, is that it really limits what they think they can do, which in turns, as a GM limits what I can do. Its very unfair if I let an NPC do something reasonable in the setting, but the players aren't contingent of. For players, thats no more fair then the GM just sending everyone falling into a death trap, for the lolz. Which can at times be frustrating. And the most you can do as a GM is nudge. If you're player really arent grasping that sending IM with thoughts, is consider as normal and as 'real' as a face to face chat, then you're gonna have to let them con someone talking to them when the entire problem from the NPC can be solved by using the internet.

Fri, 2016-04-22 10:04

ORCACommander ORCACommander's picture

this is one of the reasons i

this is one of the reasons i am so thankful for the the recently released anthology. it provides a pretty quick microcosm of the EP setting.

Sun, 2016-04-24 08:10

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

The dark future of gold farming.

The trick is to ignore the Hardness of the Scifi. Seriously. The "realism" of the setting dictates why things work as they do, but what they do doesn't care about the Hardness. For example, Egocasting is effectively teleportation, so people don't use ships to travel for the same reason they don't use them in Stargate - there's a better option available. EP Ships are destinations rather than transport options. Likewise, Nanofabrication is a hard version of the Star Trek Replicator. Resleeving is harder but look at Avatar, or even the Matrix (Machine plugs into head, then you wake up somewhere else). Straight up fantasy is another great place to look - DnD has resurection/reincarnation, teleportation, the ability to create food through magic... EP takes these fantastical elements and gives them a plausible foundation, but the effects on the setting are similar. Another suprisigly powerful source is online games and MMORPGs. All of them. You can alter your character in game, sometimes to the point of changing your race/class, you can resurrect after you die, you can move from map to map by changing server, item creation has no basis on real-world manufacturing - EVE Online even has straight-up resleeving! In my experience, the problem is more that players try to dumb down thier expectations to "Hard SciFi" levels when they don't have to: the question I get asked the most is "What stops X from happening", and the answer is always "Nothing. It's a part of the setting".

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In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?