So i reach out to the community for help with the campaign i'll be starting this weekend. If you are one of my players, don't read this.
I got it nailed down what should happen until a certain point, but i'm a bit iffy on how to connect it together.
The starting scenario is a compound between the videogame SOMA and Continuity.
The players are new to EP so i decided to give their characters a similar start by doing the SOMA-treatment. The characters are from 2016 and were selected to participate in an experiment to create a scan of their brain.
The company then used the scans for further research and at some point, used them as seeds for their own AI and later AGI research. One of these templates was used at a remote neurological research station on Luna. The station recently investigated a piece of Titan tech and subsequently infected the away team which then slowly infected everyone in the station. As in continuity, the AGI overseer of the station awakens the characters, who in this case are the old scan templates + some major psychosurgeries (backups of the actual inhabitants were corrupted).
So the first story is the characters getting used to their bodies and either free the station from the Exsurgents or find a way to send a distress signal. Like in continuity, the antenna has been manually cut from the rest of the habitat by one of the maintenance bots before it succumbed to the virus.
After that, there's the issue i have. I know i want to have them be interrogated by Stellar Intelligence, Oversight or some similar organisation because well they KNOW its an exsurgent infection there and the characters aren't infected or show any signs of being affected by the Exsurgent virus. The interrogation would continue on, but they are basically sprung free by an Oligarch who got a personal interest in the characters and wishes (wants) to employ them.
And i kinda struggle with how the characters get into custody and are sprung free. Any hints, tips, ideas?
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Need help with campaign
Thu, 2016-09-22 19:11
#1
GreyBrother
Need help with campaign
Thu, 2016-09-22 23:56
#2
DivineWrath
Hmm... I don't have much in
Hmm... I don't have much in terms of ideas yet.
I suppose the characters are sprung because they are in limbo between not being officially alive (no legal presence anywhere) and knowing too much about Exsurgents (that they exist). They are disposable. They would need to be "cleaned" anyways so why not use them? The agency (whichever you pick) would have to erase some of their memories anyways, and they would need to make a cover story as to why people from 2016 got revived after the fall. Deleting them or send them on a risky mission might be less trouble.
Being from 2016, they might not have the skills to be very useful after the fall. So much has changed. This does not make a compelling reason why important people want them. I don't know, maybe they need to work old technology? I don't why they can't train other people for the job, or have them trained and ready just in case. People from 2016 wouldn't even have any experience with mesh inserts. It would be like an incredibly advanced smart phone for them. They wouldn't even have their own muse.
Fri, 2016-09-23 09:23
#3
Noble Pigeon
For quite a while I thought
For quite a while I thought that the whole idea of introducing people from the 21st century into Eclipse Phase was basically undoable, for the reasons that DivineWrath pointed out. I feel like it is a good gateway into the setting but it presents the same problems as introducing, say, a person from the early 1800s to the modern day. You could probably acclimate them given enough time, but it's gonna take a LOT of work.
Then I got an idea, which ties in perfectly into the more horror aspects of the setting (and is, in a way, similar to one of SOMA's plot twists). The characters begin to have skill sets that are not their own. Not at first, but gradually. They can operate a lot of modern tech and innately understand some current social and political trends in the solar system (but still fail at operating some tech, and be completely oblivious to some aspects of transhuman culture). They begin to remember memories that aren't their own, of entirely different people.
It's later revealed that each one of them has been merged with another, separate ego. They are the dominant ego, but they quite literally have a transhuman mind clumsily grafted onto their own, like some kind of symbiotic entity. The ego merge was a success---mostly.
How you'd roleplay PCs who come from ego merges is entirely up in the air, but you could play with these as though they were only mostly successful, not entirely.
—
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.”
-Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
Fri, 2016-09-23 11:04
#4
jackgraham
One of the scenarios I tried-
One of the scenarios I tried--and failed--to write for Gen Con this year was set in 2016. Hilary, Drumpf, Bernie, a BLM activist, a Dan Savage-analog, and an alt-right militia dude all simultaneously realize that they're actually AGI sims of themselves, and that NYC is part of a simulspace. Then Firewall tells them to do stuff.
The problems I ran into are similar to what you describe. I was going to just "I know Kung Fu" them on some of the skills to make them useful operatives. This can be justified in a lot of ways, especially if you're willing to bend the rules one time at campaign inception (the rules don't really cover what you could do in psychosurgery to an ego that you've had decades to work on as in your scenario, so allowing a one-time "skill graft" based on this seems OK).
But even with that, someone from 2016 in EP is probably even more confused by their environment than Fry in Futurama.
—
J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!
http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
Fri, 2016-09-23 11:06
#5
hyades
Maybe it's not the old egos
Maybe it's not the old egos that are of interest to the oligarch but the psychosurgery techniques used on them. They might be the last existent work of a brilliant psychosurgeon, who vanished during the fall, a missing link for a history of psychosurgical procedures that the oligarch is compiling or the patents on them are long expired and they could be reengineered and exploited. Such undertakings might be more feasible if some sort of agreement can be reached with the PCs.
As to the interrogation: Depending on what the PCs remember from the research station, the owner might just take his property - their sleeves - back and put them on IndEX like many other infugees.
—
[...] vidi ingentis portenta ruinae,
vidi hominum divumque metus hilaremque Megaeram
et Lachesin putri vacuantem saecula penso.
Stat. Theb. 3, 640-42.
Fri, 2016-09-23 13:22
#6
ShadowDragon8685
I would suggest that the
I would suggest that the intro scenario should be nothing but survival - terrified, panicked survival, with a failing beta fork of an AGI trying to walk them through things. Then they get rescued.
My suggestion? They get rescued by Firewall. Firewall doesn't have a lot of use for egoes fresh from 2016 - but this isn't one of those stone cold cells. So they rescue these poor schlubs, and try to put together an "Okay, you're from a hundred and fifty years ago, welcome to the new age" resettlement plan for these guys.
Then, maybe, something that makes them useful [b]does[/b] come up. Perhaps some old-i-garchs are running some kind of early-21st-century simulspace - or live-action recreation - that Firewall needs to infiltrate, but all of their agents are too modern and keep getting outed. Or perhaps they need some folks to infiltrate a neoprimitive settlement, and 21st-century operatives can do that as well as 22nd.
Or perhaps you focus the first bits of the campaign, after the "aaaaaah monsters!" bits, on adjusting to the strange, crazy new world.
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url]
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Fri, 2016-09-23 14:41
#7
Noble Pigeon
If people from as far back as
If people from as far back as the 1980s are still alive in Eclipse Phase, I'm awfully interested in the story potential of characters from 2016 being awoken or reinstated in AF 10 and meeting someone from their time who is still around and knew them personally. Maybe this someone is the oligarch in question?
—
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.”
-Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
Fri, 2016-09-23 15:13
#8
ShadowDragon8685
Noble Pigeon wrote:If people
Yeah, but the thing is, the person from the '80s also lived through the intervening years.
Still!
—
Skype and AIM names: Exactly the same as my forum name.
[url=http://tinyurl.com/mfcapss]My EP Character Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/lbpsb93]Thread for my Questionnaire[/url]
[url=http://tinyurl.com/obu5adp]The Five Orange Pips[/url]
Fri, 2016-09-23 17:11
#9
Noble Pigeon
ShadowDragon8685 wrote:Noble
They did, and that could be a good link for the players. Someone who understands both times, who lived through the century and a half. Someone who understands their surprise when they find out that Lady Gaga is somehow still alive out there somewhere.
—
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.”
-Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
Fri, 2016-09-23 20:59
#10
GreyBrother
Thanks for the comments! It
Thanks for the comments! It got some juices flowing and i actually think rescue by Firewall is the thing i was looking for.
The Oligarch in question is pretty much someone born much later, but kinda fetishizes the end of the 20st Century. I know he will use a Sean Connery lookalike morph and tries to re-create lost movies from the Time Period (specifically, The Rock), so there's kind of a fascination with people that are from that time, especially with "fresh" memories.
And of course, some experimental and potentially unethical psychosurgery that seemingly worked doesn't hurt either, right?
So he can relate kinda to the characters on an intellectual level, but he gets plenty of stuff wrong of course because lost history etc.
Another idea that i will probably bring up is, that the head of research that made the brainscan died (he actually gets killed by one of the characters after the scan is made, not that the actually played character would know that), so the only thing thats left is a family of AGIs that are based on his own brainscan.
But later on, i will most definitely bring in a methusalem who lived in their time until 10AF.
Sat, 2016-09-24 00:58
#11
DivineWrath
Do you still need ideas?
Do you still need ideas? Anything else you need help with?
Sat, 2016-09-24 10:55
#12
GreyBrother
I'm still a bit unsure on
I'm still a bit unsure on where the campaign will be going in the long run. I figured, as soon as i have the characters established and they've overcome their culture shock, i'll see something more concrete.
I definitely want to have them be used by Firewall in the beginning without them really knowing what Firewall is and later have them be formally inducted if they fit.
I've also had this idea of giving them some power in the long run and see how that goes. Something like deciding positions aboard a habitat.
I always struggle with stories in Eclipse Phase that don't come down to "This Habitat is overrun by an exsurgent cult, take it out", but i think i might get ideas as soon as i am less "anything can happen since i don't know the characters that well yet".
Sat, 2016-10-08 07:27
#13
nostromo1a1
try a new approach
try out this idea
make character which will be reused over and over just don't tell players
run game and at some point character dies
start over new game same character, run new campaign till character dies
continue till players sick of same type character who starts real life time period and lives forward with fantastic ideas of what might happen in future.
then say I have new very original game idea, slightly change character sheet and reuse with new names and such other color details.
run Eclipse Phase game, then bleed past memories of all previous games into current game of "you remember something like this before" or "you knew he was going to say that"
opportunity to really mess with their heads, note brag how new and different the game is from any before. maybe even run a few missions that they players can never come back from or survive, in other words reload from back up before letting some previous game stuff slide in, just make sure you control what they remember and they even with psychosurgery can not remember anything on their own.
Sat, 2016-10-08 11:14
#14
base3numeral
Reclaimer Bait
I could see groups that believe Earth should be re-taken holding special regard for folks from well before the Fall. The inner system groups, for the most part, are not OK with this, which would put extra pressure on Oversight not to release them, until they consider the folks from 2016 know next to nothing about modern operational security, surveillance, and all that jazz. They're released as bait (after Oversight or SI conclude they don't pose an immediate threat) to see who in the Reclaimers come to talk the characters up, and if any other groups overly interested in exsurgents (Firewall) come to check the bait out as well.
—
Strength in depth...
The Fleet