The new stuff is definitely there, but the description on DTrpg hasn't been updated yet.

First thoughts: I really like the changes to languages it's now economical to buy a lot of them, which is great! I like how you can save some CP until the game has started, I usually end up giving people a free respec early in a game but here's a rule for that. CP numbers feel a lot more managable. 20 is a lot easier to think through than 1000! It explicitly states not to get attached to a morph, so we can sunset that discussion from the last thread. I forgot to bring this up previously, but I still think the reps are kind of unequal. I've never really seen F-rep used much, but that may just be my games. I appreciate factions being less important to a character. I frequently had trouble finding a faction which made sense for many of my characters in the past. Looks like 14 skills were cut, leaving 24, so that's nice. Rep isn't insanely cheap anymore, which is good, but it looks like aptitudes are still 10x as expensive as skills, which I thought was too expensive previously. I'd want to actually play with the new system before I have a real opinion here, because there are fewer skills and aptitudes to spend points on. Is the aptitude hard cap 30 now? I miss Art being a skill into it's own. It generally made for interesting flavors for characters and was pretty useful in the novelty economy. Provoke is an awesome skill to replace a whole mess of social skills with. There's a lot of stuff to work through here.

TheGrue wrote:

I see complimentary skills are still a thing. This always struck me as a "rich-get-richer" mechanic; the better your skills are, the better your skills get. I'd love to see it go away entirely. I still have a problem tying Psi skills to the same stat that Lucidity is based on. Metal stability correlates directly with how well you use async powers? This is in direct conflict with the lore.

Follow-up: Since morph bonuses are now pools instead of aptitudes, why do skills still use aptitudes as a base? Especially since there still exist skills that can't be defaulted on.

RobBoyle wrote:

TheGrue wrote:

Follow-up: Since morph bonuses are now pools instead of aptitudes, why do skills still use aptitudes as a base? Especially since there still exist skills that can't be defaulted on.

Aptitudes represent natural ability, upon which skills are built. Morphs only provided aptitude modifiers in EP1 (and sometimes aptitude maximums). Aptitudes also provide the basis for aptitude checks, which encompass character qualities not covered by skills. Some skills can't be defaulted upon because realistically they require training. Ingrained aptitude might bolster that training, but it can't always work in place of it.

I'm not asking why aptitudes exist as a seperate mechanic from skills. I'm asking why we need attributes to define the starting point of a given skill, especially skills that can't even be attempted without training.

"Don’t get too attached to your morph, because you are likely to move to a new one at some point during gameplay." Consider your rep pinged :) Onto chargen itself. I swear I hadn't read the new rules before I brought up the Transhuman packages :) Step 8: Flex, I assume the Flex points bought are permanent, but I would specify. Yes, I have seen similar errors of interpretation occur before. Yes, I know it's "intuitively obvious to the most casual observer." It still happens. Also see commentary on Ego+Morph flex below - is the total capped at 3, or only the ego valuer capped at 3? Love the recommendations in Step 9: Rep Sample Fields in Pilot do not match up with the fields listed in Movement Types: In particular, Movement Types lists Naval, Groundcraft, Aerospace Craft as Fields of Pilot used for maneuvering, whereas Pilot lists Aircraft and Spacecraft, and Watercraft and Submarine, separately. My personal preference is to use the Movement Types fields. (Also, minor issue: rephrase "not muscle-driven:" a bicycle is a muscle-driven ground craft and in low g a muscle-driven aircraft is both possible and practical. Both would still use Pilot, of course. Whereas Walkers, Rollers, and Snakes may be non-muscle-powered and use Athletics) No Neo-Cetaceans on the starting morph table? Speciesist :) (I kid, I kid. I'm glad the entire morph list is [i]not[/i] available for starting characters) Because someone will ask, can you buy off Planned Obsolescence in chargen? There's a rules-lawyer reason to do this, in that you get an extra point of Flex for being in a Basic Pod vs a Worker Pod (though you pay an extra CP for the privilege), and if Morph and Ego Flex stacks over the 3 Flex limit (better state that clearly), a Basic Pod can have 5 Flex for the same cost and stats of a Worker Pod with 4 Flex if you can buy off PO in chargen. (If the 3 Flex limit is for Ego+Morph, this also takes care of the issue.) It's only an issue for Basic Pods, Rusters "may" have the trait. For more in-depth thoughts, I'm going to see if I can talk my wife into running through chargen, but she usually likes to be paid for working on prelaunch gaming material :) I love the Resources trait. To be honest, once I realized that "money" in an RPG is just an alternative XP mechanism used to "level up" gear, I kind of thought that a more abstract way of tracking character resources was more appropriate. Answer for "Allow Additional Gear Buying at CharGen?" is "yes," incidentally. Several "character concepts" might want to be somewhat better equipped than their baseline professions. More +rep for starting gear including the blueprint for it.

Hmm... It seems that the aptitude cap for SOM because of small size is gone. Neotonic, Flexbot, etc. Its been an issue that bugged me in EP1.

There are 24 skills in EP 2E. 9 are linked to COG 5 are linked to REF 4 are linked to SAV 2 are linked to INT 2 are linked to SOM 1 is linked to WIL 1 is not linked to any aptitude Some observations:

• Only two skills cannot be defaulted on, and they are both active COG skills
• There are only three Knowledge skills, and they are COG-based
• Of the six Field skills (seven if you count Exotic), five are COG-based
• Four are Social skills, and they are all SAV-based; three of them (Persuade, Provoke, Deceive) arguably all do the same thing
• There are six Technical skills, and they are all COG-based

Clearly, not all aptitudes were created equally.

It's definitely simplified, and I like the package-oriented approach that was pioneered in Transhuman. Reducing the number of CP to a manageable 20 (from 1000) and bringing down the cost of packages/gear to more bite-sized increments also simplifies things. Not sure how I feel about a couple of the renamed skills; the skill list in particular still feels like it is halfway: a bit stuck between the old-style EP1 granularity and the new EP2 style approach with umbrella skills. Wording needs some help — a few skills have been renamed to active verbs like "Perceive" while others are nouns like "Infosec." Either "Infosec" should become "Hack" or "Perceive" should stay "Perception"; inconsistency in that kind of terminology can make things feel way bumpier than they need to. The new list of traits is much nicer, and all of them have refreshingly clear mechanical impact, not just flavor. I'll have to bang together a few sample characters and see how the process feels. As TheGrue notes, the skills that are left now seem… super weighted towards COG. Is there still tweaking in the final skill list coming?

One small change I'd recommend - a practical formatting one that would really help character creation: the short list of skills on page 9 doesn't include what aptitudes they're linked to. Currently the only way to find that information is to go down to the expanded list. Adding that in would speed up chargen and make it easier.

Removing Speed is easily the best change I've seen so far.

Archon79 wrote:

Why remove the speed attribute? Having fury morphs being Matrix like blurs was transhuman at a visceral level, the idea of this body that was so far beyond human that they tore thru rooms of flats like they were sacks of meat was again, thematic of a central conflict, transhuman vs biocon, in a way the piles of beads mechanics simply aren't. Crunch should support themes, make them real..that has been harmed by these decisions

Speed carried some thematic weight in that regard, but it was also inconvenient to actually use as part of the game because if you didn't invest heavily in Speed, combat became a lengthy process of waiting for those who [i]did[/i] to finish the dozens of rolls necessary to resolve all their attacks. We also don't actually know how the combat rules work yet, so maybe spending Vigor on Complex Actions in combat is actually really, really powerful?

Speed had the issue of being theoretically awesome and practically boring. If you hit the coveted speed 4, you would dominate in whatever field you were doing by sheer overwhelming number of dice tossed at a problem. Combat, hacking, didn't matter: you could keep at it longer than any other. The problem was everyone else didn't necessarily have that and others would basically sit and do nothing. Removing it was necessary so everyone could enjoy the game. It's a matter of game practicality vs. realistic simulation. The realistic simulation might be more nuanced and visceral, but at some point, you need to give way to the fact that you are playing a game and the purpose isn't to have the most realistic simulation, but the most fun.

Mister Lamp wrote:

So, uhh, is 2nd Edition playable now or are we still missing rules? I want to give Eclipse Phase a try with some friends.

We don't have rules for resleeving yet, for hacking, and all the non-combat skill usages would seem to be pretty threadbare. For that matter, environmental effects on combat are missing. No cover, no concealment, etc. In fact, I'm not sure you could hold a firefight on a featureless plain or a melee in a steel cage right now.

Archon79 wrote:

Why remove money? This takes out the crunch that supports the central human conflict, scarcity vs post scarcity economics, rep economy vs old economy, by flattening things so that old economy works the same way as rep anyway, that difference is gone, plus why do old economy people have to like me to sell memthings? An asshole billionaire doesn't need to win popularity contests surely?

Economic systems are prime targets for simplification/abstraction in RPGs. Even EP1 makes some pretty broad generalisations, like the cost categories. I've listened to a few EP "actual plays" on youtube, and I've yet to hear anyone who implements rep economies even half-way decently. Most of them simply supplant rep for cred: a sample container "costs" 1 rep; "sell" a pistol for 3 rep. I'm listening to [i]Know Evil[/i] now, and they even poke fun at themselves for 'butchering the rep system'. So a loss of granularity may be regrettable, but the system clearly isn't being implemented in the intended spirit. Perhaps this new system will be the fix.

Archon79 wrote:

Why remove the speed attribute? Having fury morphs being Matrix like blurs was transhuman at a visceral level, the idea of this body that was so far beyond human that they tore thru rooms of flats like they were sacks of meat was again, thematic of a central conflict, transhuman vs biocon, in a way the piles of beads mechanics simply aren't. Crunch should support themes, make them real..that has been harmed by these decisions

I agree wholeheartedly Archon79, but alas, it would seem that you and I are in the minority on this subject.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Speed carried some thematic weight in that regard, but it was also inconvenient to actually use as part of the game because if you didn't invest heavily in Speed,

A dose of MRDR in EP1 is [Low]. The same "heavy investment" as a pistol.

LatwPIAT wrote:

combat became a lengthy process of waiting for those who did to finish the dozens of rolls necessary to resolve all their attacks.

I return to the [i]Know Evil[/i] example. I'm two-thirds of the way through and there have been multiple combats with Speed 2 (and one so far with Speed 3, IIRC) participants. Those 2nd and 3rd Action Phases are whipped out so quickly they're almost treated as afterthoughts. "Oh right, you have Speed 2. Roll attack... she misses her fray. Roll damage... she's still standing, but barely. Alright, new round!"

Not every playgroup is as well-oiled as the RPPR crew, nor does every group have the ability to edit out silences and pauses that would break the flow. Remember those guys are practised at recording games in a manner that is fun to listen to.

MagisterCrow wrote:

Speed had the issue of being theoretically awesome and practically boring. If you hit the coveted speed 4, you would dominate in whatever field you were doing by sheer overwhelming number of dice tossed at a problem. Combat, hacking, didn't matter: you could keep at it longer than any other. The problem was everyone else didn't necessarily have that and others would basically sit and do nothing. Removing it was necessary so everyone could enjoy the game. It's a matter of game practicality vs. realistic simulation. The realistic simulation might be more nuanced and visceral, but at some point, you need to give way to the fact that you are playing a game and the purpose isn't to have the most realistic simulation, but the most fun.

And for me, being able to do that (tho not speed 4) was the fun part, being the devastating blur with the rail rifle was just plain cool, some people enjoy having the 'face' character or the decker, and dominating in those fields with bio and cyberware to suit, but for me it was the guy who bullet times it. Plus wired reflexes are iconic, nothing screams cyberpunk or post cyberpunk hader than wired reflexes of some kind and maybe hand razors. Whats next taking out boosted intellect and pheromones bevause they make people with them to dominant in those fields? Plus I like simulationist rpgs dammit, I don't like Fate, or Fudge, or Numenera, give me numbers and stats, give me crunch that shows me the fluff in action.

TheGrue wrote:

The problem with speed wasn't that it allowed combat characters to be good at their chosen field. The problem was that speed was so good and so easy to max, that there was never any reason not to max it. It was the opposite of a "trap" option; an option so good compared to the alternatives that not taking it was the trap.

But then in the hacking parts of the game the entire party twiddles as the decker does his thing, or the social events and the Slyph doing his thing, I am fine with that, specialists should take centre stage at those times, replacIng an iconic ability of wired characters with a slightly larger pile of coloured beads..yea not a fan, it's up their with removing mages and clerics from a fantasy rpg.

LatwPIAT wrote:

Archon79 wrote:

And for me, being able to do that (tho not speed 4) was the fun part, being the devastating blur with the rail rifle was just plain cool, some people enjoy having the 'face' character or the decker, and dominating in those fields with bio and cyberware to suit, but for me it was the guy who bullet times it.

A character built to completely dominate a social situation in Eclipse Phase 1e would do so by making the same number of rolls as Jenny Average, with a far higher chance of success. A character built to kill things dead in combat would do so by making four times as many rolls as Jenny Average. I don't like the design where everyone except the Faceman can zone out and play with their phones while Faceman plays a one-on-one game with the GM of convincing the NPC, but at least when it's Faceman's turn to do things, it's mercifully [i]short[/i]. When Troopie-the-Navy-SEAL plays a one-on-one game with the GM of killing half a dozen Reapers with his bare hands, it's going to take forever.

No it doesn't it takes less roles, be because the targets don't get to respond :p, besides removing speed from a post cyberpunk game is like 'fixing' DnD by removing spellcasters, technically it makes things faster, practically it slows things down and damages the setting

Alright, here's my notes: • Pools work as I hoped they would. I was concerned that low-end morphs getting too much Flex could be a game-breaker, but the final setup seems to work well. • Morph creation is simple, which puts me out of business for making an alternate morph creation system but is pretty cool from a design perspective. • There are some quirks re in-universe expense and CP cost, as there were in 1e. Perhaps morph traits should be moved to a separate calculation phase right at the very end (this would give the basic pod a 0 CP cost along the lines of the other low-end entries (Pods ain't sposta be more expensive than the alternatives, right?), though this has alternate issues. ○ Sub-note: This makes custom morphs incredibly more valuable; making a custom morph that's identical but lacking a trait, then purchasing the trait separately, is a system exploit. A GM could say no, but if a GM is allowing custom morphs then it could slip by or be a source of player-GM contention. • Morphs having discrete alienation test modifiers is cool and good, but runs into issues with morph traits and expense calculations (why wouldn't I buy this trait for my personal morph to get it cheaper?)

Archon79 wrote:

TheGrue wrote:

Archon79 wrote:

TheGrue wrote:

The problem with speed wasn't that it allowed combat characters to be good at their chosen field. The problem was that speed was so good and so easy to max, that there was never any reason not to max it. It was the opposite of a "trap" option; an option so good compared to the alternatives that not taking it was the trap.

But then in the hacking parts of the game the entire party twiddles as the decker does his thing, or the social events and the Slyph doing his thing, I am fine with that, specialists should take centre stage at those times, replacIng an iconic ability of wired characters with a slightly larger pile of coloured beads..yea not a fan, it's up their with removing mages and clerics from a fantasy rpg.

Since nothing in this post actually addresses any point that I made, why did you quote me?

Maybe I wasn't clear, I was trying to make the point that wired reflexes of some kind are thematic to a large degree, and while yes speed was a no brainer, it is a no brainer in the way taking a gun is, or in a fantasy rpg bringing spellcasters, neurachem and speed boosters are what at a basic level makes a combat guy, in the same way programs and a specialised muse make the hacker, or a huge rolodex makes the face character. Removing it removes a large part of the scifi feel, for me at least cybernetically enhanced super soldiers moving at the speed of thought makes the setting more than delta green in space, and turns it into Saomething greater, it's that central, that important, it's removal damages the setting in the same way and to the same extent as removing resleeving would.

No, you were clear; I was just confused about whether you'd quoted the wrong person or were just Gish galloping. Seems it's the latter.

Have we already moved past the point in this discussion where we mention Vigor lets you basically lump all your "I'm a rad supersoldier" bonuses together and all your badass combat morphs get a lot of it? Because from a standpoint of system efficiency that's way "cooler" you get to pile all your being rad-ness into a single pool and pick how you want to apply it rather than clunking up something which already flows slowly with just people who have extra actions. Also Neurachem is still a thing, it's mentioned under the Fury. Dollars to donuts it gives you Vigor to spend only on extra actions, anyone?

The thing I liked about EP gear was it did *whatever* as stated in the description and it always worked that way, every pool systemI have tried to play leads to endless time eating arguments about edge cases, hence my dislike for abstracting things to that level, have had one tound of combat last two hours because of that, in one memorable occasion

LatwPIAT wrote:

A character built to completely dominate a social situation in Eclipse Phase 1e would do so by making the same number of rolls as Jenny Average, with a far higher chance of success. [...] I don't like the design where everyone except the Faceman can zone out and play with their phones while Faceman plays a one-on-one game with the GM of convincing the NPC, but at least when it's Faceman's turn to do things, it's mercifully [i]short[/i].

Unless you, you know, [i]role play[/i].