House Rules | Eclipse Phase

Sat, 2012-01-28 19:56

#2

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: House Rules

we've made most nanotech assemblers and healing vats work much more slowly. We've found that instant access to gear and "magical" healing take a lot of the tension and strategy out of the game. off the top of my head, that's the only thing we've changed. Seems like last time we played there was something we needed to review and possibly modify but we never got to it. I think it's a pretty tight system. What is it you're having trouble with?

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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, 2012-01-28 21:30

#3

Decivre

Re: House Rules

Nicochan wrote:
Hello everybody, I was wandering about what HR you have adopted with your players and why.. Can you tell me? I think EP's system and mechanics could be improved in some of its aspects..

I actually had different houserules with each playgroup, with only a couple here and there overlapping. My simplest and most common of my houserules is that your native language does not affect raising your INT aptitude, and raising it always costs 1 rez per point. Furthermore, I make it so that any skills at max grant cost reductions to raising their tied aptitude. We made it so that you could raise a skill to 100. We found it makes math a bit more fluid when people don't have to work with 9s in their scores. To further that vein, we allow players to raise their skills and aptitudes in increments of 5, with the caveat that their character cannot raise the same stat for a week after that (1 month from 60-80, 6 months from 80+). In one of my playgroups, we actually used a mechanic more similar to the d20 system (almost everyone was coming from 4th Edition, and I modified it to make it more amicable to their playstyle). In it, your roll was added to your skill value and modifiers, and you had to exceed 100 to succeed. That group has been playing with that mechanic since. I've also mentioned the strength mechanic one of my playgroups use on this very site. I use it a little bit in all of my playgroups (it works well as a gauge of strength for GMs), but only one group explicitly knows and utilizes it.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sat, 2012-01-28 22:47

#4

tsedeq

Re: House Rules

Great idea for a topic. While preparing to start running my first campaign, here are my planned alterations: wounds do not affect changing initiate in the middle of combat. Keep the same initiative order as decided when combat first starts. The goal of this is to speed combat up a bit. There are currently a lot of rolls involved since it requires opposing rolls to be made for any attacks. No tracking of normal ammo, unless scarcity is an issue in a particular adventure. I've toned down the bonuses for various starting backgrounds and factions. Some are just so overly powerful that min/maxing players (most of my rpg group) will always take them. Remove individual language skills. Seems strange to me that there isn't an extremely effective universal translator in EP, so in my universe this technology exists. Rep is too cheap to purchase during character creation. 1 cp is normally worth 1000 credits to start, with a limit of spending 100cp on credits. With an Expensive item (average of 20k credits) being a Level 5 Favor, it only costs 20 rep to acquire such an item. 10 rep = 1 cp when creating a character. Therefore, 1 cp is effectively worth 10k - 10 times the normal conversion rate of cp to credits. I limit the number of cp a character can spend on credits to be 20 during character creation. With the current rules, a starting player can have over 100,000k - this leads to a lot of absurdities. The scatter rules also seem a bit off (p204). I believe two separate rolls should be made to determine distance and direction instead of the same roll. With the current rolls, if you roll a 6, for example, then the shot will always be 6 meters off to the south. You could never be anything but 6 or 7 meters off to the south, and if you're off to the north it must always be by 1 or 2 meters. Perhaps I am reading the rules wrong. haven't come up with specific fixes, but dual wielding and two-handed weapons rules seem off. If have any characters wanting to go that route, will dig deeper.

Sat, 2012-01-28 23:14

#5

Tyrnis

Re: House Rules

Near-universal translator technology _does_ exist in EP. If you don't speak a language, your muse either gives you a translated audio feed or AR subtitles the conversation, as you prefer. Particularly obscure or nearly dead languages may not be included, but all the common ones are. The benefits of actually knowing a language are often social, rather than in terms of being able to communicate vs not being able to. On rep, I've been sorely tempted to try altering the scale so that it runs from -100 to 100 to represent being actively disliked by members of a given network -- a Barsoomian radical, for instance, might very well have negative c-rep. Even if he gives up the fight, he's going to have to really work if he wants to get back in the good graces of those in hypercorp circles, not just build up from 0. I haven't tried it mostly because I'm not sure that it wouldn't end up just being more bookkeeping than it was worth.

Sun, 2012-01-29 21:14

#6

tsedeq

Re: House Rules

I guess my comment about universal translators was unclear. imho they should be so good that there would be no benefit whatsoever to "knowing" a language. Someone relying on a universal translator should be just as fluent as someone who grew up speaking the language. Even if it were true that a high score in a language only puts you slightly above those relying on translators (who will understand everything said, just be slower to interact with) then the benefit of the language skill is pretty small compared to the investment of rez points or cp. That's why I've removed all the language skills as a house rule. That, and I think there are a bit too many skills (especially when you consider specializations) and I've been pondering about how to trim them down. Having a skill for every type of weapon, for example, seems redundant. imho a person skilled with shooting a beam handgun should be similarly as skilled with a kinetic handgun since both rely on the same basic abilities of ocular perception and hand reflex. But, that is a digression and I haven't actually experimented with any related rules changes.

Mon, 2012-01-30 08:59

#7

Nicochan

Re: House Rules

Thanks for the replies. I was considering to change the amount of ammo needed to make a full-auto ranged attack, in order to limit its usage and make the combats more tactical. My idea is to require about 20 bullets to do a full-auto, or the full cartridge: in this way, a player has to think a lot before doing it, because in the next round he has to reload.

Mon, 2012-01-30 09:34

#8

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: House Rules

Nicochan wrote:
Thanks for the replies. I was considering to change the amount of ammo needed to make a full-auto ranged attack, in order to limit its usage and make the combats more tactical. My idea is to require about 20 bullets to do a full-auto, or the full cartridge: in this way, a player has to think a lot before doing it, because in the next round he has to reload.

Why? Full Auto is already the weaker option in the majority of cases. Burst Fire is the superior option in most engagements that are not focused around armour optimised opponents. 20 armour and up, FA is generally better. Otherwise you should be using BF. You get higher damage, you are more accurate over the long run, and ammo bonuses are applied multiple times. You even end up using less ammo. If you do change FA ammo consumption, you should also up the damage by a fair bit.

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Mon, 2012-01-30 09:43

#9

Nicochan

Re: House Rules

I found that my players always concentrate a full-auto against a single target, gaining +10+1d10 damages.. and this is a very high amount against the "standard enemy".

Mon, 2012-01-30 10:06

#10

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: House Rules

Nicochan wrote:
I found that my players always concentrate a full-auto against a single target, gaining +10+1d10 damages.. and this is a very high amount against the "standard enemy".

Then they haven't run the numbers out :) Trust me, Full Auto doesn't need any nerfs, if anything it needs a small buff. Even after the 3rd Printing errata (which changed the FA damage bonus to 3d10), it still comes out behind Burst Fire, and sometimes Semi Auto, depending on what ammo you use. EDIT: Not that I am saying that you shouldn't try it out! I don't like to sound like I am shitting on other peoples ideas. It is just that if you run the numbers, there isn't much need for Full Auto to be made worse :) Lemme see, what house rules have I applied... Positive modifiers have been halved in all instances, and are limited at +30. Negative modifiers are kept at their current values. I like the way Eclipse Phase handles difficulties, I just think that most of the time it is far too easy for unskilled individuals to constantly succeed at tasks. This little change helps with that. Teamwork is changed to that the helpers must have at least half the primary rollers skill rating. I didn't like that just anyone could help at any task. The solar systems best hacker shouldn't benefit from having random plebs helping them along (if anything they should get in the way!). Psi strain damage is changed to SV, instead of DV. Almost everyone I have spoken too has just automatically assumed that strain is SV. When told that it is infact DV, they give me a little face and look confused for a second. I just think it makes more sense for strain to be SV. Asyncs get a number of sleights automatically at character generation. Psi(1) gives you 3 sleights for free, and Psi(2) gives you another 2 sleights for free. Additional sleights may be purchased at 5CP a pop. Psi is already overly expensive for what you get out of it. This mitigates that by a fair bit. I changed extended tests so that each only requires a single complex action every turn to sustain, however other tasks have a distraction modifier of -10 while doing this. This lets high speed characters commit to multiple extended tests at the same time. Burst Fire is changed to consume 5 ammo instead of 3. Full Auto is already not that great, this helps it out a little bit. Lots of custom morphs, custom gear, other fun stuff that I wrote up. Quite a bit of other stuff. I like to tinker with my game systems.

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Mon, 2012-01-30 16:43

#11

Decivre

Re: House Rules

tsedeq wrote:
I guess my comment about universal translators was unclear. imho they should be so good that there would be no benefit whatsoever to "knowing" a language. Someone relying on a universal translator should be just as fluent as someone who grew up speaking the language. Even if it were true that a high score in a language only puts you slightly above those relying on translators (who will understand everything said, just be slower to interact with) then the benefit of the language skill is pretty small compared to the investment of rez points or cp. That's why I've removed all the language skills as a house rule. That, and I think there are a bit too many skills (especially when you consider specializations) and I've been pondering about how to trim them down.

I've always found the idea of perfect universal translators to be ridiculous. While admittedly, a universal translator should be capable of picking up general speech, I've always ruled that it doesn't pick up well on intonation, sarcasm, double entendres or cant. Now a TITAN might have some truly universal translator, but I doubt one has been invented by the transhuman race yet.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2012-01-30 16:56

#12

Azathoth

Re: House Rules

We play out combat on a 1" map grid, so some of our house rules revolve around that. For example, we have an attack of opportunity type rule (actually, it's more like the intercept rule from shadowrun, but same idea). I've also decided that as an option, attacks using multiple melee weapons can be handled more like multiple ranged weapons (ie separate attack rolls, with successive off-hand modifiers). The bonus to damage alone just seemed weird to me, but I allow either as an option. I've been toying with the idea of letting mental speed type enhancements reduce the time for hacking task actions, just to put it on the same order of magnitude as combat, but I'm afraid it may have unintended fallout if I allow it...

Mon, 2012-01-30 21:09

#13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: House Rules

I totally forgot to mention our Teamwork houserule. For us, a character may only add to the team work test if; A they have an aplicable skill or complimentary skill, B they roll a success with that skill. If they don't have any type of skill that might help they can't help. If they fail the roll then they can't help and they wasted thier time too. (It's called the: "OneTrikPony's Wife Can't Finish Concrete" rule.) We also decided that muses generally don't add to a teamwork test. Our reasoning is that, anything your muse could help you do your muse would naturally be helping by default. So instead of a Character+Muse teamwork bonus we apply a -10 modifier to any test a muse would help with when the character is forced to work without his muse.

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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.

Mon, 2012-01-30 23:28

#14

puke

Re: House Rules

we take the difference between positive MoS on opposed rolls. This isnt explicitly part of the way you play in post-errata third printing, but it brings back the functionality of the original rules without really compramising the benefits of the 3rd printing revisions. It adds a touch of complexity, but I find that only the GM really has to deal with it, and it does not take me any extra time. I also allow simulspaces to interact with "reality", as I cant think of any reason (outside of play balance) why they shouldn't. And based on one of OTP's fine and erudite posts, I only allow egos with sufficient hardware (infomorph / synth with expensive processors / cyberbrains -- or sleeved directly onto the servers) to benefit from simulspace acceleration. If we continue or start up another game after the next session wraps up, I will completely replace the rep-economy rules. Our general consensus is that it is all very clever, but tracking favors and rep-income from multiple networks is a pain in the ass and it adds next to nothing to the play experience. I would probably adopt a "Diaspora" style abstract "wealth as a damage-meter" kind of system. The rest of my changes are mainly to fluff and flavor. There are lots of things in the setting that I find to be whimsical or idealized, and I try to bring them in line with my own uneducated notion of reality. Nano-fabrication is one of these, and I generally present things such that items that are cast, milled, or forged are generally more durable than things that are assembled atom-by-atom, without much in the way of heat, pressure, or external forces. Hence there are many mightly and impressive wonders in the outer-system, but they are generally ephemeral and not as enduring as traditional inner-system construction. Nanofab weapons are relatively disposable or need frequent nanofab replacements. etc.

Tue, 2012-01-31 02:53

#15

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: House Rules

puke wrote:
Nano-fabrication is one of these, and I generally present things such that items that are cast, milled, or forged are generally more durable than things that are assembled atom-by-atom, without much in the way of heat, pressure, or external forces. Hence there are many mightly and impressive wonders in the outer-system, but they are generally ephemeral and not as enduring as traditional inner-system construction. Nanofab weapons are relatively disposable or need frequent nanofab replacements. etc.

as a certified welder I have to come down on the other side of the durability idea. But you did just remind me that nanofab items are probably not easily serviceable because they're built from the molecular level inside out. Kind of like working on some cars is a pain in the ass because of how they're assembled. I have to tear the front suspension out of my truck to change out the clutch. I can imagine that most designers don't think about that and their product is simply meant to be recycled instead of repaired. Or you'd need nanotech to do a job that could be accomplished with a screwdriver and pliers because there's simply no other way to get to what you want to repair or upgrade.

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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, 2012-02-02 01:02

#16

puke

Re: House Rules

OneTrikPony wrote:
as a certified welder I have to come down on the other side of the durability idea.

Really? I'm willing to take your word for it, but heres an anicdote: a few years back a friend of mine purchased a package of "deactivated" weapons for roughly the price of scrap metal. Included were some automatic weapons made by the germans and russians in the mid 40s, which some fine customs officer had passed a saw through. about two cuts each, generally with one passing through the chamber of the weapon. As you might imagine, there was about a quarter inch of material missing due to the cuts. He's a pretty talented welder, so he "repaired" them such that the gaps were eliminated and it was hard to tell they had ever been cut without looking very closely. They even cyceld their actions and fed rounds thorugh. Now, there isnt enough money in the world that you could pay me to shoulder and fire one of those things after it had been welded back together. The originals had been milled out of a solid billit, and theres just no way the welds were anywhere near as strong. Now, I'm no metalurgist, materials scientist, or even a welder -- but I can appreciate that there is some difference between the strength of the welded material (do you call it flux like in soldering? I dont know) and the inherant weakness of the join or bond between that material and the original form. If you tell me honestly that the welded material would be just as good if you could somehow make the entire object out of it, I'll believe you. So I'll bring up something else. also about guns, because im shallow. There are large perceived differences (I'm guessing there are actuall differences, but I dont really know) between a hammer forged barrel (I think this is like wrought), a flow-formed barrel (I think this is like cast) and broached barrel (this is like milled, I'm certain). On a non-gun related topic, I'm pretty sure there are some real chemical transformations that happen in aloys (and even molecular transformations that happen in pure-elements) depending on how you cool them. This was important for blacksmiths, and is still important in modern foundries -- hence cryogenic techniques when casting metal. I cant wrap my head around the idea that these are techniques that you could mirror with nanofabrication. individual molecular robots just cant exert that kind of force or effect that kind of cooling, the structures and bonds are bound to be weaker. I dont mean to be arguementative here, I'm mostly talking out of my ass and would be happy to learn differently if you think these ideas are misconcieved. Always happy to learn more about the world.

Thu, 2012-02-02 04:25

#17

Deadite

Re: House Rules

puke wrote:
I cant wrap my head around the idea that these are techniques that you could mirror with nanofabrication. individual molecular robots just cant exert that kind of force or effect that kind of cooling, the structures and bonds are bound to be weaker.

Puke, everything you mention here are changes on the molecular level, that is, the level on which nano fabrication is occurring. So if you can accept that EP technology allows for things to be constructed atom by atom, you should be able to accept that the machines can replicate whatever molecular effects are required. To be clear, individual nanites don't need to replicate the heat and force of heating and hammering metal, they just arrange the molecular structure with the desired forces, stresses and relationships built in. They don't have to be able to match the total force of the ammer on metal at once, they just have to replicate how that (incredibly smaller) force would have applied to one atom or molecule, then the next one, then the next one etc.

Thu, 2012-02-02 05:56

#18

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: House Rules

The reason the welds on those weapons are nowhere near as strong is because--assuming a perfect weld, and I've never made a *perfect* weld in 14 years--you have heat sheer at the margins. Heat welded material are weaker (generally) than a forged piece because welding changes the molecular structure of the work pieces. So even tho I weld with 70000 psi rod in 60000 psi mild steel you can only expect about 40000 psi of tensile strength and it will always fail at the margins of the weld not in it. (assuming you've got a *really good* weld) Since we're using steel and gun barrel examples you will probably also know about the effects of cryotreating and annealing to eliminate the natural stresses and sheer points between the crystalline structures that form in alloys during forging and tooling. These stresses and sheer points are created because, in the same way you can't get a *perfect* weld you can't get a *perfect* bond between every single molecule in the alloy in the casting and forging process. Imagine that instead of dumping trillions of molecules in a mold and letting them sort themselves out while they cool, or spraying billions of molecules down an electric arc and letting them fall were they they happen to land you can precisely place every molecule of Iron, Carbon, Molybdenum, in Exactly the right ratios, in EXACTLY the right position relative to each other and have 0.000000% silicon and other impurities get into your steel. The potential is a material that approaches the theoretical strength of EVERY metallic molecular bond in a cross section of the work piece. That's pretty powerful shit, and that's what molecular assembly (called nanofabrication in EP) will eventually be able to do for us. Here's a couple links to get you familiar with the concepts: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler]Wiki: Molecular Assembler[/url] [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_self-assembly]Wiki: Molecular Self-Assembly[/url]

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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, 2012-02-02 07:51

#19

Xagroth

Re: House Rules

-Universal translation tech: all muses know their owners language, and their own "binary" language. Thus, they translate from the owner's language to their binary one, and send the data to the other speakers' muses, where the data is turned into the relevant language. Having knowledge of more than one language allows you to make some "secret" conversations, without evenn your muse knowing what are you talking about (specially if you placed an instruction about "not recording anything I say in XXXX"). By the way, I ripped this method from another sci-fi game called EXO (from Ediciones Sombra, in Spain). Full auto can be overpowered (and in fact has proven to me that it is) when you use a shredder in closed spaces. Just by having the targets to be more than 1 meter apart from each other solves that, however (but the shredder seems to be THE weapon for tight spaces combat!). About house rules, I use two: First, I don't look into the difficulty of a task, I just ask the player to roll and tell me the result (if he asks for the difficulty, I make a quick guess on modifiers, from a flat 0 to a -20, unless I want it to be something really hard). Second, "supporting skills" can be exploited rather easily, specially using some software-implanted skills. Also I don't like to keep looking at tables time after time, so a skill can provide up to 10% of its value to another skill test. But several skills can work together in that regard. For example, programming 60, knowledge (nanotech) 40, profession (nanotech designer) 40, and interest (technoaccesories) (35) would mean that the player could get a 71% on his roll when using a CM to make him some ectos, for example. While this might sound overpowered, if the player had placed the points from the profession and interest in the knowledge, he would have gotten a 20% bonus! So I think that rule favours more skills instead of min-maxing.

Thu, 2012-02-02 08:50

#20

CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture

Re: House Rules

Xagroth wrote:
Full auto can be overpowered (and in fact has proven to me that it is) when you use a shredder in closed spaces. Just by having the targets to be more than 1 meter apart from each other solves that, however (but the shredder seems to be THE weapon for tight spaces combat!).

Still no. Short Range, Shredder, Full Auto +1d10 (range) at one target. 2D10+5, -10AP. +3d10 for full auto. Total of 6d10+5 damage, with an AP of -10. Deals an average damage of 38, -10AP. Short Range, Shredder, Burst Fire +1d10 (range) at one target. 2D10+5, -10AP. +1d10 for burst fire. Total of 4d10+5 damage, with an AP of -10. Deals an average damage of 27, -10AP. Attacks twice, deals a true average damage of 54 when both attacks hit. Burst fire has a higher minimum damage, a higher maximum damage. It can hit a higher number of potential targets (4 rather than 3). Burst fire is still better. Full auto is not overpowered. P.S, I prefer Homing HEAP mini-missiles fired from a Seeker Rifle for confined spaces. High damage, high enough falloff that the shooter should be safe but low enough to clear rooms.

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Thu, 2012-02-02 10:19

#21

puke

Re: House Rules

Deadite wrote:
To be clear, individual nanites don't need to replicate the heat and force of heating and hammering metal, they just arrange the molecular structure with the desired forces, stresses and relationships built in. They don't have to be able to match the total force of the ammer on metal at once, they just have to replicate how that (incredibly smaller) force would have applied to one atom or molecule, then the next one, then the next one etc.

Okay, I don't want to totally derail the house rule thread, so this will be my last one. I've got these little magnetic balls that you can make shapes and shit out of. If you don't already know how, it can be tricky or frustrating. You need to start with simple structures to make larger structures. You can only make large complex shapes my manipulating entire substructures. If you try to stack them individually, you'll just make a tangled mess. Thanks to everyone who shared insight on this one, you may not have brought me around yet, but its always great to get perspective from you guys.

Thu, 2012-02-02 14:12

#22

tsedeq

Re: House Rules

Xagroth - good thoughts on universal translator. I agree that muses probably communicate that way. I guess what I'm thinking, though, is that there is also general software which everyone has access to (muses included) that "knows" every common language (English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, etc...) along with the cultural norms of body language surrounding the language. The software can then, if given video and audio, translate in close to real time between all "known" languages. This seems to be a much easier bit of technology to create than digitizing a mind or uplifting animals, (considering we already have primitive forms of it) and therefore seems to fit perfectly in the world of EP to me. Obviously, the software wouldn't be as good as a natural speaker, but it would be very, very close to as good. Therefore, having something like a skill value of 76 in a language seems pretty useless to me. I see very few situations where heavily investing in a language skill is worth it. As far as a secret code to communicate with physically, you could use a software solution to provide the same end result of encrypted audible communication. I would prefer to have some other way of tracking languages outside of the skill system. Maybe can just keep a list of languages a character is fluent in separate. Just have to figure out how many rez points each language is worth...

Fri, 2012-02-03 00:04

#23

Decivre

Re: House Rules

tsedeq wrote:
Xagroth - good thoughts on universal translator. I agree that muses probably communicate that way. I guess what I'm thinking, though, is that there is also general software which everyone has access to (muses included) that "knows" every common language (English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, etc...) along with the cultural norms of body language surrounding the language. The software can then, if given video and audio, translate in close to real time between all "known" languages. This seems to be a much easier bit of technology to create than digitizing a mind or uplifting animals, (considering we already have primitive forms of it) and therefore seems to fit perfectly in the world of EP to me. Obviously, the software wouldn't be as good as a natural speaker, but it would be very, very close to as good. Therefore, having something like a skill value of 76 in a language seems pretty useless to me. I see very few situations where heavily investing in a language skill is worth it. As far as a secret code to communicate with physically, you could use a software solution to provide the same end result of encrypted audible communication. I would prefer to have some other way of tracking languages outside of the skill system. Maybe can just keep a list of languages a character is fluent in separate. Just have to figure out how many rez points each language is worth...

In our games, we've created benefits to having high skill in languages. For instance, we made it so that you gain the ability to fluently speak in slang and jargon at high levels. Also, having two or more languages at 80+ allows you to mix the languages in a manner that only someone with similar knowledge can decode easily. I've also put a latency on universal translation software, though all that does is put a -10 penalty on social skills when the language barrier is a factor. Lastly, there are the zeroes that don't have mesh access, or the isolates that might not have access to such software

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Fri, 2012-02-03 03:33

#24

Nicochan

Re: House Rules

I think that universal translator MUST exist in EP (and it seems to me that I read this somewhere in the rulebook). But my HR says that if you know a language instead of using the translation: 1) you might have some bonuses to interact with egos that have a sort of nostalgia for the old way of communicating, or that believe that being a part of a community (even pre-Fall) or knowing its language is praiseworthy. 2) you might better understand and use some slang-use of language, or manner sayings, or percept a precise intonation: in this cases too you'll have a social bonus. 3) universal translators can be hackered, or can fail in their jobs gaining a "too literal" interpretation, producing misunderstandings,

Sat, 2012-02-04 09:34

#25

Decivre

Re: House Rules

Nicochan wrote:
I think that universal translator MUST exist in EP (and it seems to me that I read this somewhere in the rulebook). But my HR says that if you know a language instead of using the translation: 1) you might have some bonuses to interact with egos that have a sort of nostalgia for the old way of communicating, or that believe that being a part of a community (even pre-Fall) or knowing its language is praiseworthy. 2) you might better understand and use some slang-use of language, or manner sayings, or percept a precise intonation: in this cases too you'll have a social bonus. 3) universal translators can be hackered, or can fail in their jobs gaining a "too literal" interpretation, producing misunderstandings,

Well, not universal translators per se, but translation software exists. Essentially, mesh access likely grants you access to a language database for the habitat you are currently in, and the languages in use by its denizens is likely kept in store and translated into the language of your choice on the fly. It's not a universal "everything I hear is translated" program, but more of a "what if Google Translate actually did a decent job, worked dynamically on spoken language, and could be accessed locally at any habitat" sort of deal. If the local habitat doesn't have such a program, or the people in question are speaking a relatively obscure language for which no translation database exists, it won't work. Also, I go by similar rules as you. Translation software in my games doesn't recognize sarcasm, intonation, some jargon or slang, and other subtleties of language. It just gives you a fairly close translation.

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2012-02-06 04:41

#26

Nicochan

Re: House Rules

I've had another idea for covers: Now, correct me if I'm wrong, staying behind a cover (that can grant -10,-20, or -30 to the attacker's range skill) gains a malus of -10 to all the attacks. What if this malus was equal to the -10, -20, or -30 malus that has the people who's shooting at the one in cover?

Thu, 2012-02-09 11:23

#27

Psoly0

Re: House Rules

Hi transhumans! I love tweaking with RPG mechanics, usually to make the game more challenging and/or realistic. So here is my little contribution. As there is no need to bore people with details if anyone want me to explain any mod in detail just ask. Setting: -"Simulspace time" SERIOUSLY modified (depends on number of mental actions -hardware for infomorfs-) -"Forking" tightly controled (Stress rules for forking and being a fork, identity and REP issues for alphas...) -Jovian faction remade (fascist anti-exurgent paranoia) -Decreased surveillance and spimes universal presence (except for Jovians) -Increased hardwiring of systems, specially vital and security systems. For Jovians almost everything is hardwired (within reason of course) Character creation: -"Animal handling" moved to INT -One REP score for each individual faction (Morningstar, Tarsis...) -Moxies maximum reduced -"[Home] knowledge" from background & "[Faction] knowledge" added as bonus skills with +20 Mechanics: -Revamped SOM aptitude. -In teamwork "helpers" can mess around too. -Hardened difficulties for hacking. -Receiving 2+ simultaneous wounds causes 1d10/2 stress. -Stress can't be recovered in stressfull situations, even within a simulspace (not clear in the corebook) -Skill trainning in a simulspace must be paid for in the form of a subscription to a simul-trainning camp (not clear in the corebook). Equipment: -More costly "Medichines" for bio and even more costly for sinths. With "low" price it renders useless other healing and repairing technologies and skills, so theres no real choice. -Nanofab needs rare materials according to the value of the item (it's mentioned in the book but not implemented). In gatecrashing and in some habitats this can be sort of a problem. -New "Item avaliability" trait (rareness of items depends on habitat environment and activities) Lenguages (it's a popular topic so I will explain this one in detail): Low lenguage skill works as a negative modifier to social tests. The Mesh has perfect translation, so social test are only caped by your highest lenguage skill. For ops with no mesh access, getecrashing mainly, "translator AI" can be purchased and has near perfect translation (skill 80) for a group of related lenguages (romance, germanic...). The IA can be executed in a communication node to bring automatic translation for everyone within reach. ...I have more house rules, but thats more than enough for today IMO!

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«Dado un número suficientemente elevado de ojos, todos los errores se convierten en obvios.» Linus Torvalds

Wed, 2012-02-29 16:11

#28

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Re: House Rules

I have in my campaign- pretty much crowded habitats and cities with flak jackets and machineguns in space. Severely limited technology- Eliminated most pod morphs- Expanded the rules for augmentations to limit augmentations and three kinds of augmentations- ecto endo nano each type takes up a certain amount of space. Expanded the morph list to include three grades of morphs- -Base morph- -Alpha morph- -Omega morph- No lasers, limited kinetic weapons, alternative scum fleets, limited genetic engineering, triple healing times, adjusted costs to make biomorphs and augs more expensive based on a curve.

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."