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How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping during a campaign?

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Wed, 2011-06-08 19:57
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clockworkjoe clockworkjoe's picture
How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping during a campaign?
Obviously death is very much a real possibility in EP and it's fortunate that death is not the end. However, on a game mechanics level, death is still a major penalty as you lose your morph, implants and most likely your gear. This matters a large deal because morphs are usually expensive in CP and some characters may invest heavily in gear. Also given the current state of the marketplace, resleeved characters will be forced into cheap morphs if they are not given a fiat by the GM. The high quality morphs are extremely expensive and rare. Given that a character only earns an average of approximately 1 Rez point per game session with the rules as written (4-7 points per 3-6 sessions), character death has the effect of making a character substantially weaker than they were at character generation - losing the benefits of 20-50 sessions of game play - an entire campaign! For example: Sally the Soldier has an exalt morph (30 CP), with toughness 1 (10 CP) 5000 credits of combat armor and misc gear (starting cash) neurachem (5 CP), a plasma beam bolter (5 CP) and skillware with 1 skill at 40 points (10 CP) if she dies and resleeves with a splicer (10 CP) she has a net loss of 50 CP. Sally's player is better off by making a new character because Sally's going to be operating as a weaker character for a long time to come. The only way to get around this is to purposefully design a character that has minimal gear and a cheap morph. So, my question is: how do you handle these game mechanic issues in campaign?
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Wed, 2011-06-08 20:13
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
That would be true, if Rez points were the only source of income/character improvement. They are also gaining reputation, credits, and other goods as rewards during scenarios. So in your example, Sally might lose her Exalt morph during play, but that is only an Expensive favour and a few networking rolls to get something equivalent back. They can even burn their rep away, depending on gaining more at the end of scenarios, during play if they have already used up their Expensive favour. You can also include things like morphs as mission gear, the Core book states that occasionally Firewall is willing to sleeve their sentinels as part of an operation. This also extends to actual gear. It is not GM fiat for Firewall to hand out morphs as rewards/reperations.
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Thu, 2011-06-09 12:31
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
How do I handle ephemeral equipment like armor and morphs? I tell my players not to invest too heavily in them. Even if they don't 'lose' them, 90% of the time their first mission is different from where the character was generated, so then what? They going to box up the morph and ship it too? And on the flip side, characters tend to pick up heavy duty equipment pretty quickly, so they're just as likely to come into a heavy morph as to lose one.
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Thu, 2011-06-09 13:31
crizh crizh's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
Funny, my initial reaction to Eclipse Phase was to design characters that expected this to happen to them and planned accordingly. A few carefully chosen blueprints will put you in a position where you will never be without a Morph for more than a few hours. This principle can easily be extended to implants and gear particularly if you design with open source repositories in mind. To some extent this is Metagaming but we are talking about Firewall agents here. If I were a Firewall agent that would be the first thing I would do.
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Thu, 2011-06-09 15:58
clockworkjoe clockworkjoe's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
don't biomorphs take months or years to grow? I mean yeah if you choose a character that uses synthmorphs heavily then you're okay (assuming you can get access to a fabber without DRM controls and raw materials and you have the time and skill to make it) This also restricts what kind of character you can play - if every character has to devote 50-100 CP for the skills and blueprints to make new synthmorphs in case of death, then you can't use those points for other things. I'd like to hear more actual game experiences though - what happened after the TPK and how players reacted to it and what new morphs and gear they got and how long it took and so forth.
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Fri, 2011-06-10 15:28
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
That why having an insurrance in the the game is REALLY important. And the GM can wear that in the story of the adventure itself, it can be a suspenseful Bplot storyhook. one of the character just died, his/her/their friends call the broker to notify the death to resleeve the character's ego...and meanwhile the gear and the stack get stolen by either the enemy of the adventure,or one of a previous game seeking revenge or foreshadowing a future scenario imagine the scene: "hum, Gus, I don't know how to tell you that, but while we were contacting your broker, your stuff has been stolen." "what?! and why dind't you bring my stack, by the way? I'm missing three days! 72 flippin' hours!" "Well, it's like this.... your stack was kinda sorta stolen too." "WHAT?!? by whom" "We don't know. Might be these IDCrew fuckers that you schrewed over with that trojan, last month..."
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Sat, 2011-06-11 02:18
root root's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
root@Handling death/resleeving and related questions of property [hr] I like to have the players build their characters and then look over them to see if they thought about this, and if so, what they did about it. Some players will find a neat trick to bootstrap themselves up from a corporeal loss, and some players need there to be embodiment for them to accept their characters. It can make for a very rich roleplaying when the player who spent 100 CP on a top-end morph and gear that has been tricked out down to the registers gets dropped into the sun after accidentally insulting the Grand Solarian Whale, and has to come to terms with this "change." Of course, this can also lead to very pissed-off players if it's done casually or used as a "gotcha" to show them how ephemeral be this moral coil. It also has the potential to lead to very confused players who can't find the correct suspension of disbelief if you cram them into an octomorph as their first resleeve, but your team mascot should take to it instantly (or maybe that's just me).
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Sat, 2011-06-11 07:00
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
As an aside, one of my first characters had a case loaded down with flaws. I actually got CP back. The first mission sucked and I hobbled through basically following an unrelated party as they chopped dudes up. I picked up a dead Olympian's head, brought it home and tossed it into a healing vat to get 'healed'. Since I had a pause between missions, and the GM was pretty liberal with the rules, it permitted me to go from a -5 CP morph to a sylph in basically one mission. It feels dirty, but there you go. Since about 60% of missions are not at your home base, we've found that 'adaptability' edge is really valuable for firewall agents. You are quite likely to be resleeving every other mission, and expected to function in whatever morph is available to you. It's been a pretty big thing.
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Sat, 2011-06-11 16:26
BOMherren BOMherren's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
For a one-shot adventure, I don't think it matters. Go ahead and splorge on that 150 CP combat wombat Fury Morph. For a long campaign, I suggest grabbing a Desktop Cornucopia Machine, a pattern for a small Morph or two (Swarmanoid, Flexbot, Dragonfly, Spare, Guardian Angel robot, etc.) and some Programming at the outset. That's 50-150 CP in skills and creds, which can be spread out among the entire party, and it's likely to repay itself within the first month or so of game time (or even sooner, if the characters use homemade Morphs as starters instead of paying CP).
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Thu, 2011-06-16 10:00
valen valen's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
How do I handle ephemeral equipment like armor and morphs? I tell my players not to invest too heavily in them. Even if they don't 'lose' them, 90% of the time their first mission is different from where the character was generated, so then what? They going to box up the morph and ship it too? And on the flip side, characters tend to pick up heavy duty equipment pretty quickly, so they're just as likely to come into a heavy morph as to lose one.
I'm planning on telling my players upfront that death/bodyloss is to be an expected consequence of working for firewall. Don't get to attached to custom morphs and that gear isn't super important in the game. If you need something for a mission you can acquire it then.
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Thu, 2011-06-16 12:09
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
Given the incredible utility of morphs and implants, this is bound to be a source of angst and conflict. Alas. :)
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Thu, 2011-06-16 13:43
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
One test character I made had a pretty tricked out morph, but given that he was a mercenary/cleanup crew for Firewall he was also quite aware of the morph's transience. That didn't stop him from treating it as a game: just how unlikely escapes could he manage to save his skin, despite being the applied brute force of a dreaded 'cleanse it with plasma fire' team?
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Thu, 2011-06-16 14:28
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
Hehe. Well, I think the conflict between materialism/stockpiling, and the value of the naked ego itself, is more or less central to the setting. It's not a *problem* that souped-up morphs (and gear) are so enticing, yet vulnerable. That said, I think I'd nearly always invest in extensive implants anyway; for a scant 50CP, the advantages are simply too much to ignore. At worst, that's 1-3 additional skills 'lost' (or some solid Favors, in play).
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Thu, 2011-06-16 16:36
root root's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
root@How do you handle death/resleeving [hr] I do enjoy playing an infomorph who is most comfortable in Case morphs or Spares (both 5 CP). The Spares have a Puppet Sock, so they can be remote piloted, and they can be "found" in almost any location. They aren't particularly effective in combat by themselves, but they can be swarmed together for lots of crazy, explosive fun, and five of them can try to fire the Reaper's main gun after it has been sliced off by the Big Bad. I keep an mp3 of R2D2 squealing as he gets shot up handy for added comic effect.
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Fri, 2011-06-17 00:53
mickykitsune mickykitsune's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
In the game I'm currently running, I've written actual "kill events" into the script, and then see if the players can survive them. If they don't, its an opportunity to advance the plot in different ways, and if they do.. well, good on them =) Generally I only do this when they're away from their 'home' bodies, however.
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Fri, 2011-06-17 13:02
Rallan Rallan's picture
Re: How do you handle death/resleeving and re-equipping ...
I'd either just ignore the technical details of resleeving, or use it as a plot development. If you're a valued member of a well-funded organisation like Firewall or a hypercorporation PMC the Jovian Republic's intelligence agency or whatever, it's not really a problem. There's a good chance that even if you haven't been ganked, they're going to routinely send you out on expeditions with fresh morphs either because the nature of the mission demands it or because the gig is 30 AUs away from you. Just wing it, treat it as no bigger a deal than being issued any other hardware before a gig, and don't let it get in the way of prancing around the galaxy being a stone cold badass. If the party are freelancing though, resleeving can get [i]interesting[/i]. Just having them burn through credits or rep isn't particularly interesting, and can potentially turn sucky if they're in a high-action game where the cost of new morphs outstrips their income. So do it off the books, and make sure there's always a catch. Some artisans on the Carnival of Goats scum barge will do you a new morph virtually for nothing, but it'll be just the teensiest bit eccentric by most peoples' standards. A criminal syndicate can get you a Fury morph that's the next best thing to military grade, but they'll expect you to do them some favours later on. That hypercorp executive likes the cut of your jib and is impressed by your resume, so he's willing to offer you a much better resleeving deal than the usual trap of indenture. But before you sign on the dotted line, he'd like to know if you've ever considered taking a freelance assignment that will involve a) gatecrashing and b) insane amounts of explosions.
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