Hello gents, as the GM for this game I'm looking for tips/ opinions/ advice based on what you see in the actual play, and of course inspiring/informing the curious is also good. This is a game of 2 players who I've run Eclipse Phase games with these characters before, though utterly unconnected to present activities. We Skype our games, though our scheduling is erratic. I use Mockingbird as referenced in Gatecrashing, not quite as it was in the book, but largely similar, particularly in the focus of what surrounded it. This post is only the first part of the start of the adventure, all the stage setting isn't even complete yet. Eclipse Phase Actual Play: A Tale of Two Gates. Mockingbird colony failed its regular check in at the Martian Gate, so within a minute Hypercorp invested in it was shoved aside to make room for the successes. They didn’t like that, though. They’d found a valuable planet. So after pulling some strings with connections they were in possession of a Quantum Entanglement Communicator, and in contact with the Gatecrashers’ Guild. Months ago, it was found that one of the six gates on Portal had a direct connection to the Mockingbird Colony. Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time Mockingbird was attacked, it happened once before, and strange morphs with three legs and multitudinous limbs were encountered, and eventually repelled, but only with heavy doses of explosives that left little of these engineering marvels behind in any observable form. Now, Portal is run on anarchist lines by and large, but a rescue mission’s a rescue mission, and due to the abundance of gates so close together, the Guild is willing to help, and has been promised compensation. This brings us to our Player Characters, both combat experts with a Hypercorp background, who came to Portal via the Vulcanoid Gate. We have Kenai, an uplifted dog (homebrew) capable with all manner of seekers, and equipped with a flyer. The other guy is Marcus, an Async Ghost with stealth expertise, an overinflated Ego, and a Sniper Railgun (He’s also got some anarchist cred). They joined the Gatecrashers’ Guild as part of their recovery and rescue operations. (Problem Number One with this group, all the non-combat bases are covered by NPC’s I don’t like forcing roles on people and they’re military sci-fi/ghost in the shell fanatics.) They rendezvous with the rest of the team at the Mi’raj: A couple other combat NPC’s (NPC file mooks), along with an info specialist and a mechanic. (Fun fact: None of us thought about the important question, if this is liable to be a rescue operation, why was there no medic dispatched, or at least a Dr. Bot?) At any rate, the standard operations of opening the gate go off without a hitch, though there is a bit of fun at the gate itself as people tease each other about visions and hallucinations that happen in transit, and there are no immediate signs of hostility revealed by the cameras. No Mesh either, for that matter. There should be one active. A middling sized bio-dome was built up around the gate, due to the mercury-like conditions of this planet, which has gravity just above earth standard, and no atmosphere. The info specialist begins working the gate box, specifically looking for its activation history. The mechanic is occupied with checking the operational capacity of the defenses which were put into place after the previous attack. The PC’s aren’t directly doing anything right this moment, but are acting as administrators, inquiring about the planet and its operations, and throwing out things to try, such as getting in contact with the satellite in geosynchronous orbit. ************** It's late, so adieu for now.