So I'm still in that frantic stage of picking up a new RPG where I really like the setting and I'm making characters that I may or may not ever get the chance to play and I've found a matter of confusion about the Argonauts.
Are they an "exclusive" faction? It's obvious that you can't be both a citizen of the Planetary Consortium and the Jovian Republic, for instance, but the Argonauts are officially neutral and highly decentralized. Could someone be a professor at the University of Mars or Titan Autonomous University and still be an Argonaut, or do you need that Hypercorp or Titanian background to be members of those societies?
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Argonaut faction membership
Mon, 2015-09-07 15:02
#1
GC13
Argonaut faction membership
Mon, 2015-09-07 15:23
#2
Trappedinwikipedia
I think it's possible to be
I think it's possible to be an Argonaut and something else at the same time. They're a really strange organization. They combine a advisory group, social movement (all those n-casts with blueprints on them in the inner system), and independent state.
For most people being an argonaut and something else should be pretty simple, it's basically endorsing open information in the capacity that that individual has. I'd expect that Argonaut higher-ups may be pretty exclusive, especially if they're at remote stations.
Tue, 2015-09-08 09:35
#3
Rehab
Yeah.
I interpreted them as the EP equivalent of an NGO, or an advocacy/lobbying group- like they have members everywhere there are experts and/or proponents of open source this-and-that. Of course anybody who runs an independant habitat, much less a bunch of them across the system might be considered a polity unto themselves in some respects, but they operate within the rest of transhumanity. Theyd have members, chapters etc in both core and anarchist space. Whether they have membership requirements, or if just liking a post or attending a seminar/rally is enough to get into the club is a good question, though.
Hmm. Jovian argonauts. Wonder if that's an oxymoron, or just an affiliation that would get a Jovian blacklisted.
Tue, 2015-09-08 11:25
#4
uwtartarus
Like Freemasons, I suspect
Like Freemasons, I suspect that Argonaut affiliations would not exclude citizenship.
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Tue, 2015-09-08 18:15
#5
DivineWrath
I think you could be any
I think you could be any combination of factions, so long as you could make the combination make sense. An argonaut could potentially be a member of the hypercorps, ultimates, scum, titanians, etc. They probably couldn't be a member of a soul trading gang like 9 lives (they are on the shit list of nearly everyone).
Eclipse Phase doesn't seem to force your characters to fit specific molds. In games like DnD, being a fighter makes you different from a barbarian in ways you couldn't easily blur. There is a lot the rules do to make it very clear what your job is and isn't. Same for spells, feats, etc. In EP, it is very much open to explore what the future could be like. If you have a good explanation for a piece of gear, then you are encouraged to make it happen. If you have an interesting character type, then go for it. This mentality seems to follow into most aspects of the game. So don't worry about what you are not allowed to do, worry about how to make the exceptions interesting...
Wed, 2015-09-09 08:02
#6
obsidian razor
I treat Argonaut membership
I treat Argonaut membership the same way.
The Argonauts are like a Solar System wide University/ Think Tank/ Research Institution. They have members all over the place and membership is open just as long as you abide by the rules of their charter (open source being a big one).
So for example, you could be a private corporate researcher, but also be a member of the Argonauts. It could, however, create a clear conflict of interest, since the Argonauts would expect your findings to be shared with everyone, but the Corp would want everything proprietary. You could balance it out by sharing openly any research that you do on your own time, but anything part of a project with an NDA for your Corp would obviously not count.
I imagine being an Argonaut is something that it's checked against in many projects to ensure there's not a conflict of interest.
The Argonauts probably receive funding from all over the place, as I imagine they probably do some research or training on-demand in exchange for a retainer, though of course, and once again, ensuring that everything is open source.
An example could be Google and Android, if we imagine Google as a Hypercorp (not unlikely as things are going) and Android as an OS developed by the Argonauts and paid for by Google.
Everyone is free to download the OS and the SDK and use it for whatever they want, but Google can work from that initial build and develop proprietary applications and systems that ensure they can grab and keep customers locked into it (which is, incidentally, what they have done).
The Argonauts probably would not be super happy about that last part, but they got a big retainer for it, and there's still a very good and useful open source base to keep developing from, so it's not all bad.
tl;dr Yes, you can be an Argonaut and a member of another faction, just as long as it doesn't cause a conflict of interest.
Wed, 2015-09-09 12:48
#7
Maudova
Depends On How Many Fake IDs You Have
I would say you can be a part of as many factions as you want/afford. All you have to do is have a fake ID for the conflicting groups. You can even fork yourself to pursue goals in each faction independently so that you can be in multiple places at once! That's why this game is fricking awesome.
If you want a Nine Lives Lives ego thief, fork yourself, establish him as a PoS ego smuggler and have him collect peoples souls/minds. Then you can feed those copied egos to you Argonaut for your cognition research related to enhancing transhuman mind states for free with your autonomist buddies. Which you can pass off to your fork working for Cognite to sell for profit. All in turn can be used to funnel rep and creds to your primary ego living on Extropa that is a mind hacking psychosurgeon, exhuman sympathizing, Singularity Seeker...
Did I mention I love this game?
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~Alpha Fork Initialized.
P.S. I often post from my phone as I travel extensively for work. Please forgive typos and grammar issues.
Wed, 2015-09-09 18:13
#8
MAD Crab
Pretty sure that the
Pretty sure that the Auronauts in general will weild the axe themselves if they catch you soul trafficking.
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Thu, 2015-09-10 05:15
#9
DivineWrath
I think the OP was asking if
I think the OP was asking if they openly be a member of multiple factions, not if there was some way to be secretly be member(s) of multiple possibly opposing faction. The later is certainly possible, but probably not what the OP is looking for.
For the record, you can do more than hack, you can psychosurgically edit minds to make them loyal to you, edit their memories, edit their behaviors, etc so they can better fit the identity you set for them. All the more to better protect and serve you. Transhuman added even more things you can do, like insert memories and objectives that will only activate under certain conditions, so the mole doesn't know that they are a mole unless they activated or something.
Thu, 2015-09-10 18:51
#10
GC13
Yeah, the character could
Yeah, the character could always be secretly an Argonaut, but the question was whether his affiliation could be known and him still keep his job. It sounds like the consensus is that nobody in the world of Eclipse Phase would see a problem with it. I guess that political neutrality pays off.
Thu, 2015-09-10 18:53
#11
uwtartarus
MAD Crab wrote:Pretty sure
The (mythical?) Medeans!
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Exhuman, and Humanitarian.
Thu, 2015-09-10 19:24
#12
Maudova
Argonaut vs Hypercorp
Well he may not be able to keep a Hypercorp Job with argonaut affiliation. Simply because they are something of an open source, semi-autonomous group that would rather see no patents/DRM on tech/genes. I am sure any Hypercorp that would employe an agonaut would keep them at arms length and keep closer scrutiny of their activities.
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~Alpha Fork Initialized.
P.S. I often post from my phone as I travel extensively for work. Please forgive typos and grammar issues.
Fri, 2015-09-11 00:29
#13
Kojak
One of the players in my
One of the players in my campaign runs a character who normally contracts as a nanotech expert with the TTO and some of the hypercorps: he's also secretly an Argonaut but keeps it on the DL so that he can steal data from the hypercorps and then turn it over to Argonauts when he has the opportunity to do so discreetly.
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"I wonder if in some weird Freudian way, Kojak was sucking on his own head."
- Steve Webster on Kojak's lollipop
Sun, 2015-09-13 06:20
#14
Pyrite
I imagine it's a bit like
I imagine it's a bit like trying to work for a modern corporation while openly being a communist: you can try, and they might still hire you if you're talented enough or they don't care too much about secrecy for the project they want you for, but they're still likely to keep a close eye on you.
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'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien