In many ways, I find it difficult to distinguish OZMA and Firewall from each other. OZMA are largely Inner System proponents of the Planetary Consortium who operate in the dark to secure the safety and stability of the PC from internal and external threats, while Firewall are largely an organization of decentralized Outer System types and Inner System dissenters who operate in the dark to secure the safety and stability of the Solar System from internal and external threats. However, an OZMA campaign would probably be one with a lot of focus on cooperation from local authorities; after all, while Firewall has to be for favours, OZMA can cooperate directly with local police or military. Hence, an OZMA campaign is one where the Players will have a great opportunity to call on a lot of lower-level resources. Instead of having to wrangle with bribes and the alike, the Players can just [i]ask[/i] and be served. They're the Men and Women In Black, after all, carrying with them an impressive array of Orders From Above that can be used to command local forces without questions being asked. Secondly, while Firewall are largely concerned with X-threats or general Player Character goodiness of helping catbots down from nanotrees on hunches that the catbot may be an Exurgent, OZMA (I believe) are much more likely to be involved in general, [i]Deus Ex[/i]-like anti- and counter- terrorism-operations. OZMA are the people who, as you say, dispatch trenchcoat-wearing, sunglasses-donning vision-augmenting agents to preserve PC integrity. So, when the Lagrange Secessionist Forces attempt to blow up Erato, it's OZMA who are there to storm the building. AN OZMA-campaign is essentially an excellent way to give the players a taste of power and authority, whereas Firewall seems to have a tendency to be scraping the barrel all the time. Now, one campaign that I've always wanted to run, but I lack players and planning (and it would probably be better as a piece of fiction, really) is that all of the players play members of Firewall - who are actually spies for Project Ozma (although they may not know that everyone else are spies from Project OZMA, due to internal divisions or bureaucratic errors) Additionally, in this flock of wolves, one of the players might be part of OZMA's Internal Security, who has been tasked with verifying the loyalty of one or two of the agents. (They don't know that the rest of the players are [i]also[/i] OZMA agents...) One of the players may be a Double Agent for Firewall, and yet another might actually be working for the Jovian Republic Intelligence Agency, and yet another actually takes orders from an Exurgent delta-form ghost-riding in their mind, etc... All their muses and multiple personalities and whatnot are, of course, [i]also[/i] double-agents. It would probably be way, [i]way[/i] too unwieldy to actually run, but I'm amused by the general [i]Deus Ex[/i]-esque "everyone may be and are Double Agents" where all the secret organizations suddenly call on their agents at the same time and then people start changing sides and suddenly [i]everyone[/i] are racing against the clock to stop each other from triggering the X-threats. I think I'm sickly too fond of [i]Paranoia[/i]...

crisaron wrote:

While Ozma is very powerful, I still represent them as hyper secretive, where Firewall isa rumor Ozma is not even a word... Project Ozma to me is like a Sword Fish organisation. Extremely efficient, self minded organization which happen to have common interst with humanity at times. At other times it is concerned with it's secrety and total control and discovery of alien/new technologies.

Agreed. LatwPIAT description strikes me more as Overwatch or Stellar Intelligences area of expertise. Project Ozma is a rumour, even among the higher ups within the PC. It would be Overwatch SWAT officers who are going into the terrorist controlled building, while it might be an Ozma agent who is sent into a Factor ship to steal light huger engine technology.

CodeBreaker wrote:

crisaron wrote:

While Ozma is very powerful, I still represent them as hyper secretive, where Firewall isa rumor Ozma is not even a word... Project Ozma to me is like a Sword Fish organisation. Extremely efficient, self minded organization which happen to have common interst with humanity at times. At other times it is concerned with it's secrety and total control and discovery of alien/new technologies.

Agreed. LatwPIAT description strikes me more as Overwatch or Stellar Intelligences area of expertise. Project Ozma is a rumour, even among the higher ups within the PC. It would be Overwatch SWAT officers who are going into the terrorist controlled building, while it might be an Ozma agent who is sent into a Factor ship to steal light huger engine technology.

My LFGS (which is a two-hour train trip away) doesn't have any copies of [i]Sunward[/i], so I was going mostly off the description given in Chp. 12 of [i]Eclipse Phase[/i]. (And my PDF of [i]Sunward[/i] wasn't much help either; there's an Æther Jabber where a Firewall agent suggests that OZMA is the power behind the throne, while Oversight are the Men and Women In Black that EPCore described them as... but that's it.) I should perhaps note that I was thinking of OZMA as the MaWIM who suddenly turn up with an executive order to hold back local police signed by the PC {manager of assorted police} while they themselves are simply not identified as belonging to any organization. People in the PC don't know that OZMA exist, but every once in a while, these MaWIM will turn up, completely take over an operation (or just watch over shoulders and then leave), always with the paperwork completely in order and then move in. When local authority regain control, whatever facility was under attack/taken hostage/suspected Exurgent threat is [i]completely empty[/i] except for bloodstains and the occasional hole in the wall. The computer harddrives have been wiped, the security cameras don't show anything... Yes. Overwatch SWAT are the people who go into the terrorist-controlled buildings. And OZMA are the people who suddenly turn up to go in after Overwatch SWAT. Their agents don't have anything but simple names; their public profiles are always [b][BLOCKED][/b]; Their authority is granted by Decree; Their faces are ubiquitous Suddenly, your colleague has a paper signed by Gia Norne or the Congress that authorizes him full control of all resources and personel in the area. The next day, he's gone, his position if filled by someone else, and everyone you talk to claim that your colleague has never worked here. The core says "ultimate Men in Black", so I see no reason not to exploit that in every possible way.

I see them totaly differently... Where firewall will do damage control after an opperation, Ozma would have completely "cleaned out" the original site without any second toughs or prejudices. They are as dangerous as they are secretive, anyone could be an agent. You don't talk to a Ozma, when he is activated it's a carnage or a very subtile opperation. Ozma would be like super secret CIA opperation hidden behind thousands of smoke screens companies, that even the CIA does not know exist anymore. When if ever an agent as to deal with "police" no one would even guess he is part of that org, is filles would be hard as stone but untracable, anyone pocking around ends up dead at the end of the mission.

Ozma can be more like Agents. If they had some kind of portable ego-bridge that could overwrite a brain quickly, very high-tech, maybe even TITAN-tech. The Ozma just sleeve into whoever seems to be in charge of the situation, or otherwise well placed to guide it. The original is still in there, in the cortical stack, and when the Ozma leaves, they can be restored. Possibly even a fork of the original Ego can be hastily made and stuck in some ghost-rider module, to be mined for specifics on the life of the original, so it can pass for them. Normally they sleeve in a disposable case or flat to get to the scene, identify the right target to transfer into, and then get them alone. For heavy hitting, have a special operations team nearby on standby. So now Ozma, to investigators, looks like a truly massive conspiracy of collaborators, none of whom every perform more than one mission, and none of whom survive the mission without needing to be resleeved from a pre-mission back-up. Whereas in fact it's an unknown quantity of 'Egonauts' who could be anyone, anywhere. Take the Men in Black, and give it a twist to fit in with a world where people can be ego-napped, resleeved or memory-edited.

I was thinking something in the re-sleeving tech they have just leaves the Morph's stack intact. As we know, just plugging a stack into a synth lets you re-sleeve very quickly. So the bodysnatcher module (why not?) contains the Ozma's stack, and also enough computing power to run an alpha fork of the original Ego as an infomorph, to be interrogated on the spot. The Ozma may decide that this identity is perfect for the mission, or they might want to move along. If they go quickly, some fast memory editing means the victim remembers nothing, while the Ozma uses the bodysnatcher module on another likely candidate. Long-term bodysnatching is covered up by the death of the victim, who is then re-sleeved from a pre-bodysnatcher backup. The idea of Ozma 'disappearing' people seems way too unsubtle. The Jovian secret police, I can see doing this. Ozma, I would have them as bogeymen that only Firewall, maybe the Jovian spy agency, and perhaps a few other espionage hypercorps, are vaguely aware of, and terrified by. Other people just see nothing. Firewall and the others see a set of odd statistical clusters, hear accounts of normal people doing extraordinary things in crisis situations though never surviving to tell the tale themselves, and they can't track it down.

The PC tells us that the Obsolescence treatments my Ruster has to get every 6 months is to keep my implants up to date, and my biomods working. But what they don't tell you is that they are also checking that the strings are still attached! Have you ever had that feeling that you were being watched, but your Muse couldn’t even find a spime nearby? That was Overwatch testing the system, watching you from inside your own head! We have puppet socks in our heads, man. Why can't you see that!? And those lights people keep seeing above Olympus? Those are the TITANs! They never left, damnit, why won't anyone listen!?

I had one of my player do that, he is the main Vilain but does not know. His main ego as implented triggers in is fork (the fork being the player unknowingly). Last time he had to resist the order to kill they all!

If I read this topic right then I might lean a bit more towards Project Ozma than towards Firewall. Speaking of that, on a random note, if I wanted to put up the characters I've created (I want to make sure I've got the skills right), then where would I do so?

Thanks! Now to actually [i]do[/i] it.

CodeBreaker wrote:

The PC tells us that the Obsolescence treatments my Ruster has to get every 6 months is to keep my implants up to date, and my biomods working. But what they don't tell you is that they are also checking that the strings are still attached! Have you ever had that feeling that you were being watched, but your Muse couldn’t even find a spime nearby? That was Overwatch testing the system, watching you from inside your own head! We have puppet socks in our heads, man. Why can't you see that!?

That would be a nasty nanovirus for an anarchist, anti-Planetary Consortium hacker to release into the ventilation system... that would be pretty easy for a determined engineer to make a reality in Eclipse Phase.