Eclipse Phase - Gaming Notes FINAL

Eclipse Phase is over. Thank God. It's not that it's a BAD game. It was just very difficult for me to get into the world and to a degree the story being told in that world.

When last we left off, we were about ready to go through a space portal to assault a Ozma base on another planet. We "forked" ourselves into other bodies (Fury morphs) for the assault. We went through the portal - no problem. We dropped ourselves off on the planet surface and the original copies of us left for deep space on a decoy mission.

Meanwhile, the super-combat "fury" copies of us met an android that guided us as we hoofed it TWO WEEKS back to the portal. Why? I was confused as well, especially since the portal wasn't guarded at all. Why not just directly through the portal when we came through?

The android produced some weird mold stuff, affixed it to the portal so it would operate in some special way, and sent us through the portal to our final destination (giving us some more portal-mold so we could get back). On the other side of the portal, we were met with a Firewall agent with a laser rifle that could fire 10km. It made me wonder if they could get an agent this close to the base why they needed us at all. He guided us for another few days until we reached the base we were to assault - out in the open. No way to sneak up!

We lied our way inside and proceeded to plant explosives all around the place and kill everyone. Resistance was oddly weak. We retrieved the alien artifact but decided to blow it up after all. Alien tech is bad news, after all.

Mission accomplished, we walked away from the smoldering crater we had created only to be picked off one at a time by the Firewall guy with a huge rifle. Now that's gratitude!

Ultimately, this game misses the mark for me. The rules are not well laid out in the book and can be quite cumbersome. The worse is downloading into a new body! You literally have to remake your character all over again which takes about 45 minutes. You can have multiple copies of yourself running around so you can have several character sheets as well.

Glad I played, but I'm not looking forward to playing again. Goodbye, Eclipse Phase!

Memorable Gaming Moment - Eclipse Phase

So, during the last Eclipse Phase gaming session my friend Bryan really had a good gaming moment.

My character had just busted into the control car of a train only to find the engineer dead. Bryan asked, "Does he have a dagger in his back?"

Eclipse Phase is ultra-high tech and futuristic so I said, "Come on! This isn't 1930, Brian!"

To which Bryan responded, "OKAY - Does he have a mono-filament dagger in his back?"

Hilarious.

Eclipse Phase - Gaming Notes

Continuing my adventures in the ultra high-tech RPG system, Eclipse Phase.

As I've said, in our attempts to find out how and why we died, we split the party. Half went to Saturn, the other half to Mars.

The Saturn group found out that the shuttle we died on was on a mission for a faction called Firewall. We were on a mission to deliver Alpha Forks (doubles) of ourselves sleeved in Fury morphs (combat bodies). We were basically to go through a gate and destroy some alien base. Another corporation found out and had us killed.

Meanwhile, on Mars, the other corporation was continuing its quest to kill us. And, to some degree, succeeding. Bryan's character was beheaded in an ambush. We resleeved him quickly and went to ground in a safehouse. We waited until the Saturn folks got to Mars before proceeding to our rendevous point.

On the way, we were ambushed by bad guys on the train! We cut our losses and ran. Everyone pilled into the control car and detatched the rest of the train. Unfortunately, this was after one of Dave's Betas got killed.

We arrived safely at the gateway platform. Now we have to upload into our super-combat "Furies" bodies and complete the mission.

Eclipse Phase - Session 3 Notes

We split the party. Hey, it's the future - technology allows us to break all the rules!
We're in the middle of a murder mystery (who murdered US - we were uploaded to new bodies from our back ups and don't remember the last three months of our lives). We already escaped one virtual reality world we were trapped in only to find that reality is a mess for us as well. Apparently, we "forked" ourselves six years ago and our other selves have been leading secret lives. Now, for some reason, people want to kill us some more.

We had a bunch of leads so half the party went to check on our other selves while the other half broadcast themselves to Saturn to find out what happened when we died there. They were expected, however, and they were given a shuttle with cargo - superhuman versions of ourselves that were designed to stop an alien invasion.

Well then...

What I'm Playing - Eclipse Phase

Ever have an role playing game make your head hurt? Well, Eclipse Phase makes mine hurt.

It's actually a very, very cool RPG. The concept is that it is far in the future - man has colonize the entire solar system and technology is way beyond even Star Wars - Mankind has "uplifted" itself to genetic perfection enhanced through bioware. You can download yourself into different skins, backup your brain, and control your environment with your thoughts.

The problem is - how do you make this work as an RPG? It's so different from what you and I know that I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. When your players can do anything, I think it's hard for the DM to "herd" them. It's also hard for players to know what's within the realm of possibility when literally anything goes. Also, how do you act in a world where everyone is a superhuman?

Not to mention the character sheets! Because you can jump bodies (and change bioware) regularly, everything about your character can chance - innate abilities, skills, stats, secondary attributes, upgrades, etc. In many ways, this RPG is beyond a character sheet as we know it. I wish the game designers had innovated a cool way to make this system work. As it is, it just seems a little clunky. It's so complex that it makes it hard for the character sheet to have the necessary flexibility.

The book is beautiful with lots of flavor text.

The basic combat and skill check rules are efficient and are easily managed. There are lots of numbers to keep track of, however - tons of attributes and secondary stats derived from those attributes.

It's worth a look - if super high-tech is your thing, then definitely check out this RPG. The game designers obviously poured their hearts into this thing.

CRITICAL REVIEW: 14 out of 20 - It's a hit!