From the most recent updates of the Eclipse Phase Second Edition Kickstarter, the new edition is heading for production in the fairly near future. The rules sections seem pretty well established and it’s just the source material to work out before at least the electronic forms can be sent. With that in mind, I thought I’d go through the backer preview and let all of you who aren’t in the Insiders’ Club know just what’s changed for characters from the first edition.
On Tuesday, I introduced a few online (and offline) resources about realistic alien ecosystems that I’d been using for “a project.” Well, here’s that project! This is the first in a series of in-person articles you can use as SolArchive handouts in your Eclipse Phase campaign (or steal for another setting, of course). Enjoy!
I’m really psyched about the new Kickstarter for Eclipse Phase Second Edition, and if you are a fan of the game you are probably psyched too. If you aren’t, though, you might want to check out Renegade Octopus’s blog for some reasons to give it a look. For my two cents, just keep reading!
The latest Eclipse Phase release is one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while. Argonauts is a small-scale sourcebook funded through the Transhuman Kickstarter way back when. This book is intended to fill in some of the details on the Argonauts faction the way that Zone Stalkers filled in information on the TQZ and the beginning of The Devotees filled in information on Nine Lives. How did they do? Well, no surprises, amazingly.
I think this will be my holiday tradition on here. As I said last time, Fiasco is a great holiday game when you’re going to be around a big group of people.With Christmas coming up on Sunday I think that’s going to be the situation for a lot of people and you might want to get some gaming in. At the same time, you probably won’t always have a group of RPG fans to rope into a quick one-shot, but Fiasco works as a bridge between traditional party games and roleplaying games. If this works, maybe they’ll be into trying something new!
This scenario is set in the world of Eclipse Phase in the crazy messed-up location of Meathab. My Titanian scenario tended toward the dramatic and transhuman; this one tends toward the bizarre and ridiculous. Try it out this holiday season and let me know how it goes!
Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there! I know it’s a holiday with a complicated history, but what holiday doesn’t? The important part is getting together with family and friends to share some fun times. If you want some inspiration for games to play this week you could do a lot worse than Fiasco, a bridge between RPG and party game with a lot of acting and fun. I’ve come up with some Eclipse Phase scenarios to combine gamelines (as I love to do) and welcome you trying this one out. If you do, let me know!
A Session Zero is the first session of a campaign that is about building characters more than advancing the plot. You get together and create your characters as a group to better meld them into a party and to help each other out. I highly recommend this if you’re going to do an ongoing campaign, but if you want to try something a little more engaging you should try telling a story at the same time. One of the best games to use this with is my favorite sci-fi RPG, Eclipse Phase.
About a month ago, I finally started a regular campaign using D&D Fifth Edition. It’s been a lot of fun and it’s prompted me to think about what the creators have changed in the game for this edition and how it plays out. Something that wasn’t changed, and I don’t think it needed to be, was alignment. But, my id started to whisper to me, what if it was?
I’m psyched to report that there is a new sourcebook out for Eclipse Phase and that I’ve been pouring through it with great excitement. Titled X-Risks, the book covers… well existential risks but also Firewall’s response to them. How do you decide whether something is an x-risk? What if you have to choose between saving a habitat or chasing down a nanoplague sample? What the hell is an Iktomi kumobot? The answers to these questions and more can be found in X-Risks.
Last week, I described using the conspiracy pyramid (or conspyramid) from Night’s Black Agents to make your Eclipse Phase game more spy-heavy. It’s an excellent organizational framework but it’s also a great tool for GMs to use for enhancing their campaigns. One of the best ways to do that is through the threats outlined in the “vampyramid,” the ways that the vampire conspiracies respond to meddling PCs in Night’s Black Agents.
Mephit James Blog 