Quote from: Valatar on April 26, 2021, 03:10:46 PM
The books try to claim that there actually is scarcity, and there are poor people in robot bodies on Mars and such, but then the next chapter over lovingly proclaims that you can live in an orbital habitat and just print out golden furniture for free based on your Twitter likes.  So which is it?

The answer in the book is Evil Capitalists deliberately keep people poor because, in the view of the authors, that is what Capitalism is all about. At least, traditional shareholder capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't get cancelled quite yet because some of those guys are cool, or something. As others have said, the whole setting is basically Rule of Cool (Portland Edition).

Quote from: robertliguori on April 26, 2021, 04:27:08 PM
You could spin up a hundred copies of yourself, have a hundred children, raise all of them to be slavishly dedicated to you, then purge 99 of them and use that one repeatedly-copied personality as your general-purpose useful personality.

Which made me think... Grandfather from Traveller. At last, we have learned the Secret of the Ancients.

Quote from: Marchand on April 27, 2021, 02:51:20 AM

Quote from: Valatar on April 26, 2021, 03:10:46 PM
The books try to claim that there actually is scarcity, and there are poor people in robot bodies on Mars and such, but then the next chapter over lovingly proclaims that you can live in an orbital habitat and just print out golden furniture for free based on your Twitter likes.  So which is it?

The answer in the book is Evil Capitalists deliberately keep people poor because, in the view of the authors, that is what Capitalism is all about. At least, traditional shareholder capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't get cancelled quite yet because some of those guys are cool, or something. As others have said, the whole setting is basically Rule of Cool (Portland Edition).

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 27, 2021, 08:07:25 AM

Quote from: Marchand on April 27, 2021, 02:51:20 AM

Quote from: Valatar on April 26, 2021, 03:10:46 PM
The books try to claim that there actually is scarcity, and there are poor people in robot bodies on Mars and such, but then the next chapter over lovingly proclaims that you can live in an orbital habitat and just print out golden furniture for free based on your Twitter likes.  So which is it?

The answer in the book is Evil Capitalists deliberately keep people poor because, in the view of the authors, that is what Capitalism is all about. At least, traditional shareholder capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't get cancelled quite yet because some of those guys are cool, or something. As others have said, the whole setting is basically Rule of Cool (Portland Edition).

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

  I agree, BUT when stupidity can start to shape opinions, it can result in malicious results.  I have a feeling the authors of the game did not distribute it for free, and did not donate profit made for sales.

I swear I wish the regressive leftists that try to infiltrate this site actually try harder at being social chameleons.

It's actually both embarrassing and pathetic imo. @ guys really I don't like the far left or far right...no really guys why are you all laughing 😂?". Then start spouting the same regressive leftist SJW woke bullshit like the rest of them. The OP came out swinging and then tried to con all us into thinking he was one of us. It's like they can't even pretend to try and their true woke SJW shines through.

Funny I noticed the authors bullshit take on religion, so how missed their views on capitalism. Goes to show how both naive and clueless they are about Capitalism and money and people desire to actually own money. I'm a Star Trek fan and I like replicators as a concept at first, older I became again a franchise that is clueless about how people desire something. If I desire say the Mona Lisa I want the original not a copy made out of synthahol or whatever the use in Trek.

Good bye and good riddance to the Op.

Quote from: sureshot on April 27, 2021, 08:49:33 AM
I swear I wish the regressive leftists that try to infiltrate this site actually try harder at being social chameleons.

It's actually both embarrassing and pathetic imo. @ guys really I don't like the far left or far right...no really guys why are you all laughing 😂?". Then start spouting the same regressive leftist SJW woke bullshit like the rest of them. The OP came out swinging and then tried to con all us into thinking he was one of us. It's like they can't even pretend to try and their true woke SJW shines through.

Funny I noticed the authors bullshit take on religion, so how missed their views on capitalism. Goes to show how both naive and clueless they are about Capitalism and money and people desire to actually own money. I'm a Star Trek fan and I like replicators as a concept at first, older I became again a franchise that is clueless about how people desire something. If I desire say the Mona Lisa I want the original not a copy made out of synthahol or whatever the use in Trek.

Good bye and good riddance to the Op.

The EP anti-capitalism stance is much more obvious than their token bit on religion.  It's actually one of the main points of the setting (with religion being way down that list). Not sure how/why the religion part caught your attention and you missed the much larger push.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 27, 2021, 08:36:47 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 27, 2021, 08:07:25 AM

Quote from: Marchand on April 27, 2021, 02:51:20 AM

Quote from: Valatar on April 26, 2021, 03:10:46 PM
The books try to claim that there actually is scarcity, and there are poor people in robot bodies on Mars and such, but then the next chapter over lovingly proclaims that you can live in an orbital habitat and just print out golden furniture for free based on your Twitter likes.  So which is it?

The answer in the book is Evil Capitalists deliberately keep people poor because, in the view of the authors, that is what Capitalism is all about. At least, traditional shareholder capitalism. Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't get cancelled quite yet because some of those guys are cool, or something. As others have said, the whole setting is basically Rule of Cool (Portland Edition).

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

  I agree, BUT when stupidity can start to shape opinions, it can result in malicious results.  I have a feeling the authors of the game did not distribute it for free, and did not donate profit made for sales.

I was referring more to the well-known history of companies making idiotic self-destructive decisions that resulted in the creation of safety organizations like OSHA and the FDA.

Quote from: sureshot on April 27, 2021, 08:49:33 AM
Funny I noticed the authors bullshit take on religion,

Religion isn't going away. It's just calling itself by new names now. The underlying psychology hasn't changed at all.

Yeah, their take that Christians and Jews just curled up and died in the face of technology that doesn't in any way invalidate either religion, but Muslims cruised through just fine is, uh.  Expressing a fundamental misunderstanding of those religions.  Short of finding God's corpse floating out past Pluto or getting a time machine and bringing back video evidence of Jesus not being real, Judaism and Christianity would not be all that inconvenienced by the things in that setting.  Altered Carbon actually did interesting things with religion, like question what people who believe in souls will think about backing up your brain.  Eclipse Phase just ignored them completely, rescuing the players from having an actual opportunity to explore the human condition in their setting.  Whew, crisis averted.

I have wanted to try DMing Eclipse Phase for a long time as the setting overall has some very interesting ideas.  Unfortunately it falls flat on the execution in way that's oddly reminiscent of Cthulhutech.

The rules are a nightmare.  They are needlessly complicated, burdensome and tiring to use.  There are also various spots where the setting and worldbuilding actually clash with the rules in ways that make the game unfun.  The ur-example of this is that you have to pay for your morph with Character Points, yet 99% of the time you're going to end up Needlecasting to the job site and resleeving into a rented body.  Some of the Morph costs are pretty ridiculous, so if you spend CP on a fancy morph, you end up being penalized for something you're never going to get to use anyway.  I think the Eclipse Phase setting would have benefited from giving the ships Epstein drives so travel times are measured in days rather than months or years.  That way the players can actually USE the fancy morph they spent CP on.

Also as 1E went along, the Morphs just became so boring and uninspired. "Owl people?  Seriously?"  I'm pretty sure that towards the end of 1E the devs were just using the new morphs as an excuse to insert their fursonas into the game.

The Infinity RPG is a far better transhumanist RPG than EP.  I'm also curious about how the Altered Carbon RPG turned out.

Quote from: Torque2100 on April 27, 2021, 12:40:10 PM
The ur-example of this is that you have to pay for your morph with Character Points, yet 99% of the time you're going to end up Needlecasting and resleeving into a rented body anyway.  Some of the Morph costs are pretty ridiculous, so if you spend CP on a fancy morph, you end up being penalized for something you're never going to get to use anyway. 

This issue was actually addressed in 2e. You don't spend CP on morphs anymore. You do have a Morph Point budget that shows the maximum value of morph(s) you can lease (nobody buys to own) at any given time. If you go somewhere by farcasting, you return the body you're not using and get the Morph Points back to spend at the destination.

That all might work out OK if the place you're going to has a compatible economy with the place you're coming from (not a guarantee) and if the whole game didn't hinge on you using false identities (that should get busted wide open when you use your Morph Points "credit account") to pull off Firewall jobs.

Quote from: sureshot on April 27, 2021, 08:49:33 AM
I swear I wish the regressive leftists that try to infiltrate this site actually try harder at being social chameleons.

It's actually both embarrassing and pathetic imo. @ guys really I don't like the far left or far right...no really guys why are you all laughing 😂?". Then start spouting the same regressive leftist SJW woke bullshit like the rest of them. The OP came out swinging and then tried to con all us into thinking he was one of us. It's like they can't even pretend to try and their true woke SJW shines through.

Funny I noticed the authors bullshit take on religion, so how missed their views on capitalism. Goes to show how both naive and clueless they are about Capitalism and money and people desire to actually own money. I'm a Star Trek fan and I like replicators as a concept at first, older I became again a franchise that is clueless about how people desire something. If I desire say the Mona Lisa I want the original not a copy made out of synthahol or whatever the use in Trek.

Just an excuse to post one of my fave moments from DS9.

I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape. Where every aspect of your identity, memory, body are up for change.

That sounds like a world where you have dysphoria about everything.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 08:54:05 PM
I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape.

It is.

Quote from: Pat on April 27, 2021, 08:59:46 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 08:54:05 PM
I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape.

It is.

Does the book sell it as a good thing?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 09:11:11 PM

Quote from: Pat on April 27, 2021, 08:59:46 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 08:54:05 PM
I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape.

It is.

Does the book sell it as a good thing?

It's supposed to be post-apocalyptic (like only 10 years ago 98% of humanity was lost in a permanent way) but those that made it through are in an age of wonder...and hoping the things that caused the apocalypse don't come back to finish the job.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 08:54:05 PM
I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape. Where every aspect of your identity, memory, body are up for change.

That sounds like a world where you have dysphoria about everything.

And that's assuming that uploading a copy of your meat-brain's memories and thought patterns means that copy is actually YOU, as opposed to just...a copy. Of bits and fragments of your mind...at the time you were scanned or whatever. And this is just an AI going off out of whatever bits of data they gathered from you.

But that's the part I never bought into about this part of the transhumanist genre. I get genetic engineering and cyber-implants, but uploading your actual "YOU" consciousness into a computer is never going to happen. All you'll get is an AI copy trapped in a meaningless existence, echoing fragments of a once living organism's mind. And all of those fragments can be stripped away through updates and editing.