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Author Topic: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?  (Read 37857 times)

Pat
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #375 on: May 11, 2021, 09:35:23 PM »
One issue i see here is people saying "But would it still be you?"

I'm not sure how that could be answered, but even if it's not the same as you is that terrible?

Now, yes, getting hacked to be a good l'il corporate servant sucks infinite ass,  no argument there.

But as to remaining 'you', are you the same you that existed when you were 10? Are you the same you that you were 20 years ago? Have you changed thru education, growth or some sort of trauma? Trying to remain the same you you were long ago means you didn't become more than you were.

In 'ghost in the shell" (Not the whitewash live action mess) Motoko  Kusanagi is offered a chance to merge with a fully sentient self aware AI that evolved in the internet's sea of information. She asks how she can be sure she'd still be her.

Project 2501 admits she can't be sure she'd still be the same, and says you cannot become what you could be by remaining what you are. Your effort to remain as you are limits you.

So maybe a you that became a transhuman ego able to shift from body to body, fork and reintegrate, etc wouldn't be you as you are now. Would it be better?  Worse?

Honestly arguing if humans would be the same after transhuman tech, mind uploading, morphing, etc opens a question: "Is humanity so good it shouldn't change?"

Yeah, i'm glad we changed from our ancestors who practiced open slavery, total dominance of women, human sacrifice, etc.  You look at the well documented and recorded 20th century and i think you see that the human race as it is now needs some improving.


Look, america today would shock the founding fathers, i mean they voted for slavery, declared a black man was property and amounted to 3/5 of a person, woman could not vote, etc. in most of america a woman could not have her own bank account until the 1970's. Imagine them seeing barack obama sworn in as president.  :o
You're conflating a lot of very different things. Not all changes are the same, and the real issue of continuity of consciousness is even more fundamental.

You also badly misunderstanding the 3/5 compromise. It means nothing of the sort.

Edit: Just to clarify, because that could easily be taken the wrong way, though I don't want to get into it any further: The 3/5th compromise does not mean a black man was 3/5th of a person. Their status as a free man or a slave, or their ability to vote, was utterly unaffected by it. Saying they're 3/5th of a person implies they had 3/5ths the rights, or 3/5th the voting power, or something like that, which has nothing to do with how the compromise actually worked. Because what it affects is congressional apportionment. It means, when they're figuring out how many reps each state gets, that black people counts as 3/5th their population. That doesn't give those black people a vote, but it does mean the the vote of each white land-owning man in the states with large slave populations will tend to count for more than the vote of their counterparts in free states, by a proportion equal to 3/5th the black population. The compromise isn't about black personhood, it's about giving all the white men with slaves more voting power.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2021, 10:13:18 PM by Pat »

Snowman0147

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #376 on: May 11, 2021, 10:05:24 PM »
The entire point of transhumanism is to conquer death itself.  If the copy isn't you, then the process failed in its intended purpose.

The Thing
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #377 on: May 14, 2021, 02:05:53 AM »
One issue i see here is people saying "But would it still be you?"

I'm not sure how that could be answered, but even if it's not the same as you is that terrible?

Now, yes, getting hacked to be a good l'il corporate servant sucks infinite ass,  no argument there.

But as to remaining 'you', are you the same you that existed when you were 10? Are you the same you that you were 20 years ago? Have you changed thru education, growth or some sort of trauma? Trying to remain the same you you were long ago means you didn't become more than you were.

In 'ghost in the shell" (Not the whitewash live action mess) Motoko  Kusanagi is offered a chance to merge with a fully sentient self aware AI that evolved in the internet's sea of information. She asks how she can be sure she'd still be her.

Project 2501 admits she can't be sure she'd still be the same, and says you cannot become what you could be by remaining what you are. Your effort to remain as you are limits you.

So maybe a you that became a transhuman ego able to shift from body to body, fork and reintegrate, etc wouldn't be you as you are now. Would it be better?  Worse?

Honestly arguing if humans would be the same after transhuman tech, mind uploading, morphing, etc opens a question: "Is humanity so good it shouldn't change?"

Yeah, i'm glad we changed from our ancestors who practiced open slavery, total dominance of women, human sacrifice, etc.  You look at the well documented and recorded 20th century and i think you see that the human race as it is now needs some improving.


Look, america today would shock the founding fathers, i mean they voted for slavery, declared a black man was property and amounted to 3/5 of a person, woman could not vote, etc. in most of america a woman could not have her own bank account until the 1970's. Imagine them seeing barack obama sworn in as president.  :o
You're conflating a lot of very different things. Not all changes are the same, and the real issue of continuity of consciousness is even more fundamental.

You also badly misunderstanding the 3/5 compromise. It means nothing of the sort.

Edit: Just to clarify, because that could easily be taken the wrong way, though I don't want to get into it any further: The 3/5th compromise does not mean a black man was 3/5th of a person. Their status as a free man or a slave, or their ability to vote, was utterly unaffected by it. Saying they're 3/5th of a person implies they had 3/5ths the rights, or 3/5th the voting power, or something like that, which has nothing to do with how the compromise actually worked. Because what it affects is congressional apportionment. It means, when they're figuring out how many reps each state gets, that black people counts as 3/5th their population. That doesn't give those black people a vote, but it does mean the the vote of each white land-owning man in the states with large slave populations will tend to count for more than the vote of their counterparts in free states, by a proportion equal to 3/5th the black population. The compromise isn't about black personhood, it's about giving all the white men with slaves more voting power.

I knew about the 3/5th compromise i saw no reason to get pedantic about it. I was using it as an example of the fact maybe humans becoming a little different might be a good thing.

Pat
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #378 on: May 14, 2021, 06:03:43 AM »
One issue i see here is people saying "But would it still be you?"

I'm not sure how that could be answered, but even if it's not the same as you is that terrible?

Now, yes, getting hacked to be a good l'il corporate servant sucks infinite ass,  no argument there.

But as to remaining 'you', are you the same you that existed when you were 10? Are you the same you that you were 20 years ago? Have you changed thru education, growth or some sort of trauma? Trying to remain the same you you were long ago means you didn't become more than you were.

In 'ghost in the shell" (Not the whitewash live action mess) Motoko  Kusanagi is offered a chance to merge with a fully sentient self aware AI that evolved in the internet's sea of information. She asks how she can be sure she'd still be her.

Project 2501 admits she can't be sure she'd still be the same, and says you cannot become what you could be by remaining what you are. Your effort to remain as you are limits you.

So maybe a you that became a transhuman ego able to shift from body to body, fork and reintegrate, etc wouldn't be you as you are now. Would it be better?  Worse?

Honestly arguing if humans would be the same after transhuman tech, mind uploading, morphing, etc opens a question: "Is humanity so good it shouldn't change?"

Yeah, i'm glad we changed from our ancestors who practiced open slavery, total dominance of women, human sacrifice, etc.  You look at the well documented and recorded 20th century and i think you see that the human race as it is now needs some improving.


Look, america today would shock the founding fathers, i mean they voted for slavery, declared a black man was property and amounted to 3/5 of a person, woman could not vote, etc. in most of america a woman could not have her own bank account until the 1970's. Imagine them seeing barack obama sworn in as president.  :o
You're conflating a lot of very different things. Not all changes are the same, and the real issue of continuity of consciousness is even more fundamental.

You also badly misunderstanding the 3/5 compromise. It means nothing of the sort.

Edit: Just to clarify, because that could easily be taken the wrong way, though I don't want to get into it any further: The 3/5th compromise does not mean a black man was 3/5th of a person. Their status as a free man or a slave, or their ability to vote, was utterly unaffected by it. Saying they're 3/5th of a person implies they had 3/5ths the rights, or 3/5th the voting power, or something like that, which has nothing to do with how the compromise actually worked. Because what it affects is congressional apportionment. It means, when they're figuring out how many reps each state gets, that black people counts as 3/5th their population. That doesn't give those black people a vote, but it does mean the the vote of each white land-owning man in the states with large slave populations will tend to count for more than the vote of their counterparts in free states, by a proportion equal to 3/5th the black population. The compromise isn't about black personhood, it's about giving all the white men with slaves more voting power.

I knew about the 3/5th compromise i saw no reason to get pedantic about it. I was using it as an example of the fact maybe humans becoming a little different might be a good thing.
Did you now.

HappyDaze

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #379 on: May 14, 2021, 09:36:20 AM »
Just started watching Gen: Lock animated series, and there seems to be a lot in there that could be used in EP.

EDIT: I got to the part where one pilot edits her own personality to be more confident/aggressive to improve her combat performance. It has a few drawbacks. She also had the option to eliminate some traumatic memories but opted not to do so.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2021, 07:09:47 PM by HappyDaze »

The Thing
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #380 on: May 16, 2021, 05:38:33 AM »
One issue i see here is people saying "But would it still be you?"

I'm not sure how that could be answered, but even if it's not the same as you is that terrible?

Now, yes, getting hacked to be a good l'il corporate servant sucks infinite ass,  no argument there.

But as to remaining 'you', are you the same you that existed when you were 10? Are you the same you that you were 20 years ago? Have you changed thru education, growth or some sort of trauma? Trying to remain the same you you were long ago means you didn't become more than you were.

In 'ghost in the shell" (Not the whitewash live action mess) Motoko  Kusanagi is offered a chance to merge with a fully sentient self aware AI that evolved in the internet's sea of information. She asks how she can be sure she'd still be her.

Project 2501 admits she can't be sure she'd still be the same, and says you cannot become what you could be by remaining what you are. Your effort to remain as you are limits you.

So maybe a you that became a transhuman ego able to shift from body to body, fork and reintegrate, etc wouldn't be you as you are now. Would it be better?  Worse?

Honestly arguing if humans would be the same after transhuman tech, mind uploading, morphing, etc opens a question: "Is humanity so good it shouldn't change?"

Yeah, i'm glad we changed from our ancestors who practiced open slavery, total dominance of women, human sacrifice, etc.  You look at the well documented and recorded 20th century and i think you see that the human race as it is now needs some improving.


Look, america today would shock the founding fathers, i mean they voted for slavery, declared a black man was property and amounted to 3/5 of a person, woman could not vote, etc. in most of america a woman could not have her own bank account until the 1970's. Imagine them seeing barack obama sworn in as president.  :o
You're conflating a lot of very different things. Not all changes are the same, and the real issue of continuity of consciousness is even more fundamental.

You also badly misunderstanding the 3/5 compromise. It means nothing of the sort.

Edit: Just to clarify, because that could easily be taken the wrong way, though I don't want to get into it any further: The 3/5th compromise does not mean a black man was 3/5th of a person. Their status as a free man or a slave, or their ability to vote, was utterly unaffected by it. Saying they're 3/5th of a person implies they had 3/5ths the rights, or 3/5th the voting power, or something like that, which has nothing to do with how the compromise actually worked. Because what it affects is congressional apportionment. It means, when they're figuring out how many reps each state gets, that black people counts as 3/5th their population. That doesn't give those black people a vote, but it does mean the the vote of each white land-owning man in the states with large slave populations will tend to count for more than the vote of their counterparts in free states, by a proportion equal to 3/5th the black population. The compromise isn't about black personhood, it's about giving all the white men with slaves more voting power.

I knew about the 3/5th compromise i saw no reason to get pedantic about it. I was using it as an example of the fact maybe humans becoming a little different might be a good thing.
Did you now.

yes. I fucking knew what the 3/5th decision meant. Unlike people who think wrestling is real and moon landings were faked i fucking know a little actual history of america.  The modern version of the 3/5 decision is the way prisons are counted as part of a district or states population even tho the prisoners aren't voters and if the state or district  gets funding for roads, schools, etc the prisoners won't be using them.

The Thing
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #381 on: May 16, 2021, 05:50:52 AM »
Back on topic, i think the EPs biggest weakness is  the fact that it's setting is hard to grasp as there is almost no popular media representation of it. I mean fantasy settings have tons of movies and tv shows, comics, etc to give people an idea about the world in question so it's easy to grasp various levels of fatasny  settings since you have everything from the conan movies to GoT to use as a reff.

Same for SF settings, you have the gamut of things from star wars to star trek to the expanse as a way for players to grasp it.

It's hard to imagine a popular media source that even comes close to capturing the EP setting, few movies even touch on elements of it. The great wasteland of tv has almost nothing even vaguely close to it.  Some really bleeding edge hard SF novels are close to it but eclipse phase thorws so much in the blender that i can't imagine anything in media that really gives you a feel for the setting.

I lean towards the best way to do an EP campaign is introduce the players to aspects of it in small doses. Focus on like firewall agents fighting a particular menace, maybe introduce egocasting and morphs early on, start with a criminal organization or a hypercorp, then move into other stuff like exsurgent cases, then a gatecrash, etc.


Karmarainbow

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #382 on: May 17, 2021, 03:51:44 PM »
I ran a fairly long campaign of EP. The system is clunky mechanically. The setting concepts are not well thought through, so I had to do a lot of house ruling on how nanofabs, reputation, and ego-casting worked in practice.

But it is a fun crazy setting. My Firewall campaign started with the PCs being awoken and told that they were the backups, and their former selves had gone missing. They had to retrace their own steps. Later they discovered that their former selves had all become exsurgents and needed hunting down.

In terms of the fork swarm business, I handled that by telling the PCs that if an alpha fork existed for more than a few minutes it would become an NPC under my control. It may develop its own ideas about sticking to the plan and then being deleted... Alpha forks are essentially no different from the character and they would not want to be psychosurgeried or deleted.

robertliguori

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #383 on: May 17, 2021, 05:07:43 PM »
I ran a fairly long campaign of EP. The system is clunky mechanically. The setting concepts are not well thought through, so I had to do a lot of house ruling on how nanofabs, reputation, and ego-casting worked in practice.

But it is a fun crazy setting. My Firewall campaign started with the PCs being awoken and told that they were the backups, and their former selves had gone missing. They had to retrace their own steps. Later they discovered that their former selves had all become exsurgents and needed hunting down.
Interesting.  Could you summarize some of those?  Again, some things like Reputation as a system just seem like a dead letter when you combine it with even just normal egocasting (can you spam-egocasts and have every fork request something before the org realizes that you've hit them with a speed-of-light-based timing attack), much less actual problems like identity theft or, uh, actual-identity-theft, where you steal someone's ego, psychosurger it, and spin up a copy and have them ask for stuff on your behalf.

Quote
In terms of the fork swarm business, I handled that by telling the PCs that if an alpha fork existed for more than a few minutes it would become an NPC under my control. It may develop its own ideas about sticking to the plan and then being deleted... Alpha forks are essentially no different from the character and they would not want to be psychosurgeried or deleted.

Yeah, the trick there is to start by psycho-surgerying yourself to remove any vestige of concern for personal continuity or identity, so that you identify as much with any instance of you that exists as the one you happen to be.  If you don't start from there, then your forkswarm will break down into a struggle of each fork for resources.  And the thing is, the setting has people working with their alpha-fork instances in the long term in a successful manner; one of the crime families is literally one woman who abused the forking rules (but not the implications of infomorphs).

And the thing is, the setting absolutely says that someone with the right tools can say "Fuck what you wanted to be before, you are now a drone for my all-consuming swarm will, even if that would horrify any normal person." because, you know, Exsurgent.  Just as the PCs didn't get to stick with their Exsurgent selves and say "Lol, no, I ignore that brainwashing and horribly abuse my gamma psi sleights.", the GM shouldn't be able to say "Well, you crit that psychosurgery roll (due to horrible parallelized retry attempts) to make the copy of yourself act a certain way, and minds can definitely be modified to act that way, but I'm going to have that NPC ignore its brainwashing and start trying to overwrite all the other forks with random ego and preferences it made up from the aether due to remarkably selective cosmic event bit-flips when it got copied."

I also think that while this is a great solution in-play and that any players who ask too many questions should be met with "Yes, I know, we're just agreeing not to look at this closely to enable the kind of genre game we want to tell.", I really have to wonder what taking your rules would do.  I mean, a naive ruling would be that egocasting kills you, because the you that gets sent in transit is an alpha fork and most egocasting is a destructive read, so your PC dies and another character completely identical to your PC wakes up and goes on an NPC-only adventure...

But of course that's silly and a degenerate example.  But let's make things interesting.  What if the PCs are stuck in a situation like the one in the 1E intro fiction, where they have limited broadcast time and Exsurgent closing in.  What if they've got themselves from a few minutes ago backed up, and now need to slowly beam themselves out line by line, and their actual-selves need to spend all of their grit, effort, and Moxie defending the transmitter array?  If they succeed, do they just die, since they have now absolutely diverged from their backups, and now people who are definitely not them will instead again wake up and again go on all-NPC adventures from that point on?

What the setting assumes, I feel, is that you have a soul, and that your soul is like the green emerald thingy from the sims; it marks you as you, it exists outside of the game layer, and it is the interface that lets you-the-player decide the actions for the character.  And, crucially, that there's only one per special character, and that the emerald thingy can jump to whatever instance of you is relevant to the story happening now.

Honestly, I think that the most interesting story you could tell in Eclipse Phase would be a specifically meta story, where you explored situations like this, and had one perverse player who literally stopped playing the game by NPC-ifying his PC and then sat back, letting the GM play the former-PC and horribly ruin the GM's own encounters, and jumped back and forth between in-game and tabletop cameras, and used that tension to dig into what that green emerald perspective meant, and what support that view of the world could have even when it wasn't being deliberately attacked.

---

It's a pity, I think, because the Eclipse Phase setting has a bunch of interesting ideas, and it says as part of its very tagline that your mind is software to be reprogrammed.  And software that can be saved to and restored from cold backup perfectly has no inherent soul, spirit, or distinguishing nature which splits it from other running instances of it.  And then the setting goes ahead and includes the one-woman crime family, and Exsurgent in the first place.  And as long as Exsurgent is a setting element, then there is absolutely a justification for a Mr. Forkswarm to exist and have countless running parallel versions, rooting through transhumanity like a horrible parasitic wasp.  And the further thing is as long as anyone can do horrible forkswarm tricks, and as long as Exsurgent exists, then the only sane (for a sociopathic hit-the-posthuman-floor-and-pulled-out-the-excavator value of sane) response is to rip through transhumanity yourself as fast as you can, because the moment that Exsurgent starts fighting smart and going loud, it will do so as effectively as you can.

Actually, did you do anything interesting with Exsurgent? As-given, it frankly sucks, and makes the setting worse in ways both gross and subtle, but I think there are a lot of interesting things you could do with it if you don't just make it a weapon (and say, by implication, that this is what powerful and effective NPCs in the setting use when they want to shoot something dead.)

Snowman0147

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #384 on: May 17, 2021, 05:40:01 PM »
Or be a non transhuman being who has no spine jack.  Sure you got one life, your weaker, your life is shorter, but your immune from the mind jacks.  Your free to be human.

HappyDaze

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #385 on: May 17, 2021, 05:45:48 PM »
Or be a non transhuman being who has no spine jack.  Sure you got one life, your weaker, your life is shorter, but your immune from the mind jacks.  Your free to be human.
That makes as much sense as making a non-adventurer-type character as a PC in D&D. If you're going to play EP, then fucking play it.

Karmarainbow

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #386 on: May 17, 2021, 05:54:05 PM »
It’s interesting stuff. I think the short answer to the thought experiment is that:
A) players generally want to play someone they can identify with rather than a horribly efficient but utterly inhuman swarm entity, and so it didn’t become an issue
B) in the fiction most transhumans are also still essentially human, and find the extreme possibilities deeply disturbing (see for example the section in the rules on “Attitudes to mental alteration”), so most people would never take that first step of making themselves okay with it. There are obviously exceptions and they are the exhuman antagonists we’re told about.

The game never really answers the question “what is a person?”. Biocons say that your meat brain is you, and frankly they may be right. Most transhumans are self selected for being okay with resleeving because they left Earth as infomorphs. If they cant ultimately accept that they are still themselves (even if they are wrong, and they may be), then they couldn’t function. 

My party did in fact face the situation you describe. They infiltrated Earth and became infected by the exsurgent virus.  They beamed the information they needed off-planet and then all committed suicide. (It was an intense session.) When the game resumed from their backups, the players were haunted by the sense that they were not sure if they were the same people...but they kept on.


The Thing
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #387 on: May 17, 2021, 06:58:29 PM »
Ok some of the stuff people talk about is covered in EP@ or other products.

Forking: If forks are separated by a few hours or a day or so, no problem. They don't erase one, they reintegrate. Nothing is lost and it's an easy process. In a "day in the life of.." segment a guy egocasts a form of himself to his family for a special event because he can't physically be there. At the end of the day his alpha fork casts back and they reintegrate. No problem, routine stuff, he remembered being with his family for that event.

Longer separations make things harder, a tougher roll to reintegrate, maybe even some memory loss. Long enough and reintegration is impossible.

Also the idea of a player deciding to break the system to ruin a game with abusive forking is not a problem with EP, it's a problem with a selfish asshole player who's idea of fun is to fuck things up for the gm and everyone else then whine "But i'm just  playing in character......"

Solution: Rocks fall, you die.

Fabbing a ton of shit. Ok, lots of fabbers have lockouts on making  dangerous things. With a certain level of AI you can make it harder for fabbers to make obvious weapons.  Plus in the hypercorp regions they have obscene DRM  systems. Sure, a really high level hacker can override these sometimes, but with limits on what you can access in terms of raw martials you still may have problems making a set of assault rifles, ammunition and combat armor for a party.

Sometimes a big part of the adventure might be getting a nanofab hacked or accessed to make your combat gear.

And again, asshole player just trying to break the system? If he pulls that roll for security and have a few heavily armed combat morphs show up to see what he's doing.

Honestly to a degree i think people are dinging the system because there are issues an asshole player can exploit to crash the game, ruin everyone's fun and feel happy he did it.

BTW, i don't call these people trolls, i call  them what they really are, always were and always will be: Assholes. They just like to ruin other people fun and laugh about it.


The Thing
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #388 on: May 17, 2021, 07:01:46 PM »
It’s interesting stuff. I think the short answer to the thought experiment is that:
A) players generally want to play someone they can identify with rather than a horribly efficient but utterly inhuman swarm entity, and so it didn’t become an issue
B) in the fiction most transhumans are also still essentially human, and find the extreme possibilities deeply disturbing (see for example the section in the rules on “Attitudes to mental alteration”), so most people would never take that first step of making themselves okay with it. There are obviously exceptions and they are the exhuman antagonists we’re told about.

The game never really answers the question “what is a person?”. Biocons say that your meat brain is you, and frankly they may be right. Most transhumans are self selected for being okay with resleeving because they left Earth as infomorphs. If they cant ultimately accept that they are still themselves (even if they are wrong, and they may be), then they couldn’t function. 

My party did in fact face the situation you describe. They infiltrated Earth and became infected by the exsurgent virus.  They beamed the information they needed off-planet and then all committed suicide. (It was an intense session.) When the game resumed from their backups, the players were haunted by the sense that they were not sure if they were the same people...but they kept on.

That's pretty much exactly the introfic from first edition, "lack".

And no i;'m not accusing you of stealing it, for all i know you got 2e and never read Lack so i'm not saying you're ripping anything off.

Lack is what they call losing some memories due to a reboot from a  backup when the 'original' is destroyed. it's a case of player knowledge you need to watch. it can be a real pain when a pc is betrayed and murdered by a npc and his backup is sent in and runs into the same npc.

Pat
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #389 on: May 17, 2021, 07:07:49 PM »

yes. I fucking knew what the 3/5th decision meant. Unlike people who think wrestling is real and moon landings were faked i fucking know a little actual history of america.  The modern version of the 3/5 decision is the way prisons are counted as part of a district or states population even tho the prisoners aren't voters and if the state or district  gets funding for roads, schools, etc the prisoners won't be using them.
I suppose it's good you know that the Moon landings were real.