Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 21, 2021, 10:49:13 AM
My Savage Worlds Rifts combat cyborg tanked three hits from railguns without even taking wounds. It's fine as is.

Ah, but if that same railgun were fired at a car would it?
A) damage the car.
B) obliterate the car.

Trick question... the answer is C) obliterate the car, an entire line of ten more cars behind it and blow out every SDC window within 30' of the projectiles' flight path. 

Quote from: The Thing on May 20, 2021, 10:11:33 PM
Ugh. I played rifts a couple times. I'd managed to forget it. Thanks for reminding me. NOT!

No you haven't. No one forgets Rifts.

Quote from: Brad on May 21, 2021, 04:24:12 PM

Quote from: The Thing on May 20, 2021, 10:11:33 PM
Ugh. I played rifts a couple times. I'd managed to forget it. Thanks for reminding me. NOT!

No you haven't. No one forgets Rifts.

I managed to, it took years and some hyponitic therapy but i managed to.

Does anyone like or dislike EPs reboot feature that means a character death or even a TPK doesn't means restarting whole new characters?

Quote from: The Thing on May 26, 2021, 07:22:07 AM
Does anyone like or dislike EPs reboot feature that means a character death or even a TPK doesn't means restarting whole new characters?

Nobody cares.

Quote from: The Thing on May 26, 2021, 07:22:07 AM
Does anyone like or dislike EPs reboot feature that means a character death or even a TPK doesn't means restarting whole new characters?

I has positives and negatives. Figuring out how it interacts with the setting can be tricky though. Supposedly Firewall pays (in cash or rep) to get the characters reinstantiated, but they're a secret organization so they can't do it too openly. In fact, I've never been sure why Firewall doesn't just take alpha forks of the PCs (played by the characters) to send on missions while the primary instances of the characters carry on with their day to day lives. This does mean that all of the cool shit players stuff into their primary bodies shouldn't matter at all for Firewall missions--and their Firewall egos really shouldn't be tapping into the character's Rep networks if they want to stay covert. At the end of the mission, Firewall can edit memories before reintegrating the fork or just delete the fork if the experiences are too compromising.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 26, 2021, 08:45:55 AM

Quote from: The Thing on May 26, 2021, 07:22:07 AM
Does anyone like or dislike EPs reboot feature that means a character death or even a TPK doesn't means restarting whole new characters?

I has positives and negatives. Figuring out how it interacts with the setting can be tricky though. Supposedly Firewall pays (in cash or rep) to get the characters reinstantiated, but they're a secret organization so they can't do it too openly. In fact, I've never been sure why Firewall doesn't just take alpha forks of the PCs (played by the characters) to send on missions while the primary instances of the characters carry on with their day to day lives. This does mean that all of the cool shit players stuff into their primary bodies shouldn't matter at all for Firewall missions--and their Firewall egos really shouldn't be tapping into the character's Rep networks if they want to stay covert. At the end of the mission, Firewall can edit memories before reintegrating the fork or just delete the fork if the experiences are too compromising.

Yeah, thinking in those terms leads to some weird places.  Like, are the PCs really the absolute best agents for the job? Literally the best, across all the habitats Firewall has access to? Because the best (as in, the literal singular best agent) can be losslessly copied into multiple bodies, or be sent farcasting to then copy themself into multiple bodies there, so there's not really any concept of expendable agents. 

And if you know that you're going to get redacted into not-you anyway, what motivation do you actually have to check back in? If Firewall claims the right and moral authority to edit your mind (which they do), then can you trust that your good opinion of Firewall is really yours?

One of the things that makes Mr. Forkswarm a stronger character in Eclipse Phase than his spiritual-siblings in fantasy settings with Simulacra spells or spawning undead is that Eclipse Phase is explicitly reductionist.  In Eclipse Phase, there is literally nothing sacred.  What might in other settings be called the human spirit (moxie, and pools in 2E) are a thing that people do, that can be analyzed, duplicated, and reproduced via copy-pasting you a dozen times over.  'You' are a pattern of data, nothing more, and what 'you' perceive is a pattern of data, nothing more, and both of these things can be copied and replicated perfectly (or as perfectly as makes no difference in the system).

When the people who believe in ideas like that are explicitly mocked, derided, and made a villain faction, then there's really nothing left but "That's icky and I don't like thinking about the implications of that." you can use to critique Mr. Forkswarm.  When the good-guy faction mindjacks people to make them loyal to their cause, what moral critique is there for Mr. Forkswarm who does the same thing, only slightly more in-depth (to just edit out everything but their skills and knowledge and replaces their decision-making, goals, and values with More Forkswarm)?  When you need to believe that the you that woke up on a distant habitat is the one true you, how do you deal with the fact that someone's egocast themselves to every habitat they can find, and is running in cheerful parallel?

A horror setting needs conflict.  It needs good and evil, sanctuary and threat, innocence and depravity.  And it needs to have the possibility of the PCs standing between the two, and making a difference.  Because otherwise, the only question becomes which darkness will win.  And you can't tell a story like that without the strong possibility of PCs standing up, and volunteering to make of themselves the Most Horrible thing in the horror setting. 

Quote from: robertliguori on May 26, 2021, 11:33:06 AMIn Eclipse Phase, there is literally nothing sacred.

Generally, it's replaced with science worship, misanthropy, and/or short-sighted wish fulfillment.

A common trend amongst transhumanists (I notice anyway) is a tendency to believe that science is just magic, and that there is some higher plane of understanding or reasoning that can be just achieved with technology. This allows for "science" to just become sacred on its own. So the singularity just becomes a rapture.

There is also a level of self-defeating misanthropy. Because humans = bad, and "science" = good, humans + more "science" = "gooderer" humans.
This of course relies on a purely human view of morality, that's deeply intertwined with our biological and sociological processes that a transhuman would have all the reasons to lose.
Whenever questioned on the particulars of their rapture, they usually resort to 'Well science made some things known so of course, it will make EVERYTHING known and it will be good because science is good." The fact that this view of science is a human religious instinct is kinda lost on them.


I mean thinking about it, in EP, the Borg would be generally on the more moralized end result of the society. They value individuals as resources and information and don't just consume you for parts. No matter how primitive, there is a space for you in the Borg collective. There is strange respect for you as an individual.
Which if they where a nanoswarm for instance, you wouldn't even get that.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 26, 2021, 02:37:21 PM

Quote from: robertliguori on May 26, 2021, 11:33:06 AMIn Eclipse Phase, there is literally nothing sacred.

Generally, it's replaced with science worship, misanthropy, and/or short-sighted wish fulfillment.

A common trend amongst transhumanists (I notice anyway) is a tendency to believe that science is just magic, and that there is some higher plane of understanding or reasoning that can be just achieved with technology. This allows for "science" to just become sacred on its own. So the singularity just becomes a rapture.

There is also a level of self-defeating misanthropy. Because humans = bad, and "science" = good, humans + more "science" = "gooderer" humans.
This of course relies on a purely human view of morality, that's deeply intertwined with our biological and sociological processes that a transhuman would have all the reasons to lose.
Whenever questioned on the particulars of their rapture, they usually resort to 'Well science made some things known so of course, it will make EVERYTHING known and it will be good because science is good." The fact that this view of science is a human religious instinct is kinda lost on them.


I mean thinking about it, in EP, the Borg would be generally on the more moralized end result of the society. They value individuals as resources and information and don't just consume you for parts. No matter how primitive, there is a space for you in the Borg collective. There is strange respect for you as an individual.
Which if they where a nanoswarm for instance, you wouldn't even get that.

Before it was retconned, the borg collected their dead (to be recycled) and rescued lost drones.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 26, 2021, 04:49:41 PMBefore it was retconned, the borg collected their dead (to be recycled) and rescued lost drones.

Yup. I will be treating the Borg Queens as non-cannon garbage. The borg check off allot of transhumanist checkboxes, and they still retain a level of human applicable morality (again, impressive for such a species). They just don't look pretty, which to them would be 100% irrelevant.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 26, 2021, 02:37:21 PM

Quote from: robertliguori on May 26, 2021, 11:33:06 AMIn Eclipse Phase, there is literally nothing sacred.

Generally, it's replaced with science worship, misanthropy, and/or short-sighted wish fulfillment.

A common trend amongst transhumanists (I notice anyway) is a tendency to believe that science is just magic, and that there is some higher plane of understanding or reasoning that can be just achieved with technology. This allows for "science" to just become sacred on its own. So the singularity just becomes a rapture.

There is also a level of self-defeating misanthropy. Because humans = bad, and "science" = good, humans + more "science" = "gooderer" humans.
This of course relies on a purely human view of morality, that's deeply intertwined with our biological and sociological processes that a transhuman would have all the reasons to lose.
Whenever questioned on the particulars of their rapture, they usually resort to 'Well science made some things known so of course, it will make EVERYTHING known and it will be good because science is good." The fact that this view of science is a human religious instinct is kinda lost on them.


I mean thinking about it, in EP, the Borg would be generally on the more moralized end result of the society. They value individuals as resources and information and don't just consume you for parts. No matter how primitive, there is a space for you in the Borg collective. There is strange respect for you as an individual.
Which if they where a nanoswarm for instance, you wouldn't even get that.

Um. The Borg 1. Forcibly assimilate individuals and 2. Overwrite and supress their individuality. A whole character in Voyager explored that concept. They only value the meat body for it's parts and the information it's brain contains.

* Though I found it interesting that the very first episode with the Borg, they didn't assmiliate people, only technology. After the abducted Picard it seem the idea of assimilating people became a thing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 26, 2021, 05:57:29 PM
* Though I found it interesting that the very first episode with the Borg, they didn't assmiliate people, only technology. After the abducted Picard it seem the idea of assimilating people became a thing.

It's hard to view that as a turning point given the Borg drones were all human(oid) from the beginning.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 26, 2021, 04:49:41 PM
Before it was retconned, the borg collected their dead (to be recycled) and rescued lost drones.

They also didn't give two craps about the people aboard the Enterprise in their first encounter. The only thing they cared about was if there was any interesting technology for them to absorb... hence what they used tractor beams and were cutting chunks out of the ship... they were dissecting it the way a student would a frog in biology class.

If you further read between the lines on their initial motivations, they'd already hit the Alpha Quadrant powers by the end of season one with those big holes in the ground where they scooped up colonies so there was nothing technological for them to learn... EXCEPT the Enterprise-D was where it absolutely shouldn't be relative to their observed technology... so they were looking for what they missed. Then the Enterprise-D zipped away at speeds beyond even the Borg (because Q), and now the Borg HAD to go to Earth in order to figure out what the heck gave them that ability and Locutus was just a one-off to try and better figure out the puzzle of this supertech space travel system they had observed.

So going by their original appearance up through the entire TNG, the Borg would have been relatively harmless to human life if Q hadn't piqued their interest by giving the Federation the appearance of far more advanced technology than they actually had.

Which is to say, they were originally (probably due to Roddenberry still being involved in season two) transhumanly alien, but not malicious to lower forms of life. Their next appearance was all about PICARD's unreasoning hatred of the Borg and wanting to turn Hue into a weapon to destroy them. Their last appearance during the TNG-era was after leaving Hue's individuality intact the Borg collective self-destructed until Lore took advantage of the situation to use them as a weapon (so basically the Enterprise-D inadvertently genocided the original recipe Borg).

All the "Borg are the ultimate evil" can be pretty much be laid at the feet of the motion picture department who wanted to cash in on the most popular antagonist of the TNG-era and dumbed everything down to have a clear bad guy for "Tank Top Picard" to defeat because God forbid we get nuanced conflicts where neither side is objectively evil in our summer blockbusters.

So basically, yes, the original recipe Borg were an infinitely better vision of transhumanism than whatever the heck EP claims to be.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 26, 2021, 05:57:29 PMUm. The Borg 1. Forcibly assimilate individuals and 2. Overwrite and supress their individuality. A whole character in Voyager explored that concept. They only value the meat body for it's parts and the information it's brain contains.

Yes. I'm just contextualizing that what the Borg are as an antagonist in Star Trek, would actually be on the relatively ethical side in Eclipse Phase. That a world where people and minds are only valued as data, the borg are a very logical outcome (if not something worse).

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 26, 2021, 06:17:12 PMIf you further read between the lines on their initial motivations, they'd already hit the Alpha Quadrant powers by the end of season one with those big holes in the ground where they scooped up colonies so there was nothing technological for them to learn... EXCEPT the Enterprise-D was where it absolutely shouldn't be relative to their observed technology... so they were looking for what they missed. Then the Enterprise-D zipped away at speeds beyond even the Borg (because Q), and now the Borg HAD to go to Earth in order to figure out what the heck gave them that ability and Locutus was just a one-off to try and better figure out the puzzle of this supertech space travel system they had observed.

While that requires a reading of Q as a purely malicious actor that put all of the federation in danger just for shits and giggles (which I do not believe the writers ever truly intended), I don't think that really works. Once they would have assimilated Picard, they would have realized 'Oh, it was Q that did all this nonsense, let's go home'.
But they didn't. They decided that 'Well since we are in the neighborhood, let's assimilate everybody'. Which to me speaks of a very inhuman moral imperative.

To them, making everything and everybody borg is an ethical action. These short-lived primitive species are not to be trusted with their own freedoms and minds. Not out of a fear of them being a threat, but because it is their imperative to 'uplift' everybody into being borg. Those that are unwilling are like a child refusing their shots. Just immature.

And Picards desire to destroy them was completely reasonable, and the fact that he was willing to let billions die out of self-righteous posturing is one of the reasons I dislike TNG. It often takes the easy way out when it comes down to its ethical consequences.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on May 26, 2021, 05:42:19 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on May 26, 2021, 04:49:41 PMBefore it was retconned, the borg collected their dead (to be recycled) and rescued lost drones.

Yup. I will be treating the Borg Queens as non-cannon garbage. The borg check off allot of transhumanist checkboxes, and they still retain a level of human applicable morality (again, impressive for such a species). They just don't look pretty, which to them would be 100% irrelevant.

The borg queen was created for one reason: To give data more screentime with the borg and have data facing seduction. Data was the nice guy character most people liked (fuck the trolls who hated him) and they decided to have the good guy facing seduction by the evil vamp.

Basically it's like having the all around nice guy being targeted and seduced by Elvira.

That;s the whole reason for the borg queen, a screenwriter wanted to give data screentime as he's popular, and make the kick innocent good guy face the evil  seductress. So fuck the whole collective mind thing, we need data being tempted by the evil queen!