So I am going to run a Nova Praxis campaign (in Savage Worlds) eventually (it's what I am doing when my rotation comes up again in our group). Because of this I have been reading other transhumanist Sci-fi settings.

Which leads me to Eclipse Phase, I heard that it was the more "post-human" setting, which I thought would be good to explore because the Nova Praxis setting is very much in a state transition and the campaign could easily spin off into a very post-human society.

EP got some interesting ideas but man were certain social/cultural assumptions bugging me. Things like "life-long relationships are considered unlikely", "people trying to stay human are bad", and "in the face of extinction people killed each other as much as the evil AI did because all corporations are run by suicidal sociopaths" seemed odd too me.
Then I got to the section on religions where the author states that Christianity and Judaism were too dogmatic to not fall apart with the existence of transhumanity, but Islam was more flexible/enlightened so it is still around.

That right there is a full immersion kill. Nova Praxis handle this much better and talked about how religion adapted or viewed the soul differently while others maintained that re-sleeving killed you and it's why many people are resisting apotheosis (especially since medical technology is indefinitely extending life spans more and more so this stance isn't suicidal).

I hate when I am liking something and then some sort of crazy SJW/Alt-right notion pulls me right out and I start questioning if the media is propaganda. Like I get that a lot of art is political. But at least try to know what you are talking about before you make nonsense claims.

Not just politically, but I like Nova Praxis setting more for a lot of reasons. I think setting is a tad more coherent and structured to give more jumping off points. The time period it is in also makes it a lot easier to get into. The average person in Eclipse Phase "trivializes" regular people (who are considered little better than slaves or brute animals and it's considered ethically wrong that they are forced to exist like that). It's kind'of hard to roleplay entities that are just better than you. It's like running a high concept fantasy Immortals campaign without working your way up into it (like in BECMI).
Idk, I think the Nova Praxis writer took better care to make an agnostic setting that explored ideas rather than willy nilly injecting his bias on what he thinks human behavior should be.
I'm pro-space, trans-humanity, science, and what-not and I think advocating against life extension procedures is equivalent to murder (some people really think people shouldn't be immortal and that we need to all die eventually), but that's philosophical argument. I don't think people are evil because they don't want a robot body, or exist as software, or be a sapient flesh ball that propels themselves in micro-gravity via tiny gas jets.

I mainly stayed away from EP because I knew the writer was something of a hack from his work on Shadowrun and because I didn't like the percentile system as implemented in EP.

Lol at Islam being more flexible than Catholicism.  That's cute Mr. SJW have a cookie.

I was temporarily banned from TBP for pointing out the author's hackneyed and nonsensical political garbage. Even TBP's most popular posters requested the stupid be dialed back for EP2, so that's telling.

The only good transhumanist game I've ever seen was Mindjammer.

Quote from: KingCheops;1057973Lol at Islam being more flexible than Catholicism.  That's cute Mr. SJW have a cookie.

Wait, isn't Islam the religion that throws Gay men off rooftops and want to kill all Jews?  That's more 'enlightened'??

The issue I have with Transhumanism is that it's the DESTINATION, not the driver of a plot/game.  Cyberpunk is better because it's got built in conflict, but transhumanism doesn't seem to have any.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1058191Wait, isn't Islam the religion that throws Gay men off rooftops and want to kill all Jews?  That's more 'enlightened'??

The issue I have with Transhumanism is that it's the DESTINATION, not the driver of a plot/game.  Cyberpunk is better because it's got built in conflict, but transhumanism doesn't seem to have any.

Think of transhumanism as more a race or augment to a character. There might come some conflict from that. Or not. Depending on how prevalent and accepted bodymodding is.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1058191The issue I have with Transhumanism is that it's the DESTINATION, not the driver of a plot/game.  Cyberpunk is better because it's got built in conflict, but transhumanism doesn't seem to have any.

This is exactly how he ruined Shadowrun.  He focused on the Transhumanism which led to a lot of setting breaking issues when there is no reason for the society to not be a Singularity Utopia with No More Death but the setting was still trying to be described as Gritty Dystopian Cyberpunk.

Quote from: Omega;1058196Think of transhumanism as more a race or augment to a character. There might come some conflict from that. Or not. Depending on how prevalent and accepted bodymodding is.

Traditional conflicts of satisfying basic needs more or less goes away (and anywhere they crop up just feels like a cyberpunk part of the setting, ergo apostate enclaves in Nova Praxis).

The conflict goes more into one about advantage as organizations try to out maneuver each other and conflict about control. People can be very dangerous in a Transhumanist society. The powers that be have an active interest in keeping a tight leash on everyone else to prevent singularity like calamities or even more basic problems like a WMB being made in someone's living room fabricator.

The potential for everything to go straight to hell and for immortals to manage to kill themselves permanently is everywhere. It's a source of conflict, but also makes things hard to GM. Because society could spiral out into something beyond comprehension.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1058215The powers that be have an active interest in keeping a tight leash on everyone else to prevent singularity like calamities or even more basic problems like a WMB being made in someone's living room fabricator.

WMB? Typo or something else that a Google search failed me on?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1057956Then I got to the section on religions where the author states that Christianity and Judaism were too dogmatic to not fall apart with the existence of transhumanity, but Islam was more flexible/enlightened so it is still around.

There's a strong materialistic idea that souls=consciousness=mind="free will"=magic that EP (and some related sci-fi) revolves around with slogans like "your mind is software".  With the Fall, most of the folks who rejected sleeving as dehumanizing were rendered forever dead, and most of those folks would likely be religious.

The problem is that the echo chamber the authors of EP were writing in couldn't distinguish between "religions" and "religious people".  The idea that some Christians and Jews would be able to embrace uploading, and recognize that "digital immortality" wasn't really immortality like their faith preached and/or didn't truly remove an individual's desire for God, didn't seem to register with the authors.  All they needed to do is make that distinction, and they solved 50% of the problem (but then they'd have yucky theists in their setting I guess).  As for Islam... just say they had a cultural and scientific revival, with hardliner Muslims ending up like hardliner Christians and Jews; EP is supposed to be set in a future after our future after all.

Personally, I found EP to be a comical setting.  A post-scarcity society that isn't post-scarcity, with as much handwavium as your average fantasy setting.  And that's -after- you ignore the handwavium involved for sleeving in the first place.

I would recommend people interested in transhumanism to track down Lesser Shades of Evil, simply because it basically makes transhumanism look less like a miracle and more like a way to slowly drive a human mind insane.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1058218WMB? Typo or something else that a Google search failed me on?

Typo, I meant WMD

Quote from: san dee jota;1058221There's a strong materialistic idea that souls=consciousness=mind="free will"=magic that EP (and some related sci-fi) revolves around with slogans like "your mind is software".  With the Fall, most of the folks who rejected sleeving as dehumanizing were rendered forever dead, and most of those folks would likely be religious.

The problem is that the echo chamber the authors of EP were writing in couldn't distinguish between "religions" and "religious people".  The idea that some Christians and Jews would be able to embrace uploading, and recognize that "digital immortality" wasn't really immortality like their faith preached and/or didn't truly remove an individual's desire for God, didn't seem to register with the authors.  All they needed to do is make that distinction, and they solved 50% of the problem (but then they'd have yucky theists in their setting I guess).  As for Islam... just say they had a cultural and scientific revival, with hardliner Muslims ending up like hardliner Christians and Jews; EP is supposed to be set in a future after our future after all.

Personally, I found EP to be a comical setting.  A post-scarcity society that isn't post-scarcity, with as much handwavium as your average fantasy setting.  And that's -after- you ignore the handwavium involved for sleeving in the first place.

Individually, the stances are not something I have an issue with. It's both at the same time that just screams SJW nonsense.

I understand an author not understanding religion or something like Star Trek where they think we give it up. The author here is claiming particular understandings about religions he doesn't understand. This kind of claim can only come from a political extremist that will try to hold contradictory ideas together.

I also confess to being something of a pessimist and don't think we as a people will ever achieve 'transhumanism'.  It'll likely end up cyberpunk whether or not we are trying for it.

Quote from: KingCheops;1057973Lol at Islam being more flexible than Catholicism.  That's cute Mr. SJW have a cookie.

Agreed and seconded. One of the more intolerant religions is suddenly more "tolerant" in the future. Yet Catholicism while having some flaws is not. Given how none of the major relgious figures in scripture did not step foward to stop the AI from destroying Earth. Where afterlife and death becomes a joke. Most if not all major established religions would be having major to minor existential crises imo. Yet somehow Islam is flexible.

Quote from: sureshot;1058326Agreed and seconded. One of the more intolerant religions is suddenly more "tolerant" in the future. Yet Catholicism while having some flaws is not. Given how none of the major relgious figures in scripture did not step foward to stop the AI from destroying Earth. Where afterlife and death becomes a joke. Most if not all major established religions would be having major to minor existential crises imo. Yet somehow Islam is flexible.

Matthew 24:30-31 " Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.  And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

I always felt like the rapture would be gathering up space christians