[Eclipse Phase] In Space, no one is safe from the Swine

[Planet Algol]

...Most of the feminists I know in real life are hot and fit?

[Planet Algol]

Feminists hold that cheesecake art reinforces both of these imaginary influences

Some do, but not all.

[Archangel Fascist]

...Most of the feminists I know in real life are hot and fit?

Then they're probably not very "into" feminism.  If they are, tell them that their attractiveness is merely reinforcing the patriarchy by objectifying them before the male gaze.

[jeff37923]

I have to ask, since I have not read the game background. If the TITANS or whoever had access to wormhole creation technology and used it in their escape after wrecking the Earth, why didn't they just go all in and use it to destroy the solar system? You could use wormholes to redirect and disrupt the natural circulation of still-fusing plasma within the sun to cause it to go nova, wiping out entire swaths of the solar system and smashing fragile constructions such as habitats.

[Planet Algol]

Then they're probably not very "into" feminism.  If they are, tell them that their attractiveness is merely reinforcing the patriarchy by objectifying them before the male gaze.

Shit, I have a good friend/ex who is a radical feminist, does yoga, has a MFA in dance, works as a choreographer, and is getting her PHD in Women's Studies, and, aside from the outfit and dye iob, looks like the woman in that piece of art. Even the pose could have been a still from one of her performances.

But please, let's exclude any middles.

[Benoist]

I have to ask, since I have not read the game background. If the TITANS or whoever had access to wormhole creation technology and used it in their escape after wrecking the Earth, why didn't they just go all in and use it to destroy the solar system? You could use wormholes to redirect and disrupt the natural circulation of still-fusing plasma within the sun to cause it to go nova, wiping out entire swaths of the solar system and smashing fragile constructions such as habitats.

Yes indeed! It almost seems like the TITANs did *not* want to completely wipe out the (trans)human race. Why? Was there a grand scheme, some plan for the future? Some necessity in triggering the Armageddon from their POV? What does that all mean? Are the TITANs the bogeymen most hypercorps and governments portray? Is there more to the Fall than meets the eye? There's a LOT of fodder for some cool conspiracies and neat gaming right here! Not to mention the horror of it all.

[The Traveller]

Some do, but not all.

Maybe, there are some people who self identify as feminists without actually knowing much about the movement or what it does beyond liking a picture of a woman holding up a placard on facebook one time.

When you think about it there aren't many pastimes that someone isn't going to find objectionable if they project far enough into the realms of paranoid delusion, an attribute which is in abundance among the ranks of feminists.

I mean what, is D&D responsible for or even any kind of an influence on knife culture and stabbings? You've got these vagrants wandering around the place sticking blades in things, surely we can tie this into mugging statistics somehow? Oh, these aren't really sentient creatures they're killing, shouldn't someone be calling PETA? Evil monsters? Othering!

And that's without even looking at the question of agency and the supreme contempt for the ability of people to make rational decisions you'd need to have in order to condemn artwork as in the OP. Whats actually being said here once you strip away the bullshit is that ninja lady shooting a guy will influence some man to go forth and rape and/or oppress women. Seriously, these people are deranged.

[TristramEvans]

Yeah, its really not fair ro actual real life sensible feminists, who are many, to be lumped in with the absurd online SJWs.

But then its also not fair for real life autistics to be lumped in with self-diagnosed online Asshole pseudo autistics.

But watcha gonna do?

Anyways, speaking as to someone who got through art school selling a vast amount of cheesecake, the overwhelmingly largest audience is actually female.

Of course, the SJW response to that is "theyve been brainwashed by the Patriarchy", which is one of those responses that makes you realize that theres no point in arguing with someone who has given up logic (Ive actually heard logic described as a "tool of the patriarchy". No joke) in favour of a self-affirming recursive stance that ultimately is predicated on the belief that all people, women included, are incapable of thinking for themselves, and its up to those super special few who have magical "Correct Thinking" abilities to protect the rest of the human race from Badwrongthought programming.

[jeff37923]

Yes indeed! It almost seems like the TITANs did *not* want to completely wipe out the (trans)human race. Why? Was there a grand scheme, some plan for the future? Some necessity in triggering the Armageddon from their POV? What does that all mean? Are the TITANs the bogeymen most hypercorps and governments portray? Is there more to the Fall than meets the eye? There's a LOT of fodder for some cool conspiracies and neat gaming right here! Not to mention the horror of it all.

Or did the writers of Eclipse Phase just have a failure of imagination and a lack of scientific background? That possibility cannot be discounted.

[Benoist]

Or did the writers of Eclipse Phase just have a failure of imagination and a lack of scientific background? That possibility cannot be discounted.

I honestly don't think so. There are in the background some people who are actually supporting the TITANs and some doubts formulated about whether these AIs are really the ultimate threat, or whether it's more to be found within transhumanity itself. The background carefully leaves out the motivations of the TITANs (or their nature itself, really) as a mystery that provides that sense of dread that if the TITANs triggered the Fall and didn't want to wipe out the whole human race then they had something in mind, which means they might return one day, maybe sooner rather than later, and why? For what? To farm humanity? Pass a final judgment on its fate? Let it devolve into a total clusterfuck to come back as saviors? Who knows? That mystery is part of the horror of the game.

[The Butcher]

Please, look, discuss and all that.

Took one quick look.

The pic is stupid, but (IMHO) not for the reasons the writer points out.

I know EP is designed to show off the designer's twee politics, with it being glaringly obvious or their ignorance on the subject of economics. I want to like a near future RPG, and I even like Transhumanism, ala Banks and such, but all the SF RPG's I see there are deal breakers, like the politics in 2300AD (which purports itself as a 'hard science' rpg but has terrible fantasy science stuff).

Yeah, the EP folks keep using "post-scarcity" as a buzzword, but if you don't have desktop transmutation and still need raw materials... that's not really "post-scarcity", now, is it? The whole reputation-based economy is a neat idea but doesn't really make sense if you look at it real hard.

Still, if you can suspend you disbelief enough to enjoy Star Wars, you can enjoy Eclipse Phase too. No reason to throw out the baby with the bath-water... though judging from your comments, you might also want to look at Orbital (for diamond-hard, non-transhuman SF) or maybe the upcoming River of Heaven (for a more space-operatic setting, with a few more out-there transhuman elements such as body-hopping).

In my games, the Jovians are perfectly reasonable.  Seriously, I've argued long and hard that the Jovians make perfect sense within the setting, and that I have a hard time not playing them as sympathetic, if a bit cowardly.

The dilemma of the Jovians in EP is similar to that of the Coalition in Rifts. Their rulers may be predominantly evil assholes, but the rank-and-file is as good a sampling of humanity as any, with honest family men fighting side-by-side antisocial psychos and petty dictators.

Though of course, it's much easier (for me anyway) to see the Jovians' isolation and passive rejection of transhumanism in a sympathetic light, than the Coalition's far more agressive agenda of extinguish all non-human life as well as the practice of magic, and reclaiming the Earth no matter how high the cost. One of my old games had the players briefly encounter a far future version of the Coalition, that had cleansed the Earth of nearly all non-humans, and now used the rifts (by way of hyper-advanced science indistinguishable from techno-wizardry) to try and conquer the Megaverse for humankind.

Yes indeed! It almost seems like the TITANs did *not* want to completely wipe out the (trans)human race. Why? Was there a grand scheme, some plan for the future? Some necessity in triggering the Armageddon from their POV? What does that all mean? Are the TITANs the bogeymen most hypercorps and governments portray? Is there more to the Fall than meets the eye? There's a LOT of fodder for some cool conspiracies and neat gaming right here! Not to mention the horror of it all.

Ben gets EP, because he's an oWoD veteran.

Thesis: EP is oWoD in space. You belong to a super cool secret conspiracy fighting back the impending end of all things with super kewl powrz of SCIENCE! Season liberally with (cyber)punk aesthetics and fight-the-man rhetoric.

And again, like the oWoD (especially W:tA), the politics are silly but not a dealbreaker.

[jeff37923]

Probably why I don't get EP. A threat that fails to destroy an entire biosphere of a planet and then runs away is not a looming threat that fills me as a Player with horror.

Likewise, some pseudointellectuals screaming at each on a blog about sexism in gaming art does not an anti-feminism patriarchy make.

[Benoist]

Yeah, the EP folks keep using "post-scarcity" as a buzzword, but if you don't have desktop transmutation and still need raw materials... that's not really "post-scarcity", now, is it? The whole reputation-based economy is a neat idea but doesn't really make sense if you look at it real hard.

Still, if you can suspend you disbelief enough to enjoy Star Wars, you can enjoy Eclipse Phase too. No reason to throw out the baby with the bath-water...

Yes, not to mention you can totally play on what doesn't make sense and make it more palatable for your game table. The whole idea of reputation-based economics is laughable, and you can totally retool that in a way that shows it as completely dysfunctional, with people hacking, people playing the system to get more rep, and so on, which basically makes it a tool in the hands of the hypercorps to reward the people gaming the system, isolating those who don't play by the rules. It becomes a Socialist nightmare.

The dilemma of the Jovians in EP is similar to that of the Coalition in Rifts. Their rulers may be predominantly evil assholes, but the rank-and-file is as good a sampling of humanity as any, with honest family men fighting side-by-side antisocial psychos and petty dictators.

Though of course, it's much easier (for me anyway) to see the Jovians' isolation and passive rejection of transhumanism in a sympathetic light, than the Coalition's far more agressive agenda of extinguish all non-human life as well as the practice of magic, and reclaiming the Earth no matter how high the cost. One of my old games had the players briefly encounter a far future version of the Coalition, that had cleansed the Earth of nearly all non-humans, and now used the rifts (by way of hyper-advanced science indistinguishable from techno-wizardry) to try and conquer the Megaverse for humankind.

That's a good point.

Ben gets EP, because he's an oWoD veteran.

Thesis: EP is oWoD in space. You belong to a super cool secret conspiracy fighting back the impending end of all things with super kewl powrz of SCIENCE! Season liberally with (cyber)punk aesthetics and fight-the-man rhetoric.

Yeah, that's awfully close to the way I'd play it. I have some ideas, which incorporate The Hobby Shop Dungeon too (I know, that's insane), and I'd totally play the Alien/Promethean feel of the game, with some artefacts studied by Firewall, VR run amok, isolated stations completely decimated by unknown threats, para-military forces in the background and all that.

[The Butcher]

I have some ideas, which incorporate The Hobby Shop Dungeon too (I know, that's insane)

I think Kevin Crawford once explicitly mentioned somewhere that he wrote this at least in part so he could drop transhuman SF PCs on the Keep On The Borderlands.

In any case, sounds like a hoot!

[Benoist]

I think Kevin Crawford once explicitly mentioned somewhere that he wrote this at least in part so he could drop transhuman SF PCs on the Keep On The Borderlands.

In any case, sounds like a hoot!

Pretty cool! I didn't know Kevin went there.