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  • More Sunward Art Previews

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Fri, 2010-07-30 19:23
    in
    If you haven't checked out the Sunward PDF yet, here's a quick taste of some more artwork. First up is the flexbot piece by Tom Garden:


    Second is this scene of a situation about to turn ugly on Mars by Andrew Silver:

    /sites/default/files/EP-Sunward_7G_Socialites_A.Silver_web.jpg

    Funny how few pictures you see of male lovers in RPGs, eh?

    Clicky to embiggen. You might also want to check out these piece by Leanne Buckley and James Wolf Strehle.

  • Running the Game: 5 Martian Plot Hooks

    Submitted by jackgraham on Thu, 2010-07-29 19:00
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    Martian Street SceneHere are some Martian plot hooks I would have crammed into Sunward if Rob had let me ramble on for even longer...
    • Workin' on the Railroad. As in the American West, railroads will be the key to opening up the Martian back country, and with it, the wealth of the planet. Heavy terraforming equipment, raw materials, and people all move most efficiently by rail. Sure, you can nanofabricate a lot of stuff in situ, but not everything. Railroads are big money, and the hypercorps controlling them play for keeps. Political intrigues abound where railroad rights of way are concerned, and there's a tension between the necessary upheavals of terraforming and the railroads' interest in creating transportation networks. Barsoomian terrorists don't mind targeting railroads when they think it will get their point across, and anybody who's watched Firefly knows that a train heist on a maglev rail system could make for a fun gaming session or two. What about the people building and maintaining the railroads? They're out in the high desert in isolated places -- in some cases not far from areas of past TITAN activity. And by the way, my teacher this week at Clarion West, Ian McDonald, has written two novels on Martian railroads. I hadn't read them when working on Sunward, but both are good inspirations for railroad-based plot lines on Mars. Desolation Road came out in 1988; the sequel, Ares Express, appeared in 2008.
    • East Coast - West Coast. Martian oligarchs don't always act their age -- which can be a pretty bad scene when the parties involved are 170 years old and incalculably wealthy. While much of the conflict over money, power, and influence in Eclipse Phase abstracts into the realm of the digital, good old fashioned territorial pissing hasn't died out. To understand Martian politics, it's important to remember that the big Martian cities are sovereign states, as well. The oligarchs behind the scenes don't like attention, but they all know each other -- and they hate it when a rival plays in their back yard. Characters caught up in these struggles can have a very bad day indeed if they take a job from the wrong person.
    • Space Elevator Murder Train. The Olympus Mons space elevator takes about as long as your average Transatlantic flight to get from Olympus to the counterweight -- and Mesh access is very limited during the trip. A lot can happen during that time, making a space elevator trip a great setting for the type of horror or suspense that works by having the PCs, a bunch of victims, and an antagonist confined in an isolated space together.
    • Never Call Up That Which You Cannot Master. The Ma'adim Valles Pandora Gate opens many times each day on alien worlds. Mostly, it's investigatory teams that come back -- when they come back. But sometimes, other things come back. Security is tight at Pathfinder's installation, but if an alien life form gets loose, it's free in an isolated area of craggy Martian canyon land. And Pathfinder is really going to want it back.
    • Unforgiven/Tombstone/The Quick&the Dead/Straight to Hell/Sukiyaki Django Western. Mars is a frontier world, and people living in the back country have -- very consciously -- adopted the styles of the American Old West. Never mind that most of the population is ultimately of Asian descent; for some reason, people still love cowboys. At the same time, the Martian frontier actually does have a lot in common with the Old West, from the limited reach of the law in isolated back country settlements, to the demands of survival in an arid, rugged land. With this in mind, GMs can have a lot of fun lifting plots from familiar westerns and deploying them on the Red Planet. Kimchee Western, anyone?
    Enjoy Sunward, and have a good time on Mars! We've all worked really hard on this product, and it's awesome to finally see it in people's hands.

    Image from Sunward by Hideyoshi.

  • New PDF Releases Today!

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Wed, 2010-07-28 20:07
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    As promised, we released 3 new digital products today! All are available via DriveThruRPG/RPGNow:
    Enjoy! And for those who will ask--we don't have a street release date yet for when Sunward will be in stores, but we will have it at Gen Con!

  • Five for the Future 07-26-10

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Tue, 2010-07-27 01:00
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    These and similar links can be found at http://delicious.com/infomorph

  • Three new Electronic Eclipse Phase Releases Coming July 28th!

    Submitted by AdamJury on Sat, 2010-07-24 01:36
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    Posthuman Studios has three kick-ass Eclipse Phase titles coming your way as PDFs on Wednesday, July 28th: NPC File 1: Prime, the highly-anticipated Sunward: The Inner System, and the Sunward Hack Pack!

    NPC File 1: Prime

    An electronic exclusive, NPC File 1: Prime presents over thirty original NPCs and some additional variants with a description and full stats; ready for use as opposition or player characters. Two files are included: One with all the NPCs in a typical layout format, and a second with half-page character sheets for each NPC. NPC File 1: Prime will be $5 and is Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) licensed.

    Sunward: The Inner System

    Eight days before its debut at Gen Con (yes, there will be a Sunward ... well, many Sunwards ... at Gen Con!), you'll be able to get your hands on the electronic version of Sunward! Sunward details the inner part of the solar system:
    • Can you take the heat? Find out on Mercury, the Vulcanoids, or dive into the sun's corona with the Solarians
    • A new star is rising on Venus, join in the intrigue as the Morningstar Constellation maneuvers for influence.
    • Return to the cradle of transhumanity and explore the blasted, but not quite abandoned, ruins of Earth.
    • Keepers of many of our cultural traditions, the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance stands watch over our shattered homeworld.
    • A red storm is rising on Mars as the traditional masters of the red planet face an upswell of Barsoomian patriotism.
    • The silent masters of the inner system, the Planetary Consortium, reach out to touch all with a velvet glove.
    • Plus new Morphs, gear, and sample characters.
    Sunward will be a 192 page PDF (with layers, a hyperlinked Table of Contents, a hyperlinked index, and internal hyperlinks) and will sell for $10. Sunward is Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) licensed.

    Sunward Hack Pack

    The Sunward Hack Pack includes the Sunward PDF and the following:
    • Sunward Cover art and chapter-opening artwork as 150DPI images.
    • Print-friendlier version of the Inner System Map, and Adobe Illustrator files for the original and modified map.

    All you need to make your own contribution to the Inner System—Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) licensed!

    Enjoy these new releases from Eclipse Phase, the Origins Award-winning and ENnie-nominated RPG of transhuman conspiracy and horror. Join us as we take the next bold steps into expanding the Eclipse Phase universe, continuing our journey outward into our dark future.

  • Eclipse Phase night at Gamma Ray Games, Seattle

    Submitted by jackgraham on Tue, 2010-07-20 21:47
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    Eclipse Phase writer and sometime online marketing helper monkey Jack Graham (that's me) will run one awesome session of EP this Thursday, 7/22/2010, at Gamma Ray Games in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

    It'll be at 6:30 pm. Please ping the game store on their Facebook page to RSVP.



    Sorry for the short notice on this. I've been doing the Clarion West writer's workshop, and gaming, like sleeping, eating, and shaving my beard, has taken a back seat to writing sci-fi.

    We'll be playing Doctrine, the scenario that I wrote for Gen Con this year. Secret Club Date! Sneak Preview! Holy Cats, Octomorph!

    Hope to see some of y'all there.

  • ENnie Awards Voting

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Mon, 2010-07-19 21:29
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    Voting for the 2010 ENnie Awards is underway! Eclipse Phase is nominated in four categories--Best Cover Art, Best Writing, Best Production Values, and Game of the Year--and we'd appreciate your votes! The polls are open this week only.

    If you're looking for some more detail, you can read my thoughts on our nominations or check out what Adam had to say.

    While you're voting, please also consider Posthuman Studios for Best Publisher!

    Polls: http://www.ennie-awards.com/voting/ballot.asp

    Thanks for taking the time!

    One last thing: if you're going to be at GenCon, the Posthuman Studios team is up for an ENnies Dream Date auction! we're giving away a signed copy of Sunward, the opportunity to put you or your character's name in an upcoming book, and our sweet devilish interesting company during the Awards.

  • GenCon Interviews

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Fri, 2010-07-16 10:00
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    If any bloggers, podcasters, or other new media journalistas out there will be at GenCon and feel like poking and prodding at me, Brian, Adam, and/or Jack, we'll all be there too and can make ourselves available for your examinations. We'd be happy to talk about Eclipse Phase, upcoming projects, Posthuman Studios, the game industry, transhumanism, and politics of various persuasions. If you want the juicy stuff, you are encouraged to buy us drinks. Just sayin'.

    In all seriousness, we're starting to set our schedules for the con, so please contact us soon if you want to set up a  time!

  • Resources Page Updates

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Fri, 2010-07-16 02:28
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    Just finished a minor re-organization and update to the Resources page. We've provided a handy menu to the sections, moved the Quick-Start Rules to their own page (http://eclipsephase.com/qsr of course), and added a number of new links to fan-created material, among other changes. We're always interested in seeing the work of our fans--we like to see that Creative Commons license put to use--so if there's anything else out there we've missed, please let us know!

    We have some other website updates in the works, including a re-organization of the forums, so stay tuned!

  • Downtime

    Submitted by RobBoyle on Wed, 2010-07-14 21:32
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    FYI, we'll be taking the EP website down for maintenance for a few hours tonight starting 11pm Central.