Transhuman Kickstarter Stretch Goals — The Final Week!

We have under a week left in the Transhuman Kickstarter, and it's been an amazing ride so far. Strap in for the last week, because it's about to get extra fun! Covered in this update: new stretch goals and an update about PayPal payments.

Eclipse Phase as ePub

We just unlocked this goal, and we'll be publishing Eclipse Phase in ePub format this fall/winter! If you want to pre-order it, you can add $10 onto your Kickstarter pledge.

New Stretch Goals

$71,000 -- 1000 ISBNs!

What? Here's the scoop: we need ISBNs to publish books, and many online stores (such as Apple's iBookstore) require a unique ISBN for each electronic book we sell. If you buy ISBNs in small batches, they cost $25 each -- but if we buy 1000 at a time, they only cost $1 each. So we want to invest in essentially "ISBNs for life!" to save us money down the road, and to allow us to profitably get Eclipse Phase into more venues! This goal is mostly about sharing info with you regarding the impact this Kickstarter will have on Posthuman Studios long-term. We want you to know that YOU can help make this happen.

$80,000 -- Caleb Stokes / Role Playing Public Radio Know Evil Team to Write New Eclipse Phase Adventure

The Know Evil Actual Play podcast is well-known amongst Eclipse Phase fans, and if we hit this stretch goal we'll bring them on board to write a brand new adventure for Eclipse Phase!

$90,000 -- Singularity Character Generator

Created by Kyle Hankins of indie software developer Snow Dog Labs, Singularity is a cross-platform (Windows, OS X, Linux) character generator that will support Eclipse Phase character generation -- both the traditional point-buy system and the new package system that will be in Transhuman!

$100,000 -- Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide

If we hit this goal, we will bring you a Fate Core-compatible conversion guide for Eclipse Phase, allowing you to play in the EP universe with the streamlined rules from Evil Hat's upcoming Fate Core! If we unlock this stretch goal, Posthuman Studios will be the first "Powered by Fate" publisher!

That's the broad strokes of each stretch goal; we'll be covering them in more detail below, and in future updates!

PayPal Pledges

We will be rolling out support for PayPal pledges on Friday, May 16th, for those who cannot pledge with Kickstarter itself.

Details regarding Stretch Goal Rewards

Caleb Stokes / Role Playing Public Radio Know Evil Team to Write New Eclipse Phase Adventure

We have several cool proposals from Caleb already and we're polishing them and deciding which one is the best way to go. We're looking at making 1this adventure roughly twice as large as our typical published adventures: twice as many words, twice as much art, twice as many pages. It will be available via PDF and Print-on-Demand with an estimated release of Spring 2014 if the stretch goal is reached!

Singularity Character Generator by Snow Dog Labs

We've been talking to Kyle of Snow Dog Labs for months now; he brought Singularity to us in working shape and we're excited to turn it into something that can benefit all Eclipse Phase fans!

If we reach the stretch goal, Kyle will get to work on updating Singularity for Transhuman compatibility, and it will be available later this year with both single-user and group licenses. If it is unlocked, we'll also add backer levels so you can get purchase Singularity and be part of the beta test team!

Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide

Eclipse Phase. Fate. Two great tastes that people have been telling us for years that they want to taste together: "We love Eclipse Phase! We love Fate, too! We want them together on our gaming table!"

We've heard you, and your game table may be getting some extra support soon!

Posthuman Studios LLC and Evil Hat Productions, LLC are pleased to announce that they have entered into an agreement that will allow Posthuman Studios to publish an Eclipse Phase-to-Fate conversion guide. This release is tied to the $100,000 stretch goal for Posthuman Studios' Transhuman Kickstarter.

If we reach that stretch goal, the following four backer levels will be added to the campaign:


It's Fate! - $5 - You get a PDF copy of the Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide when it's released, and a shoutout on our website and in Transhuman.

Find My Eternal Fate - $15 - You get a PDF copy of the Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide when it's released, a copy of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook PDF, as well as the Eclipse Phase short stories Lack, Melt, An Infinite Horizon, and El Destino Verde as digital books (PDF and ePub). You also get a shoutout on our website and in Transhuman.

Fate in Print - $30 - You get a print copy of the Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide when it's released, plus the PDF, a copy of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook PDF, as well as the Eclipse Phase short stories Lack, Melt, An Infinite Horizon, and El Destino Verde as digital books (PDF and ePub). You also get a shoutout on our website and in Transhuman. (+$15 International Shipping)

Fate and Eclipse Phase Print - $80 - You get the Fate in Print backer level rewards, plus a copy of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook in print! (Ships at the same time as Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide) (+$30 International Shipping)

The Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide will be written and edited by Fate-experienced authors and editors to be named soon, with oversight from Eclipse Phase developer Rob Boyle. It will be published in the 6"x9" proportions of the Fate Core rulebook, and contain rules and guidelines to convert Eclipse Phase to the Fate system. The Eclipse Phase core rulebook will be required for use. Page count and post-Kickstarter pricing to be determined.

The text of Eclipse Phase Fate Conversion Guide will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

The Powered by Fate logo was created by Evil Hat Productions, LLC and is used with permission.

To the Future!

Whatever happens over the last week of the Transhuman Kickstarter, it's going to be fun! Please share it with your friends over Facebook, Google+ (talking about Transhuman is way more fun than talking about whether you like the changes Google just made to Google+!), Twitter, and your other social networks.

We'll be posting a bit more frequently in the coming days, so keep your eyes peeled and let us know what you think!

Eclipse Phase & Fate

First off, a confession: when I first encountered FUDGE, as a text file on the pre-web Internet, I almost stopped reading when I got to the bit about the dice. An inveterate AD&D player, I love me some non-six-sided polyhedra. If EP has one flaw, it's that we only use one kind of die. So it goes without saying that I dislike when games only use six-siders, and by extension, when games only use six-siders marked with pluses, minuses, and blanks.

But then there's Fate. Oh, Fate. If not for your ugly-ass dice, you & I could be so perfect together. There's so much that's compelling about this rules engine, and so many possibilities that I can see for using it with our setting.

Eclipse Phase, you see, is a pretty darned old school, grognardy game. Peel back the fascination with emerging technologies, the OCD scientific research, the transhuman philosophy, and the oft-remarked-upon lefty politics, and what you have underneath is a game that is part Call of Cthulhu, part Shadowrun, and all over rooted in the wargaming tradition. We like charts & tables, detailed subsystems, and a pre-Gumshoe sort of approach to investigative scenarios. And for this we make no apology.

There are certain types of games, then, for which EP is an ideal instrument. Our system gives players who love detail a boatload of knobs to twist and levers to pull. If you like CoC and its various percentile system progeny, welcome home! We've kept a tentacle & a blasphemous AR graphic warm for you. And if you dig problem solving and technical dungeon crawls in the grand Gygaxian tradition, EP is again fertile ground. This isn't to say that you can't do other things with the game, but the aforesaid are particular strengths.

So why would we make a Fate conversion one of our Kickstarter stretch goals?

For all the people who suck at roleplaying-as-engineering-problem. Duh. 😉

Wow. I can be glib. But more seriously, we acknowledge that for some people, our old school style of rules-smithing can be too much. Fate offers a neater approach for some. But more importantly, the Fate system itself has some goodies in it that get me pretty charged up as a game designer. So let's talk about those for a sec!

When considering Fate's Character Generation system, the big thing that jumps out at me is the use of time phases. Here you've got something that ties into the drama of EP, because "The Fall" is going to occupy a phase for just about every character, and what goes on during that phase almost certainly derails the PC's previous life completely. The skills and aspects they picked up in earlier phases might shape what they do during the Fall and its aftermath -- or they might fall completely by the wayside as the PC gets catapulted into a new and probably much less comfortable life.

Character generations gives you aspects (a key player resource in Fate), and these map somewhat to EP's Motivation and Moxie mechanics. But they also map to our backgrounds, factions, and character concepts, yielding an interesting way for players to decide when and where their PC will shine. Are you enough of a Gatecrasher to flip that die to a '+'? Are you Barsoomian enough to re-roll when the cops turn loose their baboons on the protesters?

And that's just the simple uses of aspects. Other things that exist in the EP world -- your muse, your social networks, your manipulative Firewall handler -- beg to be expressed in this mechanic as well.

Finally, Fate's resolution systems provide a much lighter way of resolving challenges. The ladder system is elegant, if a bit loosey-goosey by old school grognard standards. Personally, I like a hacking system that requires a mastery of the details to use effectively, but there's definitely an appeal to the GM being able to simply define a ladder for a given system and let PCs start throwing dice at the obstacle. This approach is particularly handy if the GM knows in advance that a given system is going to get hacked at some point as part of a scenario.

I should close by saying that these are just some preliminary thoughts on a Fate vs. EP mashup. The team we're putting together to create the actual product will have much more grounding in Fate than I, and might have very different ideas about how the two systems meet. In any case, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Let's get this unholy alliance started! If you haven't backed us on Kickstarter yet, please consider doing so now. Our Fate conversion will be unlocked when we hit $100,000, at which point new backer levels including EP/Fate products will also become available.

Mashups: Eclipse Phase vs. Don’t Rest Your Head, part I

A few years back at PaizoCon, my girlfriend & I played a really great game of Evil Hat's Don't Rest Your Head mashed up with the Cthulhu Mythos. The scenario was a sequel to "The Dunwich Horror" using DRYH/DLYM mechanics. It got me thinking about doing an EP/DRYH mashup, so this year, for PAX East, I wrote a scenario about some Lost Generation kids using DRYH's mechanics. I'll be sharing them here in a series of posts.

To use the rules below, you'll need a copy of DRYH (it's five bucks at DriveThru). A copy of Don't Lose Your Mind is optional. It's got some neat ideas in it (and I'm in love with the cover art), but most of them don't mesh well with EP's setting flavor.

You'll also want to skim the setting info about the Lost and the Mind Hacks chapter in EP Core if you haven't looked at them for a while.

Mechanics
Here's how to adapt DRYH to the EP setting.

Exhaustion

  • Reflects the taxing effects of using psi on a sustained basis. Adding Exhaustion dice reflects the use of minor, psi-chi sleights.
  • Lost Generation PCs should still have a mundane-sounding Exhaustion talent, e.g., Athletics or Infosec. When they use exhaustion, they're augmenting this talent. Whatever it is they're best at, psi makes them more so.
  • If a character Crashes, they've overtaxed their psi powers to the point of breaking. They fall into an unresponsive state. It might be a catatonic state, a fugue state where they simply repeat something over and over, or a state where they're unresponsive unless physically touched, at which point they lash out, scream, or cry before lapsing again into unresponsiveness. They may or may not ever recover without extensive psychosurgery.

Madness

The fun part.

  • If a character Snaps, they gain the equivalent of an EP derangement. They've gone one step closer toward the Watts-MacLeod virus taking over completely. A character who loses all Discipline -- the point where they'd become a Nightmare in DRYH -- metamorphoses into an exsurgent and is removed from play.

Mundane Stuff (Discipline Dice)

Everyone in this world has:

  • Mesh inserts. The best smart phone ever x1000 implanted in your head. It's controlled mentally and displays info via augmented reality windows overlaid on your field of vision. It allows you to store data, run apps, and search for/connect to remote devices.
  • A muse. A personal, non-sentient AI assistant who runs in your mesh inserts.
  • A cortical stack. A backup unit for your brain. Implanted in your brain stem, it can be used to bring you back if your current body dies.

For routine use of the above technologies, or for any other mundane ask, PCs use their 3 Discipline dice.

Mind Hacks (Exhaustion & Madness Dice)

All Lost Generation PCs have:

  • A Madness Power, representing a single very powerful psi talent.
    • This power may be a psi sleight taken from EP Core, or it may be adapted from Don't Rest Your Head, or the supplement, Don't Lose Your Mind.
    • If drawing from DRYH/DLYM, players are encouraged to tweak the Madness power description to the EP setting. E.g., the "A is for Ants" Madness power in DLYM, transposed into EP, might summon and control swarms of microbots.
    • When PCs add Madness dice to a roll, they must explain how they're using their psi power to affect the outcome.
  • Minor, subtle psychic powers.
    • None are as spectacular as your Madness power.
    • None have overt, flashy visible effects.
    • Things they do:
      • Augment whatever your PC is best at, as stated in your Exhaustion talent. If you're an awesome hacker, psi makes you even better at it by subtly augmenting your native capabilities.
      • Adjust your body in small ways, making you more physically capable.
      • Augment faculties of reason or intuition (e.g., to sense danger before it happens, or to pull off an insane feat of memory).
      • Make the PC luckier.
      • Optimize the filters of perception to enhance concentration or broaden sensory input.
    • When a PC uses Exhaustion dice, it's assumed that they're calling upon these powers. The player may if they wish describe how they're tweaking their own body, their sensorium, or causality itself to favor them. This description is for flavor (i.e., it explains the game effect rather than adding to it). If a player has current Exhaustion dice, it's assumed they're sustaining whatever effect they created. If they add more Exhaustion dice, this represents either intensifying the effect already in play or calling upon a new one.

In the next few posts, I'll outline a scenario and provide some pre-generated Lost Generation PCs.

P.S. Quick Transhuman Kickstarter update: We hit $50,000 over the weekend! Everyone whose backer levels includes all PDFs gets my scenario, Doctrine. At $55k, Brian Cross writes a mini-supplement about the Argonauts! More details here...