Things have been very busy since we launched the Transhuman Kickstarter, and keeping all aspects of our social media / websites / the Kickstarter itself is a big task. Here's a summary of what's happened so far!

We launched the Transhuman Kickstarter late on Tuesday night, and by noon on Wednesday we had already reached our initial funding goal -- all before some fans had even heard of the project!

By Wednesday afternoon, it was clear that the first stretch goal was going to be unlocked that day, and it was! When we reached $20,000 in pledges we pledged in return to add 8 sample characters to Transhuman, and we unveiled the third stretch goal in the campaign: at $30,000, we'll give all the freelancers (authors, editors, artists -- but not Posthuman owners) a 15% raise for their Transhuman pay!

And by early Thursday afternoon, the second stretch goal was unlocked, adding a further 8 pages of sample characters to Transhuman, for a total of 16. At that point we debuted our fourth stretch goal -- the Morph Recognition Guide, which will be unlocked at $40,000!

We have all the details in our third update here, but in short, the Morph Recognition Guide will include artwork for many morphs that we have yet to illustrate, and have statistics and other information about them. The Morph Recognition Guide isn't part of Transhuman itself; it's a distinct PDF/Print-on-Demand book that will aim to release in November -- if we hit that stretch goal!

We're also adding some new backer levels on Friday the 26th of April at 4PM Eastern Time, and we have added a $10 "Welcome to Eclipse Phase" backer level already, for science-fiction fans who are interested in Eclipse Phase but haven't checked it out yet. The rewards for that level include a PDF copy of the core Eclipse Phase rulebook and four pieces of fiction in PDF/ePub format!

The support for the Transhuman Kickstarter has been overwhelming and awesome, and we can't thank you enough. But we still have goals we want to hit and things to unlock, so we're going to need to ask for more help! Please keep sharing the campaign, liking our posts on Facebook, hitting that +1 button on Google Plus, retweeting things, emailing your friends about it, and requesting that your local game store carry Eclipse Phase books!

How far can we go? We won't know until we're there!

The Kickstarter campaign for Transhuman has launched!

We are hard at work on Transhuman, the Player's Guide for Eclipse Phase. Transhuman is a player's handbook for Eclipse Phase, full of optional and additional rules and advice. Most importantly, It features two new alternative and simplified character generation systems for Eclipse Phase. One of these uses pre-created packages to build characters, and the other builds off that system but uses random elements to add twists. These systems are designed to make it quick and easy to create a new character or for gamemasters to whip up NPCs as needed.

Transhuman covers different types of Eclipse Phase characters in detail: AGIs, asyncs, infomorphs, uplifts, infugees, and indentures. In addition to roleplaying advice and optional rules for these specific character types, other elements of the game that affect characters such as insanity, death and memory loss, psychosurgery, nanofabrication, and reputation are explored.

The final section goes in depth on morphs. It starts with rules for creating your own morphs and then goes on to cover some brand new morphs to Eclipse Phase. It closes with a section on exotic and specialized morphs, such as flexbots, swarmanoids, aquatic morphs, and using bots, vehicles, habitats, and other non-traditional constructs as morphs.

We have already publicly released some of the material as part of the free Transhuman Open Playtest, and more is coming soon.

We have a base goal of $14,000 for this Kickstarter project, and the funding period runs until Wednesday, May 22nd. We are funding this project through Kickstarter to help us grow our company this year -- we are releasing our first card game, Shinobi Clans, this year, and we're also reprinting Eclipse Phase titles as a long-term investment in the game line. We've been steadily setting money aside to print Shinobi Clans and Transhuman and those titles are on schedule. However, a successful Kickstarter campaign will give us some breathing room and help us make Transhuman an even better book!

There are some great rewards for backers, including copies of Transhuman and other Eclipse Phase titles, art in Transhuman based on you or your character, online and in-person games with the creators, and even the chance to have us create a small Eclipse Phase sourcebook or adventure customized for you and your gaming group!

Transhuman will be 176-200 pages and available as a full-color hardcover book through fine gaming stores. Like our previous Eclipse Phase titles, it will be published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. We estimate that Transhuman, once available in stores, will cost $45 in print and $10 for the PDF.

Thanks for checking out our Transhuman Kickstarter, and we look forward to your support!

We have two major announcements regarding Transhuman, our upcoming Player's Guide for Eclipse Phase. First off, we had previously said that Transhuman material will be subject to an open playtest, and that open playtest starts today!

We have created the Transhuman Playtest section on our forums, and the first material available for playtesting -- part of the Traits chapter -- is already posted! Everyone is free to participate in the playtest, all it takes is an account on our forums and some of your time and effort towards polishing Transhuman!

Each chapter also has specific questions from us. Please read the chapter with the eye towards answering those questions. There are two threads in the Transhuman Playtest Forum for each chapter -- one for answering those questions, and another for all other discussion about that chapter.

Beyond that, we are announcing that we will be using Kickstarter to fund the production of Transhuman. Our Kickstarter campaign will go live early in April, and we have some great rewards lined up to help make Transhuman a smash success. We'll be posting more news about it very soon!