400 pages!

As previously noted, the Eclipse Phase core rulebook clocks in at a hefty 400 pages. That's a lot of book! Given the intricacies of the game, we felt it was necessary to include a solid chunk of text to the setting as well as details and rules for key technologies. Here's a short breakdown on what the book covers, and how many pages are devoted to each subject:

  • Overview: Setting Synopsis, Playing an RPG, Terminology — 10 pages
  • Detailed Setting — 80 pages   (This breaks down into:)
    •      History — 6 pages
    •      Society and Culture — 32 pages
    •      Factions — 16 pages
    •      System Gazeteer —  26 pages
  • Game Mechanics — 16 pages
  • Character Creation — 26 pages
  • Sample Characters — 16 pages
  • Skills — 16 pages
  • Action and Combat — 30 pages
  • Mind Hacks — 18 pages
  • The Mesh: computer systems, online research, hacking, AIs, etc. — 32 pages
  • Accelerated Future: various technologies, such as resleeving, nanofabrication, reputation systems, etc — 28 pages
  • Gear — 56 pages
  • GM Info — 40 pages

Rounding the book out are some tables, a character sheet, references, etc.

The book is over page count from its original specs, but we feel that almost everything in the book is important to the setting and playing the game. It can be hard to imagine or predict how some of the technologies we address will impact human society, for example, so we took a shot at covering that. It can also be a challenge for people to grasp settings that don't have a lot of familiarity, and since Earth is wrecked and off-limits in EP, defining new locales was a critical point. I think we succeeded in reaching our goal of giving players and GMs enough information that they can dive right into the game universe once reading that background.

End of the Week, End of the World 05-22-09

Humanity Plus magazine asks several sci-writers, AI researchers, and other tech-thinkers if a Terminator-style scenario is possible. The results range from interesting to humorous.

Well, if someone built a global computer security system and
intentionally made it highly intelligent, autonomous and creative... so
as to allow it to better combat complex security threats (and
ever-more-intelligent computer worms and viruses) ... well, perhaps so.
It's not beyond the pale. A narrow-AI computer security system wouldn't
spontaneously develop general intelligence, initiative and so forth....
but an AGI computer security system might... and the boundary between
narrow AI and AGI may grow blurry in the next decades...

That's from Ben Goertzel's response, and he essentially nails the idea we had with the TITANs in Eclipse Phase.

In a similar vein, take a look at this site: Preventing Skynet.