State of the World & Posthuman Studios

It's a strange time to write an update. It's a strange time to be.

The state of the world and the state of business is changing quickly. Personally, we are all in official Shelter in Place states or practicing social distancing as much as possible.

Business-wise, we continue to work on Eclipse Phase projects, but the near future of the tabletop game business is murky: major distributors are suspending operations, some printing companies have done the same, conventions have been cancelled, postponed, or are in limbo. Amazon — the world's largest bookstore — is not buying books.

While we all work from home on a regular basis, the pandemic changes things: partners are also working from home, children aren't at school, schedules are disrupted.

Our immediate focus is on finishing ongoing projects and not opening new loops. This includes the remaining rewards and stretch goals from the Eclipse Phase Second Edition Kickstarter project, all of which are in progress.

Eclipse Phase Second Edition Update

This week we updated the Eclipse Phase Second Edition PDFs, and the Character Pack, bringing them in line with the 1.2 errata. Most of the changes from 1.1.1 to 1.2 are minimal, especially on the mechanics level. We needed to complete this errata pass before handing Eclipse Phase Second Edition to our foreign translation partners.

If you've already bought them, the updated files should already be in your DriveThruRPG library!

Supporting Posthuman, Game Stores, Other Publishers

In these uncertain times, if you can do so: direct financial support of your favorite publishers is going to be very important. If you cannot do so financially, please assist in community building:

  • Posting reviews!
  • Running Eclipse Phase online — via Discord, Roll20, Astral Tabletop.
  • Stream on Twitch or post Actual Play podcasts or written summaries of your games.
  • Share the free A Time of Eclipse setting guide with fellow gamers.
  • Share Welcome to Eclipse Phase.

We have opened a public Eclipse Phase / Posthuman Studios Discord, you can join it here for game discussion and community!

Our nascent Patreon will move out of beta status at the end of March — supporting us on Patreon gets you access to extra channels in the Discord, sneak peeks at upcoming projects, playtest material, and more.

Rob's going to be streaming his Nexus 6 DJ set on twitch this Friday night at 10PM CST at https://www.twitch.tv/anarchotech and we've created a Posthuman Studios twitch account for future PS+ related streams!

Getting Eclipse Phase Second Edition

Our partnership with Atlas Games is ongoing, and you can order Eclipse Phase Second Edition (and other books soon!) directly from our online store, fulfilled by Atlas. We've added PDFs and Print + PDF bundles to our online store, which Budget and Support Posthuman options so you can tweak how much you spend on Print + PDF bundles. And we've made gift cards available in a few denominations.

We have temporarily suspended selling merchandise and other items from our online store — those that we would fulfill directly. We'll keep evaluating the viability of resuming those sales/shipments in the coming weeks.

For game stores, several distributors in the USA are stocking Eclipse Phase Second Edition, and we're working on getting more — and international distribution deals — set up. As you can expect, this is slow going with COVID-19 occupying the time and attention of everyone in the fulfillment chain. If your friendly local game store is open, please support them. If they are not open right now and you can do so, please consider buying a gift certificate or contributing to them in some other way.

Future Projects

We will be doing some upcoming projects in print via direct pre-order, where the number of pre-orders helps us determine how large of a print run to make. Digital books will continue as normal, of course!

Stay Safe!

Thank you for all your support over the years. Please stay safe in the upcoming days and weeks, and we'll speak to you again soon!

Adam, Rob, Brian, Davidson

Posthuman Studios

Category: 
EP News

The Router Case Files are online!

Whether you're running Eclipse Phase for the first time or a veteran gamemaster, Router Case Files is your resource for fast plot hooks tailored to this intricate universe. Covering the three core campaign types—Firewall, gatecrashing, and Guanxi criminals—then spanning the solar system to deal with hypercorps, uplifts, media, politics, and more!

Available now on DriveThruRPG, Router Case Files will be available in print as part of the Eclipse Phase Second Edition Gamemaster's Screen in 2020.

PS10002 RouterCaseFiles

Post Gen Con FAQ

Updated Tuesday, September 3rd.

It's the Wednesday after Gen Con; our booth furniture is safely tucked away in our storage unit, we've sluiced off the sweat and grime from teardown and the drive back to Chicago, and we've put some real food into our stomachs and had a couple good night's sleep — the best we've had in weeks. I'm about to hop on the train home to Minneapolis.

Getting Eclipse Phase Second Edition finished and out to backers in digital form, and then in print for Gen Con was a heck of a crunch, and we had to scale back on some plans that were about to happen around the convention.

This means that we've been getting a handful of frequently asked questions over the last few days, so here are answers!:

Q: When can I pre-order a copy of Eclipse Phase Second Edition?

A: BackerKit is open for Pre-Orders. It will remain open until Wednesday, September 4th.

Q: When will the PDF version of EP2 be available?

A: It is now available on DriveThruRPG!

Q: When will Backer/Pre-order copies of EP2 going to ship?

A: Our printer will begin work on the second portion of the first print run in early September, and after those books are printed, they'll go out to our distribution centers and then to backers. That process will vary in time depending on what country you are in and how complex your order is.

We pushed the second portion of the print run back to correct mistakes found in the first release, and to touch up a few things. Very few of these things are mechanics/game-related, but we wanted to do a more thorough job!

Q: When will EP2 be available in game stores?

A: We anticipate mid-November, after all backer/Pre-order copies have shipped.

Q: How about the "Everything Eclipse Phase! USB key?"

A: Now that EP2 is finished, we'll be getting those manufactured and sent out in early October.

Q: What about those t-shirts and Surya pins?

A: We'll have an online pop-up shop for those before the end of September!

Q: What's coming up next?

A: We have some EP2 resources such as the Quick-Start Rules that were created during development that need some updates to bring them in line with the final rules. The third Nano Op: Better on the Inside is available now, and then we'll be moving onto digital stretch goals from the Kickstarter project like NPC File Volume 2 and Your Whispering Muse!

Eclipse Phase Second Edition material in advance!

Eclipse Phase Second Edition is really close to being finished. We're down to some final edits, graphic design tweaks, integrating those last-minute rules corrections, working on cross-references and the index.

The Open Playtest rules are still available, although the playtest itself is over. We'll keep the playtest rules available until the PDF version of EP2 drops! And of course, the Quick-Start Rules are available and they'll be getting an update when the core rulebook is finalized!

We've been releasing some gameplay and setting material in advance of the core rulebook, and we've mentioned it on the Kickstarter page but not over here, so here's a summary!:

Infamy

Eclipse Phase: Infamy — Rob Boyle & Davidson Cole's introductory fiction.

Nano Op: Grinder

Eclipse Phase Nano Op: Grinder — the first in a series of two page mini-scenario/encounters, this one geared towards Firewall characters!

Nano Op: Body Count

Eclipse Phase Nano Op: Body Count — this Nano Op is geared towards Criminal Gaunxi characters, and they start out in the middle of the fire!

Eclipse Phase: Character Pack

Eclipse Phase: Character Pack — All sixteen sample characters, Firewall members, Gatecrashers, and Guanxi Ops (free).

Eclipse Phase Second Edition: Rules Primer

Eclipse Phase Second Edition Rules Primer — The EP2 rules condensed to two pages (free!)

Catching Up: Eclipse Phase first edition Print on Demand

Eclipse Phase fans,

We're overdue to talk about a lot of different things—a lot of this stuff has been mentioned in Kickstarter backer updates or our mailing list but hasn't been relayed here. So here's the first in a series of posts to catch you up on what we've been doing lately, starting with Print on Demand first edition titles!

First up, a bit of philosophy:

And a bit of history:

When we started publishing Eclipse Phase Print on Demand was around but it wasn't integrated with DriveThruRPG, and it was generally more expensive than it is now. Thus we didn't go through the effort of making print versions of our small page count titles available via POD, and our large titles had full offset print runs — and in some cases, reprints! Hell yeah!

It's 10 years later and with Eclipse Phase Second Edition on the horizon, we're also working on making sure that every First Edition title is available via Print on Demand in addition to digitally.

Now, The Present

We started in September with the First Edition Gamemaster's Screen (cardstock pages designed to work with Hammerdog's World's Greatest GM Screen), and followed up in October and November with Sunward: The Inner System and Rimward: The Outer System.

Rimward cover

We took December off from Print on Demand releases, and landed two in January, the adventures Bump in the Night and Continuity.

Continuity cover

Then in February we released a A Time of Eclipse—all of the source material from Eclipse Phase first edition in a softcover sourcebook.

A Time of Eclipse cover

Bundles

We also maintain bundles of Eclipse Phase: Everything Electronic & POD Books and Eclipse Phase: All POD Books — these bundles give you everything that's available, and the price is pro-rated so if you've already bought some of them, you only pay for what you don't have ... and everything in the bundle is discounted!

The Future!

Morph Recognition Guide, X-Risks, Ego Hunter, and other first edition titles are all in the queue for conversion, roughly one a month until they're all available!

Category: 
Releases