Eclipse Phase in Cataclysm

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Eclipse Phase is a transhuman post-apocalypse creative commons tabletop RPG game.

Soyweiser suggested I post some information from it that I think would fit into Cataclysm. Keep in mind the setting in EP is that of super intelligent seed AIs run amok. So it’s possible some/most of the X-Threats will not fit well in the setting.

[size=14pt]X-Threats (aka Monsters)[/size]
Nanoswarms
Holy crap these things are scary, I not sure I want to suggest them, since they are that scary. If you meet one you are near doomed.
Consisting of millions of microscopic robots, these will of course be treated as a swarm (a single entity)
Immune to guns, and melee. Not just a little immune, more or less completely immune. Mostly immune to cars as well.

Best way to handle them is with EMP grenades (instant death for them), normal explosives (damage them in a shockwave), or area attacks (things like flamethrowers). A short range radio jammer would work too. Pretty much everything else will not work, at all. EVER.

These things usually travel in large groups however (on Earth anyway).

Headhunter Robots
These robots fly around and their only purpose is to rip off your head. In EP it is so i can upload your mind to the big bad TITANS. But in Cataclysm I am sure there are other uses. Luckily for you, their purpose isn’t just to kill you, but to take your head. So no bullets. So in Cataclysm these would likely would just be like huge manhacks. Except they first grab you then proceed to attempt to remove your head. Fun.

Unfortunately just like nanoswarms they travel in packs.

Exsurgents
Basically these are zombie, cept instead of undead they are virus infected. They still eat, sleep, and so on. You can even hold a conversation with one if you wanted to. Mind you, it probably doesn’t have much to say to a lowly meat worm such as yourself.

Reapers
These are synths in EP, but they fit here, they are basically slim robots that hold all countless number of melee death weapons. Including a scythe. Most likely a military robot if put into Cataclysm. Probably a hunter killer of sorts (but more silent and sneaky).

The Factors
The only alien in EP (that we know of for sure anyway), basically giant slime molds that trick and trap to eat you. Basically slimes, but smarter. Not really applicable to Cataclysm though (their basically a slime batman, plans within plans).

[size=14pt]Technology[/size]
Ah lovely lovely technology, am I right?

Personal Augmentation (aka Bionics)
Going to try avoid mentioning most stuff that Cataclysm has something equivalent to, or bionics I deem pointless for Cataclysm (like a cortical stack). EP doesn’t really have a augmentation power system like cataclysm, so these are all low to no power usage. But I expect that would change for Cataclysm since there is some balance needed.

Bioware
These are all bioware in EP, meaning they generally work by biological engineered methods.

Bioweave Armor We already have something like it, “Subdermal Carbon Filament”, but Bioweave sounds cooler. It comes in several flavors, lighter sutff and the heavier stuff.
Circadian Regulation Only need 2 hours of sleep.
Clean Metabolism Less likely to get infections and other diseases through bio engineering.
Emotional Dampers Activated, greatly reduces moral penalties (like from killing children or eating stuff you don’t like).
Endocrine Control Activated, reduced appetite, pain and moral penalties. Really expensive. Cancels out truth-teller and similar.
Enhanced Pheromones Activated, benefits when working with NPCs.
Gills Lets you breathe underwater. Doesn’t work in things like sewage of course.
Neurachem Activated, speed boost to everything.
Poison Gland Allows you to poison things.
Skin Pocket Kind of like Internal Storage, bit different in how it works. Capable of holding small items.
Temperature Tolerance -30 C to 60 C without discomfort.

Cyberware
More like the Cataclysm stuff we have now. Most of the ones in the book already have a Cataclysm equivalent.

Oxygen Reserve A limited amount of time underwater or in smoke.

Nanoware
Nanomachines in our body. A lot of these are not really relevant to Cataclysm.

Skillware Provides a boost to a certain skill.

Armor
Just F.Y.I. Spider silk beats the pants off Kevlar.

Armor Clothing Normal clothing with organic weave armor (synthetic spider silk or similar). No real protection against bashing.
Crash Suit Like armor clothing, but can be activated to provide more protection (but with more encumbrance), probably would need to be powered by a UPS.
Riot Shield Not applicable till we have dual wielding.
Second Skin Basically like undergarments we have now, but armored. Minimal protection, but more then current undergarments. No real protection against bashing.
Smart Skin Nanofluid, like a Crash Suit, it is powered by UPS, but layers like Second Skin. No real protection against bashing.
Spray Armor Yeah, they have spray armor in EP.

Armor Mods
EP has armor mods.

Ablative Patches Slap on patches to protect vital areas. Mainly reduces damage from explosives and energy weapons.
Chameleon Coating Armor based cloak! Really varies based on coverage I would think.
Immunogenic System Adds a nanobot swam to protect from poison, toxins and so forth.
Fireproofing Provides protection from fire.
Lotus Coating Makes clothing repel water.
Offensive Armor Armor with shockers.
Reactive Coating More armor, but uses UPS power.
Refractive Glazing Protects from lasers.
Self-Healing Nano-swarm that repairs damage.
Shock Proof Protection from shock (electric discharge).
Thermal Dampening Protection form thermal sensors…? I guess cloak, but against only robots, or other creatures that see infrared.

And more to come. Want to submit this before Fate hits me with a power outage or something.

2

I’ve read Eclipse Phase, it wasn’t very interesting and didn’t really come up with very many good ideas, but that’s probably not the topic of this thread.

Monsters:
-Nanoswarms: I don’t like monsters that have one particular weakness and are completely invincible otherwise. Cataclysm is primarily a sandbox game, and to limit the player to one particular method of attack doesn’t feel like it fits the theme of the game. Plus I don’t think technology has developed to that point in the Cata universe.

-Headhunters: Maybe? I don’t see much of an in-game justification for making them, but a melee robot that primarily targets the head could have some merit.

-Exsurgents, Factors: Don’t fit the Cata lore.

-Reapers: There’s not much of a reason to create robots limited mostly to melee weapons, and they don’t really fit the style of the other robots. You could probably make a case for a modified farmer robot, maybe?

Technology:

-Clean Metabolism, Temperature Tolerance, Skin Pocket, Bioweave armour: Like you mentioned, redundant.

-Circadian Regulation, Emotional Dampers, Endocrine Control, Neurachem, Oxygen Reserve: Maybe? Not inherently terrible ideas.

-Gills, Poison Gland: Sort of overlaps with some mutations, don’t know how the devs feel about that. Personally I consider it redundant.

-Skillware: I don’t think Cata technology has developed up to that point.

Armour:

-Armoured clothing, second skin: reinforced clothing is already a thing, probably redundant.

-Crash suit: You’ll probably have to elaborate more on how that works, but I doubt Cata technology has advanced that far. The bulky, heavy power armour appears to be the limit of armour development.

-Smart skin, spray armour: Don’t think Cata technology has developed anything like that either.

Armour mods:

-Not really applicable in this game, may consider the suggestions when it’s implemented.

Overall these aren’t very interesting or applicable suggestions, if someone likes them they could make an Eclipse Phase mod or something, but as it stands very few of these would make sense or fit the current setting, and any attempt to cram them into the base game would be clumsy and ill-founded.

3

Forgot to mention that you can outrun nanoswarms, they just usually tend to sneak up on you because they are hard to see.

Also the attitude, not to much appreciated. I am only mentioning these because it was suggested I do so. Otherwise I would likely never have posted or suggested these.

4

Still have that problem of having only one weakness, though. In a game where everything else can be destroyed with enough conventional weaponry, they just feel out of place. Also Cata tech hasn’t advanced far enough.

And a bad idea someone went out of their way to suggest is still a bad idea.

5

Well, burning nanoswarms or attacking with powrful weapons could work. I’d suggest to make them appear in labs only, in the deeper floors. It would be like seeing a Jabby in the wilderness. It would make labs even more dangerous, wich i see awesome.

6

Please ignore Inadequate, he’s our resident party pooper. While he probably considers himself a critic, a true critic’s purpose is to help improve something instead of tearing it down. Heckler is a more apt description of Inadequate.

7

His job as a critic is very Inadequate. HAR HAR HAR. Anyway these sound very good, especially the CBM’s. And yes some of the stuff could be renamed and some of the “races” can just be muties. I do really like that less sleep CBM though, I would go out of my way to find it.

8

Some ideas in OP are worth looking into - I mean new CBMs and armor mods.

9

I dont know what people think less sleep is advantageous, a bionic that reduces your need for sleep in half also duplicates the amount of time that you’ll have to wait before your wounds heal naturally.

10

I think a few of the armor mods and ‘bionic’ things which don’t lean so heavily towards fantasy-tech might be the sort of stuff we could use as inspiration for CBMs, but I’m not really feeling the robot monster critters. Bear in mind that the robots in C:DDA which are left wandering the world are all things that served a purpose prior to the end of the world; they kept law and order or cleaned up toxic waste. There’s just not much of a market in a sensible pre-cataclysmic world for robots whose stated purpose of function is to tear people’s heads off and throw them in the dumpster.

If you don’t want criticism for posting ideas (which may or may not fit with C:DDA’s world due to being lifted from an extant IP), then don’t post them in the first place. You may not like everyone’s opinion of what you post, but you invite critique by posting in the first place.

11

I agree.

Too far.

12

Most of this is just stuff pulled right from the EP Core Rulebook. sometimes adjusted to fit into Cataclysm better (such as the mentioned UPS stuff, a UPS doesn’t exist in EP).

I’ll get to the weapons later and then see about tackling the other rulebooks.

13

Uh, Chase?

I’ve got a pile of GURPS books to my right (and a few to my left!) as I type this, but putting 'em in wholesale seems like a bad idea. Atomic Horror, Bio-Tech, Martial Arts, Robots, High/Ultra-Tech, etc all are relevant to Cata, and I frequently check 'em for reference, but copying stuff out ain’t all that great. Sorry.

OK, yeah, the nanoswarm might fly as a Lab finale (with EMP gear accessible but tough to get at, sort of a HL-style set piece), and the bladebot could work as Inadequate suggested (make it a combine harvester and set it rogue on the occasional farm).

The augs: we have a UBA aug already and if sewage got deep enough to go under, it’d work fine there. I can accept augs that would fight disease and infection (we have the anti-disease one already, and IMO medical nano ought to fix infection if it doesn’t already). Appetite is a Problem because actual need-for-food and Hunger are the same thing in DDA, so tech that lets you believe you’re not hungry actually WOULD keep you fed. Which… it really shouldn’t.

Rest of 'em, meh, no real need or opposition. We’ve got internal storage already.

Armor: we have an offensive-defense aug, so I guess it could be crafted into armor if someone wants to. That’ll add more recipes or require more infrastructure work, FWIW. Rest of it gets the Meh.

14

Well people can pick and choose if they want. I am not offering to implement these. I am placing them up as ideas, for those who don’t want to read through the books.

15

Appetite could be implemented by simply suppressing the speed penalties derived from hunger/thirst while active. This would be very useful to a starving player without affecting the long-term need for food/water.

16

Well, I would have assumed the reaction to this would have gone better. Seems I’m one of the few people who likes the “future!” aspect of cataclysm.

Headhunter robots could be modified into something else, a misguided science experiment by one of the labs. A robot that tries to either remove goo infested flesh, or salvage the not goo infested flesh, either way a flying robot that hunts for Z’s, and other live things to gut them. Have them attack till a certain reservoir is filled and then they fly off (probably to go to a sacrophagus or a toxic waste dump or something). So they grab you, cut pieces out of you (perhaps enough to kill you) and fly off.

The exsurgents could be implemented in labs like some sort of CBM super soldier gone mad. Say, a wounded soldier is used as an experimental test subject, implanted with all kinds of badly working CBM’s that interact in annoying ways, talk to him (Basic AI) and the world also went to shit. Then, in the ruins of the lab from which you cannot escape due to the turrets at the door, you read that you are infected with some sort of goo that ruined the world. Enough to drive most people mad. And then you look in the mirror and see: http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/336/2/6/continuity_by_freshpaint-d343eq6.jpg or http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/233306/Team_by_sttheo.jpg (not the middle one). And your left arm keeps talking to you about a lost connection!

Thanks for taking the time to type it up Chase.

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Yeah I also like many of these existing ideas that we can take and change to fit the cataclysm.

Because FUN.
Robot farmer FUN.
Nano swarm lab finale FUN.
Robot limb dismember-er in a lab FUN.

18

I thought you literally meant an eclipse in Cataclysm. You go outside when it should be daytime, and it’s as dark as night…

Eerie. But you started talking about DnD, three and three, and then everything just degenerated into word salad that I could not palate.

19

That’s a good idea. Or we could sneak a look at Cata 2 - its treatment of hunger resembles Unreal World.

20

For appetite/hunger (and thirst/hydration + tiredness/rest) we have plans to eventually split them into two categories, one which determine what your body actually is and the other determines what you feel (and over time moves towards the real one). Generally penalties would be determined by the one that you feel until you reach the more serious ends of dehydration/starvation/exhaustion at which point your body starts to feel real physical effects.

As for the OP I find the biggest problem it suffers from is idea overload, i.e. too many ideas in the same post. There are definitely some good ideas in there, but there are a fair amount of ones that I would heavily oppose too, making it difficult to discuss them due to the sheer number.