Eclipse Phase: The Roleplaying Game of Transhuman Conspiracy and Horror (Eclipse Phase 1st Edition)

Part of me loves the hell out of Eclipse Phase-the setting is freaking amazing transhumanist post-apocalyptic existential horror cyberpunk.

On the other hand, I have some problems. The d100 system is… workable, I guess, but the skill list is not particularly inspired, which is a problem given that you have to spend 700 of 1000 character points on it.

For RPGs, a big question is always “what do you do?” Kill monsters and get treasure; lounge around being depressed and drinking blood, get screwed over by some corporate Mr. Smith douchehole. In Eclipse Phase, the default setting has you as agents of Firewall, a distributed intelligence agency/conspiracy that preserves transhumanity from existential threats. While I haven’t read the GM guide, Firewall appears to send poorly equipped agents on suicide missions. Not much fun there.

A second question is the materiality of the setting, and this is another area where Eclipse Phase falls short. Okay, minds are software, bodies can be bought off the rack, and everybody lives off of nanoreplicators in space, but I think there should be a more serious engagement with the value of information vs kilowatts and reaction mass, the dangers of high-powered weapons in glorified tincans, and how polities fragment when point-to-point travel takes months, and low bandwidth communication takes hours. The Solar System is big.

That said, kickass setting in a lot of ways, great presentation, and the book is free. What do you have to lose?