Sidetracks - EP via G+ Huddle

In the between sessions, which is taking a long time to get back on track, I decided to run an impromptu game via  Google+ Huddle.

Impromptu in that he wasn't expecting to play in a play-by-post game *at all*.

The hacker, Haze, (my co-gm and best friend) gets a vr message from an old colleague.  He's in deep shit with a group of explorers he "liberated" data from.He can't trust anyone with with the data....especially him! He needs help hiding out, and as Haze has nearly shaken off his past identity.  He promises a cut of the action if he survives to release the data en masse.

Seven hours passed. In game and out.  At this point he did not respond to the hook above.

Haze's muse was unable to find his friend, D33p-6 on the mesh.  All of his haunts are deleted and traces of him are fragmented at best.  Haze receives an encrypted message.

Another three hours pass (in and out of game, with no response), and Haze's mesh hotspots are suffering from unknown disruptions.

Suddenly, one of his swarmbots drops to the ground.  His personal network has exercised emergency protocols and disconnected him from the mesh, crew, and everything and everyone.

As he frantically runs massive antiviral software, and announcement over the ships coms.

"We're looking for Haze.  He has something of ours.  Failure to relinquish the in-tact article we seek or Haze himself will cause unnecessary violence."

12 more hours pass, and the Krik's utility morphs are reported as "rogue occupied".

Haze finally manages to jack out from his latest pirated Hypr0n (aka HyperPorn to the 11337erates) and finally begins to assess the situation.  He knows D33p-6 and his data are the kind of trouble he should avoid.  He also knows he's a shameless attention whore and quickly realizes there is no fighting his nature.  Haze old school hacks and attaches himself to the cockpit.  He also advises, over the P.A. that it would be a good call for Krik to shut down the rogue morphs and ignore the bounty request.

He traces the signal to the com array, but he's locked out.  The signal is identified as being commonly used in manual labor pods.

Haze interferes with the signal, and funnels the feeds into a VR model.  He studies it, and regains control of the morphs and the ship.  He also is able to scan for the source of the signal to a small outpost near a newly discovered Pandora gate near Europa.  It's an investigation he's becoming very anxious about.

They hit base near the gate, and Haze starts to pick up on the local com chatter.  As he starts mining or data, he discovers that a cyborg named Leo runs the show there.  Reports of having double dealers drawn and quartered are....numerous.  And graphic.

They dock and get a cold greeting from Leo, who does not trifle with Haze's slightly dodgy demeanor and foot and mouth syndrome.

As they walk down a crowded corridor, a worker pod morph bumps into them.  The stranger points with his eyes that he placed a data chip in his hand and walks off nonchalantly.

Haze digs for info on the morph, to discover that it is registered to a local construction company, with no known activity outside of work zones.  The chip is filled mainly with data about the Gate, and geological and geo-data on the moon on the other side of it.  Also upon it is the gift of a pass-code for superuser access to the gate site. 

"Haze, many Bothans died to obtain this information. D33p-6"

Haze devised a plan to have himself and Krik re-sleeve into some worker pods and take a look around.  He sends his muse to scour the mesh for info on the company and the gate in general.

The muse dug up data for a constrution company called Moresan, which has the tiniest connection to a  company called Monolith, that operates out of the Europan sectors.  Just like most construction sites, it's labor and admin functions are completely bottom dollar.  No news of incidents or trouble.  Haze's Muse, which looks like Ms. Pacman, also finds a statistal growth in xeno-related  hirings.

Krik answers after seeing the data, "Fine, but let's not do this like we're fucking new, alright?"

They go back to the ship for planning and rest.  Haze's research bring up a color code system that they can easily tell which morph should be in a certain area.  He was able to get access to code black relatively easily, but codes grey and white are on premises only for upload.  White is the code they need to get close to the gate.

Freelancers - New Faces, New Mission

For the next session, the experiment in co-GMing continues.  We have one player creating a new pc, swapping out his pre-made sample pc.  Also on board is a new player that doesn't really know about the setting, but is keen to play and learn the setting via game-play.  We generated a character for her, but she wouldn't need anything immediately.

Essentially the same crew for the jaunt to Mars last session.  The swapped pc is more muscle, so that will definitely lends itself to a more rough and tumble game.  

The crew assembles for their new orders from Firewall.  They have intel on a morph designed to lock-in an ego....indefinitely.  Also, they have to find a specific ego they believe to be in the possession of a group that may sell this ego to the highest bidder..  They would like this tech...if it exists.  The only lead is on a small station on the fringes.  Time passes and they make their way through the landing dock of the station.  

They find their prey fairly easily, holed up in a small block of units used for lab work.  The hacker disables and runs interference, while the big guns run in and catch the flunkies off guard.  They see the operation these guys were into was an ego harvesting venture, in that they find ships that were left derelict or lost during the escape from the Fall.  The person that was being poached wakes up.  It's the new player, completely blank from disorientation and shock, stuck into a cheap pod morph.

"What's the last thing I remember?"

"Getting kissed by a man while the world explodes in fire."

I think that intrigued her to play more.

The team goes through the captured manifest and finds the ego in question and make their way back to the ship.  The hacker takes a slight detour and obtains another morph for the new new recruit.  She goes through her first morph swap with uncertainty, but with no adverse effects.  They ditch the morph, board the ship, and embark to the next destination.

The mark has a small vault that's not heavily fortified, but it will require some finesse to make sure they can find and acquire the lockdown morph.  They evade with meager security forces easily, as the sap that took possession of the merch thought a remote location would be defense enough.

Without fail, the group finds the vault.  It's packed with all kinds of anomalous morphs.  This collector got taken to the tune of multiple morphs and a small cache of weapons and tech. 

The game wrapped up quite well, with everyone seeming to want to play again.  Slowly introducing ideas like body-swapping, is a critical one.  I plan on using these kind of situations to highlight those bits and bobs that make Eclipse Phase such a rich ground for role-playing and stories.  Since my group isn't reading over a lot of the books, I have the means to use that to my advantage and blow their minds....before they upload into a new morph.

Freelancers - Proto-game

The first game.  It's a fairly daunting task to introduce a new setting and system to a group of friends.  My best friend and I chit-chatted about Eclipse Phase, and I had a jones to run it.  I asked for his help, since I've run far less games than he has.  I suggested we co-run a session or two just to get a feel for the system.  We didn't really come up with a means for switching roles in the game, but we've known each other for about two decades, so I was completely confident that would be able to rotate as the story demanded.  We did go over the basics of the plot, so we'll just wing it after that.  Who doesn't love surprises? 


A couple of us went through character creation, which honestly was a bit rough for the first go around.  The amount of customization is awesome, but the price for that power is a lot of time on the front end of it.  Since this was taking up valuable game time, I opted for a couple of players to play some of the sample characters.


I started the game with their contact meeting them in a VR space, sending them to Mars to confiscate some information that that was boosted from a Firewall cell, and could threaten the identity of agents.  I'm a big believer in groups not starting the game fully formed, so I had them meet their Martian contact, which was my PC.  After the party has completed its formation, they make their way to the secluded bunker.  When my character is in play, The co-GM takes over without missing a beat.


Combat took some getting used to, but we found our way through it.  Systems were hacked, faceless goons were defeated, and the parcel returned to the mentioned drop zone.  This session was not really supposed to be big on plot, but more to showcase a new kind of game.


Knocking around it, Eclipse Phase has a lot of elements to it to explore.  With the system more or less tackled, I could now use the next game to introduce some of more mind-blowing aspects of the setting, like the separation of morph and ego, the aftermath of the Fall, and the ubiquity of the mesh and one's reputation.