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''Your body is a shell. Change it.''
''Death is a disease. Cure it.''
''Extinction is approaching. '''Fight it.''''' }}
'''''Eclipse Phase''''' is a tabletop roleplaying game originally published in 2009.
Humanity stood on the cusp of a new age, with accelerated technological growth converging toward a singularity point, promising an undreamt-of future. Despite the ecopocalypse and social upheavals on Earth, humanity had conquered the solar system and partially terraformed Mars. Advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science transformed our lives. Everyone was wirelessly networked with the world around them, [[A Is]] processed vast amounts of information, and nano-fabrication enables people to print complex devices on the molecular level at home. Biotechnology allowed people to genefix, enhance, and clone their bodies, while others pursued body modifications to adapt to new environments or make themselves into something no longer quite human. People's minds and memories could be digitized, uploaded, transferred over long distances, and downloaded into new bodies (biological or synthetic). Death had been defeated... for those who can afford it.
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In the aftermath of the Fall, transhumanity lives on, divided into a patchwork of hypercorp combines, survivalist stations, transhuman faction species, and city-state habitats. Under the oppressive police states of immortal inner-system oligarchies, advanced technologies remain highly restricted, and refugee infomorphs are held in virtual slavery or resleeved in robotic bodies and forced into indentured labor. In the outer system, rebel transhuman scientists and techno-anarchists struggle to maintain a new society?from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. And on the fringes and in the niches lurk networked tribes of political extremists, religious fanatics, criminal entrepeneurs, and bizarre posthumans, among other, stranger, and more alien things ...
Though most claim the Fall was carefully orchestrated by the out-of-control TITANS, others whisper that the driving powers behind the wars—both AI and transhuman—were infected by a mutating virus with multiple infection vectors—biological, information, nano—dubbed the Exsurgent virus. Whatever its source, this virus has been known to sometimes transform its victims into something unexplainable ... something monstrous and reality-altering. Whatever the truth, the remnants of the TITANS and this virus were left to the desolated ruins or driven to the edges of the system, where they remain hidden away in dark corners, quietly waiting to infect the minds of the scavengers and explorers who find them ...
This game is brought to you by Posthuman Studios. The three editors/writers/founders buy into some of the post-classical economic thinking seen in the setting; books are published under the [[Creative Commons]]
So far,{{when}} they have released the following:▼
▲This game is brought to you by Posthuman Studios. The three editors/writers/founders buy into some of the post-classical economic thinking seen in the setting; books are published under the [[Creative Commons]] license, and their website's forum is used as a hive mind to collect ideas and features to be used in the book.
* ''Eclipse Phase'': The core rulebook, with [[Loads and Loads of Rules]]▼
* ''Sunward'': A splatbook concerning the inner solar system▼
* ''Gatecrashing'': A splatbook which covers the use of the [[Portal Network|Pandora Gates]], sending expeditions beyond gates, and several sample Exoplanet Habitats▼
* ''Panopticon'': A splatbook combining the topics of [[Surveillance as the Plot Demands|surveillance]], [[Uplifted Animal|uplifts]], and [[Space Station|space habitats]].▼
▲So far, they have released the following:
▲* Eclipse Phase: The core rulebook, with [[Loads and Loads of Rules]]
▲* Sunward: A splatbook concerning the inner solar system
▲* Gatecrashing: A splatbook which covers the use of the [[Portal Network|Pandora Gates]], sending expeditions beyond gates, and several sample Exoplanet Habitats
▲* Panopticon: A splatbook combining the topics of [[Surveillance as the Plot Demands|surveillance]], [[Uplifted Animal|uplifts]], and [[Space Station|space habitats]].
----▼
▲----
{{tropelist}}
* [[After the End]]: 10 years after, to be exact.
* [[
** And, on the other side of the coin {{spoiler|The Prometheans.}}
** It's mentioned that playable AIs are engineered without the limitless potential of the early designs, to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
* [[Alien Geometries]]: The Pandora Gates. No one knows how they work, but that doesn't stop the various corporation from [[Tempting Fate|constantly sending people in.]] It is stated that the bizarre geometries of said gates might cause dizziness or nausea in people, and that some of the gates' borders are encased with normal structures to keep it looking safe.
* [[Alien Kudzu]]: The blue forest on the exoplanet Bluewood is a relatively harmless
* [[The Alliance]]: The Autonomist Alliance and others.
* [[All Planets Are Earthlike]]: Averted; Earth-like planets are very rare.
* [[Alternative Calendar]]: All dates are given in terms of BF (Before the Fall) and AF (After the Fall), in order to maintain the setting as being [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] without falling into [[Exty Years From Now]].
** Also, given the different rotational and revolutionary speeds of planets, calendars are different on a month-by-month basis. A detailed description of Mars' 668-day year is given.
* [[Amazon Brigade]]: Furies are genetically engineered [[Super Soldiers]] (well, bodies for supersoldiers, anyway). It was discovered that their brains being designed for combat made them all overly aggressive and wild, so to balance these tendencies they are only produced as biologically female. In a brilliant PR move, the company producing them decided to turn a minor inconvenience into a marketing point by making the Furies as beautiful and sexy as possible without harming their combat capabilities...
** Actually the furies only tend to be biologically female but are not always. The book entry mentions the use of gene sequences promoting co-operation and pack mentalities to counteract hot heads.
** 'Fury morphs tend to be female' is a thing that later supplements are getting away from, going back to a more even gender distribution. Justified in-setting as having finally worked out the bugs in the design.
* [[Ancient Conspiracy]]: Millions (possibly billions) of years old.
* [[And I Must Scream]]: All sorts of chilling stuff can happen to you if your Ego (ie, your conciousness) ends up in the wrong hands. For example the Ultimates are rumored to download indentured infomorphs into deaf, visually limited flats with no AR implants.
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* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: The Factors and their goals are almost incomprehensible to transhumanity. Certain groups of Transhumanity are also starting to go this way.
** {{spoiler|The ETI and the Exsurgent virus, whose agendas are completely unknown and alien to us humans, but so far seem quite evil. May even dip into [[Omniscient Morality License]] territory, depending on how the GM interprets their motives.}}
* [[Body Backup Drive]]: Borrows the cortical stack concept from ''[[Altered Carbon]]'' and externally stored "backups" are part of most insurance policies (instead of being exclusive to the wealthy as in ''Carbon'').
* [[Body Horror]]: What some strains of the Exsurgent virus do to you.
** [[Mind Rape]]: What ''all'' strains of the Exsurgent virus do to you.
* [[Body Surf]]: Common and relatively safe, not to mention being the most efficient method of traveling between habitats and planets.
* [[Brain-Computer Interface]]: The Basic Mesh Inserts that come standard with most morphs.
* [[Brain Uploading]]: Near-omnipresent in the setting. Leads to [[Staying Alive|functional immortality]] when combined with [[Body Surf
* [[Brown Note]]: Basilisk hacks, the Exsurgent virus variant that uses sensory input to infect its victims.
* [[Casual Interstellar Travel]]: Averted; egocasting is much more preferred in both cost and time efficiency.
* [[Cloning Blues]]: Clones have to be grown and are not instantly the age of the original (an aversion of the cliche "instant clone"), but modern age acceleration systems reduce what would require 20 years to a mere 3 (which almost makes it played straight). In most cases, they are mindless bodies intended to be used as spares by the original (another aversion from the cliche "same mind"), but a person's mind could theoretically be forked and placed in the new body, causing two of the same person to exist (which plays it straight). Finally, forks generally have far less rights, and are treated as lesser beings, by most legal entities (playing the trope straight).
** So basically it's a [[Zig-Zagging Trope]]?
** Project Futura tried to accelerate the growth of its clones' minds (by time dilation and virtual reality) to replace the [[Depopulation Bomb|population lost]] during the Fall, but accidents happened and the project was called off, leaving a bunch of [[Creepy Child|specimens]] with mental problems.
* [[Cool Gate]]: The Pandora Gates.
* [[Corrupted Data]]: Something like this can theoretically happen to saved backups. It gets a lot more corrupt when [[The Virus|the Exsurgent virus]] gets involved.
* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: The Plantery Consortium.
* [[Cosmic Horror Story]] [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE!]]: More optimistic than others, but really, that isn't saying much.
** [[Lovecraft Lite]]: ''Extinction is approaching.'' '''''Fight it.'''''
* [[Cult Colony]]: A number of habitats, both of the "religious retreat from the start" variety and the "developed into a
* [[Cult of Personality]]: Some of the habitats, as noted above.{{context}}
* [[Death Is Cheap|Death Is Expensive]]: Thanks to mental uploading, personality backups, and cortical stacks, most people are able to simply "resleeve" if their body is killed. However, there are costs involved (both mental/spiritual and economic), and with so many indentured infomorphs waiting to be resleeved, bodies are a moderately scarce and valuable commodity.
* [[Death Is Not Permanent]]: A fundamental conceit of the setting.
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* [[Empathy Pet]]: Somewhere between this and [[Imaginary Friend]], muses are AI programs granted to virtually all children as an assistant intended to stay with them for the rest of their lives. Their personalities change to best suit their owner's desires, and they do many menial tasks for them... all while existing inside their owner's mesh inserts.
* [[The End of the World as We Know It]]: Also known as "The Fall". The Earth was completely decimated 10 years before the start of the setting, leaving killsats, nanobot swarms and head-hunting bugs to greet anyone who is <s>stupid</s> <s>insane</s> brave enough to go back.
* [[Everything Is an iPod In The Future]]: Nanotechnology and future materials, combined with the ever-increasing demand of future transhumans for ever-increasing comfort and ease of use (as well as the necessity for every item to be usable by a variety of different morphs in a variety of different environments) means that just about anything that isn't a weapon, a suit of armor, or implanted into your body is a palm sized, smooth, cream-colored ovoid with little glowy bits instead of buttons (assuming it isn't controlled wirelessly by the computer in your brain). These little iPods are virtually weightless and indestructible, never malfunction, never need a recharge, clean and repair themselves, can easily be attached to any surface (so they won't go floating around in your microgravity bedroom) and are usually controlled by a friendly internal AI. Some people refer to such devices as "blobjects".
* [[Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods]]: The Octomorph is exactly what it sounds like.
* [[Everything Is Online]]: Played mostly straight. Virtually every piece of tech can be controlled remotely and/or mentally using an ecto ([[Hard Light]]-esque physical interfaces) or mesh inserts (brain-implanted PC).
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* [[Walking the Earth|Gatehopping The Universe]]: The Gatehopper groups who continuously travel through the Pandora Gates, sightseeing the wonders of the universe and sometimes return to transhuman space by random chance. Unless they ended up in a supernova by said random chance.
* [[Giant Enemy Crab]]: The Nova Crab morph, a human sized coconut crab with cybernetic implants.
* [[Gender Is No Object]] / [[Purely Aesthetic Gender]]: Since you can switch into a new body that has a gender more to your choose, or can have an implant that point-blank lets you switch genders, issues of gender politics have somewhat fallen by the way side.
* [[Heads
* [[Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It]]: The dating system in Eclipse Phase is based around The Fall.
* [[Hunting the Most Dangerous Game]]: Predator Exhumans, who mod their bodies into becoming the perfect killing machine and hunt down other transhumans.
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* [[Kill Sat]]: Earth's quarantine is enforced by a number of armed satellites. However, nobody's quite sure who put them there....
* [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better]]: They tend to do more damage and pierce armor better than energy weapons, which are mostly designed to be less-than-lethal. Assuming, of course, that you want your opponent dead in the first place.
** Killing people is largely an expedient done to mooks and suchlike because you don't care much that they wake up elsewhere. However killing people that you are trying to stop is seldom a good idea because it lets them get away.
* [[Let No Crisis Go to Waste]]: The Fall.
* [[Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!]]: Courtesy of uplifting and animal morphs.
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* [[Metaplot]]: The developers have stated that they will develop the metaplot, despite a minor fan outcry on the forums.
* [[The Men in Black]]: {{spoiler|Project Ozma}}. Firewall itself has some similarities but neither works for any government nor do they have much of the hierarchy most such groups have.
* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Generally tends toward the "hard" end, with most scientific advances being logical extrapolations of modern, in-development, or currently-proposed technology. The primary exceptions are the [[Cool Gate|Pandora Gates]] and anything created by the [[
* [[More Than Mind Control]]: Psychosurgery can be used to eliminate addictions, assist in alleviating mental disorders, or even to [[Heel Face Brainwashing|remove someone's violent tendencies]]. It can also be used on unwilling subjects for some [[Mind Rape|downright sadistic forms of mental torture and alteration]].
* [[Muggle Power]]: The Jovian Republic exists to safeguard ''humanity'' from the millions of threats to it. Including transhumans.
* [[Multi-Armed and Dangerous]]: Some Morphs have more than four limbs, plus various modifications in form of extra limbs.
* [[Myself, My Avatar]]: You could say that the most common form of interplanetary "travel" is like that, if you plan on returning to your old body which was stored on ice.
* [[Nanomachines]]: Ubiquitous, from "nanoware" implants to nanofabricators and Titanian swarms of [[Grey Goo]].
* [[No Transhumanism Allowed]]: Played straight by the Jovian Republic and other bioconservative groups, very much averted by everyone else.
* [[Nuke'Em]]: Some of the older members of Firewall tend to believe that the best approach to danger is to nuke the settlement from space.
** This was also used as a strategy to try and stop the TITAN conquest and destruction of Earth. It helped them more than anything.
* [[One
* [[One-Gender Race]]: Averted with the Fury morphs as the name implies female only but the description says that on occasion there are male versions.
* [[Only One Me Allowed Right Now]]: Many places forbid forking, at least at the Alpha level.
* [[Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions]]: Subverted. The majority of pre-Fall religions, particularly Christianity and Judaism, are mostly gone due to the changes in transhuman society, but [[Fantastic Religious Weirdness|new faiths]] ([[My Friends and Zoidberg|and Buddhism]]) are filling the void.
** Played straight, however, in that very few of the religions in-setting, whether new or old, are given positive portrayals.
* [[The Pioneer]]
* [[Portal Network]]: Two forms exist. Pandora Gates are an FTL [[Portal Network]] linking the Solar System to any other system (if you can figure out how to program the gates to send you there), and Egocasting is a lightspeed means of transporting someone's mind to another body at another location.
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* [[Robot War]]: What the war on Earth eventually became, once transhumanity figured out what the TITANs were really up to.
* [[Sanity Meter]]: Your Lucidity score functions like mental hit points. It's a ''lot'' harder to recover Lucidity than HP, especially since if you run out of HP, you can just buy more (at both a credits and Lucidity cost).
* [[Scale of Scientific Sins]]: Every single one of them has been committed in
* [[Scenery Porn]]: In-universe, the Gatehopping group stumbles upon a very impressive looking nebula. Also, a scientific gatecrashing team have set up shop on a dead planet with a premium view of the Milky Way.
* [[Science Is Bad]]: "Transhumanism Is Bad" is the rallying cry of the Bioconservative faction, most notably the Jovian <s>Junta</s> Republic. Largely averted otherwise, aside from the various posthuman factions.
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** One of the audio clips for the Continuity module is {{spoiler|I'm sorry, I can't do that.}}
** In ''Gatecrashing'', it's mentioned that one Angelina Germanotta is a member of a certain hedonistic space colony. She might be better known to you by [[Lady Gaga|another name]] ...
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20131109150332/http://lifeboat.com/ex/main Lifeboat Foundation] got renamed as the Lifeboat Project/Institute in one of the later chapters (regarding one of the origins of Firewall). Similarly for the [https://web.archive.org/web/20120616070928/http://singinst.org/ Singularity Institute] which just got changed to Singularity Foundation.
** In the introduction one character complains that she always gets sleeved in a chain smoker, kind of like [[Altered Carbon|Takeshi Kovacs]].
** Nanofabricators specialized for food production are called [[Transmetropolitan|Makers]].
* [[Skilled but Naive]]: [[
* [[Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism]]: Extropia and anarchists on one end of the spectrum, and the Jovian Junta on the other. The Planetary Consortium leans authoritarian, while the Titan Commonwealth leans libertarian.
* [[Smells Sexy]]: The Enhanced Pheromones (standard in Sylphs and Pleasure pods) implant and Hither drug. The combat drug BringIt also causes users to emit pheromones, but they make people want to kill the user instead of have sex with him.
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* [[Uplifted Animal]]: Uplifts, duh.
* [[The Virus]]: The jury is out on whether the Exsurgent virus is worse than anything [[Prototype (video game)|GENTEK]] or [[Resident Evil|the Umbrella Corporation]] ever made.
** To compare, the Exsurgent virus can infect virtually anything because it comes in digital, biological and nanoswarm forms. There are even basilisk hacks that can [[Brown Note|reprogram you to the virus's whims simply by you hearing a sound or seeing a light pattern]]. Did I mention that the virus is also intelligent? As in, [[Techno Wizard|able to keep up with Stephen Hawking]] and capable of [[Adaptive Ability|self-reprogramming?]]
* [[Virtual Ghost]]: Infomorphs.
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: Complicated in-universe with the existence of uplifted animals, AIs, and personality forks, complicated further by the general non-permanence of death (e.g. is it okay to murder someone if you agree to pay their [[Body Surf|resleeving]] fees?), and complicated further still by opinions and laws regarding the subject varying from habitat to habitat.
* [[What Measure Is a Non Super]]: The Ultimates and Exhumans look down on normal humans with disdain. The Ultimates being a [[Social Darwinist
** Even outside these groups, "zeroes" (people without access to mesh inserts of any kind) and "flats" (genetically unmodified baseline humans) don't really get a lot of respect from transhumanity at large, to say the least.
* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: Psychics, without exception, all go insane to some extent following the onset of their powers. They can get better, but are still more prone to psychosis afterward.
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[[Category:Science Fiction Tabletop Games]]
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