Eclipse Phase News

We have under a week left in the Transhuman Kickstarter, and it's been an amazing ride so far. Strap in for the last week, because it's about to get extra fun! Covered in this update: new stretch goals and an update about PayPal payments.

Eclipse Phase as ePub

We just unlocked this goal, and we'll be publishing Eclipse Phase in ePub format this fall/winter! If you want to pre-order it, you can add $10 onto your Kickstarter pledge.

New Stretch Goals

$71,000 -- 1000 ISBNs!

First off, a confession: when I first encountered FUDGE, as a text file on the pre-web Internet, I almost stopped reading when I got to the bit about the dice. An inveterate AD&D player, I love me some non-six-sided polyhedra. If EP has one flaw, it's that we only use one kind of die. So it goes without saying that I dislike when games only use six-siders, and by extension, when games only use six-siders marked with pluses, minuses, and blanks.

But then there's FATE. Oh, FATE. If not for your ugly-ass dice, you & I could be so perfect together. There's so much that's compelling about this rules engine, and so many possibilities that I can see for using it with our setting.

• Why would aliens obliterate our moon?
• Nanosponges to sop up bloodstream toxins
• New DNA-binding protein (fungal life only)
• The praxis of anarchist economics
• Intelligence explosion microeconomics

These and similar links can be found at http://delicious.com/infomorph

We've released one more section of Transhuman to the Open Playtest today: the Infomorphs chapter. You can check it out here in either the Informorphs Playtest Questions thread or the Open Discussion thread.

Of course, there are plenty of other chapters still available in the Transhuman Open Playtest for commenting/questions, or just if you want to get a sneak peek at Transhuman in its roughest public form!

And we have to mention that the Transhuman Kickstarter is rolling on, towards a stretch goal of releasing the Eclipse Phase core rules in ePub format!

• Analyzing brainwaves to authenticate users
• Optogenetic mind control via pleasurable stimulation
• 11 of the weirdest solutions to the Fermi Paradox
• Metacognition not limited to humans
• Hallmarks of psychiatric illness revealed remotely

These and similar links can be found at http://delicious.com/infomorph

A few years back at PaizoCon, my girlfriend & I played a really great game of Evil Hat's Don't Rest Your Head mashed up with the Cthulhu Mythos. The scenario was a sequel to "The Dunwich Horror" using DRYH/DLYM mechanics. It got me thinking about doing an EP/DRYH mashup, so this year, for PAX East, I wrote a scenario about some Lost Generation kids using DRYH's mechanics. I'll be sharing them here in a series of posts.

Our crowdfunding for Transhuman hit $45,000 yesterday, so we've unlocked two new stretch goals.

Stretch Goal 6: Doctrine scenario, $50,000:

Firewall sends a team into the belly of the beast -- the TITAN Quarantine Zone on Mars -- in search of a missing Pandora Gate researcher. Is this a legit mission, or a test of loyalties? And in the hellscape of the TQZ, does that even matter? Adrift aboard a derelict airship, the team must survive long enough to find some answers.

I originally wrote Doctrine as a scenario for Gen Con 2010. At the $50,000 level, Rob Boyle & I will expand on the original adventure to create an episode suitable for insertion into campaign play. Some funds will also go toward commissioning art to accompany the scenario. Doctrine will be available in PDF and POD format, with the PDF included for all backers whose level includes our PDF catalog and the levels that include all PDFs released as part of the kickstarter campaign.

Our crowdsourcing for Transhuman hit the $45,000 mark yesterday, and so we've announced two new stretch goals!

Stretch Goal 6: Doctrine scenario, $50,000

Firewall sends a team into the belly of the beast -- the TITAN Quarantine Zone on Mars -- in search of a missing Pandora Gate researcher. Is this a legit mission, or a test of loyalties? And in the hellscape of the TQZ, does that even matter? Adrift in a derelict airship, the Firewall team must survive long enough to find some answers.

I originally wrote Doctrine for Gen Con 2010. Designed for a 4-hour con slot, it was a bit thin, so Rob Boyle will expand upon the original material to create an episode suitable for insertion in an ongoing Firewall campaign. Doctrine will be made available in POD and PDF format to all backers whose level includes our full PDF catalog.

Stretch Goal 7: Argonauts supplement, $55,000

None dare call it Clanbook: Argonauts! OK, maybe some dare. Fans have consistently requested more material on the Argonauts, a faction with close ties to both Firewall and the mysterious Prometheans. Pawns of the Prometheans, IT consultants of the Infopocalypse, or technological savant/saints? The Argonauts may be all these things, depending upon whom you ask.

When this stretch goal is unlocked, EP co-creator Brian Cross will produce a monograph on this faction of dreamers, skeptics, & scholars. Of similar length to his previous supplement, The Stars Our Destination, Argonauts will flesh out this faction with info useful to both players and GMs.

• Software to reconstruct ancient languages
• Moore's Law and the origin of life
• Blobs of computational "intelligent" goo
• Is there a case for robot slaves?
• Squeezing a washcloth in zero-g (video)

These and similar links can be found at http://delicious.com/infomorph

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, check out the Kickstarter campaign for our next EP book, Transhuman!

Things have been very busy since we launched the Transhuman Kickstarter, and keeping all aspects of our social media / websites / the Kickstarter itself is a big task. Here's a summary of what's happened so far!

We launched the Transhuman Kickstarter late on Tuesday night, and by noon on Wednesday we had already reached our initial funding goal -- all before some fans had even heard of the project!

By Wednesday afternoon, it was clear that the first stretch goal was going to be unlocked that day, and it was! When we reached $20,000 in pledges we pledged in return to add 8 sample characters to Transhuman, and we unveiled the third stretch goal in the campaign: at $30,000, we'll give all the freelancers (authors, editors, artists -- but not Posthuman owners) a 15% raise for their Transhuman pay!

The Kickstarter campaign for Transhuman has launched!

We are hard at work on Transhuman, the Player's Guide for Eclipse Phase. Transhuman is a player's handbook for Eclipse Phase, full of optional and additional rules and advice. Most importantly, It features two new alternative and simplified character generation systems for Eclipse Phase. One of these uses pre-created packages to build characters, and the other builds off that system but uses random elements to add twists. These systems are designed to make it quick and easy to create a new character or for gamemasters to whip up NPCs as needed.

Transhuman covers different types of Eclipse Phase characters in detail: AGIs, asyncs, infomorphs, uplifts, infugees, and indentures. In addition to roleplaying advice and optional rules for these specific character types, other elements of the game that affect characters such as insanity, death and memory loss, psychosurgery, nanofabrication, and reputation are explored.

The Transhuman Open Playtest is rolling along, with more to come! Here's a summary of the chapters we've released so far:

As we near the launch of our kickstarter campaign for our next book, Transhuman, we have a few news items we wanted to catch everyone up on.

First up, Sunward: The Inner System is now back in stock and in stores once again. This is our second printing of the sourcebook and we're glad to have it available again! Note that we raised the cover price to $44.99.

Second, Rimward: The Outer System has been nominated for an Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement! We're glad to see it get some recognition. If you're attending the Origins Game Fair this summer, please consider voting for it!

We have two major announcements regarding Transhuman, our upcoming Player's Guide for Eclipse Phase. First off, we had previously said that Transhuman material will be subject to an open playtest, and that open playtest starts today!

We have created the Transhuman Playtest section on our forums, and the first material available for playtesting -- part of the Traits chapter -- is already posted! Everyone is free to participate in the playtest, all it takes is an account on our forums and some of your time and effort towards polishing Transhuman!

Each chapter also has specific questions from us. Please read the chapter with the eye towards answering those questions. There are two threads in the Transhuman Playtest Forum for each chapter -- one for answering those questions, and another for all other discussion about that chapter.

I'll be moderating two panels at PAX East this year.

At 10:30 am on Saturday, I'll be hosting a Sci-Fi Worldbuilding Workshop with my blogger buddies Caroline Willis & Andrew Linstrom. This one is audience participation: we provide some seeds for a world, and the participants split up into groups to flesh out various aspects of it. Come build an original SF world in an hour! The results will be posted on the Net and CC licensed for anyone to use. (Last year this filled up fast, and it's in a hard to find room -- so scope it out early if you want to come).

• Other kinds of minds
• Are super-Earths really mini-Neptunes?
• EmDrive microwave relativity engines
• Turning off the ability to feel cold
• Graphene supercapacitors

These and similar links can be found at http://delicious.com/infomorph

We're pleased to announce that we sent Sunward back to the printer yesterday for a modest reprint! Sunward sold out of its original print run last year, and we've pulled the trigger on a corrected reprint (mostly to bring it in line with the 3rd Printing of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook). To bring Sunward in line with our other books, we have raised the cover price to $44.99. We'll announce the date that the reprint will be available in stores as soon as we know it!

Reprinting a sourcebook -- especially a full-color hardcover one -- in today's RPG marketplace is a risk, but we think it is a properly-measured one. If you have Sunward in electronic format only (or maybe you borrowed a print copy from your GM and he'd like it back), the reprint is a great chance for you to get an updated rulebook and to help us prove that reprints are viable! The success of the Sunward reprint will determine our course of action for future reprints (and the stock of at least one of our other sourcebooks is already running low...)

Of course, we've also made some changes and updates to the electronic versions of Sunward:

• The Resources page has been updated with the new errata file; the Second Printing of Sunward is version 1.2.
• The Sunward PDF on DriveThruRPG has been updated. If you have already bought it, this is a free update for you!
• The Melt (fiction from Sunward) ePub/Mobi/PDF on DriveThruRPG has been updated. If you have already bought it, this is a free update for you!
• The Melt Amazon Kindle Edition has been updated. Unfortunately, we cannot provide free updates if you bought it on the Amazon store.
• We have changed the Sunward Hack Pack on DriveThruRPG to match how we are distributing Hack Packs now, as $5 downloads that do not contain the PDF file. Everyone who bought the Hack Pack before February 1st 2013 is, of course, eligible for a free copy of the Sunward PDF. If you did not get a coupon in your mailbox offering you this download, please email Adam at adam@posthumanstudios.com.

Thanks to everyone who has bought, read, used, and shared Sunward!

The long-awaited French translation of Eclipse Phase is out this week in France, courtesy of Black Book Editions! The standard books will be in stores and available for order via Black Book's site on Thursday. A slip-cased limited run collector's edition is also coming out, and Black Book tells us they still have some copies of that available for order. (The pic just shows the book; we don't have a pic of the final slip case just yet.)

This is the first translation of Eclipse Phase into another language (translation is currently underway to translate EP into Japanese via Arclight and Polish via Galmadrin), and we're excited to check it out. Both Sunward and the EP Gamemaster Pack are going through translation into French now. Major thanks go out to the Black Book crew for making it happen, as well as all the French fans that provided translation feedback! You can order the French translation of Eclipse Phase here.