Eclipse Phase conversion to GURPS (ideas?)

[Eukie]

I rather like the darkly transhuman conspiracy-horror RPG Eclipse Phase, but I've found that the system (which seems like its cobbled together from Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun) doesn't quite meet my needs for expediency, consistency, and balance. GURPS, meanwhile, mostly does.

So therefore, I'm working on converting EP to GURPS. I've started this thread in part to brag and showcase my work, and in part to ask questions about snags I've hit.

Campaign Conceits
As a necessary Campaign Conceit for GURPS:EP, you play what in EP is termed an "Ego"; that is, your disembodied intelligence. Normally, stating up an EP Ego in GURPS would give it an immense point cost. Transhuman Space: Changing Times gives a cost of 86 points for ghost-mind emulations, and by a strict reading of the rules, Egos should probably also have Duplication and a potentially infinite supply of Extra Lives. Just playing an Ego seems like it should be worth hundreds of points all by itself - which is good when comparing it to other GURPS characters, but somewhat pointless when it comes to actually playing Eclipse Phase.

So as a campaign conceit, everyone plays an Ego, and Egos cost 0 points.

Attributes
One of the really cool aspects of EP is that it tries to firmly divorce your body from your mind; you have no actual physical stats for your mind, only mental ones. Then you stick your mind in a physical body and the body is the object that has physical properties. It's pretty neat...

...and doesn't mesh well with GURPS; GURPS has, among other things, your physical strength (ST) and your physical dexterity (DX) as core attributes, and somewhat haphazard rules for switching out your attributes when switching between physical forms. This would not make a good fit, I feel, for an EP conversion, where you're supposed to let your mental aptitudes control your physical body.

So I've decided to do something a little unorthodox for a GURPS-conversion; introduce new Attributes. SOmatics, replacing ST, COordination, replacing DX, and TeNacity replacing HT. So your Ego is defined, primarily, by your SO, CO, IQ and TN instead of ST+DX+IQ+HT.

ST, DX and HT I keep as ratings for your physical body, what EP calls your "morph". This, among other things, allows me to fix one of EP's flaws, where the immense strength of strong morphs improved your ability to handle yourself physically, which meant that sleeving into an elephant made you more skilled at butterfly swimming, or more egregiously, downloading your mind into an uplifted whale brain made you more skilled at shooting guns. One of the main reasons I wanted to switch to GURPS was to have more well-defined differences between your physical form (using GURPS' detailed stats for physical capabilities, size, etc.) and mental form (using GURPS' skill list).

For example, this allows me to have your gross lifting capability be based entirely on your body's ST, while the amount of damage your can inflict with a punch can be given by looking up ST+SO-10 in the relevant table.

In EP, basline human attributes range from 5 to 20 averaging 10, with special individuals going as far as 30. The absolute maximum is 40, and player characters average 15 in all their starting attributes. For a GURPS-conversion, I decided that this meant that normal humans usually fell in the range 8-12, usually maxing out at 16 but sometimes going as far as 22. The transhuman average would be a range of 10-16 averaged around 13, usually capped at 22. The absolute maximum would be to go as far as 28 in a Primary Attribute.

This corresponds, in EP and GURPS respectively, to:
5:6
10:10
15:13
20:16
25:19
30:22
40:28

Of note is that Flats cap attributes at 16, Splicers cap at 19, and Exalts and better tend to cap at 22; Remade, Reapers and Infomorphs cap at the full 28.

Another campaign conceit would be that morphs (bodies) are bought as Gear, so characters can't buy physical advantages or disadvantages as inherent traits of their characters; Appearance, Voice, Fit, etc. would be confined to your morph, rather than your Ego. Egos only buy social and mental (dis)advantages. To get physical advantages, you have to buy the right kind of gear.

This has certain advantages with regards to how many small advantages morphs in Eclipse Phase have; the basic Splicer has stat bonuses, Fit, Less Sleep 4, Improved G-tolerance 3 (only lower gravities -50%), Regrowth, Regeneration (Slow), Extra Life (requires body -20%), Longivity and Unaging, for a total of over 108 points.

That's the body most people inhabit; making characters pay the full point-cost of such a body would, I feel, be a bit unreasonable when you consider how often people are supposed to swap back and forth between their bodies in the default Eclipse Phase campaign.

Computers
By a fairly conservative estimate (level 6 in this paper), the Complexity of a computer needed to run a full brain emulation is about 19, and would require about 1 exabyte of storage (for comparison, all the Internet traffic in 2008 was 9.9 exabytes). GURPS tends to claim Complexity 7 and 1000 GB, but I am a bit of a realism-freak.

Also, I plan to use an adaptation of the system presented here for hacking, since it fairly closely replicates the feel of the system in EP, is more realistic, and is based on SJG's Hacker, which is an incredibly fun game.

Skills
The GURPS skill list is one I'm rather happy with; it covers the vast majority of situations and has a good list of well-defined defaults. Only occasionally do I feel the need to introduce a new specialty to cover missing ground, such as Innate Attack (cephalopod ink sacs).

However, I feel that many skills need to be described in detail to explain what they can do in an Eclipse Phase context, and in GURPS sourcebook-style, why your character should or might have them; this ranges from small notes about how "Dropping" can be useful for characters sleeved in morphs capable of flight, to somewhat more extensive writeups like the one I did for Environment Suits:

Environment Suit/TL

CO/Average

Default: CO-5

This skill is absolutely vital to most Eclipse Phase characters, who live in hazardous atmospheres (Mars, Venus, Titan), underwater (Ceres, Europa, Callisto, Iapetus) or near hard vacuum (everywhere else). “Vac suits”, also called “spacesuits” became available at TL7, but most suits in GURPS: Eclipse Phase will be TL9 or TL10. The Vacc Suit specialization covers both suits for surviving the vacuum of space and the hazardous atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan. The Diving Suit specialization covers diving hardsuits, most of which will be TL9 and TL10, but the specialization is available at earlier tech levels. Infantry in GURPS: Eclipse Phase commonly use various forms of power armor and exoskeletons at TL9 and TL10, covered by the Battlesuit specialization.

----

I felt the need to write what they can do at TL8, TL9 and TL10 because I imagine EP as a nascent but fastly developing TL10 society with some experimental TL11 technologies that was very recently TL9... and TL8 within living memory, meaning that quite a lot of TL8 and TL9 technology is still around, and quite a lot of people will have been trained in the TL8 and TL9 versions of the skill. Just as there are Third Wave nations left in the Fifth Wave world of THS, the pre-Singularity was not evenly distributed in EP.

Besides, I like describing technological developments over time and geeking out over the finer details of gun technology...

Reputation Networks
This is one of those things that have been difficult for me to figure out how to implement. GURPS: Social Engineering covers in loving detail how to do economic transactions, requests for aid, and searching for information and skilled labour through social networking, and it would be easy to just make EP Rep Networks a form of Reputation.

On the other hand, the Rep Networks as described seem to have more application often far outside the realms of Requests for Aid; more like the rules from Action 1 (also described in GURPS:SocEng) for being part of an organization. But those rules require a hefty Duty, which seems unsuited to the somewhat communal, voluntary laxness of EP's Rep Networks, so I'm not really sure how to handle them.

Perhaps use the Organizational Reputation rules from Action 1/SocEng, and make the player pay the cost of not having the Duty?

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Comments, ideas, etc.?

[vicky_molokh]

100 Terrabytes, actually. And C7 to run the mind.

I don't see why you need to fiddle with attributes. You can just combine the attributes of the morph with the attributes with the ego the way you do in Changing Times. So a DX13 ego in a DX_modifier -1 morph acts at DX12.

The idea of having the ego have any sort of attribute that improves thr/sw is scary. It means that logically most adventurous/combatant people will have an intermediary adaptor software handling the punching, always maximising thr/sw to the level that is still safe for a given morph. Maybe even regularly redline it in matters of life and 'death'. Ditto HT/TN.

The GURPS variant of RepNets are described in Toxic Memes. They're not the same thing, but I haven't seen the game mechanics of EP RepNets.

[dataweaver]

I wouldn’t try to come up with ST/DX/HT for the Ego. I would tinker with the attributes a bit; but I’d start by repurposing existing traits instead of inventing new ones. For instance, take Will and Perception and promote them from derived traits to full-on attributes in their own right: i.e., not based off of IQ. I’d likewise promote Charisma from an Advantage to a full-on Attribute, too — and I’d consider changng a number of Interaction skills that are currently based on IQ to instead be based on Charisma. I’d swipe the Stress and Derangement rules from the latest edition of GURPS Horror to serve as the basis for the Ego’s equivalent of Fatigue and Hit Points, respectively. Finally, I’d calculate Basic Speed off of either Perception or Perception and IQ: either Per/2 or (Per + IQ) / 4.

Morphs would provide ST, DX, HT, FP, HP, and Move outright; they might also provide modifiers to the Ego’s Attributes; in particular, I could see limiting the character’s effective Basic Speed to the lower of the Ego’s Speed or the Morph’s Speed; and the Morph might likewise impose similar limits on IQ, Perception, Will, and/or Charisma, with the more stringent the restrictions translating to a built-in level of Stress and/or Derangement that persists until the Ego has successfully adapted to the Morph. Morphs aren’t bought with character points; they’re bought with in-game currency: I’d say “cash”, but EP has long since become a cashless society.

Likewise, the traits that differ between a new Morph and an old one (both positive and negative) would translate into “Adaption Stress” that would gradually go away as the Ego adjusts to the new Morph (or not, if it fails to adapt).

On the “Reputation Network” thing, note that EP treats Reputation as a form of currency. You could use Impulse Buys to do something similar, with appropriate social advantages such as Status providing something akin to the Destiny Points that said book talks about, but with the available Impulse Buys being tailored to represent the sort of things that can be accomplished by "spending social capital”: buying success on social interaction rolls, points for equipment, etc.

[Eukie]

I've written the following to describe the Beam Weapon/TL skill in EP. I've also written ones for Guns/TL, Animal Handling, Boating/TL, Crewman/TL, Dropping, Free Fall and Innate Attack.

"Advances in optics, steady-state materials and the development of room-temperature superconductors in the pre-Fall decades led to the development of combat capable direct-energy weapons. Mass deployment and radical innovation came in the years just before the Fall and in the post-Fall period, driven and driving by the development of advanced optical metamaterials and advanced energy storage methods such as room-temperature superconductors. Types of beam small arms include light-based systems in the microwave and near-visible wavelengths, charged and uncharged particle weapons, electrolasers, and plasma weapons.

TL8 beam weapons are largely experimental oddities or too large to be used by an individual on foot. Pistol-sized laser weapons for damaging space suits were reportedly developed and deployed by the Soviet Union in 1984, and laser weapons capable of causing temporary or permanent blinding are easy to manufacture but have been banned by a UN Convention. The United States have also been experimenting with man-portable laser-weapons capable of inducing pain and shock in the target.

TL9 sees the early deployment of “practical” man-portable direct energy weapons. High-powered laser weapons and charged energy weapons are deployed by militaries, while less-lethal microwave weapons, electrolasers and laser dazzlers are adopted by police and for military police actions. Direct energy weapons from this period tend to be large, fragile and have immense power requirements. Like firearms from this period, beam weapons have targeting computers and “smartlinks” to aid targeting, as well as security systems to prevent unauthorized used. TL9 soldiers may have some familiarity with high-powered laser weapons and particle weapons, and police forces may have been trained in the use of dazzlers, electrolasers and microwave agonizers.

TL10 beam weapons are far more advanced than earlier direct-energy weapons. Metamaterial optics, high-energy physics and room-temperature superconductors are used to create precise and high-capacity direct-energy weapons. New developments include neutral particle beams and plasma weapons, and advanced miniaturization allow practical hybrid weapons that combine charged and neutral particle beams, multiple-wavelength lasers, and high-energy lasers with electrolaser capabilities. Further developments in firing software allow smartlinked computers to compensate for atmospheric disturbances and local magnetic fields, increasing the accuracy of beam weapons to an even greater extent."

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I don't see why you need to fiddle with attributes. You can just combine the attributes of the morph with the attributes with the ego the way you do in Changing Times. So a DX13 ego in a DX_modifier -1 morph acts at DX12.

My rationale was that certain things that are derived attributes in GURPS are not derived attributes in EP. For example, in GURPS ST determines you number of hit points, whereas in EP, top-level athletes will die as easily from bullet-wounds as everyone else. Hence, to recreate that effect, I needed to divorce HP from ST. Additionally, I felt that giving ST, DX, etc. to morphs and then modifying it with Ego attributes meant that I could meaningfully give morphs things like maximum lifting capacities, maximum movement speeds, etc., without limiting the skill of the sleeving Ego.

It also seemed like the best way to divorce gross physical stats from mental aptitudes and adaptability.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The idea of having the ego have any sort of attribute that improves thr/sw is scary. It means that logically most adventurous/combatant people will have an intermediary adaptor software handling the punching, always maximising thr/sw to the level that is still safe for a given morph. Maybe even regularly redline it in matters of life and 'death'. Ditto HT/TN.

That kind of adaptor software in EP isn't very competent. In EP's d100 scale, software can't increase your skill above 40. On a purely mechanical level, I don't really see what's so scary about it; if you pay to have a physicaly strong body and are also good at using your strength, you hit harder. Much like just increasing your ST and Arm/Leg ST, really.

However, would it be more in line with the GURPS "philosophy" to instead have "Body ST/DX/HT" that determines the ST/DX/HT of your body, and then let Egos use the normal ST/DX/HT to modify the Body ST/DX/HT values? What I really want to avoid is the THS thing where infomorphs/mind emulations have only one meaningful Attribute (IQ), because all the other Attributes are set by the kind of cybershell/bioshell you put that mind into.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I wouldn’t try to come up with ST/DX/HT for the Ego. I would tinker with the attributes a bit; but I’d start by repurposing existing traits instead of inventing new ones. For instance, take Will and Perception and promote them from derived traits to full-on attributes in their own right: i.e., not based off of IQ. I’d likewise promote Charisma from an Advantage to a full-on Attribute, too — and I’d consider changng a number of Interaction skills that are currently based on IQ to instead be based on Charisma. I’d swipe the Stress and Derangement rules from the latest edition of GURPS Horror to serve as the basis for the Ego’s equivalent of Fatigue and Hit Points, respectively. Finally, I’d calculate Basic Speed off of either Perception or Perception and IQ: either Per/2 or (Per + IQ) / 4.

Morphs would provide ST, DX, HT, FP, HP, and Move outright; they might also provide modifiers to the Ego’s Attributes; in particular, I could see limiting the character’s effective Basic Speed to the lower of the Ego’s Speed or the Morph’s Speed; and the Morph might likewise impose similar limits on IQ, Perception, Will, and/or Charisma, with the more stringent the restrictions translating to a built-in level of Stress and/or Derangement that persists until the Ego has successfully adapted to the Morph.

This does sound like an intriguing idea, and I quite like how morph and Ego both set minimums. However, it still seems like IQ would completely dominate, since so many skills are based on IQ. Additionally, what happens to ST, DX and HT-based skills? Purchasing them is, of course, easy, since GURPS purchases are largely independent of the Attribute (as skills are just a modifier to the Attribute, effectively), but this sets them strongly apart from IQ, where you can use a purchased IQ-increase to boost you skills across the board.

[Seneschal]

You're spot-on about the weapons, but I wouldn't bother going into more detail than that. I was a bit dismayed when I learned Eclipse Phase had a small selection of generic weapons, since my first instinct when playing sci-fi action is to make huge catalogs of fancy gear. However, that's part of the whole post-scarcity "stuff is just stuff"-attitude - when you're an immortal digital mind, gear becomes very ephemeral and disposable. In fact, I would have expected much of EP's personal utilities and gadgets to be single-use, fabbed on the spot and then tossed into a recycler.

EP has a few ammo types that don't appear in UT, namely flux (switches from baton to regular on command) and biter (switches from solid (or AP) to hollow-point on command). These seem pretty easy to convert, they're just combination-gadgets. Accushot and Zero are Stabilized and Gestalt, respectively, from THS.

The Shard Pistol, however, has no GURPS analogue. I remember it being a very common weapon. Did you do a writeup on that? I would love to see how you converted it.

[Eukie]

I haven't made a write-up of the Shard Pistol itself; skill-wise, it's basically a footnote on the Guns/10 skill. Technically speaking, it's a fancy kind of flechette pistol. Mechanically, it'll probably be a pistol-sized merger of a shotgun and a flechette rifle. I'll probably look to UT and/or HT for how those are treated in GURPS.

Incidentally, Guns/TL:

"Personal firearms went through a small paradigm-shift in the 21st Century, moving from largely mechanical devices, to incorporating advanced electronics and cutting-edge technologies. However, due to the simplicity of manufacture, their ubiquity in conflict zones, and ease of use, many 20th Century firearms were in use all the way up to the Fall and would be familiar (if awkwardly antiquated) to most military and paramilitary personnel in 10AF.

TL8 rifles and pistols would be familiar even to soldiers and hunters of the late 19th Century (TL6); standardized bullets with casings fired from weapons with rifled barrels and internal or external magazines, sometimes capable of automatic or semi-automatic fire. Infantry rifles and machine guns from the late 19th and early 20th Century still saw use in conflicts and were fielded by even the most technologically advanced armies of the early 21st Century. There is virtually no difference between the small arms of the early TL7 and late TL8. Typical late-era TL8 weapons include semi-automatic and automatic rifles, LMGs, semi-automatic and automatic pistols, revolvers, pump-action and semi-automatic shotguns, guided and unguided light anti-armor weapons (LAW), man-portable anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS), submachine guns (SMG) and unguided grenade launchers. Gyrojet weapons and automatic shotguns exist but see little use; computer-aided grenade launchers exist but are not commonly deployed.

TL9 sees the introduction of ballistic computers and “smartlinks” on all military-grade small arms and grenade and missile launchers. Virtually all rocket-propelled missiles are guided, and grenade launchers are computer aided, but are facing obsolescence in the face of guided “mini”-missiles. Even the smallest guided missiles take advantage of miniaturized computers to intelligently home in on targets, earning the moniker “brilliant missiles”. Conventional ammunition is replaced with gyrojet and caseless rounds, and may benefit from in-flight adjustment to achieve better accuracy and special flight paths. Bullets are electrically fired, rather than mechanically, and early versions of electrokinetic weapons (railguns and Gauss guns) are deployed. Most personal firearms have security systems that protect them from unauthorized use.

TL10 firearms take full advantage of developments in nanotechnology and materials sciences to design finely-crafted tools of surgical death. Shapeshifting memory-alloys allow on-the-fly flight adjustment of bullets and grenades, as well as a wide variety of special ammunitions. Room-temperature superconductors make railguns economical. Miniaturization of missiles continue to the point where pistol-round-sized “micro”-missiles are a mature technology. Smartlinked fire-control software become almost as smart as the person holding the gun. The TL10 soldier is familiar with a wide variety of computer-assisted firearms firing self-guided metamaterial bullets, “brilliant” missiles of all sizes, and compact railgun systems. High-rate-of-fire flechette pistols (“needlers”) become an option for dealing with robots and heavily armoured targets. The TL10 soldier will, however, be unfamiliar with unguided weapons, how to maintain mechanical weapons, and will probably not have personal experience handling now-outdated gyrojet weapons."

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Eukie

This does sound like an intriguing idea, and I quite like how morph and Ego both set minimums. However, it still seems like IQ would completely dominate, since so many skills are based on IQ. Additionally, what happens to ST, DX and HT-based skills? Purchasing them is, of course, easy, since GURPS purchases are largely independent of the Attribute (as skills are just a modifier to the Attribute, effectively), but this sets them strongly apart from IQ, where you can use a purchased IQ-increase to boost you skills across the board.

First, not all skills that are currently based on IQ would still be based on IQ with this change: for instance, a lot of social skills would now be based on Charisma. Second, decoupling Will and Per from IQ should probably be done anyway; I even do it in regular GURPS. Third, the fact that Stress and Derangement are based off of Will strengthens its value even without a large list of skills, much as HPs and FPs increase the value of ST and HT. Given that I’m proposing Derangement as the medium for representing the difficulty egos have in adapting to new Shells, as well as both being mediums for mental combat, their inclusion is a non-negligible buff to Will.

Finally, ST/DX/HT-based skills can be boosted by upgrading your morph; if anything, improving such skills is even easier than boosting mental skills.

[pfharlock]

I've had a similar problem with info morph characters in transhuman space. The idea being, that if I want a being of pure mind to crawl into a shell that has 200 st then I want that character to be able to do that (it's one of the perks of being an info morph right along with being able to make complete copies of yourself etc).

It's no different than a normal character being able to drive a tank or teloperate same said shell (with the exception that the signal could be jammed in the case of teleoperation)

Dx and iq I treat as belonging to the mind, whereas st and ht belong to the physical body. A different body will have different st and ht attributes.

If the info morph is inside a normal computer, then they have a st of 0 and depending on the repair of the hardware a ht of somewhere between 10 and 12.

This next part is probably the most heretical. As far as charging points, the info morphs don't get charged cp for their st or ht, nor do they get points back for dropping those statistics. They have to spend their wealth to get the body with the attributes and properties they want.

This is just what I've come up with to handle a similar problem. Not sure if it would work in your case or not.

edit:The secondary attributes conveniently follow, fp is based on ht and is a measure of power reserve, a body that has a battery gets fp a normal computer that merely has a power supply has an fp of 0 (or infinity depending on interpretation). Perception and will are based on iq which works out since they also belong to mind.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Eukie

My rationale was that certain things that are derived attributes in GURPS are not derived attributes in EP. For example, in GURPS ST determines you number of hit points, whereas in EP, top-level athletes will die as easily from bullet-wounds as everyone else. Hence, to recreate that effect, I needed to divorce HP from ST. Additionally, I felt that giving ST, DX, etc. to morphs and then modifying it with Ego attributes meant that I could meaningfully give morphs things like maximum lifting capacities, maximum movement speeds, etc., without limiting the skill of the sleeving Ego.

Well, there's no reason you can't modify derived characteristics from their attribute-derived default values. If you really want, you can simply decouple them.
Decoupling HP [2/level] changes ST cost to [8/level].
Decoupling Per & Will [5/level] leaves IQ at [10/level].

Originally Posted by Eukie

It also seemed like the best way to divorce gross physical stats from mental aptitudes and adaptability.

Divorcing physical and mental attributes is great, but the idea that one mind driving a tank (or spaceship, or whatever you decide to sleeve into . . . we're transhumans, we don't limit ourselves to silly humaniforms) results in it having ST 900 and another one in it having ST1,150 is quite odd from balance, plausibility, and convenience PoVs.

Originally Posted by Eukie

That kind of adaptor software in EP isn't very competent. In EP's d100 scale, software can't increase your skill above 40. On a purely mechanical level, I don't really see what's so scary about it; if you pay to have a physicaly strong body and are also good at using your strength, you hit harder. Much like just increasing your ST and Arm/Leg ST, really.

It's not about skill. It's about the fact that a given shell's ST is very software-dependent under your interpretation. So it would make sense for a NAI or Shadow layer to exist between the infomorph driving the shell, and the shell's muscles, and everybody would go for the best layer on the market.

Oh, and for bioshells in GURPS, mental faculties affecting ST is already covered. Extra Effort.

Originally Posted by Eukie

However, would it be more in line with the GURPS "philosophy" to instead have "Body ST/DX/HT" that determines the ST/DX/HT of your body, and then let Egos use the normal ST/DX/HT to modify the Body ST/DX/HT values? What I really want to avoid is the THS thing where infomorphs/mind emulations have only one meaningful Attribute (IQ), because all the other Attributes are set by the kind of cybershell/bioshell you put that mind into.

IQ, Will, Per, and an assortment of mental things that GURPS calls Advantages, but which nonetheless performs functions similar to attributes in other systems (Charisma/OPHs, Combat Reflexes/Paralysis, Fearlessness/Fearfulness, High Manual Dexterity / Ham-Fisted, Empathy/Sensitive/Low Empathy etc.).

[Michael Cule]

I would be less inclined to worry about reproducing the exact way that EP handles combat. It will be easier to use the GURPS engine and create a version of the world with it.

How are you planning to handle Wealth and Reputation? Because they're going to decide how much access a character has to new bodies, back-ups and all the Cool Stuff in the setting and EP is not simple in the way it handles the two interacting issues.