Essentially every character in Eclipse Phase has a personal muse: An AI that serves as their companion and personal assistant from the time that they’re a young child until the day that they die. Their persistent presence and collaboration in every facet of a person’s life is one of the transformative elements of the Eclipse Phase setting which creates the unique exotic flavor its science fiction.

As I mentioned when I posted my Eclipse Phase system cheat sheet a few days ago, however, it initially proved difficult for players to properly utilize their muses as an integral part of their lives. Literally front-paging the muses helped, but something I also started experimenting with was the idea of letting another player run the muse. Thus everyone at the table would control both their PC and the muse of another character.

The recent Eclipse Phase: Transhuman sourcebook makes a similar suggestion. There are multiple advantages: First, it forces the roleplaying relationship between the PC and their muse into the open. Second, it encourages the muse to have its own independent personality. Third, it can also make it a lot easier to split the party because many or all of the players who aren’t present may still have a muse to play in the scene.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, however, I’m currently developing an open table Eclipse Phase campaign. Unfortunately, an open table disrupts the idea of having a second player run your muse: Since the players at the table are constantly in flux, there would be no guarantee that the player running your muse would be at your next session.

Loosely inspired by Shock: Social Science Fiction, therefore, I’m going to experiment with the idea that your muse is always played by the player to your left. (Basically a structured troupe-style play in which the muses form the body of communal characters.)

This obviously sustains the advantage of the muse always being portrayed by a separate player. The disadvantage, however, is that there would be a constant flux of different players portraying your personal muse (leading to potential continuity problems). To mitigate these problems, what you need is a quick briefing sheet that would introduce the new player to your muse. This needs to be insightful enough that the essence of your muse is communicated, but focused enough that it can be quickly assimilated at the beginning of the session.

Fortunately, I already have a template like this that I use when designing NPCs for social-intensive scenarios. I’ve tweaked it slightly to customize it for troupe-style muses. I think you might find it useful even if you’re not contemplating this style of play.

When designing your muse, I also recommend checking out “Maximizing Your Muse” in Eclipse Phase: Transhuman (pg. 166-169). There’s a lot of good ideas in there.

MUSE TEMPLATE

Name: Self-explanatory. As limited artificial intelligences, muses have their own identities.

AR Avatar: A description of the muse’s “physical” appearance when it appears in AR (or VR).

Roleplaying: This is the heart of the briefing sheet, but it should also be the shortest section. Two or three brief bullet points at most. You’re looking to identify the essential personality traits or mannerisms which will serve to unlock the muse.

Motivations: Like any other character, muses should have three personal motivations (Eclipse Phase, pg. 138). These may mimic, support, or even contrast the motivations of their owner.

Background: This is likely the only section of the briefing sheet which is likely to need frequent updating. I recommend a single bullet point for each significant scenario the muse participates in (and keeping each bullet point to no more than two or three sentences). The point isn’t to be encyclopedic: It’s to provide an essential overview of key facts. (If the muse’s current player needs clarification about something, they can lean over to their right and ask.)

Notes: A miscellaneous category of key information that wasn’t hit in the previous sections. For example, if the muse is currently holding the encryption keys for an important data store or is hiding the fact that they know what happened to their owner during a span of lost time, this is probably a good place to note it.

Stat Block: Include the muse’s stat block at the bottom of the briefing sheet for easy reference. Most muses will use the standard muse stat block, but they’ll still be customized by selecting three Knowledge skills. Some muses might be commonly housed in a bot (in which, case include that stat block, too); others, of course, may have received custom upgrades.

AURORA – SAMPLE MUSE

AR Avatar: A young girl with yellow hair so bright it seems to glow lemon. She usually has a cigarette drooping out of the corner of her mouth.

Roleplaying:

• Refuses to take any shit from her owner, but is also fiercely protective of her.
• Her owner cannot understand her obsession with celebrity gossip.
• A dry, sardonic laugh that often breaks apart into a fake “smoker’s cough”.

Motivations: +Open Source, +Wealth, -Alien Contact

Background:

• Aurora was originally licensed on the likeness of a child star named Sundrop. Around the time her owner turned 17, “Sundrop” got tired of that identity and started referring to herself as “Aurora”.
• Aurora was actually the one first contacted by Firewall based on a research project she was working on for her owner.
• Aurora’s owner deleted her and restored her from a backup that was three months old. Her owner refuses to explain what happened, which completely infuriates Aurora.

Notes:

• Aurora was infected by a “dormant” strain of the exsurgent virus. It hasn’t had an visible effects yet, but she’s been spending her down time secretly researching a very strange and seemingly random set of topics. (List anything she researches on the back of this sheet, please.)

Aurora: Aptitudes: 10, INT 20. Skills: Academics: Psychology 60, Art: Simulspace Design 30, Hardware: Electronics 60, Infosec 30, Interest: Celebrity Gossip 30, Interface 40, Professional: Accounting 60, Programming 20, Research 30, Perception 30.

When characters want something in the Eclipse Phase universe, they hit up their social networks: PCs will make a Networking test to reach out through their friends, associates, and the sophisticated software that binds society together in the year 10 AF. And if they find someone who can help them, they’ll ask for help based on the reputation they’ve built for themselves.

In short, they’ll call in a favor.

But if the PCs are constantly reaching out to other people, doesn’t it make sense that people would also be reaching out to them? They’re skilled, well-connected, and possibly even well-known. Just the sort of people you’d want to ask a favor from.

The system presented here is a tool I’ve designed for an open table Eclipse Phase campaign I’m currently developing, but it should prove useful for almost any Eclipse Phase GM. The idea is to create unexpected complications (and synergies) by having the social networks of the PCs organically interrupt their lives.

RANDOM REPUTATION FAVORS

Rep Network Check: Each PC has a 2 in 10 chance of being contacted for a favor each session.

The GM should make this check at the beginning of each session and note which PCs will be receiving a request. These requests won’t necessarily happen immediately: The GM should decide during the course of the session when the call comes.

Optional Rule: If the initial rep network check indicates that a PC will be contacted for a favor, immediately roll another check to see if they’ll be contacted for a second favor. Continue rolling until they actually fail a check.

GENERATING THE FAVOR

1. Determine Reputation Network. Randomly determine which of the character’s reputation networks is making the request.

2. Determine Solicitor. Determine who’s requesting the favor by rolling on the Solicitor table. Note that this can be an opportunity to develop the PC’s personal life for play. For example, if the table indicates that the request is coming from a friend that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a friend who has been part of the campaign before.

3. Determine Favor Level. Determine the level of the favor being requested by rolling on the Favor Level table.

4. Determine Type of Favor. Roll on the Type of Favor table to determine the type of favor being requested. The exact nature of the favor is heavily dependent on the particular circumstances of the character and the campaign; the table is merely designed to provide a general idea that can help serve as a creative seed for the GM. Reference the favors tables on pages 289-290 of the Eclipse Phase rulebook to determine the scope of the favor being requested (based on the level of the favor).

Information: This can either be information that the character already knows or information that they are capable of finding out. (It could also be information that someone just thinks they know or can find out.)

Introduction: The solicitor would like the PC to introduce them to someone they know. At trivial levels, this is the digital equivalent of passing business cards. At higher favor levels, a physical meeting is likely (and, obviously, the person they want to be introduced to will be of some importance). If the PC agrees to make the introductions, don’t be afraid to let the consequences splash back on them. (“What the hell did you get me into?”)

Skill: Somebody would like the PCs to use their unique skills. You can randomly determine which of their skills is desired or simply choose one. Obviously this can range from the benign (“can you prepare a précis on the most recent discoveries in xenoarchaeology?”) to the criminal (“I need you to rescue my sister who’s indentured in a brothel”). Make sure to take note of the terms of service listed on the Acquire Services table (EP, pg. 290) – this favor could actually be a long-term job offer.

Delivery/Pick-Up: At low favor levels, this is most likely going to be a matter of convenience. For example, the PC happens to be standing outside a Coffee Star franchise and somebody a couple blocks away wants a latte. At higher levels, it becomes increasingly likely that the pick-up or delivery requires some special skill the PC possesses.

Transportation: Similar to the delivery, except in this case it’s someone needing to be delivered themselves. If the PC doesn’t have access to a vehicle, then it might be someone looking to hitch a ride in their ghost rider module. Or asking them to deliver a portable server filled with enslaved infomorphs.

Use of an Item: The PC has something somebody would like to borrow for a bit. They’ll give it right back. (Honest.) At trivial levels this is again likely to be a matter of convenience. (“Hey, I’m just across the plaza. The local spime spotted that you had a utilitool. Could I grab that really quick to fix my glide sneakers?”) At higher levels, it’ll be something expensive or the use of which the PC might need to supervise.

Buying an Item: The PC has an item that the solicitor would very much like to purchase. Pretty straightforward.

Selling an Item: The solicitor has something that he thinks the PC might be interested in. Wait… why does he think the PC is the sort of person who needs large amounts of explosives?

Borrow Money: 50 credits for a trivial favor; 250 credits for a low favor; 1,000 credits for a moderate favor; 5,000 credits for a high favor; and 20,000 credits for a scarce favor.

REWARDS AND PENALTIES

Cyberpunk Alley Pub – Brosa

If a character refuses to do a favor, there is a 10% chance that they’ll suffer 1-2 points of reputation loss. (Feel free to modify this chance depending on exactly how the PC handles the interaction: If they’re a real prick, their reputation is more likely to take a ding. If they apologize for being too busy at the moment and recommend someone who might be able to help, they might even gain a rep point. But, in general, most people don’t feel entitled to assistance and won’t ding someone for a simple refusal.)

Characters who fulfill a favor, however, will be rewarded with a reputation gain. Of course, characters who say they’ll do something and then fail to carry through on their promise are going to get hit with a reputation loss. See page 385 of the Eclipse Phase core rulebook for more information.

(click for PDF)

UPDATE: These cheat sheets have been revised and improved. I recommend checking out Version 2.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I frequently prep system cheat sheets for the RPGs I run. These summarize all the rules for the game — from basic action resolution to advanced combat options. It’s a great way to get a grip on a new system and, of course, it also provides a valuable resource at the game table for both the GM and the players. (For more information on the methods I use for prepping these sheets, click here.)

This particular set of cheat sheets was designed for Eclipse Phase. It should be noted that these cheat sheets aren’t designed to serve as a quick start packet: They’re designed to be a comprehensive reference for someone who has read the rulebook and will almost certainly prove wholly insufficient for teaching you the game. (Although they do serve as a valuable adjunct reference if you’re teaching someone the game.)

WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED

The most notable absence from these cheat sheets are what I refer to as “character option chunks” (for reasons discussed here). So you won’t find psi sleights or the effects of specific nanodrugs listed here.

HOW I USE THEM

I keep a copy of these cheat sheets behind my GM screen for quick reference and also place a half dozen copies in the center of the table for the players to grab as needed. The information included is meant to be as comprehensive as possible; although rulebooks are also available, my goal is to minimize the amount of time people spend referencing the rulebook: Finding something in the 14 pages of the cheat sheet is a much faster process than paging through a 400 page rulebook. And, once you’ve found it, processing the streamlined information on the cheat sheet will (hopefully) also be quicker.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive. The actual sequencing of pages (combat before hacking, hacking before psi) is mostly arbitrary. The sheets as they currently exist have been tweaked several times based on actual play experience.

Page 1: Basic mechanics. The stuff on this page should become irrelevant fairly quickly because players are going to rapidly memorize it through play. The information in “Your Muse and You” is more verbose and advisory than the sort of material I would normally include in a system cheat sheet, but after a few sessions I found that new players were routinely under-utilizing their muses. Adding this chunk of material significantly improved this and the inclusion of the stat block for a standard muse was significantly useful.

Pages 2-4: The combat reference. If you’re looking for a more simplistic system introduction for new players, temporarily remove pages 3 and 4. The Eclipse Phase combat system really comes alive when both the GM and the players are actively trying to create situations that will create positive modifiers on their combat tests, so I recommend continually refocusing attention on the combat modifiers table through both word and deed.

Page 5: In a future version of the cheat sheets, I might try to find some way to incorporate more info on medichines, nano-bandages, and repair spray. (They’re fairly ubiquitous and commonly used.) But letting health and healing spill onto multiple pages made things significantly less useful and most of the key information is summarized on the Healing table in any case. So, for now, I’m merely including the page references.

Page 6: The streamlined rules for jamming shells and vehicles is one of the major improvements Eclipse Phase makes on the Shadowrun rules. I just recently added the default stat block for a bot/vehicle AI to this page. Including the muse AI on page 1 was so useful I decided I should try to include a few more of these stat blocks. I’ve never done this with a cheat sheet before, but these AIs are so ubiquitous in the Eclipse Phase setting that I think this will prove very valuable.

Page 7-10: The methodology here is a page of general information on the mesh and then two pages of material on hacking… and then another half page on hacking because I couldn’t figure out a way to squeeze it all onto two pages. Fortunately, the key information is all on the two main pages (although this took a few playtesting tweaks to really figure out what was essential and what wasn’t in typical play).

Page 11: Reputation. This page is oft-referenced by new players trying to figure out how the new economies of Eclipse Phase work.

Page 12: I initially didn’t include resleeving rules in the cheat sheets. Big mistake. First, there are many scenarios in which the PCs are going to seek frequent resleevings in the middle of the action. Second, for new players this sheet helps to acclimate them to some of the unusual features of the setting.

Page 13: This is a recent addition to the cheat sheet because I specifically avoided including psi in the first half dozen sessions of Eclipse Phase that I ran. That’ s not because I don’t like the psi system (or its inclusion in the setting). Rather, I decided there was already so much stuff to grapple with in the setting that simply avoiding psi would be a convenient way to simplify things.

Page 14: And, finally, a page of miscellanea. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Some people might consider leaving this sort out of stuff off the cheat sheet entirely, but over the years I’ve found that this is actually the stuff you’ll find most useful in the long-term. As the other core mechanics slowly ingrain themselves into your memory, it’s going to be the random miscellanea that you’ll need to keep referencing every time it comes up.

A SIMPLER SET

If you’re looking for a quick introduction to the system for new players, here’s what I recommend:

• Page 1: Basic Mechanics (tell them to report test results to as “# out of #”, for example “I rolled 32 out of 65”)
• Page 2: Basic Combat (emphasize how valuable combat modifiers are)
• Page 5: Health and Healing (make sure they understand wound/trauma thresholds; you can’t trust players with their own bookkeeping until they do)
• Page 7: Basic Mesh Use (emphasize how valuable Research tests are)
• Page 11: Reputation / Social Networks

For this approach to work, you’ll want to avoid PCs that are focused on jamming, hacking, or psi. That’ll be very limiting in a long-term campaign, unfortunately, so you might want to start with a couple of one-shots to build up system familiarity. Or, alternatively, set aside time with the specific players interested in those areas to review those rules.

There is also, of course, setting information that you’ll want to pass on. I recommend 10 Things You Should Know About Eclipse Phase as a good way for accomplishing that.

The Eclipse Phase: System Cheat Sheet is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

In the Eclipse Phase setting, Artificial General Intelligences (AGIs) are the source of some deeply forged and bitterly raw prejudice: Their digital cousins the TITANs — seed AIs capable of recursive self-improvement — underwent a hard-takeoff singularity and shattered human civilization in a genocidal frenzy. The core rulebook states:

The vast majority of transhumanity blames the Fall on rogue seed AIs. As a result, any AIs that are not crippled or somehow limited from improving themselves — including the AGIs that were common and growing in number before the Fall — are completely illegal in many habitats or at least heavily regulated… Many transhumans consider AGIs and the TITANs that murdered their homeworld to be one and the same.

Since AGIs are also playable characters in Eclipse Phase, it can be vitally important to know where you can travel openly and where you need to fall back on smuggling and darkcasts if you’re going to go there at all. Unfortunately, this information is somewhat scattered and often unsatisfactory. (You have to reference various passages from the core rulebook, Sunward, and Rimward, and even then the information is frequently vague.) Reading between the lines and making a few inferences, however, we can draw up some general guidelines.

AGIs AND THE LAW

First, there’s a general spectrum that runs (from most severe limitations to least severe limitations): Jovian Republic, Lunar-Lagrange Alliance, Planetary Consortium, Morningstar Consortium, Titanian Commonwealth, and the Autonomist Alliance.

Within that spectrum, you can use these general guidelines:

Jovian Republic: AGIs are subject to summary erasure. Anyone creating, aiding, or abetting an AGI is subject to severe criminal penalties, including the possibility of execution for treason.

Lunar-Lagrange Alliance: AGIs are outlawed by most LLA communities; they will be banished or placed in cold storage depending on circumstance. Hypercorps or individuals creating AGIs are subject to heavy fines.

Planetary Consortium: Roughly 25% of Planetary Consortium polities ban AGIs completely (similar to the LLA). In other polities they are heavily regulated. AGIs are considered property by the Planetary Consortium and will never have citizenship rights. In addition to regulations by local polities, the Planetary Consortium as a whole has regulations governing the development and use of AGIs. Violations of these regulations are punished with heavy fines.

Morningstar Constellation: The Morningstar Constellation’s approach to AGIs is similar to the Planetary Consortium, but the regulatory oversight is significantly smaller and only 10% of Morningstar polities ban AGIs completely. (Very rare MC polities even grant AGIs citizenship, but citizenship in one Morningstar polity is no guarantee of your rights in another.)

Conservative Independents: This isn’t a specific political body, but a significant number of independent settlements (including some autonomist settlements) fall into this category. In these settlements, AGIs are considered full citizens but they sacrifice some of the normal rights of citizens. This most notably includes privacy: AGIs in these settlements will have their mesh access tightly monitored and their morphs/hardware specs routinely audited. They may even have to undergo mandatory and intensive monitoring of their minds in order to detect the hypothetical onset of a singularity event. It’s even possible that they could be legally forced to undergo psychosurgery in order to prevent it. AGIs visiting such settlements will also undergo such scans (and possibly surgery).

Titanian Commonwealth: AGIs are recognized as full citizens by the Commonwealth and even benefit under Titan’s “one body for every mind” policy. However, new AGIs can expect to undergo extensive monitoring and testing before achieving citizenship. (Optionally, a GM could easily decide that AGI citizens are still subject to heavy surveillance and sousveillance in Titan society.)

Autonomists: AGIs, infomorphs, synthmorphs, Factors, flats… Dude, we’re all sentients, right? Don’t bug them and they probably won’t bug you.

NOTES

Individual habitats, of course, can obviously vary from these generic baselines. (In the case of the PC and LLA, you could even use the listed percentiles to randomly determine a given habitat’s legal framework.) These should be considered tools, not straitjackets.

It should also be noted that the Morningstar Constellation’s attitude towards AGIs is, as far as I can tell, never explicitly spelled out in any of the Eclipse Phase sourcebooks. I’ve intuited the position described above based on specific adventure seeds and historical incidents in Morningstar habitats. Given this paucity of information, however, a GM could easily shift them even further from the Planetary Consortium. (Perhaps you could have them behave like the Conservative Independents I describe above?)

The Eclipse Phase universe, like a lot of science fiction universes, features faster-than-light travel (in the form of the Pandora Gates) and FTL communication (in the form of quantum-entangled transmissions). If relativity is true (and, in the real world, we have copious evidence that says that it is), then this is impossible.

This tends to get hackles raised from those who are unhappy with a universal speed limit, but this Wikipedia article gives a pretty good explanation of why FTL causes time travel. There’s really no way around it: If FTL communication is possible, then Alice really will receive an FTL reply from Bob before she sent the original FTL message. And once you can do that, it’s trivial to create causality violations. (Particularly if we replace “FTL message” with “FTL travel” so that Alice can go some place, come back before she left, and shoot herself in the head.)

The realities of relativistic speeds are deeply unintuitive to us, but they are no less real because of that. Without getting elbow-deep in the math so that we can really grasp what’s happening, we’re not going to spontaneously discover something that the last five generations of very clever scientists have overlooked. There is no easy escape hatch.

But recently I was drawn into a discussion of how the FTL “realities” of the Eclipse Phase universe could be handled. Here a few approaches you could take:

OOPS…

I guess relativity was wrong after all. Oops.

There’s really no way to pull this off without ignoring a century of scientific data, but we’re just going to ignore that: FTL works and there’s no causality violation because, ta-da, we said so.

To be fair, general relativity and quantum mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with each other and something’s going to have to give if we’re ever going to reconcile those theories. It could be the light speed limit that’ll need to be jettisoned (although it’s entirely unclear why or what form the resulting scientific theory would take).

This is, basically, the approach Eclipse Phase takes: QE-based communication alone completely ruptures relativity at a local and immediate level. Ergo, relativity must not be true. Fly, Skylark, fly.

MUST… GO… FASTER…

But let’s wave our hands a little faster.

It turns out that hyper-luminal drives actually increase the local speed of light not just for the ship, but for all spacetime within the light cone of that ship. There are no causality violations because the ship never actually goes faster than light (just faster than light was going last week), but suddenly the radio waves from Earth are reaching Mars much faster than they were before. In fact, it turns out that most of the dark energy in the universe is just a by-product of extragalactic FTL civilizations and tachyons are basically a form of interstellar pollution.

For the purposes of Eclipse Phase, let’s just ignore QE-communication for the moment and focus our attention entirely on the Pandora Gates. It turns out that this “speeding up the speed of light” effect of hyper-luminal travel is heavily gradated due to the vast distances being traversed by the Gates. But people begin to suspect what’s happening when scientists begin detecting small “speed-ups” in interplanetary communication systems. (And it’s possible the scientists weren’t the first ones: There have some anomalous trades on the Planetary Stock Exchange that could only be possible if someone knew they could take advantage of discontinuities in communication speeds.)

OUT OF THIS WORLD

Or maybe causality violations resolve themselves through some variant of the many-worlds hypothesis: Alice leaves at FTL speeds, returns before she left, and then shoots herself in the head. But causality isn’t violated because Alice the Murderer can still trace her personal timeline into a different world where the shooting never took place.

The universe where this happens, however, is a complete disaster: Causality may not technically be violated as it leaps from one spacetime to another, but from a local perspective it’s shredded into pieces. The solar system becomes filled with nonsensical events that we can’t really comprehend: Revolutions are thwarted before they started, but then instantly won by time-traveling revolutionaries who blah blah blah, my brain hurts.

Interesting thought experiment, though: What does the universe where Alice the Murderer zoomed off at FTL speeds look like? Well, in that universe she simply disappears the minute she turns around and violates causality (having skipped into a different universe where her return isn’t an immediate paradox). In this scenario you might actually end up with a very large number of universes which this causality-violating Alice simply “skips through” creating ghostly, quantum-froth blips as she sequentially violates causality in one after another. (Once again, we could hand-wave violently and pretend these causality-busting events are happening around us all the time and are the source of dark energy or quantum manifestations or any number of things.)

But here’s the important bit: In the universe where we sent Alice away at FTL speeds, she simply vanishes and we will never see her again. If she turns around and tries to come back, she (and anyone else trying that stunt) will vanish into an alternate dimension never to be seen again.

In the Eclipse Phase universe, though, we’ve been doing this for awhile now: We send Alice out at FTL speeds through the Pandora Gates and we bring Alice back at FTL speeds through the Pandora Gates. Everything seems fine. But then we crack the science and discover that Alice can’t come back: When she comes back, she flips out of this dimension and is never seen again.

But if Alice can’t come back… who the hell is the “Alice” who came back through the Gate? What the hell is the Alice who came back through the Gate?