I have run a game of Eclipse Phase at an RPG convention in Sydney. I found it to be a very cool game, the setting in particular is very interesting and varied however the rules are a little complex for people who want to just try it.

There are a lot of bits which don't quite fit into hard sci-fi - aliens, psychics, nanotech that works like magic. However, it's pretty easy to leave these out, except it's difficult to know how realistic nanotech would work. I doubt we'll ever use it to create mundane things due to energy constraints, but I guess in the context of the game it works.

Where the game really shines is in dealing with mind uploading, "re-sleeving", virtual worlds and psychic surgery - you can copy minds and re-merge them, even edit them to some degree. It gives a lot of scope for games that work with meta-levels of reality and manipulation of minds. I would like to explore possible transhumanism using it if I ever get the time to.

I'd be interested to playing this via google+ meetups or posts. Anyone else?

Anders Sandberg wrote some campaigns for Eclipse Phase. There's even one about gur evfxf nevfvat sebz n fhcrevagryyvtrag benpyr negvsvpvny vagryyvtrapr.

My friends and I started trying it a couple of weeks back. The first part of the game, the worldbuilding, is awesome - different players 'own' different parts of the world, so while you throw a lot of ideas back and forth, specific players have final arbitration over which details do and don't get included. The character building is also interesting - you collaboratively pick a couple of axes that the characters will vary along. For our session we picked corruption/integrity as one axis and personal responsibility/lack of as the other. Then each player creates a character that will explore the theme/issue that the person to their left owns, deciding where they fall on each axis and some details about their character for other players to work with. Then the person to their left creates the antagonist for that character who will oppose their goals.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time after that, so I can't really comment on the mechanics of the actual roleplaying, only my impressions from skimming the first couple of chapters of the manual. The dice rolling mechanics seemed a little clunky, a poor attempt to incorporate randomness into a framework that's really all about the collaboration.

The author of Dogs in the Vineyard just posted this on his blog:

Designing Philosophical Arguments

Ry asks:

How do you take a philosophical argument that's very, very important to you and express it in a game - without being pedantic?

(like you did with compassionate and uncertain vs. judgmental and certain in Dogs)

Well, wow. Mostly I fail!

I want to say that I don't try to design games that way, but it's not true. All the time I'm writing things in my notebook like "so, Vincent, compassionate vs judgmental, right? How?" But it turns out that when I approach a design that way, nothing ever comes of it. Ever! It's not fruitful for me.

When it works, it works because I ignore the philosophical argument and design the realities of the situation instead. What circumstances can a character find herself in, what can she do, and what can come of it?

At least, that's how it seems to me this afternoon. What do you think? It's a good topic - do you want to ask or say more?

Mwa ha ha!

Due to time constraints, isn't it better to play post-by-post?

Appreciation:"the act of estimating the qualities of things and giving them their proper value", "clear perception or recognition, especially of aesthetic quality", In order to appreciate rule-breaking, you must first know the rules. That's why a cultured person might have fun contemplating an abstract work and sharing the in-joke with the artist (I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE) while Average Joe will only see a doodle and will ask for figurative Art, perhaps of the sort that involves naked women and ceramic jars.

The charm of a role-playing game allows you to do what you couldn't do otherwise. The impossible. The more knowledgeable you are about why something is impossible, the more you can appreciate the escapism of playing a simulation of doing.

This is why a rollerblader would enjoy Jet Set Radio Future, a skater would have great fun with Tony Hawk, a climber or parkourer will enjoy Assasin's Creed or Mirror's Edge more than average-sedentary-joe: they know that if they tried that in Real Life, they'd break their own fingers... at the very least. It's why an actual soldier will enjoy the less realistic shooters, a racing pilot will have crazy fun with Burnout, and architect would get their mind blown by Bioshock, many types of Engineer will be greatly entertained by Steamboy....

And a rationalist, especially a scientist one, will be greatly entertained by a game about Mad Science, where you build all those technological Wonders you dreamed of as a child without all the frustrating constraints you have been discovering as you pursued your dreams as an adult. "No, you can't build that complicated yet beautiful contraption. Well, actually you can, but here's a thing that does the same function, is lots cheaper, and much more reliable. It's made in China." or "No, you can't build a general AI yet, and no, it won't arise from "complexity" or "No, your unification of physics using quantum gravity is and has always been bullshit" or "Time travel is impossible. Period."

And in this game... all that stuff... for the duration of the campaign... you can pretend it was possible. You get your jetpack. You get your raygun. You get your Chocolate Factory. With Pure Imagination, you can forget about the hard limits of reality and dream dreams of unlimited human and transhuman potential... for a while.