Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on September 24, 2020, 10:36:37 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on September 24, 2020, 10:18:07 PMThe setting has (artificially created/grown) space whales that "swim" through the sun's corona and space habitats made of meat. I can't really discuss EP on a more "realistic" level.

Then its a shame sex took priority in such whackiness. Still if I want Space Wahales Il go for spelljammer.

I've read the EP2 pdf. There's probably less words on sex in it than in the OP's first two posts.

Quote from: HappyDaze on September 24, 2020, 10:44:01 PM
I've read the EP2 pdf. There's probably less words on sex in it than in the OP's first two posts.

Given that it is two posts only because teh Forum software screamed at me for going too long, I must concede that you are probably correct.


Mind you, its rarely the actual word count that is the issue, but the presentation and placement of those ideas and the correctness or incorrectness of those ideas.


An odd example might be a newspaper story that has a headline that reads 'Happydaze murdered fourteen', and followed by a twenty paragraph story that clarifies that what they actually mean is Happydaze totally owned fourteen posters in internet arguments.  Three words will have far more impact that twenty paragraphs in that case.


In Eclipse Phase we have nothing in the rules about assigning Gender or Sex, or what even EP actually intends to mean by these increasingly obfuscated words, but by smacking them all over the example characters and prominantly placing boxes for this information on the character sheet, Posthuman Studios gives the topic much more weight than even they seem to think it deserves.


And if you care about how its 'wrong', well... I delivered a very nice essay/rant on the topic to start the thread...

I'm going to throw Eclipse Phase a bone here and say that because the setting indicated that bodies are pricey, I can see legitimate scenarios for transgenderism.  Specifically, person low on cash can only afford a "slightly-used" body, body is a different sex from what the person's born as, now they're stuck in it until they can afford to swap it out, bam, valid in-game situation for there to be a transgender character.
The thing is, that character should be viewing their situation much like a person today who bought a used car that turned out to be a lemon: An annoyance that will be rectified as soon as means allow.  They wouldn't have all of the identity baggage that comes along with 2020 transgender people, because the fix for their problem is obvious and straightforward by the standards of the setting.
My bigger beef with the setting is, like other people mentioned, the way it tries to portray the Jovians as being crazed in their dislike of technology after out of control technology went and murdered like 99% of humanity.  And their very valid fear that copying yourself into a new body isn't actually copying "you", but making a software duplicate of yourself who walks around and acts like you.

Quote from: Spike on September 24, 2020, 11:54:47 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on September 24, 2020, 10:44:01 PM
I've read the EP2 pdf. There's probably less words on sex in it than in the OP's first two posts.

Given that it is two posts only because teh Forum software screamed at me for going too long, I must concede that you are probably correct.


Mind you, its rarely the actual word count that is the issue, but the presentation and placement of those ideas and the correctness or incorrectness of those ideas.


An odd example might be a newspaper story that has a headline that reads 'Happydaze murdered fourteen', and followed by a twenty paragraph story that clarifies that what they actually mean is Happydaze totally owned fourteen posters in internet arguments.  Three words will have far more impact that twenty paragraphs in that case.


In Eclipse Phase we have nothing in the rules about assigning Gender or Sex, or what even EP actually intends to mean by these increasingly obfuscated words, but by smacking them all over the example characters and prominantly placing boxes for this information on the character sheet, Posthuman Studios gives the topic much more weight than even they seem to think it deserves.


And if you care about how its 'wrong', well... I delivered a very nice essay/rant on the topic to start the thread...

I think we need to coin a new logical fallacy about arbitrary limits of brevity. Philosophers and English teachers will be driven out of existence if we don't stop it.

Quote from: Spike on September 24, 2020, 11:54:47 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on September 24, 2020, 10:44:01 PM
I've read the EP2 pdf. There's probably less words on sex in it than in the OP's first two posts.

Given that it is two posts only because teh Forum software screamed at me for going too long, I must concede that you are probably correct.


Mind you, its rarely the actual word count that is the issue, but the presentation and placement of those ideas and the correctness or incorrectness of those ideas.


An odd example might be a newspaper story that has a headline that reads 'Happydaze murdered fourteen', and followed by a twenty paragraph story that clarifies that what they actually mean is Happydaze totally owned fourteen posters in internet arguments.  Three words will have far more impact that twenty paragraphs in that case.


In Eclipse Phase we have nothing in the rules about assigning Gender or Sex, or what even EP actually intends to mean by these increasingly obfuscated words, but by smacking them all over the example characters and prominantly placing boxes for this information on the character sheet, Posthuman Studios gives the topic much more weight than even they seem to think it deserves.


And if you care about how its 'wrong', well... I delivered a very nice essay/rant on the topic to start the thread...

Beyond sex, consider the other issues that EP skirts around...

If these are just brains in a robot body, how is their any sexual attraction at all? You're missing all your hormone bits.

The funny thing is, transhumanism is the ultimate refutation of identity politics.  If you can swap your race, sex, age, anything at all physical about you, the only things left to differentiate people are wealth and one's personal choices.  But identity politics have steered away from wealth, coincidentally ever since Occupy Wall Street, no connection there, and 'I was born this way' is an integral part of the IdPol creed but no longer valid in a world where your body at birth is fairly irrelevant.  But by golly they've still got to cram that into their game, even if it's the worst fit ever.

It supposed to be a universe where people swap bodies like shirts in a changing room. Yet somehow the person sleeved into the body of a nanite swarm self-identifies as a sock. It just goes against the setting immersion and basic tropes of the setting imo

I'm postgenderist, so I totally agree. The identity politics are nonsensical.


The irony is that the identity groups could still make sense as bioconservative cultures.


For example, here's an excerpt from the 1986 scifi novel Starhammer by Christopher Rowley:

QuoteThere are some fascinating cults. Like the Pansperm Sympathoea, an extreme male-supremacist group who have been homosexual with reproductive cloning for forty generations or more. They are said to be radically altered from the human norm in patterns of thought. Their visual arts, for example, have progressed into new, quite bizarre experimentation in the religiosity of sexual depiction.

You could have omegaverse-style cultures where all females are engineered to develop into transmen (i.e. display no sexual dimorphism).


You could have a literally non-binary culture where everybody is either hermaphroditic or parthenogenic.


You could have people suffering psychological trauma as a result of military neurosurgery to make them identify as attack helicopters.


If you want to have a setting where people still clash over race and gender and all those icky human issues, then you need to build the setting to support those things.

They could have used this space to do something else, why do rpg companies feel pressure these days to be woke? Its not like it matters at all, this is a niche hobby, people dont care about the body poilitics in their rpgs unless they are shoved in. A pdf with this stuff as an extra on their site would be just as effective. Still, if its nothing really supporting the setting but supporting our current politics into the political garbage bag it goes..

Quote from: Warder on September 30, 2020, 04:06:22 AM
They could have used this space to do something else, why do rpg companies feel pressure these days to be woke? Its not like it matters at all, this is a niche hobby, people dont care about the body poilitics in their rpgs unless they are shoved in. A pdf with this stuff as an extra on their site would be just as effective. Still, if its nothing really supporting the setting but supporting our current politics into the political garbage bag it goes..

I don't get the feeling that the EP writers felt pressure to be woke; I think that's what they want to be and what they want their product to say.

The more I learn about Eclipse Phase, the more interesting Warhammer 40k becomes to me.

While the woke crowd has made a couple passes over 40k, the lore and overarching ideas make it a tough nut to crack. 40k has this weird kind of almost cheery nihilism about it. Oh, sure, there's a handful of 'thou shalt nots' -- female Space Marines are the big one -- but for the most part, none of it matters because, well, in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. And war doesn't care about your gender, your pronouns, or your preference for a pumpkin spiced latte, because chances are good your latte will be splashed across a wall along with your innards soon enough.


It's why I laughed at the handful of people bitching about the Sisters of Battle getting front-row honors in the 9E trailer, because long-time 40k players know the Sisters have been getting the short end of the stick for MANY editions. Most of us don't mind in the slightest that GW has brought the bolter bitches back into the fray, and we welcome the challenge.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on September 30, 2020, 09:18:01 AM
While the woke crowd has made a couple passes over 40k, the lore and overarching ideas make it a tough nut to crack. 40k has this weird kind of almost cheery nihilism about it. Oh, sure, there's a handful of 'thou shalt nots' -- female Space Marines are the big one -- but for the most part, none of it matters because, well, in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. And war doesn't care about your gender, your pronouns, or your preference for a pumpkin spiced latte, because chances are good your latte will be splashed across a wall along with your innards soon enough.


It's why I laughed at the handful of people bitching about the Sisters of Battle getting front-row honors in the 9E trailer, because long-time 40k players know the Sisters have been getting the short end of the stick for MANY editions. Most of us don't mind in the slightest that GW has brought the bolter bitches back into the fray, and we welcome the challenge.

The irony is that female space marines would probably look identical to male space marines. A bunch of those armored minis could be female and you would never know by looking at them.


https://www.deviantart.com/sigvardsteel/art/Female-Space-Marine-338739042

Quote from: HappyDaze on September 30, 2020, 05:31:08 AMI don't get the feeling that the EP writers felt pressure to be woke; I think that's what they want to be and what they want their product to say.

  Agreed, I think very little of this comes from external pressure--I think there are a lot of progressive and Hard Left 'true believers' in the industry.