A decent translation of the weird and wonderful Eclipse Phase to the Fate System, though the switch does lose out on some of the custom nuance of base EP, and as this was a 1st Edition Port, it lacks any of the refinements new to EP 2nd Edition.

Detailed worldbuilding, focus on storytelling and fast combat make this one of the best RPGs out there. Does not mean that it is perfect(if DriveThru supported 4.25 or 4.5 out of 5 I would rate this as that), but the amount of content offered is very good, and the devs keep adding new content on a relatively frequent basis.

Long story short: EP first edition was great, EP second edition is even better.

It's a complex but much more elegant game now. No rule feels more complicated than necessary in this edition, but all nuances and flavours of the 1st edition are still here. Pools especially are a neat and exciting mechanic, clearly introduced to ease the 1st edition's crunch. Skills have been streamlined a little bit, too. The writing is very good throughout and the typesetting is amazing. I have never seen a cleaner, more neatly put together RPG book before. It's the same timeline and setting as in the first edition, so 99% of the 1st edition books are compatible with this one and the remaining 1% is easily convertible.

I really have no gripes with EP2 apart from quite a few typos, but that's just cosmetics and has improved significantly since the version 1.0 (we're currently at 1.3). This easily is one of the best RPG rulebooks out there, my experience as GM being with Warhammer (1,2, 4), DnD (3), Fading Suns, New World of Darkness (Vampire, Werewolf, Promethean), Call of Cthulhu (7), Tales from the Loop/Things from the Flood, Vaesen.

I could now proceed with praising the game world and how fascinating its intricate structure is, but the following quote from the book sums the whole up better than I ever could:

Eclipse Phase is an exploration of uncertain futures. This is more than a tabletop roleplaying game, it’s a detailed science fiction setting that thoroughly investigates issues that affect our future as a species.

If you like gritty, bold science fiction, this is as good as it gets. It's where hard science, politics, sociology and philosophy go hand in hand to help you create the best sf stories possible.

I can feel the glimpse of one of the best settings I've ever laid the eyes of my morph. Looking forward to the full game and the corollary manuals!

Cool stuff for the best faction in EP, gives some interesting adventure ideas.

It's an anthology so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that it's a mix. Mostly good (White Hempen Sleeves, Nostrums, Stray Thoughts, Prix Fixe, Lack), some are fine (The Fukuda Cube, An Infinite Horizon, Melt), some are tedious (Thieving Magpie, A Resleeving of Love).

This source book does a really evocative job of describing the Argonauts and how they interconnect with the rest of the system. Like It's right there on the tin but I felt like it needs to be said that it certainly captured my imagination on how these scientist opporate on the day to day and more importantly how to introduce them into Eclipse Phase campaigns. There's enough detail to ground them into their profession/work without it being too much and the added information about the organizations inner workings helps to flesh it out even more.

Which honestly goes into one of my favorite things about Eclipse Phase as a setting and how much love and attention is added to it while it still has enough blank spots/gaps in the right places that groups can easily add more details to groups, locations, solar system wide conspiracies, etc with out it causing friction with what's already there.

Also it goes to mention how fantastic the art pieces are throughout the book and the mood they bring to see a space whale flying around a solar space station and argonauts in various modded or customized bodies doing research in a lab really just sets the tone and also give a sense of wonder about these transhuman scientist that try to make the solar system a better place on the best of days.

If you're an eclipse phase fan and want ot learn more about these sci-fi eggheads then yeah I wholely recommend this book.

That said I feel like I should add a content warning for a joke that honestly made me feel really uncomfortable when I read it with no warning. On Page 17 there's a subsection talking about the Argonauts relationship with Titinian Commonwealth that mentions basically a fetish playparty that involved ageplay aspects (though it was with uplifted whales) but with modified bodies (assuming to be modified to be more child like) and that made me just stop reading the book for a week or so before coming back to read the rest. I know this was written a while ago but a content warning because I enjoyed literally everything else in the book except for that joke that's thrown in there with no warning.

There are a lot of things to say about Eclipse Phase, and honestly most others in these reviews have already said it.

If you like cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, hard sci-fi, transhumanism, lovecraftian cosmic horror and more then buy this game! You won't regret it.

J´ai fait jouer ce scenario comme scenario d´introduction à Eclipse Phase 2nd edition. Ce scenario est extremement bien présenté avec beaucoup d´aides au meneur pour le faire jouer.

L´histoire est plutôt bien ... même si par goût je préfèrerais que les créatures au coeur de l´intrigue soient plus impressionnantes que le bizarre qui les caractérise ici.

This game has opened up my world of reading/thinking and made me a better gamemaster.

I came to the first edition of the game through the creators' connection to Shadowrun. Eclipse Phase takes the technological aspects of that game and advances them to their logical conclusion.

Eclipse Phase has prompted me to ask questions like: What does it mean to be human? Where have we come from? Where are we going?

As a result of this, I’ve roamed through books such as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel to Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens and Home Deus and now I'm reading Toby Ord's The Precipice. The latter author is professionally connected to Anders Sanberg, who has also written material for Eclipse Phase.

Of course, none of the above is going to get your players excited about this game. My group are fairly reluctant to learn a new ruleset, but the second edition of Eclipse Phase was easy to explain to players. It also helped that the first season of Altered Carbon was released around the same time as the Second Edition playtest material.

So, I have an ongoing campaign that I love running where the main challenge is keeping anti-matter bombs and large reactors just out of reach so I get a chance to explore the beautiful concepts from this game before they get blown up.

How could you not love running a game where a session typically begins with: three robots that combine to form a giant panda, a neo-neanderthal rights activist, an escaped isolation test subject, a psychic psycho-surgeon, an uplifted octopus and an AI enter a habitat . . .

I'm really happy with the 2nd edition. The game is a lot easier to run without sacrificing any depth or flavor. I definitely recommend, and I can't wait for more Eclipse Phase modules!

I'm happy to report that the second edition of Eclipse Phase has more or less fixed all of the mechanical problems with the system.

Character creation, once a purely point buy system that more than one of my players described as tedious, is now runs on a streamlined, package buy system, though point buy is available for any purists or min-maxxers that may be interested. For those who are familiar with the first edition, the new system appears to be based on the one presented in Transhuman.

Resleeving - moving your mind to a new body - has also been improved, largely by paring down the number of things your morph affects. While this means that the individual morphs can feel less distinct, it means that it's much more feasible to switch morphs mid-session without the use of a spreadsheet, making it a welcome change, at least in my group.

The four pools are also a great addition, serving both as mechanical advantages that represent a character's enhanced abilities, and as ways to reinforce the fiction of a character.

While a lot has been made of the streamlining done in second edition, Eclipse Phase remains a rules-heavy game, and as such will not be ideal for every group. My group came from d&d, and has not had a lot of trouble picking up the game, though - as with a lot of sci-fi games - the lingo can be a bit of a hurdle.

As was the case with the first edition, the setting is a real treat here - detailed and interesting, with lots of hooks for different sorts of campaigns. A number of my players - even those not traditionally drawn in by setting 'fluff', tore through the material in the core book before moving on to relevant 1st edition books to find out more.

Overall, a great book, and a great improvement over the previous edition.

The long awaited successor to the first edition, and worth the wait. Streamlined rules for morphs and better guidance for new GMs are but two of the myriad extensive improvements that go into this excellent RPG. Pick it up, give it a go, and start telling your stories.

Eclipse Phase has been my favorite RPG since it first appeared. It presents players with a near future in which the human species is only barely outrunning its mistakes. The worst of humanity's faults led us to The Fall, an apocalypse exacerbated by renegade AIs, the TITANs. Billions of people, the vast majority, died. The remaining civilization lives in the rest of the solar system, in space stations or habitats built on asteroids or planets. The Fall ended ten years ago, but terrible risks remain. Humanity remains on the verge of extinction.

Second Edition streamlines the game in a number of ways. Character Creation, which was complicated in the first edition, is much faster now. There are some small changes to the setting, but for the most part, the various setting books produced after the release of first edition are excellent sources of material. Players can find themselves interacting with uplifted whales near the sun or exploring abandoned outposts deep in the Oort cloud at the egde of the solar system. Or venturing through the mysterious Pandora gates to new worlds throughout the galaxy. They'll face opponents who are no longer human, some of them deliberately. They'll face machines left by the TITANs. A terrifying virus that can mutate them into monsters. Vicious lifeforms on alien planets. Or humans with the worst instincts and the most advanced technologies at their disposal.

The default setting assumes player characters have been recruited by a secret organization called Firewall, which exists to protect humanity from the threats that lead to extinction. There are other options. Characters can be gatecrashers, exploring the new worlds available beyond the Pandora gates. Or, they could be criminals, exploiting other survivors. Enterprising GMs will come up with many other options just reading the setting material.

Posthuman Studios publishes under a creative commons license (foilow this link for details: https://eclipsephase.com/cclicense). That means you can find much of their work for free. They want you to enjoy their work. So do that if you want. And then come back here and support what they've done by paying for a copy.

An excellent collection of game seeds to inspire even the most seasoned Eclispe Phase GMs! Well categorised and laid out, with a tag system that makes searching for specific ideas and concepts easy, the Router Case Files is one of the best RPG purchases I made in 2019. I've already worked one into an upcoming campaign of mine.