As we approach the conclusion of the Know Evil campaign, each episode will be accompanied by a portrait of a Firewall agent. Our first portrait is Max, drew’s ill-fated Ultimate security guard.
In this episode of the Know Evil campaign, the Firewall team prepares to leave the scum swarm, but not before doing last mission. In order to secure transportation to a remote habitat and acquire some equipment, the team agrees to assassinate a heavily defended war criminal in an isolated spacecraft. Of course the target is guarded by a crack squad of ultimate mercenaries and the spacecraft is trapped. But the Firewall team is nothing if not determined. Bullets and nanoswarms will fly in the blood opera of the Scum Swarm Tier!
Speaking of violent games, check out the relaunch of Raillery, a video game actual play podcast starring Ross and other RPPR regulars!
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that asshole was also sleeved/implantedly backed up in one/all of his pleasure pod wives, wasn’t he? this is Eclipse Phase, you guys! you can’t just ‘bitches, leave!’
Oh MaxJax, I’ll miss you going crazypants insane. And I love the fighting in EP. Can’t wait to play some, myself.
The combat is pretty impressive for so many things going on at once. While we’re on the subject of Max, why was Gerard so eager to kill him anyway?
I assumed it was his loyalty to the KR-crew. Also, MaxJax did shoot him when going nuts, so maybe he held a grudge? 😀
I think it was probably the shooting. The full-auto fire trauma pretty much took Gerard out of the A Proficia fight, which was against TITANs shenanigans. There was also the chance that Max had been infected, so Gerard’s experience in the Fall wasn’t about to let him play around with that amount of risk.
Amazing game. Good job running such a decent fight, Caleb, and good job on the players for surviving it.
Directed by Peckinpah, I hear :3
a chat room, where you kill people
Yeah, Caleb’s right if I remember correctly from the ages past when we played this game. Gerard’s only solution to deal with that level of infection was to execute the infected and purge the TITAN contagion before it infected anyone else. Also, with how crazy MaxJax went, Gerard believed there would be no amount of psychotherapy to repair the mental damage; it would be best for him to revert to a backup. Lastly, if we didn’t eliminate him, then there was always the possibility of MaxJax’s stack falling into the wrong hands. In that regard, Gerard considered him a huge security risk to Firewall.
Oh, nice, you guys mentioned me in a roundabout way as the guy who said space wasn’t cold. And to my relatively layman’s understanding, Caleb is mostly right in this case, while if you are say, kicked into space your heat isn’t going to go anywhere quickly, but if you suck out all the air at whatever temperature it is into space, anything left behind will be colder. Probably not cold enough to be more of a risk than the pressure difference basically boiling the air out of your blood, but it wouldn’t be comfy.
Great session guys, kudos to Caleb for managing this crazy enemy strategy w/ a tactical map. I’ve run a lot of crazy mass combats with numbers of combatants of all kinds of sizes, and most of the time it doesn’t go have as smoothly as this one did. RPPR must have gotten very well adjusted to combat in EP because you guys moved from action to action very smooth and quick.
Tiny point of clarification, Plasma Rifles only need to cool down in Vacuum, and while I’m not entirely sure, I don’t think Preston/Challenger was in the first time he needed a whole turn to cool. But even if he was, you guys to the “two-shots then cool” thing, like everywhere.
I know about the plasma rifle rule. I just don’t mention it. At 3d10 damage plus fire they are just too powerful, no one would carry anything else into a fight. I feel like the two and rest, three and explode is a nice nerf. It’s basically a really powerful double barrel.
Another great Know Evil in the can. Caleb, I love you as a player and I love you as a GM. You just bring such intelligence to both roles and your games are so full wit. Ha, I could tell that you thought the guys got over the encounter too easy, maybe they did. They enjoyed it, you enjoyed it, we enjoyed listening to it; that equals a great session.
Thanks man! You made my day!
Plasma rifles arguably have enough other drawbacks (bulky, basically impossible to conceal, illegal or very tightly controlled in many parts of the system, substantially more expensive than most other weapons, prone to accidentally releasing your atmosphere into the void) that people wouldn’t use them exclusively. But they’re so much more powerful than the competition when it comes to scenarios where they -would- be available and in use (apparently they’re even capable of semi-auto fire, which is…2 3d10 armor-piercing possibly set you on fire shots per action phase? yeesh) that I can understand wanting -some- drawback at that stage.
Incidentally, on another rules nitpicky note that’s probably way too late – mental speed and multitasking give two extra mental complex actions -per action phase-…so if you’re at Speed 2, you get two extra mental actions on phase 1 -and- two extra mental actions on phase 2. They don’t give you Speed for mental actions only. And mechanically there’s no real difference between the two except that multitasking is for cortical stack users only and mental speed is nanoware. Fictionally speaking it makes sense for them to be simultaneous vs sequential, though.
A nice end to the scum tier! It did seem like Caleb thought the guys got away with barely a scratch, but they did take a bit of damage. It is hard to tune combats: Too light and it seems like the bad guys just rolled over and died; Too heavy, and the players start dropping like flies.
This went surprisingly smoothly for a knock-down dragout fight with so many things going on. I really enjoyed the tactics of the bodyguards and how ready they were to use the environment against the player characters.
In a lot of ways, this felt like the “sequel” game to when they fought the bounty hunter in episode 12. But there they went in unprepared and played catch-up through the deathtrap halls; here they stole some tactics and came in ready.
My other favorite aspect was the flash of memories from Khalid; giving even a monstrous war criminal that moment of vulnerability and humanity (crushing loneliness, then hope) was a very nice touch, especially against the violent backdrop of the rest of the episode.
I could be wrong, but isn’t 1 round in Eclipse Phase 3 seconds? Because at one point one of them said something to the sound of “end of round 2=2 minutes”, which sound REALLY SLOW for gun combat…
Where was the post where the terrorist got his expended Sim space fun time? I tried to find it but can’t.