Play the Eclipse Phase RPG

Why should you play the Eclipse Phase RPG? A number of reasons.

Firstly, the setting is cool. It’s like Cowboy Bebop meets Mass Effect meets Neuromancer. It also (on purpose, I’m sure) channels the old Paranoia RPG. Like… a lot. The overall tone, however, is decidedly less humorous than Paranoia, but certainly no less dark.

That being said, the core Eclipse Phase rulebook and all future supplements are being released under the Creative Commons license. Specifically, the CC BY-NC-SA license. That is, you are free to share or remix Eclipse Phase as long as you do so non-commericially, attribute the original licensor (in this case, Catalyst Game Labs), and only share your remixed work under the same license.

Unlike Wizards of the Coast and their “Open Gaming License” which wasn’t all THAT open, this truly is Open Source Gaming. Which is another reason you need to play this game. The potential within Eclipse Phase for the community to be able to develop and re-use the material is like few RPG’s before it.

So, here is the torrent to download Eclipse Phase. Yes, it’s legal and cheap as free.

Oh, just checked the Eclipse Phase blog, and apparently, Eclipse Phase is the number one seller on DriveThruRPG.com. Not bad for a free, open source product.

The Frost Lotus Ultimatum

I generally enjoy playing WoW.

That being said, there are a few… issues I’ve been having lately. Yes, it is sometimes annoying to get the “No more instances can be created message” but that doesn’t cause seething hatred in the cockles of my heart. Nor does ganking, nor Death Knights constantly being nerfed, nor even the guy in Vent that turns his speakers up really loud so that whenever anyone else talks you get this annoying echo effect.

What fills me with rage is drama.

First, to give you a little background, I’ve recently joined a new raiding guild. The guild I had been in which was pretty much just a group of friends, while fun, was not very diligent as far as keeping to ANY kind of raiding schedule. When Ulduar came out and I was still kicking around in Heroic 5-man purples, I decided to strike out for greener pastures (and better raid schedules.)

I found the current guild through the WoW forums (I know, I know… but with horrible gear, and very little actual raid experience, I can’t be too choosy, here.) They seemed pretty laid back when I browsed around their forums, and it looked like the kind of place I could join up and not get in too much trouble if I couldn’t make a raid night every once in a while. (Family first, ya know!)

Well, we’re running our mid-week Ulduar 10-man and we’re clearing out Freya. I vaguely remember there being some in-game chatter about who has herbalism blah blah blah okay let’s go kill stuff. Well, we clear the whole area (because we don’t want to do hard mode, mmkay) and right before we’re getting ready to pull Freya, the Shaman/healer/Guild Master leaves the raid group, immediately disconnects from Vent, and goes offline. Everyone is shocked for a few seconds as we wonder if his connection blew up, or maybe evil Nazi super-scientists teleported him to the black sun dimension, or what. Then, someone in vent says, “If he wants the 3 Frost Lotus, I’ll give it to him. It’s really not that big of a deal.” Wait, what?

Yeah, so our shaman ragequit over some stupid herbs. Granted, they are somewhat valuable, but enough to actually ragequit over it? Seems a little dramatic to me. At this point, I’m thinking to myself, “No biggie. We’ll just pug another healer and keep going.” Well, that’s when our Resto Druid and a rogue both /gquit. “Wha??”

They inform us in vent: “Yeah, <GuildMaster> just threatened to /gkick us over this Frost Lotus thing because he says he’s the guild master and doesn’t have to be treated like this. We don’t really want to stick around for this. Bye.”

At this point I should explain that the core of this guild is a group of IRL friends. The GuildMaster is actually more of an officer, and the real guild master, the guy that organizes raids, determines who can join the guild, grants forum access, is really a great guy, fun to play WoW with and in all respects is pretty cool. If the GuildMaster were actually the guild master, I suspect a large amount of the guild population would’ve been looking for new guilds at this point.

In the meantime, the raid has ground to a halt, and I’m suddenly NOT getting any closer to getting my Tier 8 gloves. And this is what bugs me. It’s one thing to be pissed about something, and it’s another thing to be pissed about something so inconsequential. It’s entirely another thing to leave people hanging because you want to go have a cry-fest over some stupid herbs. This is playground-level of getting pissed. Buck up, little camper! If losing 3 Frost Lotus is enough to send you into a fit of rage, just wait until your mom kicks you out of the basement.

Ugh.