 Goto [ Index ] |
Sunward is what it claims to be and delivers what it promises: A guide detailing the inner solar system in the EP era, with the inner solar system defined as being from the sun (Yes, the sun) to the innermost fringe of the asteroid belt.
I might have preferred it if the belt had been kept in one book for easier reference, but I understand that there is an inner fringe of asteroids that crosses mars' orbit, and mars has usually been accepted as part of the inner system.
Starting at the sun (yes, the sun) Sunward given a fairly complete look at the inhabitants and societies that occupy the areas it covers. Living in solar orbit are some communities of heavily engineered bio/cyber entities that essentially feed off the sun's energy and the matter surrounding it. One of these exotic artificial being's graces sunward's cover, as a matter of fact. While the odds of players wanting to be spacewhales living on solar power are perhaps remote, the game makes it possible for them to do so or for the GM to have his players contact such..extreme beings.
Mercury is next, with major corporations creating anti matter on it due to its low population density and mobile miners following the terminator around to mine the planet of it's heavy metal bounty.
We now go to Venus where the morningstar alliance seeks to free itself of hypercorp control in it's cloud cities, while on the surface indentured servants toil in quartz morphs, working on mining, research and other activities. The book makes it clear the hypercorps screw over there indentured infogees badly, forcing many to start their year of service over and over again, and at times I wonder why. I mean, are the corps evil for evil's sake? I can just imagine a little exchange in the boardroom of some hypercorp abusing workers on Venus and cheating them out of their contracts by getting them killed and mandating they start over:
"Well, Sir, production on the venusian surface facilities is down again, as the workers are basically despondent over ever fulfilling their contracts and getting their promised payoffs and freedom.
So? Increase the oppression, that ought to fix things.
Uh, well, we've increased oppression 4 times since last year, and every time we do, productivity drops. Plus we have to spend more money on security to keep fed up workers from snapping and sabotaging the work, surveillance to stop them unionizing and going on strike for better conditions, and so on. I'd say that oppression is counter productive, and counter profitable too.
So? What should we do then? Torture? Random executions?
Um, well, who not- and I know this is a real step out of the box here- but why don't we just....treat the worker fairly and stop cheating them?
(Assorted gasps and some growls)
Look! Oppression costs us more money than we save not paying off the workers in lost productivity and extra security! We've got tens of thousands of these infogees who need bodies and jobs, so we're not going to run out any time soon, so why not just be fair with them, pay them what we agreed to and stop pissing them off and lowering their productivity by cheating them? It'd be more profitable to just pay them what we agreed to and being in a new infogee worker than to keep oppressing the ones we have!
But-but if we did that, what about the Evil?
The what? "Evil"?
Yes, the Evil. We're a hypercorpation, we have an Evil status to maintain, you know. I mean, if we did what you're saying, our Evil rating would drop like a rock! Investors would shun us, no one would buy our stock, other hypercorps would see us an an east mark and we'd all be out on our asses in a few months! +++ Ok, so that's kind of the image I get at times. I hate modern corporations with a fine passion, but at times I think the portrayal of "Evil Inc." in EP is a little unnecessary as there's plenty of infogee workers so I don't see why the hypercorps need to hose them over so badly. It seems, from the stories I read, that knowing they're going to get screwed by the corporation makes the workers less productive and more inclined to looking for ways to payback their treatment.
After venus we return to the terra/luna system. Don't you dare call it "the moon" or the lunarians will glare at you like you just took a dump in the fruitbowl.
First off, there are still apparently survivors on earth, people that may have somehow eluded destruction by the TITANs and still cling to life a decade later. Also, there's evidence that things are being built, grown or just created on earth that may or may not be TITAN relics or even new forms of existence evolving in the aftermath of the apocalypse. There are doors open to adventures on the dangerous, unknown and alien world earth has become in the EP era, who wants to step thru?
(There's a hint that there may even be a pandora gate on earth itself. Now isn't it nice to know that no GM could possibly be evil and sadistic enough to set the players up with a trip thru a pandora gate to an unknown destination just so he could eventually have them meet the statue of liberty's ruins on a beach eventually? :) Man, would that be twisted.)
Earth orbit is given a good viewing, with the various orbital facilities to survive the war examined, and a look at the remaining space elevator that was used in the intro EP story "Lack". Now, I have to wonder something: If the people away from earth are so paranoid about thingies getting up from earth to attack them, why wasn't the last space elevator nuked about 10 years ago? Still, it's there if anyone wants to try using it.
Luna (Don't call it the moon, I said!) is then looked at and laid out for adventuring on and in.
Now we come to Mars, with more detail give to the angry red planet's occupants and their various factions. Criminals, settlers, corporations and maybe even a few exsurgents and TITAN relics await you. Come one, come all! There's plenty of sand to bury everyone in.
Last stop is the inner fringe of the asteroid belt, at the edges of useful solar power and relatively quick and easy access to other planets. Some real weirdos have staked out their own private little worlds here, where a distinct lack of nosy nearby neighbors ensures privacy. Some places encourage visitors, like the scum traders, others rather pointedly refuse to put out the welcome mat.
Asides from a smattering of locations and organizations, Sunward introduces some new traits and morphs. There are a good selection of new characters to choose from, and the illustration of the martian ranger is some really nice fan service. (Ever wonder where martian adapted biomorphs store their extra oxygen? This pic gives you a hint. A couple, actually.)
The style is the same as other EP books. Much information is presented as coming from an agent in firewall, sending you, the firewall FNG, messages or even having a talk with you. Other info comes as emails, public announcements, forum chats, etc.
The art is quite nice, especially the martian ranger picture.
There are some flaws here and there. A piece of text on pg 43 is simply cut off in mid sentence, missing the last couple lines of the final paragraph on adapted venusian aerolife, and the entry for the synthmorph activist has some stats clearly swapped with an octomorph.
Despite my reputation for harsh judgments, I'm going to let these glitches slide. First off after the problems caused by catalyst labs I'm damn glad to see post human studios making ANY new stuff for eclipse phase, and also in the scrabble to survive and find a new publisher I can understand a few lines of text getting lost or misplaced here and there.
Also, in a week or so they can put out the new PDF with the corrections, so if you bought the bad copy just hang in there, an updated PDF is on the way. So it's nothing to kill anyone over.
All in all, I'd say that sunward is a great EP product and maybe an interesting one for any SF RPG gamer looking for ideas.
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
