As previously noted, the Eclipse Phase core rulebook clocks in at a hefty 400 pages. That's a lot of book! Given the intricacies of the game, we felt it was necessary to include a solid chunk of text to the setting as well as details and rules for key technologies. Here's a short breakdown on what the book covers, and how many pages are devoted to each subject:
- Overview: Setting Synopsis, Playing an RPG, Terminology — 10 pages
- Detailed Setting — 80 pages (This breaks down into:)
- History — 6 pages
- Society and Culture — 32 pages
- Factions — 16 pages
- System Gazeteer — 26 pages
- Game Mechanics — 16 pages
- Character Creation — 26 pages
- Sample Characters — 16 pages
- Skills — 16 pages
- Action and Combat — 30 pages
- Mind Hacks — 18 pages
- The Mesh: computer systems, online research, hacking, AIs, etc. — 32 pages
- Accelerated Future: various technologies, such as resleeving, nanofabrication, reputation systems, etc — 28 pages
- Gear — 56 pages
- GM Info — 40 pages
Rounding the book out are some tables, a character sheet, references, etc.
The book is over page count from its original specs, but we feel that almost everything in the book is important to the setting and playing the game. It can be hard to imagine or predict how some of the technologies we address will impact human society, for example, so we took a shot at covering that. It can also be a challenge for people to grasp settings that don't have a lot of familiarity, and since Earth is wrecked and off-limits in EP, defining new locales was a critical point. I think we succeeded in reaching our goal of giving players and GMs enough information that they can dive right into the game universe once reading that background.