Explore Topics:
AIBiotechnologyRoboticsComputingFutureScienceSpaceEnergyTech

Transhumanism Gets Its Own Role Playing Game

Aaron Saenz
Apr 20, 2010
eclipse phase rpg

Share

Move over Dungeons and Dragons, the Singularity has its own nerd-tastic role playing game to thrill geeks everywhere. Eclipse Phase is a table top pen and paper RPG based on the concept of accelerating technologies changing our world. What happens when biotech, nanotech, and robotics start to reshape humanity? You get Transhumanism, the real life cultural and intellectual movement interested in how humans will transcend their current limitations. Eclipse Phase jumps on and rides the Transhumanism train to create a RPG that is partly speculative and partly based in real technology.

eclipse phase rpg

Your characters can reshape their DNA, upload into robot bodies, and even live forever by storing digital backup copies of themselves. Players use these characters to help save the world from a vast conspiracy set on destroying transhumanity. If you want to play you can purchase a starting guide for just $15. It's all just a game, and it's definitely a nerd-fest in the making, but Eclipse Phase looks cool and it highlights how exponentially growing technology is starting to effect our culture. After all, we are what we game.

Be Part of the Future

Sign up to receive top stories about groundbreaking technologies and visionary thinkers from SingularityHub.

100% Free. No Spam. Unsubscribe any time.

We've seen various incarnations of the Transhumanism philosophy before. There are groups of like minded people that meet in various communities, and there's plenty of art that explores the concept. Eclipse Phase fits into the trend very well. It's a game for fun, but there's the subtext that the technology under discussion could, and probably will, be available some day. After all, these speculative technologies have their roots in current developments. Ray Kurzweil discussed living forever through uploading your personality into a computer in the movie Transcendent Man, designer babies with perfect genes are around the corner, and people are already working on getting nanobots in the body. The fact that someone's developed a game around these concepts just shows that they are in the public awareness at some level. Which is good. Accelerating technologies could lead to big changes in the global civilization in the next few decades. Maybe gaming about them now will help us deal with them later.

transhumanism rpg eclipse phase

[image credit: Eclipse Phase - product of PostHuman Studios, published by Catalyst Game Labs]
[source: Eclipse Phase, PostHuman Studios]

Related Articles

A long spiral staircase with railing

Scaling Up: How Increasing Inputs Has Made Artificial Intelligence More Capable

Veronika Samborska
Scientists Find ‘Mirror Life’ Building Blocks on Asteroid Bennu

Scientists Find ‘Mirror Life’ Building Blocks on Asteroid Bennu

Shelly Fan
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)

SingularityHub Staff
A long spiral staircase with railing
Artificial Intelligence

Scaling Up: How Increasing Inputs Has Made Artificial Intelligence More Capable

Veronika Samborska
Scientists Find ‘Mirror Life’ Building Blocks on Asteroid Bennu
Space

Scientists Find ‘Mirror Life’ Building Blocks on Asteroid Bennu

Shelly Fan
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)

SingularityHub Staff

What we’re reading

Be Part of the Future

Sign up to receive top stories about groundbreaking technologies and visionary thinkers from SingularityHub.

100% Free. No Spam. Unsubscribe any time.

SingularityHub chronicles the technological frontier with coverage of the breakthroughs, players, and issues shaping the future.

Follow Us On Social

About

  • About Hub
  • About Singularity

Get in Touch

  • Contact Us
  • Pitch Us
  • Brand Partnerships

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
© 2025 Singularity