But does a BTL really change your brain chemistry? It fools your senses into thinking you're perceiving and feeling something that isn't there... which is no different from jacking into Virtual Reality except that it's beyond intense and indistinguishable from RL. It doesn't sound like there's an active component to a sim rig and BTL chip that would chemically affect you. I'm thinking of RL experiments where neurologists zap a person's skull to induce sensations. It doesn't change the brain's chemistry, it just tricks the brain. Once the stimulus is removed the brain reverts back to normal. I'm not convinced the addiction component of a BTL chip is a chemical reaction (like being genetically predisposed to something). Addiction comes into play because the BTL experience is so much better than the person's crappy life. If I could live the adventures and sex life of James Bond why would I ever come back to reality? I could see constant increased heart rate, metabolic functions, adrenaline, etc. from BTL simulation excitement damaging a person but not the actual chip and hardware itself. My theory is that a BTL stresses you to death.

Psychotropic Black ICE is a type of BTL, and it permanently affects you.

Hence BTLs can affect your brain. It's not just perception.

ASIST biofeedback can do pretty much anything a drug can do and more. SR's been at the point where deckers with enough neuroscientific knowledge could basically re-write your brain since 1st edition. Check out the PAB machines in Shadowbeat. Or, if you're not comfortable with them because they seem to have been ret-conned out of the game, look at bunraku or psychotropic IC. I can definitely see BTLs that cause you to ignore pain. I don't know about physical stat bonuses, but I see no reason BTLs shouldn't be able to temporarily raise or lower INT, WIL, LOG, or CHA.

And then there's the issue of cyberware. I can see some BTLs possibly interfacing with existing 'ware. Maybe bonuses that you only get if you have skillwires. Maybe your BTL is messing with your head while at the same time, an embedded file tricks your muscle replacements into exceeding their safety limits (sort of like red-lining a cyberlimb). Eventually, it will kill or horribly injure you because it's putting more stress on your cyberware than your cyberware was meant to handle. But, hopefully, those particular BTL's will be more of a special occasion treat than an everyday routine (unless your security employees have a really crappy union).

If you slot a chip that terrifies you by inducing fear stimulas to the section of the brain that deals with emotion ( is that that the thalmus?) it would fool the brain into producing the chemical by product of that. If you stimulate the pleasure sensors of the brain you induce Endorphins.

This is outside electrical/visual/aromatic stimuli affecting the chemical struction of the body. This is what makes BTL so dangerous.
Yes if you slot a rage chip with the emotional overtones of invincibility you are going to trigger Adreline which would make you faster and stronger.

Remember you also get the entire emotional overtones of the person on who the chip was made. All of this stimuli affects the way the brain percieves the issue and then will correspondinly ( is that a word?) change/control chemical output of the brain and glands.

Good points. I retract my theory. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif)

You know, I've been playing SR since 1st edition, and I've thought about BTLs a lot. But I just realized something very creepy that would probably be true of the BTL industry that I'd never thought of before for some reason. I bet that the most in-demand producers of BTLs are people who don't really feel emotions, so the BTL will come as close as possible to being just the effect it was programmed for. If you're slotting a chip that makes you see a world made out of chocolate, you don't want to slog through the subconscious feelings of anxiety of someone who maybe had a brother choke to death on a Crunch bar or something. And any sort of environment-type chip, like one that made you think you were on a shadowrun (BTLs are still illegal, but this would be MUCH safer for your average suburban teenager than actually GOING on a shadowrun), you're not going to want one made by a shadowrunner that liked his job; you're going to want one made by someone who was totally indifferent, so you can feel your own emotions (also, you're not going to want one where someone gets scared by gunfire--you'll probably be scared enough on your own without adding someone else's fear on top). So if you think about this, it means that a lot of the stars in the BTL industry are going to be emotionless, because they were selected for that very reason. That's dystopian, especially if the same applies to legitimate simsense. The most popular stars will be ones that are very pretty and can act well, but have no soul to speak of.

Then what's the use of the SIM RIG? It records the emotional track as well as the physical. If I slot a Porno Chip of me doing Nadia Daviar then I want the complete emotional and physical package as well. I want it to be me or us or whatever..... You know what I mean. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The SIM RIG would give you the ability to make your own recording. If you were doing that, you'd probably want to keep your own emotional tracks. But if someone were to hand it to you, you'd probably want them to edit out their own emotional track, so you can experience your own emotions while doing it with Ms. Daviar, rather than someone else's. If you were skeevy and wanted to overide the ASIST cutouts to turn your little tryst into a BTL, you probably wouldn't want to bother editing it, because you'd want to get your product out on the street in as little times as possible. That's when you'd want someone who didn't really need to be edited out.

Shadowbeat has a section on BTL abuse. There are passing notes in some fiction of people who slot too many "Neil the Ork Barbarian" or "Slade the Sniper" chips and can't really tell where reality and fantasy meet.

There will be a forthcoming book that updates what was found in Shadowbeat for the 4ed. Synner mentioned in it in the last chat session. It should drop next year.

Alright! The Kapow-Kapow Shadowteens are back!!!

Hell, I DON'T have BTLs (being that I actually exist, and all), and I sometimes get a little carried away thinking about Neil the Ork Barbarian. Axes are kewl.

So...wait: no rules regarding the dangers of BTL abuse until next year? A cornerstone of the fluff in the game, which has been talked about since the core book? Seriously? Wow, what a great time to be a chiphead. No harm, no foul, at least until next year.

Would it be a good thing for their to be rules on how the player should play their PC personality?

If BTLs did something mechanical in the game to begin with, then I can see a need for rules. But do I need rules for slotting the Happy BTL versus the Sad BTL?

Isn't it changing Role Play into Roll Play?

True, sadchips probably need no rules. Nor do happychips.
But NeiltheOrkBarbarianchips that boost your adrenaline and prevent you from feeling pain....

Some P-Fix chips should give you influence skills and bonuses to composure tests. Like for instance the "workaholic" chip in one of the recent shadowrun fiction contests probably gives you influence 2, while the "soldier of fortune" chip might give you +3 dice to composure tests, intimidation 3, and leadership 3.

They shouldn't be capable of a skill rating more than 3 and should have the effect of making you do things you otherwise would not want to do, but they would work really well as the "poor man's skillwires" for social skills.

Yes and I sometimes imagine shooting a particularly obtuse client-after they're back in their car- but neither you nor I actually slip a gear and take out that annoying waiter in the honest belief he's really an enemy agent about to assassinate the King of Zog.

Well in that case, why have rules for drugs? Or pain modifiers? Shouldn't we just e the players roleplay how they think it would be if they were shot, or high on deepweed? I'm so tired of hearing this argument whenever someone complains about the developers leaving out an obvious set of rules. Supposedly, according to the fluff, BTLs can have serious, game-affecting mental effects on people who use it. As it is now, a BTL addict is apparently perfectly functional, no matter how much of it they use. Hell, you could go shadowrunning while slotting two of them, and be none the worse for wear.

Maybe I do. You don't know me.

Okay seriously...the reason that this is a problem is that the Addiction negative quality says that it requires a substance that has a negative effect on the user. That's why drugs count, but coffee and cigarettes (which have no in-game bad effects) don't. BTLs supposedly count, but there are no negative effect for using them, so it's kinda like free points...or a license for your GM to screw you more than the points you paid for is worth because the effects just aren't defined.

It's sloppy writing.

Does the nuyen you pay for your regular fix count? Spending X amount of nuyen every y days seems to me a negative effect already.

I would say that it's entirely possible a BTL could cause some attribute modifiers, but because of how varied BTLs can be, it's pretty much a GM's call. Nailing down rules on BTL effects is a difficult task, because there are so many different kinds of BTLs. I think official rules like that would only limit GMs.

Add to that specialist types of BTLs like God Chips and 2XS.

Or, of course, something nasty and new...

I would agree, except that other drugs have the cost *and* negative game effects. And if those rules aren't overly constraining GMs, why would BTL rules do so? I'm just baffled how something so intrinsic to the setting is completely undefined by game rules. It'd be like not having stats for dragons, or if we didn't have hacking rules.

Which brings us back to coffee and cigarettes: do we need to start treating them under the addiction rules just like BTLs are, since cost alone can be considered a negative affect worth receiving buildpoints for, or are both of those now free under this setting?



We have hacking rules?