Man and Machine, SR3, had in the actual rules for it that you would eventually suffer pemanent TLE-x. While the crunch for this is conveniently missing in SR4, the condition still exists (along with Cyber Psychosis...mmmm...). I would never actually MBW on a character I actually intended to play for this very reason. Your guys with Wires are already strung out unless they turn them off. Now imagine never being able to turn it off and having more tremors, constantly, than Michael J. Fox. Your body is in a state of seizure CONSTANTLY from that ware. You don't want that, it's just bad mojo all around.

TLE exists in 4e but it's listed separately and not concretely associated with MBW. And X is correct, MBW incurred automatic stress points in 3e, not optional ones. Of course, every rule is "optional" depending on how much a GM wants to enforce. Though I think the tremors M&M described were meant to be more irritating and bothersome than debilitating like poor Michael J Fox. Think more like Tom Hank's trembling hands in Saving Private Ryan or a twitch/tremble you get every so often in your leg or something. A role playing element more than anything. Though one can only imagine how many role players are choosing to outfit a character with MBW, heh.

As to the game encouraging players to be awakened as opposed to utilizing cyber, the Stress system was hardly impetus for that. The rules for awakened characters and magic slowly but surely made it preferable to play as adepts anyway, in the apparent attempts to remove the cyber from the punk.

Nope, it's not an optinal rule, never said it was . . but we, as a group, agreed on that stuff being fucking dumb . . if you run the risk of your ware that you probably put 50% and more of your starting character ressources into were likely to fail after the first round of combat and requiring expensive cyber-surgery to run again. more expensive than you can afford usually. and while you're damaged goods, who is gonna give your sorry ass a job that pays well enough to remove the damage? Also, the stress got worse over time.

It's as if casting spells or being hit by blunt objects or projectiles or bullets made magicians lose spells or spirits and adepts powers . .

In theory it could if you took a Deadly wound.

That was a chance of straight up magic loss, so the analogue did not work as good . .

Just the Leonization treatment every so often.

they whole concept of stress was way to out there. it could make cyber-sams unplayable. I never played with in any of my games.

I can see ignoring Stress rules for the game, but ignoring them for MBW seems just kind of... munchkin.

If the side effects of MBW were too risky, there was always Wired Reflexes, Synaptic Accelerators, Boosted Reflexes, etc. The risk and upkeep of Move By Wire was the trade-off for it being so powerful.

The real killer for MBW was, under 3rd Ed, the prohibitive high price in both nuyen and essence and the fact that it is basically incompatible with most everything that lets you do the same thing for way cheaper and better . .

I think it was because they didn't expect any players to ever actually use it. It was more of a toy for GMs to utilize for NPCs. It was kinda there to show where the technology could go, but what the prices were for that level of performance, and not in nuyen. FASA did that though. They included stuff in the game few, if any, PCs would ever want to take. In fact, stuff that few, if any people would want to take. Just to show what could and would be possible in their game universe. I don't think FanPro or Catalyst realized that when they took the license over.

4e turned it into some kind of overpowered cheese by making it affordable and drawback free.

It'd be the type of stuff forced upon people against their will...

The kind of stuff you implant when your desire for revenge is bigger than your desire to live for more than six months. Remember, dystopia, desperate people!

Implanted comlink and clean metabolism are basic to gamers.

I think they're talking about the MBW

Yah, the really fun stuff ^^

Not really. Gaming hardware technology improves faster than the games. Having to get surgery to make sure you can run the latest game at standard settings? Seems like too much of a pain in the ass. One thing that the designers, and a lot of players, never really took into account regarding headware cyberdecks and implanted commlinks was how much effort there would be involved in staying with the SOTA.

Which is why i chose the datajack.
Upgrading an external computer is MUCH easier ^^

makes me think about the VR2 breadboarding rules, and the mention of the need for a large hat if one ever considered breadboarding a implant deck.

what is this breadboarding?
also, that's what cyber-limbs are there for.
build your cyberdeck in there, much more comfortable.

Or you could have the Terminatoresque easily accessage processor chip in the top of your head.

Or the cyberlimbs i just mentioned.
And i am afraid i don't get that Terminator Reference O.o
Implant Comlinks seem to me more like the kind of thing they used in the one Universal Soldier Movie with Bill Goldberg.

In game terms it allowed one or more of the components to be upgraded without having to rebuild the whole deck. That is iirc, tho.

ah i see.

I forgot to mention that it also made a former keyboard sized design into something that was only usable on a desk.

how so?
you just need a decker that's big/small and strong enough . .