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> Essence Ingame, ...bring out the canon...
Rev
post Oct 2 2003, 07:54 PM
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I beleive the surgery rules talk about things like aborting cyberware operations in the middle because the patient appears to be drying of essence loss. So maybe they will notice that suddenly the patients vital signs start dropping off when you get really close to 0 essence and stop the operation. Also the research that goes into designing the cyberware could include a good estimate of its "spiritual consequences" such that the doc just has to have you assensed once then he pretty much knows if you can take it. The old surgery rules had a 10-20% randomization of essence cost for any cyberware didn't they? That makes the whole thing very imprecice when a person gets toward the edge. Don't know if the new ones have that.
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Herald of Verjig...
post Oct 2 2003, 08:27 PM
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There are surgical options (that could be hinted at IC but not explicitly stated) that allow for better or worse essence use than the standard numbers. It's in the surgery section of M&M.
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DV8
post Oct 2 2003, 09:04 PM
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QUOTE (Herald of Verjigorm)
Any doc qualified to implant cyberware would need extensive training that usually would include "how to not accidentally kill a subject by metal overload."

Street docs are street docs for a reason; because they, for whatever reason, couldn't hack it in the real world. Alcohol problems. Incompetency. Fallen on disrepute. Etc.

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...have fun but stop arguing that your way is more accurate.

I'm really not arguing that my way is more accurate, which is why I said:

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Well, depending on what kind of game you play, that's going to be brought into play in various ways. If you put the accent on the "cyberpunk" aspect of play...
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BitBasher
post Oct 2 2003, 10:32 PM
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QUOTE
Street docs are street docs for a reason; because they, for whatever reason, couldn't hack it in the real world. Alcohol problems. Incompetency. Fallen on disrepute. Etc.
Or they provide free services to homeless and SINless alienating themselves from the rest of the financialcentric medical community while still needing income, or they could recognize the ludicrious tax free profit potential of less than legal implantations. Both options for world class surgeons to be street docs. I could think of many other reasons good, qualified legitimate doctors could be street docs.
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Kagetenshi
post Oct 2 2003, 11:25 PM
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If anyone's ever read or seen Battle Angel, Daisuke Ido is a classic street doc who was among the best doctors of the legit medical establishment before he decided to go where he could actually do some good.
Not exactly common, but far from unheard of.

~J
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Abstruse
post Oct 3 2003, 12:05 AM
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QUOTE (DV8)
QUOTE (Sphynx @ Oct 2 2003, 02:50 PM)
M&M, page 145 very last sentence under Detecting Implants.
QUOTE
No successes means the test only reveals the basic Essence Rating or Bio Index of the character.

Oooooooooooooooh, I dislike that.

Doctor: "Mr. ehm...Smith, we see here that you have an essence of .19 left. That means that you could just squeeze in those shiny new pair of cybereyes, provided you go for the alpha grade models, of course, since they give you 20% off the essence decline."

That'll never happen in my game. It takes away so much atmosphere! To those walking the line of burnout or just plain death you shouldn't give them a precise indication of what their body will or will not be able to handle. It takes away from the sick realism that most people that go in for heavy augmentation or playing with their goddamn lives.

That's why you use the optional surgery rules from Man and Machine and don't tell the players their essence. Since it varies slightly depending on the surgeon, one person's WR3 takes up 5.2 essence and someone else's takes up 4.5

The Abstruse One
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DV8
post Oct 3 2003, 07:18 AM
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QUOTE (BitBasher)
Or they provide free services to homeless and SINless alienating themselves from the rest of the financialcentric medical community while still needing income, or they could recognize the ludicrious tax free profit potential of less than legal implantations. Both options for world class surgeons to be street docs. I could think of many other reasons good, qualified legitimate doctors could be street docs.

Good point, a very good source of service that I completely overlooked.

QUOTE (Abstruse)
That's why you use the optional surgery rules from Man and Machine and don't tell the players their essence.  Since it varies slightly depending on the surgeon, one person's WR3 takes up 5.2 essence and someone else's takes up 4.5

Yeah, that's a good idea. In fact, I just suggest something similar to my players the other day, as a result of this thread.
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DV8
post Oct 3 2003, 07:19 AM
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Quick question; are there rules that connect the success of the cybersurgery roll to the amount of essence lost? And if not; should there be?
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Herald of Verjig...
post Oct 3 2003, 08:25 AM
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QUOTE (DV8)
Quick question; are there rules that connect the success of the cybersurgery roll to the amount of essence lost? And if not; should there be?

They are surgical option in man and machine. If you were to choose surgical options that affect the essence use without telling the players, it would add to the surprise next time they are assensed.

Since most of the options (maybe all, I'm not about to look it up) add a threshold instead of increasing the TN, you could actually choose them afterward and not tell the players at any time.
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DV8
post Oct 3 2003, 08:50 AM
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Thanks, HoV. I'll have a look at that later.
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Sphynx
post Oct 6 2003, 11:18 AM
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QUOTE (DV8)
QUOTE (BitBasher)
Or they provide free services to homeless and SINless alienating themselves from the rest of the financialcentric medical community while still needing income, or they could recognize the ludicrious tax free profit potential of less than legal implantations. Both options for world class surgeons to be street docs. I could think of many other reasons good, qualified legitimate doctors could be street docs.

Good point, a very good source of service that I completely overlooked.

QUOTE (Abstruse)
That's why you use the optional surgery rules from Man and Machine and don't tell the players their essence.  Since it varies slightly depending on the surgeon, one person's WR3 takes up 5.2 essence and someone else's takes up 4.5

Yeah, that's a good idea. In fact, I just suggest something similar to my players the other day, as a result of this thread.

Just kinda be careful how far you go with this. I mean, if you're going to hide the Essence info from a player, or not allow him to use his 'player knowledge' then how far does that go? How does a character know how muh combat Pool to use? Do you have him describe his actions and then determine for yourself how many dice he can roll? Characters don't know their Karma (actually they do if you read about making deals with free spirits, but that's another thread), so do you also decide, based on the effort they describe how much karma to spend and in what manner? When does the player quit even rolling dice so they can never 'munchkin' how much they can roll, and at what point does it become a diceless RPG?

I'm not saying that roleplayin in ANY of those manners is wrong, it's actually something all players/groups eventually do, but the only 'right' way (and thus the definition of munchkin) is to use all the rules, which includes character-knowledge of his Essence and other statistics.

Sphynx

PS. Sorry for the delay on the reply, I've been very out-of-townish for the weekend
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DV8
post Oct 6 2003, 11:54 AM
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Because I don't see the correlation between Essence and Combat Pool, so I can't really accurately reply to that analogy.

In regards to your relatively generic - and therefore easily answerable - question about how far one could take this obscurity; Unless the player has a serious bio-medical background, preferably with a cybernetics specialisation, they don't know how much their body can or cannot take, and they have to go on how fit they feel, which depends entirely on GM input. If I tell them that after the repairs done on their cybereyes because somebody beat the shit out of them with the front fender of a Nissan Jackrabbit - Thank God for that cyberskull, huh!? - they start to feel twitchy and out of synch with time, or that they suffer from constant headaches or a bloody nose, then they can make up their own mind if it would be a good idea to go in for more surgery.

If they have the necessary skills to make such an assessment, or they go and get an outside opinion, they'll get an approximation of how well their nervous system is doing, and how much they could take. But they still won't get any numbers. They'll get a "I wouldn't go in for that Fuchi cyberleg you were thinking about, bub" or "Dude, you could still have your entire insides rewired without too much problems."

So I don't propose obscuring things like their Stealth skill, or their Combat Pool, but those things they would have little or no way of knowing.
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ialdabaoth
post Oct 6 2003, 11:00 PM
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For replying to essence in-game, as a GM, I always have medical-type NPCs refer to it as "CNS Adaptability", and only mystic-type NPCs refer to it as "astral integrity" or "essence". Whenever I need a doctor to quote an impressive-sounding number, I just multiply Essence by 100 and divide by 6 to get a percentage - "Well, according to our MRI scans you've got 15% CNS Adaptability, putting you in Category 4 on the Reicher-Morowan scale. We can try putting the gear into you, but I can't guarantee it'll work. Oh, and I'll need you to sign here, here, and right here on this waiver, and initial here on the organ donor section."
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