Do you want cyberware to affect psychology?, Low Essence maniacs? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Switch to: Outline Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Serbitar]

Should low Essence values lead to paranoia, phobia, and other things. Since SR3 this is not mentioned any more, except in cyberzombies.
What do you say?
Would you want guidelines for mental illnesses, phobia, anti-social behaviour, sociapathism, coldness and so on?

[fistandantilus4....]

I think that it should. I ran a game once with a character w/ Move-by-wire, and ended up suffering from it's side effects. He was a Top Notch, cybered to the hilt cyber street same killing machinge type, and to have him start having mental issues... well it made for a great game.

[Slump]

If anything, low essence should affect stamina and fatigue. After all, it's powered by your own bio-energy. Presumably, a cyberarm uses more energy than your real arm, which is why there is an essence cost. Since it uses more energy, you should become fatigued more easily -- which can be compensated for by other cyber- and bio-ware.

I think a blanket rule for 'becomes colder and less human' for low essense is bunk, because it doesn't make any sense. What if someone just packed their body with stuff that's not even interfaced to their mind, like Toxin Filters?

I could see someone who gets alot more input from their body than normal people being affected by their cyber, but not much. No more than someone who always runs in AR, or a technomancer or mage who always sees/senses things that most people don't.

[Jaid]

i suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

i mean, i don't see too much of a deal with, say, implanted sim module/datajack/whatever, since there are external versions. which is not to say that extensive use of these things won't have an effect, but rather i don't see the need to have an effect beyond what using the external versions would.

on the other hand, i would be comfortable with saying that certain modifications do mess you up in certain ways (wired reflexes being one of the more well known ones), particularly those that make fairly large changes to your brain (cerebral booster, sleep regulator... basically anything that you might see from using a drug, pretty much).

however, that being said... it's way too much bother to go through each individual piece of 'ware and decide what has what effect, and i'm not in favor of low essence in and of itself causing changes... so, generally speaking, no (flavorwise it would be fine, though)

[Serbitar]

Just a remark: This is not about realism. This is just a question of "Do you want it because of the dystopican setting to have that effect or not".

Besides: I think a compilation of how cyberware would affect day to day life of a runner would be nice. How does a man with intelligence 9 deal with the world, where verybody else must be extremely stupid. What does sleep regulator do to oyu? How is wired reflexes affecting your behaviour. And all such things.

There is really a lot of stuff out there, that really differentiates 2070 from 2007. And and cyberware is one of it (besides AR and information technology).

[fistandantilus4....]

the Cybertechnology of cuorse has that nice piece w/ Hatchetman. But overall, that would be neat.

[Trigger]

I personally think that a large amount of cyberware in person will have psychological outcomes on the person. I could see a person developing an addiction to getting new cyber, much the same way that people get addicted to getting plastic surgery now. Also some pieced of cyberware are going to completely change some people's view of the world, such as some hot-sim riding data junkie developing the psychosis of believing the virtual world of being more real then the real world. Also Wired Reflexes and the such will create a jumpiness and most likely a sense of paranoia in the character, a want to trigger the reflexes more often and for longer amounts of time. People with obviously fake cyberlimbs could develop a sense of disconnection to their limbs, since the just don't feel the same when touching the rest of their body, a feeling that separation between themselves and their limb. Simply, a number of psychosi can develop with the installation and use of cyberware.

[Catharz Godfoot]

If anything, using too much VR/BTL, especially rigging, should cause dehumanization. Anything that actually disassociates the mind from the body. The cyberware thing is just silly. It can screw with a good game by making it absurd.

At any rate, I'm all for letting the player dictate his character's psychology. If he wants to play a psychopath, that's fine. If he is strongly suggested to play a psychopath, that's fine too. Forcing a player or taking her character out of her control is just bad form.

[Fortune]

[Serbitar]

Sure, this is not about forcing players, but to make suggestions. As is just about anything concerning character.

[Fortune]

The first part of Catharz' post is valid as well. The stereotypical disassociation that is usually applied to cyberware could (and if this system is implemented, should) also be applicable to habitual AR/VR users.

[Jack Kain]

Mechanically characters are already punished for having low essence.
First Aid and magical healing takes dice penalties.
Its not fair to apply any other mechanical penalty to the mundanes who must turn to cyberware to futher there power.


Forcing any kind of psychological problem on a player can only lead to you having one less player.
Players who like psychological problems on there characters don't need and excuse to give them one. The effects of cyberware on people, isn't meant to be obvious which is why they dropped the rules for them.

And Jaid if anything cyberware would increase stamina. Machines don't suffer from fatigue like living things do. Cyberware requires no oxygen, and that is a huge boost to avoiding fatigue.
Who do you think gets tried first John McClane or Robocop?

Players should decided for themselves how cyberware effects them mentally. After all not everyone is going to have the same reaction to wired reflexs as everyone else.

Well one guy always sounds aloof and arrognant thanks to his mental boosters giving him a logic of 9. While another actually sounds kinda slow and even mentally handicaped because his mind is always else where.

One guy with wired reflexs may be hyper and talks a mile a minnute because he leaves them on to long. While another appears perfectly normal.

One 0.1 essence guy may be somber and miss the lost of tactile sensation his heavily cybered body is missing. Another may be violent and cruel.


if your going to force any kind of psychological problem on characters who choose to get cyberware why don't you just take there character sheets and play the game with out them.

[fistandantilus4....]

too many dice to roll that way. ;)

What I would prefer would be an optional system. Maybe a certain amount of optional mental flaws. I've never played with a system that used it, like Cyberpunk did IIRC. NEver played that system, jsut seen it. But it seems interesting to me.

Perhaps abatter question would be: Has anyone used this as a rule? How did it work out?

[Serbitar]

Again: This is not about forcing things on players, this is about 2 tings.

1.) Giving ideas and suggestions to players to enrich their roleplaying
2.) To give an idea how cyberware works on the majority of people, to set baseline, to give background.

Since the "cyberware brings mental problems" fluff has vanished from fluff I have not seen a single character with this theme. Mostly because people think it has gone.
I like this "low essence - mental problems" thing because of the dystopian setting. It makes the world darker and gives it flavor.

This is definitely not about rules! Its about ideas, guidelines and suggestions.

[Glyph]

(Edit - posted before Serbitar's last post)

Okay, ideas:

I think it is more the types of cyberware than the "Essense" rating that should be used for ideas.

Someone who gets mnemonic enhancer could find out that enhanced memory is not a good thing for someone who commits acts of violence or gets injured on a regular basis. Post-traumatic stress is bad enough without remembering it all in perfect detail.

Things like a pain editor could mess a character up. Maybe when it's on, it's almost like sensory deprivation, but when it's off, things are too intense.

Too much VR, smartlinking, data displays, and so on, and the character might begin to feel a curious disassociation, like he is a character in a video game rather than someone acting out in real life.


btw, one good way to inspire the players would be to have a sammie buddy of theirs telling them about the downsides of his new piece of 'ware, or having a villain who exhibits cyber-psychosis of some sort.

[Jaid]

[Shrike30]

I would like to see specific pieces of cyberware having noteable effects. Very low Essence should be more subtle, but there's a number of bits of 'ware I'd like to see some more fluff written out for, even if it's just a paragraph or so of "this is what living with bone lacing is like."

[Serbitar]

Yes, at first this was all about essence. But I really like the idea of cyberware specific drawbacks (again, not as a must, but as fluff and roleplay enrichment).

What about compiling an essay about "The dark side of ware?", writing some stuff for most of the ware thats out there? Could even be written mostly in Shadowtalk.

Anybody interested?

[Jaid]

hmmm... you know, it wasn't that long ago someone commented something to the effect of "i'd like to be able to just create shadowtalk for official books". now, this isn't exactly official, but maybe we can track them down... or possibly they'll show up before i can find it in a search. who knows?

[edit] got it. digital heroin, in this thread, not to far down :)

so maybe you should get in touch with him... given you've got a rather large amount of material you're usually working on, you might want to farm stuff out.

heck, you might even consider starting up a new version of TSS/whatever there was before that. [/edit]

This post has been edited by Jaid: Jan 7 2007, 03:02 AM

[Trigger]

Actually I have been wanting to write some more SR related stuff and I think that this may be a good topic to launch myself back in with...also the thread has caught my eye for awhile now and is a very interesting topic to discuss.

[Catharz Godfoot]

[Banaticus]

The smarter than normal guy would be like a Mentat from Dune.

[Crusher Bob]

Mostly I vote no on such things because too many people have been exposed to pop psychology. You add in a few paragraphs about how ware might effect people’s actions and influence social trends and you get hordes of imbeciles coming out of the woodwork talking about how getting your eyes replaced should make you want to eat human flesh.

But since it’s you, I’ll throw in my real .02Y.

One of the biggest social effects of the information age I’ve seen so far involve memorization vs. knowing how to find information.

As information becomes easier to look up, people no longer practice memorizing things. So, for example, you could find the average rainfall in Brazil for me in a few minutes. But you would not be able to remember it if I asked you again tomorrow. After all, you could just look it up again. But one thing you might not notice is how you go about searching for the avg. rainfall figures. You have some idea where to look, have a pretty good BS detector, know to avoid phishing sites, and so on. So while the mental tools of the previous generations might have involved much more memorization, the mental tools of members of the information ages and much more in information retrieval and sorting. So, one of the biggest impacts of cyberware will essentially be having ‘net access in your head, all the time. You can be sitting on the beach and by watching the satellite photos of the weather, you know when it is time to pack up and go because a thunderstorm is moving in. To persons from a previous age you will seem to be some sort of oracle. Imagine things such as everyone opening their umbrellas just as the first drops of rain begin to fall.

People will might call you an information junkie, but that is missing the whole point do people call each other vision junkies because they walk everywhere with their eyes open?

[Catharz Godfoot]

[Banaticus]