Cloning in Shadowrun Options

[CountingGardens]

So I just watched the movie "The 6th Day" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and I definitely want to make my campaign somewhat like the plot or exactly like the plot. My only question is, how is cloning viewed in the Shadowrun world? How big or small is religion really?

[Warlordtheft]

In general-it depends upon locale. Seattle, pretty much a bit player. Salt Lake is a Mormon Pinks Skin Reservation.

There is some info on it in Street Magic, as well as loose alliances. In the location specific material, it will mention if there is a significant religious presence (the Westphalia section in the German SOurce Book comes to mind).

[Kimberly]

My first post!!

Cloning like we do in present-day results in a living, breathing organism that is really only different from any other organism of its type by its conception. Not particularly exciting from a Shadowrun campaign perspective and definitely nothing like The Sixth Day.

Cloning like Sixth Day sorta exists. Check out the medical rules... you can pay for maintenance of a clone for stock parts in case you lose some of your own (due to violence, disease, bad habits, whatever). Obviously, these clones are vat grown to a state compatible with the intended recipient - it really doesn't help you to have an infant's kidney lying around when you're a full-grown adult in need of one.

I don't think they ever say that these vat-grown clones are more than just parts-farms... but you can take a few courses toward deciding why they are or aren't... and potential repercussions:

1. They're selectively grown so as not to have any higher brain function. This leaves room for the odd experiment here or there but leaves them pretty boring... until, of course, you consider that someone may start breeding these clones without selective engineering and training them for some dubious purpose.

2. They WOULD be intelligent individuals in their own right. Their intelligence is suppressed since the vat is essentially a sensory deprivation tank. Should a clone be released, it may develop an intelligence of its own. Obvious scenarios may exist where a clone is released for whatever reason... but it wouldn't be a clone of the original in any mental aspect (he'd walk by his original's wife and kids and truly wouldn't know them since he'd never met them). Still could be interesting for a PC to learn he has a double... with a full life of her own.

3. From more Shadowrunny/Earthdawny considerations, a pattern is a pattern. A clone could never be a copy of a person except in a superficial sense. Should a clone ever develop a pattern, they would have to be a completely different person... but I can imagine a person being geeked, their spirit being unwilling to leave this mortal coil, drifting across wherever it is they drift until they find the empty shell of their clone.... and it fits like a glove. Indeed, some crazy cybermancers/blood magicians may already be attempting (and perhaps succeeding) at this, already... the willingness of the dearly departed notwithstanding.

Obviously there are more ideas... those just popped in my head. However, I'd have to do some work to make it believable. I assume that the Immortals (pains the in the rumps that they may be) would back themselves up with multiple copies if they could... which might be sorta fun... having Dunkelzahn step out of a vat in 2075 and ask, "Where's Nadja." might make for an interesting cutscene...

This post has been edited by Kimberly: Apr 14 2010, 03:08 PM

[Dr.Rockso]

My first post!!

Cloning like we do in present-day results in a living, breathing organism that is really only different from any other organism of its type my its conception. Not particularly exciting from a Shadowrun campaign perspective and definitely nothing like The Sixth Day.

Cloning like Sixth Day sorta exists. Check out the medical rules... you can pay for maintenance of a clone for stock parts in case you lose some of your own (due to violence, disease, bad habits, whatever). Obviously, these clones are vat grown to a state compatible with the intended recipient - it really doesn't help you to have an infant's kidney lying around when you're a full-grown adult in need of one.

I don't think they ever say that these vat-grown clones are more than just parts-farms... but you can take a few courses toward deciding why it is:

1. They're selectively grown so as not to have any higher brain function. This leaves room for the odd experiment here or there but leaves them pretty boring... until, of course, you consider that someone may start breeding these clones without selective engineering and training them for some dubious purpose.

2. They WOULD be intelligent individuals in their own right. Their intelligence is suppressed since the vat is essentially a sensory deprivation tank. Should a clone be released, it may develop an intelligence of its own. Obvious scenarios may exist where a clone is released for whatever reason... but it wouldn't be a clone of the original in any mental aspect (he'd walk by his original's wife and kids and truly wouldn't know them since he'd never met them).

3. From more Shadowrunny/Earthdawny considerations, a pattern is a pattern. A clone could never be a copy of a person except in a superficial sense. Should they ever develop a pattern, they would have to be a completely different person... but I can imagine a person's spirit, being unwilling to leave this mortal coil, drifting across wherever it is they drift until they find the empty shell of a clone.... and it fits like a glove. Indeed, some cray cybermancers/blood magicians may already be attempting (and perhaps succeeding) at this, already... the willingness of the dearly departed notwithstanding.

Obviously there are more ideas... those just popped in my head. However, I'd have to do some work to make it believable. I assume that the Immortals (pains the in the rumps that they may be) would back themselves up with multiple copies if they could... which might be sorta fun... having Dunkelzahn step out of a vat in 2075 and ask, "Where's Nadja." might make for an interesting cutscene...

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Get to the dragon if you want to live! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

[Eratosthenes]

Isn't there a quality akin to "Escaped Clone", which would indicate that not all of the clones are necessarily brain-impaired?

[Westiex]

Isn't there a quality akin to "Escaped Clone", which would indicate that not all of the clones are necessarily brain-impaired?

Escaped Clone
Cost: 5 BP
At some point, someone made a clone from stored DNA:
maybe your parents wanted their little girl back, maybe a rich
corper thought this was his ticket to immortality, or maybe a
megacorp grew a wimp for experimentation. Maybe she was accidentally
released, saved by a kind soul, or misplaced at a clinic.
Regardless, that clone eventually escaped into the world and realized
its full potential becoming the character.

There is more for the entry, but I thought this sufficed to indicate that yes it is possible to have a clone with higher brain functions.

[Dumori]

If force grown IE for part ect the brain messes up. Where as if grown at a normal rate the develop as a person mentally. In Aug iirc. Force grown clones are call wimps or such.

[Bira]

If force grown IE for part ect the brain messes up. Where as if grown at a normal rate the develop as a person mentally. In Aug iirc. Force grown clones are call wimps or such.

Cloning is not such a big deal, really. The big thing about The 6th Day is the memory transfer technology, which is something that resembles Eclipse Phase more than it does Shadowrun.

[Demonseed Elite]

Cloning is not such a big deal, really. The big thing about The 6th Day is the memory transfer technology, which is something that resembles Eclipse Phase more than it does Shadowrun.

Full memory transfer is something not yet unleashed on the Shadowrun setting, though the building blocks are there. It's just a bit outside the technology level at this point. Programmable ASIST Biofeedback can implant memories on a person, but there's been no mention yet of technology that can capture a person's entire memory experience and implant that entire history as a whole.

[NetWraith]

What if they happen to implant a commlink into said clone and this clone happened to have the whole cyber package(arms, legs, etc...) and for fun lets say an e-ghost happened upon this blank commlink ... If it blieves it is someone who am I to say that it's not...

[darthmord]

Obvious scenarios may exist where a clone is released for whatever reason... but it wouldn't be a clone of the original in any mental aspect (he'd walk by his original's wife and kids and truly wouldn't know them since he'd never met them). Still could be interesting for a PC to learn he has a double... with a full life of her own.

Better yet, the clone is the runner and thinks he's the original and believes the original is the clone. Obviously, this is really 6th Day but would definitely fit in the SR Universe...

[Drats]

(...)there's been no mention yet of technology that can capture a person's entire memory experience and implant that entire history as a whole.

The closest you could come in canon, I think, would be to rig up a person's clone body so that it operates like a Cyberdrone and then have that drone "rigged" by the E-ghost of that person- an interesting concept, IMO, but one that's got a complete lack of RAW-support. (I remember seeing material in the Unwired fluff that suggests that it might be feasible to actively endeavor to "become" a cyberghost, but not with any sort of reliability. Plus, cyberghosts can just get kind of lame if the GM doesn't handle them right.)

As to cloning, one thing that should be noted is that there's still something of a social stigma associated with it in the Sixth World, and it isn't native to holy roller types. Clones and cloning aren't trusted by the populace at large.

(Edit: Engaged in the arcane science of Grammarmancy.)

[Demonseed Elite]

Yeah, e-ghosts certainly appear to have a complete map of someone's memory, but no one is certain how e-ghosts are created or even what they are exactly, so it's not really at a point where it could be considered a reliable technology.

[darthmord]

Yeah, e-ghosts certainly appear to have a complete map of someone's memory, but no one is certain how e-ghosts are created or even what they are exactly, so it's not really at a point where it could be considered a reliable technology.

Wasn't their original appearance during the same time frame as System Failure? I believe JackBNimble was implicated as having backed up people who were stuck jacked in when the Matrix crashed due to the worm.

[Demonseed Elite]

Wasn't their original appearance during the same time frame as System Failure? I believe JackBNimble was implicated as having backed up people who were stuck jacked in when the Matrix crashed due to the worm.

That's a popular theory to explain them, yes. But no one's been able to prove it, I don't think, nor has anyone been able to replicate the effects.

[Drats]

There's actually some Jackpoint chatter in Unwired (Or Runner's Companion?) concerning a (rumored) online cult whose creed involves somehow preparing yourself for an existence as an electronic consciousness and then committing suicide while running in VR-- their head priest even attends the "Transition Ceremonies." The book has nothing to say about the feasibility of this, but they do say that the cult's dogma states that those who fail to make the transition didn't believe strongly enough-- which, provided that this bit of information isn't just urban legend, would imply a non-negligible success rate.

Yeah, e-ghosts certainly appear to have a complete map of someone's memory(...)

Quite to the contrary, actually. By 4e canon, most of them are probably incomplete copies who may be missing large portions of their memory or even entire facets of their personalities. Some of them maintain only the basest sense of "self," retaining perhaps a few vague impressions of their former lives.

I imagine that the perfect ghosts could plausibly be attributed to JackBNimble, but that would just be an educated guess-- my familiarity with pre-4E storyline material either comes from the Sixth World Wiki or was gleaned contextually here on Dumpshock.

[Yerameyahu]

Actually, isn't there plenty of precedent for actual suicide cults with no 'success' rate? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sengir]

Instead of becoming an E-Ghost, you one could just have his brain put into a CCU and then installed into a riggable clone body. OK, Augmentation says that the biodrone stuff does not work on speed-grown clones, but that still leaves enough options...

[tagz]

I suppose one could simply sim-rig and record their own life if they didn't want to go through the trouble of e-ghosts and whatnot. Memory size is a non-issue with SR so you can have someone just endlessly recording every little thing that happens in their own life.

You could then put some trodes on the clone and play it back about 50 times at a super high-high speed (we can have very memorable dreams that are created by the mind at extreme rates, faster then our waking mind can process if I recall correctly). This could effectively transfer all the experiences to the clone I believe.

[Drats]

It'd be a xerox of a xerox, though, and even though the Simrig would record memories and emotions while you kept it running, it wouldn't actually capture any of the thought processes or the internal monologue... things in that poor clone brain could easily get pretty messy and confusing. (Which, this being Shadowrun and all, would probably be a good thing, at least for the GM (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

[Dumori]

We need simrig 2.0 XD

[tagz]

It'd be a xerox of a xerox, though, and even though the Simrig would record memories and emotions while you kept it running, it wouldn't actually capture any of the thought processes or the internal monologue... things in that poor clone brain could easily get pretty messy and confusing. (Which, this being Shadowrun and all, would probably be a good thing, at least for the GM (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

Yep, that's one possibility. And I like it.

Another is that since it's a sim from the earliest childhood memories and that the brain chemistry is identical to the original that the clone's mind would want to make identical choices to the same situations, only since the playback is on a set track the decisions and thoughts only appear to matter and in-fact don't.
Sorta like take the Nature-Nurture argument but keep BOTH elements the same.
And this one opens up some fun possibilities too. Like what if the last 2 weeks of life were altered by a hacker? Well, suddenly in this clone's "life" his decisions suddenly stop changing things and the clone sees things as he as though isn't in control of himself/herself. Or maybe a hiccup in the video makes a little mistake in the recording process and it puts the clone into this state at an "early" age. The possibilities are endless.

[Pepsi Jedi]

I think it's in Augmentation that it really talks about the wimps and how.... frequent it's done now. There's also implication that 'Just growing an ARM or just an EYE is really hard and expensive. It's much cheeper to force grow the entire thing and hack out what you need."

Which begs the question.. what's done with the rest? lol

Augmentation also goes into the universal organ donner guy, (( Who's exploitation and abuse is taken from a real life guy that had singular cells that were abnormal. No not full grown organs making billions of dollars over years but that __WAS__ Taken from a poor guy that got ripped off IRL much like he did))

They also say, with out quite SAYING it.. that the mega corps have to have like.... Matrix Like forrests of human bodies based off that poor guys' cells. Just ... hanging or laying around somewhere mindless waitng to be hacked into pieces. Just 100s or 1000s of clones of that ONE GUY used as parts. lol

That's before they even touch the clones of the ultra rich that they keep on file (( even some Doc Wagon have one or two on reserve for parts if needed))

It's presented as kinda bright and bubbly "Look what we can do!" sort of thing..

But can you imagine doing a run on a werehouse in the barrens and find it full of ... 5,000 living, BREATHING, twitching clone body's onracks with medical monitors on them... stretching row after row after row.....

[Harbin]

Thanks for the nightmare fuel. :[


That reminds me, if someone took Type O System, feasibly, could they be selling samples of their skin to corps and stuff? Would make for an interesting basis if a runner had sold samples and then the corps had made clones for experimentation, then the runner gets injured and needs parts/the clone escapes and goes to try find the originator to get them to help.

[Pepsi Jedi]

If you did that, the corp would no doubt copyright or trademark your cells and then... of course.. with corp law... be able to confiscate the base materials as being owned by them.

Meaning you.

Meaning.... Oh...... Drek!