Androids Options

[GodForsaken]

Hey guys, are there any androids in Shadowrun? Two of my players are new to the game, and they wanted to play Ex-Androids Hunters (obvious blade runner inspiration), that worked for one of the Japanacorps.

I don't want to say no. I want to go with my players' idea but also maybe twist it a bit so it will work in the Shadowrun universe.

We are playing at the 5e timeline.

Any ideas?

[Sascha Morlok]

Nope, no Androids, just Drones. They may play Ex-Technomancer Hunters.

[Blade]

Blade Runner's androids are made of flesh and bone, they're vat grown humans, and Shadowrun has this. It's not clear how functional they can be. Some shadowtalks say that for some reasons they have been unable to get fully functional people, but the "Escaped Clone" quality suggested that it was possible.

While I don't remember reading about any groups specialized in hunting these, I can imagine a few situations where this could happen:

- One of the lab where DocWagon (or similar) grows replacement bodies for their clients had an accident and some clones escaped. Officially, the clones are not supposed to have a functional brain, but that's just PR to avoid admitting that clones are perfect copies that are just grown to be butchered for spare parts. A covert group of the corp hunts the escaped clones.

- A corp uses vatgrown humans as slave workers. They're raised in a completely corp-controlled world to be made as efficient as possible. From time to time, despite the corporation's best efforts some vatgrowns get a sense that there might be a better life (or just that there might something else) out there, and find ways to run away. The corp has a group of hunters to track them and get rid of them before the word gets out.

- A small company has started growing brainless clones of celebrities, put some Agent with personality software in control and sold them to people who wants to be friends (or more) with celebrities. The company doesn't have the rights to use the images of the celebrities, so either it has been shut down already or it's playing hide and seek with the corps who own the intellectual property. Meanwhile, since the copies are hurting the image of the celebrities, a group of enforcer was created to terminate them.

[Thanee]

Since it's SR5, why not go with the "metaplot" and have them be Ex-CFD-victim-hunters? It's somewhat close to androids, isn't it?

If you have Stolen Souls, it has a lot of information about this. There's some in Chrome Flesh as well, though.

Bye
Thanee

[hermit]

Hey guys, are there any androids in Shadowrun? Two of my players are new to the game, and they wanted to play Ex-Androids Hunters (obvious blade runner inspiration), that worked for one of the Japanacorps.

No androids, but AI.

[Mantis]

SR has essentially two types of clones. There is the fast grown wimps which are used for body parts and like. These have a brain but it lacks all higher functions. They are vegetables. This is supposed to be where much of the bioware comes from.

Then there is the second type of clone. This is slow grown, takes as long to mature as a regular non cloned person and, except for being incubated in a vat, is a human, just the genetic source code comes from one person rather than two. They are grown for, well I don't know why really. If brain transplants were a thing that might explain it. I suppose for experiments or something where you need cognitive function. Anyway, this type is where the escaped clones come from. A corp could have hunters for these if they were being grown for some nefarious purpose the corp doesn't want getting out, like bio weapons research or something. I feel like this would be a very small niche though and a corp is likely to just send some company men after the clone rather than set up whole divisions for the task.

Now rogue AIs in anthroform drone bodies would certainly work but again, this just isn't that common. I suppose you could introduce something like cyber psychosis from the old Cyberpunk 2020 game and have them hunting over cybered samurai that have gone round the bend. Cyber zombies already have this potential but they are stupidly expensive to make and I think a corp making them would go to some lengths to keep them alive even after they've gone nuts.

Another option is to have them hunt some sort of critter. Some places still have bounties on ghouls and other infected. Hunting down vampires could be pretty lucrative but morally questionable enough that the characters might leave the company over it.

[Draco18s]

You can kind of cobble (full robot) androids together.

There's rules for playing as an AI (they aren't good per say, but they exist) and you could definitely have them "live" inside a drone. The...Otomo-something-something is vaguely humanoid. Custom chassis would be easy enough to handwave given that fullbody cyborgs exist.

Speaking of, the other option is brain-in-a-jar cyborgs.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You can kind of cobble (full robot) androids together.

There's rules for playing as an AI (they aren't good per say, but they exist) and you could definitely have them "live" inside a drone. The...Otomo-something-something is vaguely humanoid. Custom chassis would be easy enough to handwave given that fullbody cyborgs exist.

Speaking of, the other option is brain-in-a-jar cyborgs.

AI with an Otomo Body - Priceless... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Sengir]

Some shadowtalks say that for some reasons they have been unable to get fully functional people, but the "Escaped Clone" quality suggested that it was possible.

They can get fully functional people, it's just the force-growing process used to ensure your "donor counterpart" is ready a few months into the DocWagon contract which prevents development of a functional brain.

An "Escaped Clone" can therefore simply be a clone grown without acceleration, by somebody with enough time. Or the clone could be a freak case which developed a functioning brain despite the full regimen, which would of course make the clone heavily sought after

Maybe there also is a middle ground, some acceleration may be possible without causing damage.

[GodForsaken]

Wow! really awesome comments guys! thank you! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[binarywraith]

SR has essentially two types of clones. There is the fast grown wimps which are used for body parts and like. These have a brain but it lacks all higher functions. They are vegetables. This is supposed to be where much of the bioware comes from.

Then there is the second type of clone. This is slow grown, takes as long to mature as a regular non cloned person and, except for being incubated in a vat, is a human, just the genetic source code comes from one person rather than two. They are grown for, well I don't know why really. If brain transplants were a thing that might explain it. I suppose for experiments or something where you need cognitive function. Anyway, this type is where the escaped clones come from. A corp could have hunters for these if they were being grown for some nefarious purpose the corp doesn't want getting out, like bio weapons research or something. I feel like this would be a very small niche though and a corp is likely to just send some company men after the clone rather than set up whole divisions for the task.

Now rogue AIs in anthroform drone bodies would certainly work but again, this just isn't that common. I suppose you could introduce something like cyber psychosis from the old Cyberpunk 2020 game and have them hunting over cybered samurai that have gone round the bend. Cyber zombies already have this potential but they are stupidly expensive to make and I think a corp making them would go to some lengths to keep them alive even after they've gone nuts.

Another option is to have them hunt some sort of critter. Some places still have bounties on ghouls and other infected. Hunting down vampires could be pretty lucrative but morally questionable enough that the characters might leave the company over it.

Designer kids, generally, for the rich corper parent egotistical enough to want a kid that's entirely theirs, or as close to themselves as possible.

[Mantis]

Designer kids, generally, for the rich corper parent egotistical enough to want a kid that's entirely theirs, or as close to themselves as possible.

That's a good idea though I gotta wonder just how many rich corper parents are there that are that egotistical and that rich to justify the expense of development. Oh well, like many things in the canon that make little or no sense, I just adapt what I need for my games and ignore the rest.

[binarywraith]

That's a good idea though I gotta wonder just how many rich corper parents are there that are that egotistical and that rich to justify the expense of development. Oh well, like many things in the canon that make little or no sense, I just adapt what I need for my games and ignore the rest.

Think how much their insurance company stands to save if they make all the little wage-slaves opt in to engineered kids without birth defects!

[Sengir]

Think how much their insurance company stands to save if they make all the little wage-slaves opt in to engineered kids without birth defects!

Think how much the company of mom and dad saves because mom opts out of all the messy in utero business...

[Glyph]

I suppose you could introduce something like cyber psychosis from the old Cyberpunk 2020 game and have them hunting over cybered samurai that have gone round the bend.

Cyber psychosis actually exists in Shadowrun. It is a quality, rather than an inevitable result of too much augmentation, but the effects are similar.

[KarmaInferno]

Think how much their insurance company stands to save if they make all the little wage-slaves opt in to engineered kids without birth defects!

Or WITH hidden birth defects that require special drugs administered secretly via their food allotments to not manifest and kill them?




-k

[Mantis]

Cyber psychosis actually exists in Shadowrun. It is a quality, rather than an inevitable result of too much augmentation, but the effects are similar.

You are right, it already exists in game. But it's supposed to one of the ones limited to cyberzombies or cyborgs rather than something just anyone can take, at least in 4th ed. I say supposed to be why let a good quality go to waste if you've got a concept it fits. No need to create it but you would need to have it available to any character in order to set up a story line where you have former hunters taking out victims of cyber psychosis for a corporation. It somehow seems a bit weird in the SR world to see something like that. The corps kill people for a bunch of reasons but being crazy isn't usually enough on its own. I suppose if the psychosis was a side effect of a new cybernetic procedure and the corp wanted to hide that they might do something like create a unit to hunt down folks.
But then there are so many other things the corps already do in the canon that would make someone have second thoughts about working for them that I don't see why you'd need to add this.

[bannockburn]

But it's supposed to one of the ones limited to cyberzombies or cyborgs rather than something just anyone can take, at least in 4th ed.

It is a commonly available quality in Augmentation, as long as you have less than 1 Essence left. There are even optional rules to allow for developing it in-game when falling under 1 Essence.

[Glyph]

It is not restricted to just cyborgs and cyberzombies in either edition. You just need an Essence of 1 or less. Basically, the quality is such that a character who badly fails a social skill test will experience a psychotic break. Corporate employees who are that heavily augmented will tend to be elite soldiers, security personnel, or black ops, and having one of them snapping and going on a violent killing spree is a threat to the corporation's secrets and security protocols, as well as its bottom line. So hunter-killer teams actually make sense.

They would track down more than the occasional cyber-psychopath, though. Such a group would probably also hunt down things like defectors, escaped "experiments", and the occasional luckless shadowrunner team that saw too much.

[Mantis]

Yeah it is. My mistake. In my own games about the only folks who get an essence score that low are cyberzombies (NPCs) or cyborgs. I've never actually had a PC take this one, even if their essence got that low so it has remained in the realm of NPCs only.

[Glyph]

It's kind of a crap flaw for PCs. "Take a penalty to your social skill tests, which are probably a minimal dice pool already, and if you critically glitch a social skill test - which will inevitably happen - you become an NPC!"