You forgot Tanamous.

That would be a good roleplaying idea, but I imagine it would inherantly suck donkey balls from a mechanical point of view.

Think about it. Except for combat skills, any technical expertise the character will have will be the better part of a century out of date, he won't have any cyber and chances are that unless he Awakened while in the tank, he's not a spellslinger, either.

Investing in Saeder-Krupp back in the day... Hehehe, yeaaaaah, that would be valuable, aw'right.

And, of course, any of the manifold companies that were folded into it.

We're working under the assumption that the tech company didn't go belly-up when the tech bubble burst, right? Or was one of the something like 85% of tech startups that never shows a profit before getting closed down entirely, right?

That could work...


Alternatively, for the NPCs, it would go like this:

You were a multi millionare computer geek. Then you got yourself frozen to wait out the next 60 years or so, hoping to arive at something approaching a Star Trekian utopian future. You're loaded with 60-years-out-of-date pop culture references, find out Elves are real and not just something you can play in D&D, and your 1337 skills are so far behind the SOTA that even though you have 7 Computer skills you're laboring under about a +80 TN penalty. So you start chipping skillwires and knowsofts, running autolearning courses in your head while you sleep, find an elf girlfriend (did I mention that you also pay someone to teach you 'smooth') use the best techniques to give yourself the kind of figure that made tens of millions of girls swoon over Legolas on the big screen, buy whatever Wizards of the Coast came out of the Crash as, unless they completely went under, then you just hire Runners to recover pristine copies of the old stuff and start printing. But more, imagine it! You join up with a big corp, probably the one you have so much stock in, and start making D&D-themed AR games.

And then you remember there was a game called Shadowrun sometime back then, start making waves looking for it, and the Shadowrunners sent by Lofwyr to prevent anyone from realizing that all events were fortold by a mere games company nearly kill you. That's how you wind up running the Shadows, looking for sourcebooks to tell you what happened, and hopefully finding ones from after you were frozen, to tell you what will happen.


Actually, that sounds.... Well, does anyone else like prophecy? It would, however, mean you're enslaved to the official metaplot, at least until the PCs start trying to change world events.

Before, after, or during the IPO?

This is assuming that it would take place while frozen. If a "M-Gene" is what causes Goblinization then it is not too far off to think that it would stay dorment inside of you along with everything else until you were thawed. That means you could allow for Orks and Trolls (and the varients there of), but not Elves or Dwarves.

I'd second this notion. When your cells are frozen solid, they're not going to change. The DNA can't move anymore than the frozen proteins and frozen water of the cells. Once you're thawed, Goblinization should be possible.

I'm starting to groove on this concept, though, and I do have the Transmetropolitan issue in question.

They're trying to prevent cellular damage during freezing.

However, the length of time required for the procedure and the time it takes to swap out enough water...well, you'll either end up with lots of dead brain cells from oxygen starvation, or you'll still have some freezing damage. Or both.

The freezing techniques are improving all the time. The whole cryogenic science is improving because there are a host of things that benefit from proper freezing (from embryoes to stem cells to livers).

I know that the cells are destroyed, but as long as they're not thawed, the data is not lost (and it should be repairable). We just have to have faith that medical science will continue to improve (and I'm quite sure it will). Current cryonic patients have a 'wake up' reward in their contract. They put $100,000 (or whatever) aside, and if when they're thawed, the group that thaws them get the money. The reward collects interest, and the technology to thaw will eventually become cheap enough (or the reward will become great enough) to make thawing research viable.

I wonder why more elderly atheists don't do this?

Yes, that would probably work in the future but it's apparently not in use today, which is what I was talking about.

There is an arm of Krupp that does contract electronics work for businesses in RL.

Anchovies? just need to contact your local Red Vory. of course it may wind up costing a kneecap or two.

The embryos - the zygotes and fertilized eggs - consist of a one to a handful of cells that can be frozen and thawed readily. Freezing and thawing 75kg of cells is a leetle more complicated.

I surely be wealthier (relative to what I am now), but I wouldn't be wealthier relative to the world. While my $10k is compounding, so is the rest of the planet. And the rest of the planet is likely compounding at a greater rate.

So, I won't become one of the 'uber-rich', for sure. However, I while be a LOT more wealthy in an absolute sense (I'll be able to afford many more times what I have now. For example, I can buy a $2000 laptop today - but the quality of laptop I could buy in 80 years using that same $2000 (compounded for 80 years) would by much, much better than the laptop I purchase tomorrow).

There's good evidence that the brain (i.e., "you") can be recovered from a 'stopped' state and still be "you". Again, grandma wouldn't be dead until you thawed her improperly. Until then, her information is static, and the body can be repaired (with sufficient technology)

That's only true if you're getting wealthier by keeping your money in a savings account. Mutual funds, stocks, real estate, even government bonds, will get an interest rate over the long term which far, far outpaces inflation (barring a major disaster such as the fall of the United States). If you'd like to do the numbers yourself, inflation has been at a steady 3% (approximately). Real Estate has been closer to 8-10% (with, of course, local variations). Stocks have gone up and down a fair bit, but I believe have averaged around 11%, bonds closer to 8%. Corporate bonds are higher, government bonds may be closer to 6-7% (I'm making that up, I just know it's a good deal lower than most anything else, however it's insured by the government, which makes it pretty safe.) Banks generally give 3-4% interest. Over the long term, you'll quickly outpace inflation with anything but a standard savings account. I'd tend for a diverse portfolio with an emphasis on real estate and bonds, a few mutual funds and maybe 10% in stocks in particular big name companies. I'd beat inflation by about 5-6% every year, which is formidable with a reasonable amount of seed money.

I am aware of that, but the point that in that interim, the person is no longer engaging in normal brain activity. In medical terminology, she is dead. The fact that she can be revived (or more precisely, perhaps, maybe, possibly can and will be revived) is an aside, it still requires you be dead for an indeterminate amount of time. Many people find this proposition just a little unnerving for that reason.

Of course, you could also just follow Shadowrun cannon and invest heavily in all the corporations which get conglomorated into the Megas. As well as Boeing.

Then you'll be pulling down a swirling pool of economic power. That, and good from investing with the rest of the ideas...

Oh, it'll easily outpace inflation - I don't doubt that. The cryonicist will absolutely be wealthier. Likely much wealthier (their buying power goes up while the quality of goods goes up too)

But remember, while I'm snoozing and compounding, other people are working and compounding both at the same time. All things being equal, if I sock away $100k and go to sleep and you sock away $100k and stay awake - who's going to be wealthier in 100 years? You, very likely, since you'd be continuing to work and save in the mean time - as long as you make more money than you need to survive, you'll be saving some of the money (even if only in the form of DVDs and music and boats and whatever else you spend your extra cash on).

If the person can be awakened, then how were they dead? Maybe they seem dead, but so did a heart-attack victim 60 years ago. However, since then we've figured out how to shock a heart back to beating. Does a person's last will and testament kick in as soon as the heart stops? No way.

There's a difference between being legally dead and actually dead. The frozen embryo is a good example of that. It's in utter stasis, but it's certainly not dead. In stasis, sure, but that's it. It's legally more akin to being in a coma than deceased.

You will, because I'll be dead, my estates will have been split and split again, spent on rent, food, college parties, failed businesses and a bazillion other things my progeny think is worth investing in.

That may be true, but how many people do you see lining up to intentionally stop their heart? People don't like to die, even if it's 'temporary'. That's my point. Otherwise we'd have a lot more dead Christians (since they'll go to heaven, and that's a lot better than life here!)

I don't see how death can be temporary. To me it's a yes/no state.

I'd think that every single person who goes in for heart surgery allows their heart to be intentionally stopped, right?

I guess cryonics is the last refuge. It's a source of hope for people who don't expect to live longer, so if an experimental procedure might keep them alive, then people would do it. *I'd* not do it right now because I can certainly make my money grow faster by being awake than being in stasis.