Because today leaves me bored, I'm left to thinking. Musing. I'm not even sure how much I believe this, or think it could be applied to a game. But anyway.

Look at Essence, a creature we've never been able to really explain to anybody's satisfaction.

Platonic Ideal Forms get rocks thrown at them as a bunch of "insane philosophical shit".

The 'human-mana connection' seems a bit off, too.

So my instinct is this: Set aside the mechanics for now.

What is Essence?

Essence is probably best lost when your capabilities exceed the maximum.

Not just because you had an accident and have to get a cyberarm do you lose essence - but because even if you're psychologically completely okay with it, something inside you realizes "Hey...This arm doesn't need to feel pain! It can smash through walls if you let it! I can do really amazing shit now!"

This would be greeted with joy, maybe...But also a quiet bit of apprehension, of existential musing.

It's not the fact that the cybereye can see 20/20, it's that it can see in lowlight or thermographic as naturally as in normal vision. You might get used to it, but something inside is always going to go "That just weirds me out".

You might well get used to being able to plug your brain into electronics, but it's hard to imagine you'll never have a nagging bit of wonder.

It's not the fact that your arm or leg is made out of whatever materials. but that it can, with a thought, entirely exceed what should be possible for people.

It's not that your nervous system is backed up by wiring, but that you can now move so fast you're a blur to others.

Same with bioware. It's not that you have some extra space in your stomach, but that you can eat so much more and not reject it. It's not that you have some stuff that regulates your sleep cycle, but that you barely need to sleep at all.

So...what if Essence wasn't based on "meat replaced by cyber", but the extent to which you exceed metahuman capabilities? This neatly applies even to fashion stuff - the same thought process can be extended pretty easily.

Wouldn't adept abilities eat up essence, then? After all, they completely exceed human abilities, and some of them might not even realize it's magic.

I like insane philosophical shit.

Adept abilities...Well, presumably, the same nagging voice that freaks at cyber can figure out that that's different.

Hyz: Me too. The Platonic forms seem like, generally, the most elegant way to handle it. But they do have issues.

Oh oh oh it's magic, you know!

Essence is a game mechanic which basically represents the 6th world's lack of understanding with magic and the impact of technology on the body as a whole. It isn't fully explained nor should it be.

I know. But I tried anyway.

Or did I not mention I was bored?

Essence measures the hippy-love quotient. Things that reduce your hippy-love-spiritualism reduce your essence, whereas things that are good and lovey (like adept powers and pacemakers) do not.

Does that mean a good drum circle and some weed can recover essence?

I always believed essence was a measure of how much of yourself you still have. The more essence you lose the more you lose what makes you, you. The more machine you put inside yourself the colder and more calculating you get and you lose the little things that make you (meta)human.

I've always gone with the "essence is the connection between aura and body". the more "unnatural" things in the body, the more the astral template differs from the body.

Essence is lost for no reason.


Essence: Just Do It
"It isn't wiz at all. It's kind of shitty actually. But it is essence friendly."

Essence doesn't make any sense at all. There, I've said it. And I stand by this assessment. The datajack is and has been so unbelievably powerful in every edition that it's really hard to justify an Essence cost for much of anything. Why would anyone get cyberarms when they could chop their arms off (losing no Essence) and then just wear some robot arms and run them through their datajacks? If Essence actually existed, and yet the Datajack seriously allowed you to send out any output you wanted, you're damn skippy that people would do that sort of thing. And yet, in Shadowrun they don't. They don't for no reason. That's important. Essence is a game balance concern, not a rational one.

Equipment Spotlight: Bone Lacing
Bone Lacing is the classic example of a piece of cyberware that costs essence for no reason. And that's fine. In the case of Bone Lacing, it would be entirely "realistic" for it to cost nothing at all. Not only does it not interact with your nervous system in any way, it doesn't even replace a single cell. Your Calcium Phosphate matrix isn't "alive" in any meaningful fashion, it's just a dead mineral scaffold that your body happens to hang on like a fleshy coat. Even more damning, Bone Lacing actually costs more essence when it's made out of something that is more awesome. That's absurd – but it's also good game balance. You should pay more Essence when you get a better bonus, the fact that you're replacing the same amount of stuff that isn't even your living tissue in either case is beside the point.
And that's the point.

-Frank

I think you lose essence from bone lacing because of how they "install" it. They have to coat your entire skeletal system. It can't just be put up to your bones but attached some how. They also have to get to your bones which means opening you up in a big way. That's where I think the essence loss comes from.

I think we are all forgetting how famous game designers come up with these numbers.

They pull them out of their ahem rears.

This is a balancing game, between so-called game balance and so-called realism.

It makes me sad when people don't dig the overall hippie idea that cyberware eats your soul. It shows they don't really dig the 80s.

The 80s was a time of starcom toys (magnets everywhere!), preschool, and kindergarten for me. Not so much hippie ideas like "cyberware eats your soul".

It's not so much hippy-love or losing your body. It's the hit your whole system takes. It's the Mind/Body/Spirit balance. At an essence of 6, you have precisly what you should have. You're in balance. You have focus, even if you don't know it. But, once you start to add in cyberware, being to lose limbs, that sort of thing, your balance begins to wane.

It's harder to keep that balance and stay human, sane, and organic. You're not so much losing your soul as you are losing control of it, and it takes more work to align your body with the other two. Remember, ware is also a psychologically stressful thing. You're not human anymore, you know that, and that grates hard on your mind. And this throws off your mental trains, your thinking, even if very slightly. And that tips the M/B/S balance. You might still have your whole soul, but because your body took a hit and you're stressed, it's harder for your soul to compensate for these.

And this very well explains how critters can suck essence out of you. You now have less soul, spirit, ki, whatever you want to call it. This throws the balance out of wack, as your body and mind need to support your weakened soul.

So...yeah. That's my .02

Losing a limb doesn't cost essence. Nor does grandma's replacement hip. Why? Because it is very un-PC to discriminate against people with handicaps or the elderly. It's only when you replace that missing limb with an artificial one or grandma gets rid of her legs for a pair of heavy duty caterpillar treads that it costs essence.

i had cooked up a little essence-system, if anyone is interested i'd place it here tomorrow . . time for bed now x.x. .

No, Essence Zero represents the point at which your inner self goes "Oh, screw it" and quits trying to live.