I'm with you there.

As if it wasn't dangerous enough being a teenage runaway.

It takes roughly 3k in cyberware (datajack and R1 Skillwires) to set a person up as a bunny whore. If the parlor is organized enough, the ware might even be used (from a worker whose last client was into rough stuff.)

Even high-end cybergeishas probably have less than 30k invested in them.

Worst thing is, I can see kids staying home because all the the stepdad does is beat them.

Thirded. Bunraku is nasty and some of my players would probably freak if I brought it up in the game.

I believe that was the plot of one of the original SR modules... Dreamchipper. I've run that module 6 times with 6 different groups. At the end when they decide if they return the chips for the cash or smash em to bits "in the process of retrieving them" I have NEVER found a group that took the cash.

Disturbing? Perhaps, but it remains one of the few really meaty (if you'll forgive the pun) ties Shadowrun maintains with cyberpunk. I think it can be used in a game quite tastfully at that. You don't have to go into explicit detail with it after all, unless of course the players really want to.

I dunno. I might put stuff like Halberstram's babies up near the top of the list.

George Alec Effinger had a whole culture around this sort of stuff in his Budayeen series (When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, et. al). The main difference is that people were doing it to themselves, which kind of makes it creepier in a way. Sort of. The main character is kind of coerced into getting wired though, which opens up a world of problems. The narration during the periods when he's under a different personality is...weird.

Molly Millions, the razorgirl from Neuromancer, tells that she earned the money for her combat cyberware working as a "meat puppet"...

Damn, too slow...

Ditto; in the hierarchy of disturbing things that SR has to offer, Halberstam is at the top of the list, right up there with Deus' experiments in the Arcology.

Actually, I would put Bug spirits, Halberstam and Deus' Network all above the institution of the bunraku; at least there's a chance of escape from a bunraku parlor--not so much if you're stuffed into a cocoon, a CCU or are made into a Node.

Compassion and respect for each other make the species strong. Why trade that for shaving a year or two off the pace of scientific knowledge?

"It's not enough to survive; one must be worthy of surviving"

-- Commander Adama, in the episode "Resurrection Ship"

internal compassion and respect is not the same as external compassion and respect.

as in, if its of the same species, thats one thing, but if its not, thats something else...

sadly, thats a very slippery slope as the borders may well be mobile...

Basically the Dr.Mengele of SR who specialises in Matrix/Neuro-Tech

read this:
http://ancientfiles.dumpshock.com/Echoes.htm

eh. any species' largest competitor is generally going to be itself. and in the case of humans, there's really nothing else we can practice aggression on.

While I totally agree with this, I think that those 'classier' ones that you go on to describe are in the minority.

As an aside, do we have any evidence that prostitution is illegal in 2070? Hell, it's not even illegal now in parts of the states.

Any species largest competitor is generally going to be itself? Tell that to the semi-digested remains of inumerable little animals.

As to there being nothing else that humans can practice aggression on then what is the need to practice aggression for? I should clarify before this gets into a debate on the social necessity of competition that whilst I've used your term, the original point is one of experimentation on human life and other atrocities. Are you saying that it's necessary to practice aggression in preparation for when the aliens arrive? Or the machines try to wipe us out? Well unity will serve us better than in-fighting when the aliens come and if we stop building machines that kill, we might not have to worry about the robot uprising.

I find it hard to believe that you're arguing for the necessity of atrocities such as unwilling human experimentation.

No they make a species strong. Can you imagine a mankind achieving the things it has achieved without working together? Compassion and respect allow us to live and work together.

A very slippery slope. I've found that one can correlate the "goodness" of a person with the broadness of the definition they give to "my kind." Is it just themself? Is it their family? Community? All mankind? Though of course that's simplistic and there are other axis to measure the inclusiveness along as well such as sexuality and religion. But the principle of what I'm saying is pretty clear, I think.

Going back to bunraku parlours, I am in no way saying that other people shouldn't include these in their games. I just know that with us, a degree of separation between reality and fiction is necessary for us to enjoy the game, else we wouldn't be able to play for worrying about the ganger we beat up. And rape in any form doesn't increase the separation between reality and fiction for myself and certain players, it brings the game into too great a level of reality which we are uncomfortable with.

Well, its most finely tuned competitor, wanting the exact same resources, but lots of species have had worse problems with other species, eg those that were displaced by the introduction of rabbits to Australia. Humans tend to have a top predator perspective.

Cyberpunk tends to include quite a bit of humans treating each other as non-allies. But having *some* sense of "us", someone to watch your back, is a good thing. Knasser favors taking a broad view of "us". Some Buddhists pray for *all* beings. I favor a narrow sense of "us", and the ability to make allies and cut fair deals with "them" when advantageous. Cf. the thread on Humanis Policlub; also the "start with cooperation, then tit for tat" strategy in iterated prisoner's dilemma.

My PC has been cutting deals with ghouls... and would rather see them fed peacefully, than have them go hunting. *Some* of them are fellow sentients. It's kinda borderline. If spider spirits eat wasp spirits, and don't eat humans, then hey, it can be time to ally with spider spirits.

Back to the more specific topic:

I'd hate to be a meat puppet, and I'd also hate to be shackled to an assembly line machine. One is creepy, and the other involves a risk of limb-mangling industrial accident. Seattle 2070 probably includes a few bunraku parlors, in various degrees as hyzmarca describes, in about the same proportion to total population as RL Seattle has sex workers of various sorts. Seattle 2070 might also have a lot of factories with low safety standards and workers who would *rather* be p-fixed than spend their 12-hour shift in constant fear of accident. If you eat at Stuffer Shack, or buy ammo from Ares, you're probably consuming products made in such a factory.

In a Pink Mohawk type campaign, if a runner becomes an underground hero, aka Bonnie and Clyde, or aka the "Jaynestown" episode of "Firefly", a bunraku parlor might use personafix and cosmetic sculpt to make a "puppet" just like the popular image of Our Hero, except attracted to any and every customer who walks up to the bar. If the PC meets their bunraku double, or better yet if Mr. Johnson sets up a meet at that bar and gets confused about which is which, hilarity could ensue... or rather, hilaristurbing.

Your mistaking the maximum application of compassion to the lack of compassion.

Let us say that we have six people all of whom are compatible with each other for the purposes of organ donation, five are dying slow and painful deaths from organ (two from lungs, two from kidneys, and one from heart) failure and the sixth is healthy.

A rational compassionate individual is driven by compassion to minimize death and suffering. In this case, there are two ways to accomplish this. One can euthanize the healthy guy and distribute his organs to the other five or one can euthanize the heart patient and give his organs to the other five. Assuming that recovery from a heart transplant will be painful and that the individual's life expectancy will be reduced, one might choose to kill the heart patient. If not, then it is a pure toss up which might as well be decided by a coin flip.

Either way, the most compassionate choice is the sacrifice the one to save the many.

I don't know, the bunraku seems alot like what would happen in Rl - it's realistic that's what makes it so bad.

Blood spirits, mad doctor experimenting on people, and the good old Horrors coming to end the world is less believable.

Well dr. mengele did exist, but how many mengele are there compared to human trafficking and prostitution?

And another aspect of the industry that makes it scary is that at first glance it looks neat. If you enter as a customer all you will see is gorgeus (insert prefered gender) that seem educated and savvy, seem to be enjoying themselves alot and are very turned on by you, in addition to being perfect for you preferences.

Now most men without background knowledge of this might well be tempted to try it out. Heck even the old hookers today with layers of makeup to hide beatings can fool men today (as they want to believe the hookers chose the profession).

and thats the freakish thing, these are all fully normal people that would not do such a thing on their "fellow man". but as soon as they get into the state of mind that some group of people are "sub-human", all bets are off as to what they can bring themselves to do...

No it isn't. If there was a vote, then it would be mob rule. In this case it is a unilateral decision based on utility. That would be a dictatorship. It is necessary to do some distasteful things to minimize suffering. Besides with all variables taken into account, it is probably best to kill the person who is dying of a heart condition, as I pointed out, unless one can guarantee against rejection and other complications.

Which is why humane methods would be used to kill. There is suffering there. The point, after all, is to eliminate suffering. ( Of course, if one's goal is to eliminate suffering then it stands to reason that genocide is the ultimate act of compassion)

If the heart patient's organs are unsuitable for the others then the best choice depends entirely on whether or not the healthy person's heart will fit the troll. If yes, then euthanizing the healthy person would have the greatest utility. If no, then we are left to trade organs between lung and kidney patients. KP1 gives up a lung to LP1 in exchange for a kidney. The same trade is made between KP2 and LP2. Or some other combination is used. The heart patient still dies, of course, since there is no heart that fits him, it is only a matter of when he dies and how much he suffers in the mean time.

Wow. If I had unlimited resources I'd buy the rights to Care Bears, make them into a rifle-toting platoon in Vietnam, and make the cartoon show about them going on patrol and getting repeatedly ambushed over the course of their 1 year tour of duty. It would be completely straight-faced and nobody would comment on the Care Bears being a bunch of bears, but instead would just act as though they were nothing out of the ordinary.

But it's a perfectly cyberpunk scenario, which has nothing to do with compassion and doesn't merely tolerate, but celebrates the inequalities among people of different social strata. And it happens all the time today - organ donation among Chinese prisoners is a big business, and there's plenty of urban legends (not true, but part of the collective unconscious) about travelers getting drugged and waking up in a tub of ice.

...and if he was claiming that it was cyberpunk, I wouldn't be arguing. But he's claiming that it's compassionate. Perhaps you should read back a bit and get brought up to speed as to where the conversation has been.

er, yeah, you're correct. lemme amend: at the top end of the food chain, any species' largest competitor is generally going to be itself.

Indeed, as we learned from "The Princess Bride", life is pain, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Therefore, logically, if we get rid of life we must be getting rid of pain as they are one and the same.

I do have one question for JonathanC, though. Do you sell bulk coffee? I go through that stuff so fast and it would save me a lot of time and money if I could get a good wholesale value.