Emotitoys:
Arsenal, P. 57
Possess Empathy Software which allows a bonus on ONE type of attribute only test.
Empaathy Software:
Arsenal, P. 60, specifically says it works for 'Sense Intentions' tests, detailed on page 130 of the BBB.

Sense Intentions Tests:
You gain a basic insight as to their honesty, intentions, or Emotional State.



What this says to me is:
*Grue: HISSSS!* "My Grue doesn't like you, chummer. You holding something back?" (honesty)
*Grue: *thrumthrumthrumthrum** "Well, my you certainly seem to be in a good mood today, Kirk. You finally get laid? Even my Grue likes you!" (Emotional Sense: Happy, Gratitude, Contentment)
*Grue: Whimper!* "Hey hey, take it easy, chummer. You're scaring my Grue." (Emotional Sense: Anger)
*Grue: gurlgegrowl* "Yeah, think we'll pass on this one, Breeder. Something tells me you've got ideas other than just delivering a package on this one." (Sense Intentions: Betrayal)

Further, you should be able to fake any of these with a con roll at a threshold of (2), and the simplesoft isn't going to know the difference. People learn to fake out /polygraphs/ with very little practice, and this is far from that.

Emotitoys only apply to ONE very specific and very limited test. It can sense imminent hostility, but they can be fooled very easily. The reactions of the emotitoy also aren't a dicepool bonus to YOU. It's a base dicepool for the Emotitoy. That's all it gets. An Emotitoy 6 gets six dice, total, to use the Sense Intentions test, as described on p130, which is pretty much just the 'gut reactions' stuff from above. Easily faked with an easy Con roll. Otherwise Actors would be bland and boring. There's even a piece of bioware that completely negates your ability to use that kind of test at all.

Having Empathy Software installed to interact with your CyberEye can't even be done. You need cyber-eyes, a built in SimRig, (the full trideo recorder unit, chummer!), and then the program to run it. It says right there 'Designed to be used with a Trideo Camera'. Which a CyberEye ain't. Even then I wouldn't allow it to add to all your social rolls in real time, only the sense-intentions ones.

People who rely on empathy software may also find their 'basic instincts' fooled by a simple Con roll, and overlook fishy information. "He looked like he was telling the truth! I swear! My EmpSoft said it was an 89% likelyhood of truth when he told me he was no longer with the Corp that was hunting us, despite the cufflinks, briefcase, and Icon Logo on his commNode!"

Where do you guys get a different idea?

I mean for F's sake... it's a Furby!

Try reading the damn Empathy software. It gives you a positive Dice Pool Modifier to all Social tests. Further, it requires a video camera. It is fully operational from recording unit contact lenses, let alone a cyberye.

I did. I even quoted the page number.

I believe you're reading to much into it. It can't specifically contradict itself in saying that:
It can be used as a sensor to make an independent test (EDIT)
It DOES NOT DETECT FALSEHOODS
It adds a bonus to Con rolls (Task: Detect Lies)

Two of these things are contradicting one another. Further, no where does it say the bloody furby gives you access to it's software. That software acts as it's OS. It reacts to your moods and cues. (I like him. I don't like her. He needs comfort. Leave him alone.)

Re-reading it, it seems the empathy soft further ONLY applies to 'sense interest and emotional states' sub-tasks of Sense Intentions tests, which is why it's cheaper than ConSoft or NegotiationSoft. Lie Detection Software is needed for the Sense Honesty/Dishonesty portion of that typically Attribute Only test. Why would a 600Y keychain toy be more effective than your Rating Six ActiveWare?

Seems like a dose of common sense is in order, and the interpretation of the last line should be read 'Adds to the above mentioned Social Rolls' not to all of them.

((EDIT)) I'm rereading the cyber-eye again and going back to the camera sensor, which is supposed to be a one capacity item, so can fit in something about the size of a coin, which I guess means no problem wiring the hardware directly to the optical-brain interface, which means it does take video data. That's quite useful. So really all you need is cyber-eyes to run the EmpSoft. Easy enough. (Eye Recording/Camera and Image Link to display the information) Still, it can't turn you into a human lie detector (requiring a second software... which does...), which means it can't legitimately add the bonus for scant nuyen to ALL your social dicepools, as that directly contradicts it's prior statement. You have to pick one interpretation, and as one is obviously broken, the other has to stand, right?

Last sentence in the description of the Empathy software in Arsenal (pg. 60) says that it gives it's rating as a bonus to social tests dice pools. That is the huge thing that everyone talks about. The emoti-toy itself is just the most common way to use the software.

*edit* And last time I checked RAW was not subject to "common sense." There isn't much to interpret as I read it.

The last sentence in the description of Empathy software states:



I agree with you that this sentence has no business being there, and a lot of people seem to feel the same way. Personally, I think empathy software is fine if you simply take that last sentence off. Until they have an errata fixing it, though, that's still a house rule, rather than canon.

Wait wait wait...



Emphasis mine. They put in "limited" for a reason. What that limit is, is not specified, but given that they did do that, chances are that it can't do everything that empathy software does. If the purpose of that particular emotitoy is negotiation, the bonus applies there. If it's interrogation, it applies there. If it's con, it applies there. It seems to imply that the toys are built with a specific niche involved, rather than being all encompassing. Otherwise, why include the phrases "limited ability" and "based on their purpose"?

"Limited" may refer to its rating. "Purpose" may refer to any number of purpose the character may have for the emotitoy. This part of RAW requires writer clarification. However barring any such clarifications, there is no RAW limitation imposed upon any specific emotitoy's purpose or that an emotitoy may not have multiple purpose. However, the 2 phrases does give the GM some ground to stand on to limit the capabilities of an emotitoy.

I'm going to go with it comes down to GM interpretation. That being said, I have been using something close to JFixer's version, allowing the damn furbies to add their rating to 'Sense Intentions' rolls. None of my players have them, so I am leaning towards them working as the OP stated. It won't nerf anything since as stated none of my PCs use one.

Not exactly true. People can easily learn to control their biorythms, but knowing when to do it is an art unto itself. A skilled polygraph examiner can tell if you're using special techniques to falsify a polygraph reading, although I don't think they can see through it.

Anyway, for right now, the RAW is clear. The furby adds its rating in dice to *all* social tests. It may not be able to tell if people are lying, but it can help you do so. No, I don't like it either; but this wouldn't be the first time the RAW was broken and ill-conceived.

Uh... the Furby doesn't. It's running it's soft in order to respond to actions in the environment. Where does it say that it interfaces with your PAN and gives you access to IT'S programming? Does your drone give you it's Pilot Soft to drive your car?

Since an EmoToy is, actually, a drone, it applies the same rules, yesno?

Although I think any so-called runner showing up to a meet with a fuzzy kid's toy on their shoulder should get an offsetting "You've got to be kidding me" penalty of -12.

Glyph,
I know you like to pretend that you're a big manly man who is serious in everything you do, but... well. You play RPGs. Even serious professionals have their hobbies and quirks. Everybody is human. Even hardcore criminals. Everybody has weaknesses in their mask.

Now, the Emotitoy craze is big. Bigger than furbies. Bigger than Tamagochis. Bigger than every CCG combined. Bigger than pokemon. The marketing divisions have even got "serious" professionals buying these things. The only reason Damien Knight doesn't have one is that he has something even better. He probably has a cadre of empathic fembots.

The world of 2070 has people who walk around with every flat surface sporting pictures of pornstars. There are people who live every day with an imaginary friend and this is accepted. Imaginary pets are fine. Imaginary background music is perfectly alright.

Why would anyone have a problem with you walking around with an animatronic Lofwyr or Dunkelzahn? Hell, it's more "mature" than having a fawning, perfectly beautiful AR "wife".


That's why I hate the "ZOMGITSAFURBY" response to Emotitoys. Compared to some of the things in the BBB they're tame.

Oh, also, there are people today who can't stand seeing spiders or some other kind of animal. That's pretty pathetic, no? But we accept them. Because. It. Happens.

A person in 2070 has to deal with all kinds of "weird" stuff on a daily basis. They don't care that you've got a "toy" (need I point out that even adults need toys as well? We just like to pretend that they're not toys) on you. At least you aren't wearing Second Skin and nothing else.

No. Those drone rules apply for autosofts, each soft has a specific application. The problem with the Emotitoy is that it is in essense a drone loaded with non-autosofts. What happens when a non-autosoft is loaded into a drone? Is a drone not also a node in that you can load programs onto?



You mean "At least you aren't Bubba the Love Troll wearing Second Skin and nothing else".

My biggest problem with them isn't the fad of having them. I actually think it is pretty nice. My biggest problem with them is the by RAW + umber social dice. If they were trying to make Emotitoys a 'gotta have' item then they surely succeeded in that. If you play a Missions game without one then your crazy. I haven't seen one character in the missions write-ups carry one, you can get a rating 6 one for cheap, and by RAW it will add 6 dice to all your social rolls. That average of 2 additional successes will net you some nice payout.

I still think any decently professional runner would go for the empathy software (which is still extremely cheap!) and a discreet microsensor over a cutesy critter on a keychain. Everyone knows what emotitoys do. Walking into a meet with one is like announcing that you're going to be using a sensor and software to analyze the other person's facial expressions. I don't think that would go over any better than the mage announcing that he's going to be scanning everyone's surface thoughts, or the hacker announcing that he's going to be trying to hack the Johnson's commlink. Not that no runner would attempt such things, but you don't say you're going to.

But it's the dice pool inflation, and disproportionate dice pool inflation at that, which really makes them a "must house rule" item. In SR3 it was the mnemonic enhancer which was broken, in SR4 it is this. Hopefully it, too, will be toned down in an errata. I guess they must have looked at the original pornomancer build and said "Hey! Social adepts don't have enough dice!"

Yes, but this being what it is, it seems socially acceptable.

I can see it if you put it into a cricket drone body, and make it look like a broach or something. And, of course, laoding Empathy software into your AR-glasses s perfectly fine. The problem is that the software costs IIRC ten times as much as the damn furby does! When combined with the needless dice pool inflation, we have both mechanical and fluff issues with emotitoys.

A character I had, had an emotitoy as a silver adder coiled around her neck. She threw only something like 28-30 dice for social interaction rolls.

But I think emotitoys should be Voigt-Kampf machines that are the size of suitcases, involving an optical reader with a light and breathes like a book spider on the table.

-Chrysalis

I noticed the same cost value difference. I pretty much did what you described; gutted the furby, turned it into a decorative broach of sorts and stuck it on our raccoon shaman. She was covered in shiny little trinkets anyhow, so it didn't stand out.

While I think the OP has the RAW wrong, I think it's an appropriate house rule. It's already too easy to get bonus dice to social tests. I think emotitoys should be limited to rolling their own ratings, and telling you limited information. That way, they're helpful, but not required.

Emotitoys look like one of the really misguided "time to balance samurai and mages" hose rules that sometimes pop up on dumpshock. It's like the developers forgot the very basic rule that any technology which samurai can use, adepts can use, too. So, while it's reasonable to give sammies an easy way to get decent social pools, it just takes the rather broken dice pools of social adepts and it swells them by a huge proportion. Also, since they're cheap, everyone who expects to use social skills will have one. If you simply give everyone in the whole world +6 dice, you may as well forget about it, those +6 dice just cancel out of the equation... Me, I'd prefer a world where not everyone has a pikachu on their shoulder whispering in their ear. I'm ok with some people having it, but with it being a cheap, indispensible piece of gear, it just becomes too obligatory.

Amen, brother. Even the price fits if you remove that sentence.

@JFixer: Cybereyes are pairs of coordinated high-tech trideo cameras, usually tricked out to the max. They certainly qualify as useable sensor suite.

A critical 25% or so of the SR rules totally violate common sense. Some are crazy, either logic or fundamental game assumption violating silliness. Chunks of the magic rules, large pieces of the combat rules, most of the hacking rules are all like this. Then their is the stuff that is simply stupid, like military explosives that are more unstable than homemade nitrogen triiodide, like rating 6 fake IDs typically won't last a month of buying crap at stuffershack, etc.

If you want to use house rules to try to get some "common sense" into the parts of the game that are severely lacking it that's fine, but the rules say what they say and they typically really do allow idiocies like bloodzilla or furbies to add + 6 to skills. You are actively making changes to fix them, and you have to tell your players that.

We roll it as the Furby gets his six dice to use as Teamwork to your social roll.

Anyone who thinks that emotitoys are supposed to provide this level of bonus are dreaming. I'd personally bitchslap any player who tried.

- J.

You'd "bitchslap" a totally new player who thinks he's following the rules?

Face it, the book says you get the bonus. You can point out logically that it's overpowered and underpriced, and apply house rules and fixes to make it into something sensible. But someone who is following the Rules as Written does not deserve to get "bitchslapped", just because he can't read your fragging mind.

Yes, it seems like emotoys are too good, but how is a player to know that? Most people have heard of the pornomancer in internet legend. They don't know the role the furby plays in it. Basically, this is a situation for calm discussion about house rules, not thwacking someone repeatedly with your BBB.

I dunno about that. You seem to think that people don't deserve to get bitchslapped for no reason. I can't possibly understand why anyone would need a reason to instigate casual violence another person, you weirdo

I take this as evidence you read things far too literally, and we shouldn't trust you in your interpretation of RAW.

Honestly, I'm not touching the RAW vs RAI argument having too long dealt with this crap in D&D. Common sense and a GM call are what's called for. Not a highlighter over the offending passage in the BBB and having it thrust under the GMs' nose screaming like a five year old "But its in the ruleezzzz........!"

- J.

PS: On a sidenote, I would warn a player first but yes, I'm not about bitch slapping my players. I am a hard man but I am fair...

In this particular instance, Cain is correct, and is not in any way "reading to literally".

RAW is very clear on this subject; Empathy software (& thus Emototoys) give you a Dice Pool Bonus to all Social Skill Tests. If it was not intended to be this powerful, why does it say it so fucking clearly?

Unless you specifically tell the players you are not running it that way, you have no right whatsoever to punish them in any way for using it as written. Doing so will not leave you a GM for long, & is the kind of behavior I would beat the shit out of you for.

I agree with the original poster. The furby is the one running the empathy software, not the runner who owns it. If you let your furby handle the negotiations then it should absolutely get a +6 dice bonus to the roll, otherwise it's just a nifty toy dangling from your keychain that makes adorable faces and R2-D2esque noises in response to the emotional cues people around it are giving off.

The only thing the emotitoy can do on its own is to make a judge intentions test for emotional status, with its rating as the die pool... and that's all it does. It's doing that all the time.

Common sense is pretty uncommon, especially as it pertains to RPG rules. Fact is, rather or not the developers wanted emotoys to be that powerful, they *are* that powerful in the RAW. You are, of course, free to houserule it as you see fit. But I would NOT come down on a player who planned on using them that way. They're just following the rules; it's up to me to communicate how I plan on using them.

You know my tune. Open communication and honesty will solve this problem, easily and without hard feelings.


Even that can get unbalanced rather quickly. They're dirt-cheap, so there's no reason for everybody to have one. By your ruling, the Uncouth character will keep 6 dice to all his social rolls, which is 6 more than he should have. For 600 , he effectively sidesteps a 20-point flaw. If the roll belongs to the character, however, then the furby is much less valuable.

No, my interpretation of the way emotitoys works means nothing of the sort. An uncouth character with a rating 6 emotitoy will still be just as socially inept as ever, but he will have a furby that is picking up on emotional cues to which he may be completely oblivious. That would make it useful, but it wouldn't undo a 20 BP flaw.

When I suggested letting the furby handle negotiations for you, I was kidding... I thought that was obvious, because of how absurd a notion it was, but I guess I should have spelled it out a little more clearly.

Emotitoys can't negotiate or use social skills. They can't make independent social tests.
On the other hand, my Ares Predator 4 loaded with APDS rounds is a very good negotiator.

Emotitoys have a drone option. An Uncouth rigger could use one to handle the negotiations for him that way.

While it's not RAW, it seems like the best way to handle this would be to have the Emotitoy use its own dicepool for "Sense Motive" tests, and handle any augmentative use of an Emotitoy or autosoft agent as a Teamwork test. It rolls its dice first, and then any successes are added to your dice pool.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the original intent, and it somehow got mangled in editing.

I think the way it was seen is: You have the Emotitoy ooked into your PAN, and you are getting the input from it in AR to your eyes, ears, what have you. It is using the program, because it is a piece of hardware optimized for using it, and then it is feeding you the information through AR.

Thus, in my game, Johnsons like to either meet through AR images, or put down Jammers, thus neatly sodestepping the chances of being ambushed y runners, and, having a side benefit of not letting the Emotoys work with them...Remember: Johnsons are paranoid....there is a bomb under that desk, you will not meet your johnsons face-to-face, and you are being watched by snipers the whole time at the meet...

I really think that the toy would get multiple penalties to Negotiations, for being a frigging toy.
If someone even agreese to negotiate with you toy bear, i think most people would just laught an send you away if you said that "my toy is going to be handling the negotiations for me."

Yeah. I can just see a huge, hulking minotaur, an ork dressed in sepulcher black with matching mirrorshades, and an elf with a green mohawk and studded synthleather punk garb walking up to the Johnson, and plopping a teddy bear down on the table.

"Mr. Fuzzy will be handling the particulars."

Seriously, though, emotoys can give characters more dice than they deserve. An Uncouth, Cha 1 character would normally have zero Social dice; with an emotitoy, he's got as many as a Cha 3, Skill Group 3 character. (One of my players pointed out that there's no reason to buy an emotoy at anything less than rating 6, so we can assume any emotoy will be at that level.) Even if they take a small hit for using a toy (which doesn't have to look like a furby, it can look like anything) they've still got a positive dice pool. That's better than what they would have normally.

I can also envision the Uncouth character with an emotitoy participating in a Teamwork test alongside the Face. That could get out of hand quickly.

"This is our Decker...you know, the one who likes to keep hidden? This is the face he/she chose for this negotiation. You got a problem with that?"

"So I get to talk to the hand because the face ain't listening?"

Being a voice without a face at the table worked for Charlie.

*Pulls a large bag out from under the table, drawing out a pair of stuffed animals... a bright orange and purple t-rex and some blue on blue creature with large ears, black eyes, and a huge mouth full of teeth.*

"That is quiet alright gentlemen. T-Bone and Stitch handle the details. By the way, I hope you have a lot of money because your going to end up paying me to do this job."

This also still doesn't adress the original point:

Can not be used to detect lies.

Con: Detects Lies

+6 Dice Pool Modifier to all social skills allows a +2 success margin on detecting lies.

Not to mention the whole 'emotoy is 1/5 the price of the comparable software upgrade'. You can certainly jump into your miniature scamper-toy drone with no firewall and no system rating, but so can the building's spider, to watch your every move. It's a non-virtual virtual pet. It has behavioral software that allows it to react to people...

How the /f/ does that add six dice to your /INTIMIDATE/ roll? Your Leadership!?

Meet Mr. Flibble.

Thanks alot... got quite a few weird looks from cubicle neighbors when I lost it and broke out laughing. Mr. Flibble indeed...

Danke!

*facepalm*

Congratulations Cain. For managing to bring a Red Dwarf reference, you win a cookie.

Oh, I say Cain deserves more than a cookie! Bravo on the RD reference, Cain! *Boys From The Dwarf Salute*

If I were the building's spider, and I hacked into someone's emotitoy, I would do a lot more than watch their every move. I mean, think about it. These people are relying on this toy to guide their negotiations, and you control what it says. At the very least, you could change that +6 bonus into a substantial penalty. Or you could have the toy act up and completely trash the runners' reps with its behavior.

I was referring to the runners infiltrating a building, like an Ares Corporate Office, actually, and not just the club where they rely on the toy.

Thing's a backdoor into their PAN, ne?