An In-Character Article

I'm of mixed feelings about this. I don't mind the increased cost for cyberware / bioware and such, that's fine. I'm more concerned about characters from 4E going into 5E who used nanohives or had genetic engineering. :\ I'm waiting now for the Augmentation 5E book, to see if this kind of stuff will still exist.

This is ridiculous, and a great illustration of a problem with the way the shadowrun line is handled.

This is ridiculous because nanotech has been working fine in the SR world for a long time. Ok, there might be something new that causes problems with nanotech, like a virus or something. But when Jorgumandr hit the Matrix in 2065, did all the Matrix corporation close down? Did everyone said "ok, we're closing down the Matrix, we won't be using it anymore"? No, because that's not what people do. When there's a rotten apple you don't stop eating apples forever. Here, it'll probably take long enough for the prices of the 'ware in the core book to stay correct for the whole duration of the 5th edition.

A great illustration of a problem with the way the shadowrun line is handled because:
- It's a decision made to move shadowrun to something closer to what it was before. This is something that you can't do forever. You can't advance the timeline and reverse eveything else.
- It's a shitty fluff explanation for a questionable change of rules and fluff. It's no different from the stupid wireless bonuses that are bad things made to allow an (arguably) good thing.

If they wanted Shadowrun to go back to the 50s, they'd have been better off by making the 5th edition take place there, not in a 2075 where everything suddenly starts looking like the 50s all over again.

Honestly, it's like pruning away branches on a tree. Some stuff gets cut off and removed to make way for new growth. Whatever the 5e Augmentation book looks like, it will probably bring back nanotech and gentech in one form or another. Neither of those played a big role with the players at my table, but I can see how not having something people are used to using suddenly become unavailable could be upsetting.

Should've done like what was done to transition between SR3 & SR4. Don't make it 2075, make it 2080 and go on from there.

And as someone else around here mentioned, SR5 is more throwback to the older SR3 style to entice more of those older players. Not sure how true it is, but from one gaming group I know of it certainly seems to be true.

*Performs a happy dance*

Also, partially called it

You, then, are a visionary.
I don't see this as a long-term shutdown (oh gods, I hope not), but more of a short-term setback. The way nanites are produced and used at this time are being closed down and studied while the 'event' is happening, and perhaps a method for correcting this situation will come out in the future - around the time the Augmentation book comes out.

I want to see nanites, genetech, and other such things return to Shadowrun, it pushed the envelope into transhumanism, and that's something I really want to see in the Shadowrun universe -- effectively 'the body is hackable'. Mind you, that's completely different than 'damn it, someone hacked my body', which seems to be what's causing this panic.

If cool with "Nanotech no longer reliable to have in internal Hives and used as weapons/attack vectors" but "Still ok for out of combat use/infrastructure/whatever".

Like Commlinks to Cyberdecks now, or when they said "Um, yeah you remember that total immunization package that we let you have in Shadowtech (or whatever), yeah that doesn't work anymore"

Especially considering the fact that the 2050 Shadowtech stated that Cyberimplantation works with ... nanoware.

So what exactly ware these "old tried and true" cybernetics for fallback? Oh yeah, cyberware with ... nanoware?



Yeah ...

SYL

After Jorgumandr, they basically had to rebuild from the ground up. At this point, we're still in the midst of whatever the hell this is, and nobody knows what's going on. It's not that they're choosing to stop using nanotech, it's that they're no longer ABLE to use nanotech for whatever reason - and at least until they know what's going on, there's not much they can do about that. Largely, this all seems to be in consequence to what's shaping up to be a pretty interesting plotline.

This strikes me as a plan to reign in nanotech and genetic manipulation to a level that remains familiar to us. This is necessary, because the natural result of these technologies is a form of humanity that we, as players, won't be able to really understand.

A little transhumanism is great. But deep transhumanism is a very different beast.

Read further than just the buzzword: "Nanites" in Shadowtech are simply bacteria which incorporate metals and then settle on patterns formed with special nutrients. In other words, stuff which might actually work instead of magical tiny spider bots, and which most likely will remain unaffected by the disease which befalls these bots.

Still, it ought to remain. Not only did it offer interesting augs both fluffy and practical for the players, but out of control genetweaks and transgenic creatures made for great GM tools.

Well, I think it might be wise to withhold judgement on that score until this plotline has actually been carried through.

I'd never. The game is for the players, if the fluff ticks us off, we should find our own depth. Until I get to work on SR (a dwarf can dream!), all power to 'em.

Uhhh...

By my count, 30-40% of the nanoware systems are exclusively soft nanotech and a further 30-40% are available in your choice of hard and soft. If soft nano were safe, the text would describe a move to the safer systems. The text makes no distinctions between soft and hard nano, so we should assume that soft nano is also affected.

Painting a pattern with a nutrient and then setting bacteria on is is not really "programming". In Fact, M&M even went out to establish why the "old" nanites were actually no nanites and only the new nanobots deserved that name:
In the early stages of the cybernetics industry, genetically engineered bacteria, misleadingly nicknamed "nanites," laid the neural bridges during cybersystem implantation. This "oldworld" nanite was responsible for the first implants, and its imprecision limited cyberware to a comparatively basic level and caused significant Essence loss even for very small implanted devices. The advent of true nanites rendered such clumsy tools unnecessary. True nanites are more precise and versatile, allowing larger devices, including limbs, to be implanted without such a loss of Essence that the body would shut down.
(M&M, page 84)


@Tias: It explicitly says that geneware is still around, just more expensive due to no longer having nanite support. I guess they just went back to retroviral carriers

@Sengir: But Man & Machine also discusses how essential robotic nanites / hard nanites have become for cyberware, both with installation/cybersurgery and maintenance. So the original statement that cyberware relies on nanotechnology would be correct. Even if there are alternatives to make cyberware work, the field should be massively impacted by this. Switching highly developed products to a completely different technology would prove disruptive. And if we ignore the speculative science behind this for a moment, Heath Robinson's argument is convincing, if soft nanites are not susceptible to this "disease", why isn't half of nanotech still working? Soft nanites complement bioware. So both cyber- and bioware should be in trouble. "older, tried-and-true techniques" essentially means far behind sota.

BTW: Those who can read German, we have the same discussion running in Pegasus' forum, from here: http://www.foren.pegasus.de/foren/topic/85...-66#entry313018

-- don't ask --

Assuming that you actually care about that particular plotline. Personally, not really a big fan of it currently. *shrug*
Maybe it will grow on me.

Which is obviously why the Bioware and Cyberware are so much more expensive in SR5. They have had to implement new protocols for implantation and maintenance. *sigh*

Well, you are missing the point. This is not about price or availability, but about being able to provide equivalent function at all. If a component technology that has been relied upon for decades and was co-developed along with your product suddenly is completely unavailable, you don't just switch over to an older technique without loss of quality or function. Fluff from both Man & Machine ("Without nanotechnology, all but the most basic cyberware would be so large and bulky that it would defeat its purpose") and Augmentation ("Nanotechnology is an absolute necessity for all implant surgery") stresses how important nanotech is to the field of cybertechnology. Going by that cyber- and probably bioware should not only be pricier and less available but maybe also more dangerous to implant, less useful and in some cases not even usable at all.

And we are not even speaking about all the people who run around with systems that rely on nanotech. "nanotech [..] is integral to the functioning of many others including cybereye accessories, filtration systems, chemical analysis tools, and even cyberlimb sensory feedback systems" aug.103

EDIT: And I grant you that some of that nanotech could be materials engineering rather than nanoscopic machinery. Doesn't change the overall problem, especially with cybersurgery.

No really, I am not. I agree that the elimination of Nanotech is stupid and ill thought out. I agree that the return to an older tech base is completely ludicrous. It is just another example of not thinking through all the ramifications of a change to the game world. This is just one of the reasons that I dislike 5th Edition. While there may have been some great ideas, they were not thought out in regards to the world setting and the unintended ripple effect impact that such changes would have.

I feel about this the same way I feel about the reintroduction of decking. Which is to say, I think it is a bad game design decision.

Agreed. I like the new matrix paradigm (mostly), but it would have worked with Comlinks just fine. No need to reintroduce Decks, just pop in a few new hardware modules and go. The price points for Decks are just ludicrous. *sigh*

On that note, if I ever were to transition a favored technomancer character to the SR5 rules (still not likely to happen) I'd treat him as a decker as well. Funny thing there, means that he'll get a Fairlight Excalibur, a ¥823,250 cyberdeck, for free. Sad thing is that deck is still better than his living persona.

The "early stages of the cybernetics industry" M&M talks about (set sometime in the early 2060s) actually is Shadowtech (2053), which described exactly this procedure. Cybertechnology (2057) made no reference to any drastic changes in nanotechnology, so seemingly all the advanced cyberware (really, what new cyberware have we gotten since then?) did work with the metal-fed bacteria, too.

Only in M&M did nanotech turn into Eric Drexler's nanorobots capable of precision manufacturing in a moshpit where all participants are covered in superglue; with a little retconn that it had been that way since ages without anybody mentioning it. But since it offers no dates it would be easy to re-retconn this to mean that the big change only happened between Cybertechnology and Man & Machine, which would make total sense, because such a big change would certainly have not gone unnoted in the previous book.


First of all, we don't actually know of soft nanites indeed went the way of the Dodo. Fluff only talks about all kinds of nano-powered molecular assembly (from DNI over food to fighter jets) going haywire, that has so far remained the realm of nanobots, i.e. hard nanites.
However, as Augmentation put it "[f]or the most part, soft and hard nanites are interchangeable in game terms" (p. 106). They are not simple bacteria with a few genetweaks, but more aking to preprogrammed bio-robots. So whatever malware screws around with nanite programming, it certainly could also affect soft nanites.

Now personally I don't see soft nanites as that much of a problem, since most of the 100 % certified bullshit has so far been attributed to hard nanites. But as far as potential fluff explanations go, if there is some malware affecting hard nanites, it certainly can also affect soft nanite breeding systems...

They will not because they are not programmable in the sense that they can be affected by a commlink or any Shadowrun computer technology. They certainly are not susceptible to WiFi. That might make them immune. These "nanites" cells act like regular single-cell organisms - they need a track of nutrients to follor and grow on, you have to coerce them, you cannot simply have them act on your beck and call and program them to do whatever you want. Shadowtech's nanotechnology actually sounds realistically tedious, whereas Augmentation's is pretty much all magical science.

Also, back in Shadowtech, Nanotech was a rather limited technology, and expensive, and experimental and everything. The great Nanotech boom of SR4 and late SR3 came about due to the end of Renraku:Arcology Shutdown and Brainscan. Essentially, the current generation of Nanotech has been developed by Deus (a hostile, alien AI), and was then used by corps who pilfered blueprints of them or reverse-engineered Deus' products and Experiments for profit, without any good idea how it actually works, or real interest in this because hey, business, cheap bucks, shareholder value and the Weyland-Yutani principles of business. No, I cannot see why any of this can go wrong at all.

SR4's Nanotech is a lot more advanced. It's near Eclipse Phase levels (actually, Eclipse Phase developed out of a "Shadowrun 2100" thought experiment, for all I know). And there's an older generation of - arguably - much less easy to handle nanotechnology available too, if dated, clumky, and not really easy to apply. So I think that's the article's angle.

Augmentation's nanotech relates to Shadowtech's Nanotech like a Tesla Model S relates to a Ford Model T. Much as this seems to be a reverse-engineered explanation of why cyberware sucks so much in SR5, this does make a lot more sense than other recent CGL plots, in in-game terms.


I suppose they make up for that with Cloud Computing (yay magical science!). This is why cyberware sucks so much without wireless.

Oh, then I misread the sigh.

I agree on the first part, but if I'm not mistaken Cybertechnology dispensed with the science background altogether. So I wouldn't argue based on exposition not being in the book.

Well, at least the importance for cybertech is reaffirmed in Augmentation, p. 103 the paragraph starting with "Nanotechnology is the silent wonder of the cybernetics and biotech industries". Silent, you see.

Agreed. But as I said the argument that some nanotech should be avaible if not, convinces me. What they are saying instead: "I think we all know by now that nanoware is completely untrustworthy. Remove it or neutralize it as soon as possible, at least until somebody figures out what in the name of the spirits is going on." Okay, maybe you could say it's just overreaction.

Actually, I do see the effort.

Ah, they compute the results of the evil disease out of your cyberware. Things start to make sense.

I've noticed a few people seem to dislike any metaplot which changes or advances the setting. I'm somewhat curious - what kind of game-changer metaplot would you prefer?

-- Shadowtechnology was written (partly) by an actual doctor, Cybertechnology was written by one of the staff writers. But Shadowtechnology is still arguably one of the most influential books in the entire game line.

-- Shadowrun jumped from fairly simple nanotechnology (and nanotech isn't synonymous with nanobots: i.e. nanofabrication using self-assembly, tailored bacteria, lithography etc.) and, as has been noted, jumped directly to Drexlerian superscience assemblers (with a small nod that this was made possible by reverse-engineering Deus' toys). It's a Machina ex Deus In GURPS terms, Shadowrun jumped from TL9 to TL11 between books.

-- I have no idea if the final Sybil thing will make a lick of sense (anything involve "e-ghosts" and the like gets my BS meter rising, though), but nanotech was getting pretty out of control in the game, and becoming increasingly difficult to explain away in terms of how this wasn't upsetting the status quo.

It has nothing to do with advancing the setting, at least for me. It has everything to do with the obvious fact that they completely miss the ramifications of their sweeping changes with no thought to the ripple of consequences. They do what sounds cool, and when they are confronted with all the stuff that now makes absolutely no sense because cool overrode consequence they have to scramble to make sense of it all (which often never actually happens, because it is so hard to repair the unintended consequences of their changes). It is quite frustrating, honestly.

See, I never saw Nanotech as "getting out of control" or out of hand. It had some interesting possibilities, but they were far from becoming mainstream to everyone (hell, even most shadowrunners did not benefit all that greatly, as far as I was concerned). It was just to damned expensive for the really cool stuff.

The only piece of Nanoware I felt was "out of control" or "game breaking" was the smart staff from War!... That thing was stupidly over the top being able to change shapes drastically over the course of a complex action. Most everything else took minutes to make even minor changes like fingerprint patterns. That one piece of gear changed everything…

You describe the WAR!-Nanoware, not the Augmentation-Nanoware.

SYL

Ahh, yes, the Victorinox Smart Staff. Never used them myself. I preferred the Victorinox Sword, if I wanted something like that (Only ever had a single character who ever used one). However, that is a single piece of equipment, and I cannot see it changing everything. Niche and Intersting, to be sure, but not really a game changer.

It's not conclusive evidence, but at any rate it is compatible with both the hypothesis that MBW, Cybermancy, and all the other advanced cybertech was only made possible by nanobots, and with the hypothesis that nanobots only started being used for cyber implantation after 2057 (i.e. Cybertechnology).
So to the best of my knowledge, saying that implantation without nanobots used to be done is at least fully compatible with existing fluff, if not already preestablished.


@hermit:

Speaking of which, all nanotech fans hopefully realize what fate would have awaited nanobots if they had made it into 5th...make them hackable or they become incompatible with wearing leather shoes

If that item could change so drastically and so quickly why did the False Front bioware or the Jigsaw Skull (I forget what it was called but I believe it was in Spy Games) take so long, cost so much essence or in the case of the bioware have limited durations for something that should have been so easy.

It did change everything... At least for me... I looked at it and wondered why they would boost Nano so much and never think of the other items that would have benefitted more from it. Our GM allowed one in the game and then house ruled it to take minutes instead of seconds for any others people wanted and finding an in game way of removing the one already in play.

-- Shadowrun nanobots are invisible little magical machines brought into existence by stealing tech from Deus (Man & Machine). The stuff from War! is not really any dumber than ultrafast reconfigurable diamondoid skin sheaths, or nanites that can rewrite your retinas on-the-fly.

Just because you can apply Smart plastics to something simple like a weapon, it does not mean that it is equally applicable to Cyberware. I see what you are saying, I just do not agree with it. The Victorinox Smart weapons were gimmicks. How many cool gimmicks have come and gone over the years where the logical next step application would have been revolutionary? I would be willing to bet more than a few.

OK, so let us take a look at a piece of Agumentation nanoware:
Voice Mimic, costs R*3000 ¥ and Availability is a flat 16F. Its cyber equivalent (Voice Modulator + Secondary Pattern) costs R*5000 ¥ and Availability (R*3)F
Or how about the Retinal Adjusters nanoware, which has the same Availability as its cyber equivalent (Retinal Duplication) but costs a third of it?

OK, nanoware is actually cheaper than cyber despite supposedly being cutting edge, but at least it cannot do completely outrageous stuff, right? Well, maybe take a look at Demolishers and NanoSpy...

And how many characters ever take EITHER of those systems, regardless of being Nanoware or Cyberware? I have not ever seen either system in actual play, and only ever seen the Retinal Duplication on a Theoretical Build, that never actually saw play. I am sure that tables have characters with these pieces of 'ware, from time to time, but I just cannot see either of them being problematic. I might consider switching Costs/Availability between them, but they are not game breaking.

It's not about game balance, it's about the fact that supposedly cutting-edge tech is easier to have than cyberware which has been around since 1st edition.

PS: Although from a gamist POV, I'd add that it sucks that counter-biometric ware is so heinously illegal and expensive...

Yeah, I get that. I would change the prices and availability, reducing Cyberware, and increasing Nanoware. But that is just me.
I also agree with that. It should not be so excessively expensive, though I do think that is should remain HIGLY illegal.

Before we do that please review the entire comment and the quote. I never talked about actual game values or if price x is fair while price y is not.

SYL

Oh, gods, Old Man Jones was pretty heavily loaded up with nanoware...

I wonder if he would have been aware enough of the changes to activate his blue goo kill switch?

Especially if I'm right and the new Matrix is really Deus.


-k

Of course it should be illegal, this is a dystopian panopticon society after all. But if changing your biometrics via cyber is basically unattainable (if you want to fool more than the most basic scanner) and a complete fake ID goes for R*1000 ¥, there is clearly something amiss.

(Disclosure, the "cyber impersonator" is character concept I have always wanted to play. So I'm probably slightly biased )

Agreed... I had an idea for such a character myself, it was just never really feasible to me. Sadly...

...therefore I also provided two items where the problem is not just the price/Avail. Tiny robots constructing an assembly of camera, microphone, and transponder, appearing "to be no more than a very faint discoloration of the material it's been applied to"? My GloMoss just turned into a floodlight from the poorly disguised magic...

@TJ: I feel your pain

Entertainingly, I never really used that Nanotech, either, because an RFID Sensor Tag with Microcamera (Trideo, of course) was so much more efficient, and far cheaper. Lets see... 500 Nuyen for 20 Sensor Tag (that is 25 Nuyen each, and DR3), and a Microcamera (Trideo functionality, of course, for 100 Nuyen). So, 125 Nuyen per Sensor Tag (minimum -6 to be spotted, threshold 2+) for a total of 2,500 Nuyen. Hmmmmm.... 2,500 Nuyen, for an ubiquitous sensor option that is very difficult to discover, or 7,000 Nuyen for a restricted nanoware piece of crap (which is seen with a Threshold (3) perception test, no penalties, because it covers a square foot of space, by the way). And since I can get 56 such sensor tags for the price of a single Nanospy I know what I am going with. Not all nanoware is good at what it does, after all, and there are often more economical/practical means to do the exact same thing for far cheaper. *shrug*

Indeed... Sometimes they just do not work out.

Yes, this.

Moreover, the justifications are ridiculous. "The nanites messed with your genecode, but no way it could be detected in all these years - or checked right after the procedure, really".
Besides, minding that the nanites have been used for everything for ages, they're even found in common items like disguise kits, I fail to see any reason for certain areas to be affected more than the rest, IC.

Also, that bit on "a lot of small Matrix-order shops are also shutting down all over the globe"? Utterly ridiculous. Have you seen the prices of nanofaxes in Augmentation? These are not 3D printers made out of wires and scraps! Anyone using a nanofax to print T-shirts is going out of business long before any nanotech infection.


I find myself agreeing with lokii in this thread. Otherwise:

Yeah, and the new edition is not changing this. I find this to be badly thought-through, really.

Sensor RFIDs are capable of basically the same trick, so it's not a game changer of any kind.