FXcalibur
May 9 2004, 08:35 AM
Okay, so putting cyberware into someone is already very well covered in shadowrun, but what about putting human parts into a machine? Perhaps a drone or vehicle. Is this even possible, or will the person die off first, or is this considered cybermancy?
I'm asking because I just remembered a friend referring me to some old comic where the government harvested human brains to power a railgun targeting device. Sorta got me thinking.
A Clockwork Lime
May 9 2004, 09:03 AM
Shucking off meat doesn't cost you a single fraction of a point of Essence, so you're free to have everything down to your brain and spine removed if you really want to. Once you do that, get a VCR 3, Smartlink-2 Ballistic Processor, and Datajack with Internal Transducer at the very least installed. Buy a heavily armored "bucket seat" with "special machinery" and at least one "living amenity" and say that it includes all the stuff you need to keep you alive. You'll need a custom lifestyle to account for your nutrient solution and all that sort of thing (see Sprawl Survival Guide for information on how to make one and synergize it with a living amenitiy).
That should about cover it. 'Course then you could cheeze out and get a bunch of flaws to reflect your predictament. Quadriplegic, Infirm 5, Blind (variant that allows riggers to still function), etc.
Anymage
May 9 2004, 09:16 AM
If I'm reading you right, essence would be irrelevant, since what you're doing is effectively putting a steak in the freezer. And other than space considerations, you can have as much steak in there as you like.
Now, in a mystical game like Shadowrun, you're not likely to have nerve (or other biological) tissue have any special effects or traits outside of an aura; matter of fact, its biggest advantage is likely to be the ability to "ground" or produce an aura. So while in real (mundane) life biological tissue is an engineering marvel, in Shadowrun using biological parts should always be inferior in a machine; pistons are stronger than transferred muscles, wires are faster than transported nerves, etc.
Edit: ACL's post did raise a good point; you can shuck off meat, and so long as what's left is well taken care of, stay alive. So if you want a small, versatile, and unhackabe "drone", you can have just the head/brain of the person attached to a life support system and modified VCR3. It'd be wicked expensive and of extremely limited use, making it highly unlikely, but you just know some Kevin Warwick out there is itching to try it.
snowRaven
May 9 2004, 10:05 AM
And if you can put brains in jars and plug them into the matrix, there should be nothing stopping you from putting them in drones and/or vehicles.
[ Spoiler ]
In fact, rumors in Corporate Download say that Dr Halberstam has started to work with MCT, and MCT are doing alot of rootic research... Imagine their best 'robotic' drones controlled by specially trained human brains. A new breed of cyberzombie, without the worst drawbacks...
[ Spoiler ]
And maybe Deus wants in on it, for more advanced drones in a network - he has already proven he can create otaku and rewire brains, so the step won't be far to put tose brains in highly superior robotic bodies. He might even want to make a few of those bodies for himself, though he would most likely use them as a rigger uses a vehicle, to avoid being too vulnerable. He could make an army of his robotic drones, controlled by elite otaku-rigger-samurai in beefed up drone bodies, and use his Network to infiltrate key positions in companies with the research facilities he needs, take them over and automate them. He could dominate the matrix using his otaku and improved versions of Halberstam's babies, as well as a few Agents. Oh, the possibilities...
Lilt
May 9 2004, 10:38 AM
I don't agree entierly with the whole 'you don't lose essence for cutting stuff off' idea. Limbs could be cut-off, but your body will still need Internal organs, glands, ETC. It wouldn't be as expencive as a full cyber body replacement, but there are still probably bits that would need connecting to your Central Nervous System.
toturi
May 9 2004, 10:42 AM
By Canon, you do not lose Essense by loping parts off your body... If it did, you would lose Essense someone hit you with Serious or worse damage.
Lilt
May 9 2004, 10:59 AM
That's not quite my point, my point is that logically other bits and pieces will need to be connected to replace the organs ETC lost. I'm saying that connecting those other bits may well cost some essence.
I Eat Time
May 9 2004, 11:35 AM
QUOTE (toturi) |
By Canon, you do not lose Essense by loping parts off your body... If it did, you would lose Essense someone hit you with Serious or worse damage. |
Something that instinctively makes me twitch: Heavily Metaled street samurai lose their humanity to the Perfection of the Metahuman Form, or something like that. Which intuitively makes sense to me. The more metal you've got planted in you, and the more castor oil runs through your veins, the more distance you have from warm, emotional humanity.
The FIRST thing that comes to mind when thinking about a disembodied spine and brain is distance from humanity, growing cold and amoral because you're now something much less, but much much more. How would you represent the degree of this madness, besides essence loss? And Lilt brings up a good point. All those life support systems need to be jacked in and have connections, despite the VCR rig and smartlink.
Crusher Bob
May 9 2004, 12:54 PM
This of course explains why Briareos is an inhuman killing machine and Dunnan is all warm an fuzzy.
In short, this 'losing of humainty' is a bunch of crap with no solid psycology to back it up.
booklord
May 9 2004, 01:16 PM
Since this was done with Halberstam's Babies in the Threats book I going to say it is canon and you could theoritically lose your meat body and have your brain hooked up in some sort of life support tank. Not really my cup of tea but I imagine there are some billionaires out there dying from some sort of incurable disease that might consider it.
Nikoli
May 9 2004, 01:37 PM
anyone else reminded of the Ship who Sang here?
Firewall
May 9 2004, 01:39 PM
re: essence loss
A person gets their leg removed by a monosword-swinging adept. No loss of essence. You replace it with a cyberlimb, essence loss. Personally, I would rule the essence loss temporary (and non-lethal for the purposes of death by essence loss) at the point of losing the limb. The body still 'wants' a limb. By adding cyber, you tell the body to suck it up and get used to the missing parts. If you added real flesh, the essence returns.
Maybe those pantom limb pains are the essence swirling in the gap and waiting for flesh...
Nikoli
May 9 2004, 01:43 PM
Wait till someone developes a bio-ware based replacement limb with the overal density of tungsten and the strength of a troll in a convenient human sized package.
Blaze
May 9 2004, 03:27 PM
I think of Essence as a combination of the body's bioelectric and morphic fields, the astral form and the intangible elements relating to a being's sense of identity (call them a soul if it floats your boat). While removing a body part does not immediately affect the whole (have a look around for Kirlian photography), adding a cybernetic component that forcibly changes that sense of being (eg. a cyberlimb, reinforced skeletal components etc) will thus cause the being's sense of self to deteriorate.
(Yes, I do hit my players with dissociation syndrome regularly- it's the price they pay for the chrome)As to the idea of a brain in a jar, the above would be true- while you'd need to provide all the necessary life support functions mechanically as well as provide new sensory inputs/outputs and retrain the 'operator' from the ground up in the use of their new 'body', it should be feasable without immediate death from Essence loss. However, I would hit the player with similar penalties to cybermancy (CDS especially) and have his/her Essence decrease over time as the morphic field begins to fail. I'd also suggest that, if they want to play a Full 'Borg, they might be happier with a CP2020 game.
-JH.
Tal
May 10 2004, 01:14 AM
Well, according to everyone's favourite bag of chocolatey goodness, the M&M, Essence loss is caused by the brain being rewired to accept the new hardware. Something about the brain not liking it's programming being overwritten with new blueprints...*Shrugs*
Arethusa
May 10 2004, 01:54 AM
Which, of course, explains how you can lose essence if you install a bunch of bioware that never touches your brain, like muscle toner and augmentation. Ignore that explanation.
Like so much in SR, Mulvihill doesn't think before he writes and the stuff just spills out onto the page with wildly varying results.
BitBasher
May 10 2004, 02:02 AM
QUOTE |
Which, of course, explains how you can lose essence if you install a bunch of bioware that never touches your brain, like muscle toner and augmentation. |
Er, you don't lose any essence from bioware... am I missing something?
Jason Farlander
May 10 2004, 02:10 AM
QUOTE (BitBasher) |
QUOTE | Which, of course, explains how you can lose essence if you install a bunch of bioware that never touches your brain, like muscle toner and augmentation. |
Er, you don't lose any essence from bioware... am I missing something? |
Yeah... I think you're on the bad crack this time Arethusa.
A Clockwork Lime
May 10 2004, 02:13 AM
If you want to complain about it, at least complain about stuff like Dermal Sheathes and Bone Lacing.
Arethusa
May 10 2004, 02:33 AM
But it was so cheap, and the nice man said... aw.
Hoo. Whoops. Mixed up Bio Index cutting into Essence as literally overflowing into Essence. NSRCG can really be a crutch sometimes. Still doesn't explain why you lose essence from systems that barely interface with your brain or interface no differently from stuff you've got now, like muscle replacement, though. Or why radios cost .75 essence. Or, hell, like Lime said: dermal sheathing and bone lacing. So, uh, swap out the explanation. Everything else I said was right.
I'll, uh, just go this way now.
kevyn668
May 10 2004, 03:25 AM
On the original thread topic:
So, anybody read "Legion of the Damned"?
kuroko
May 10 2004, 03:28 AM
QUOTE (I Eat Time) |
QUOTE (toturi @ May 9 2004, 05:42 AM) | By Canon, you do not lose Essense by loping parts off your body... If it did, you would lose Essense someone hit you with Serious or worse damage. |
Something that instinctively makes me twitch: Heavily Metaled street samurai lose their humanity to the Perfection of the Metahuman Form, or something like that. Which intuitively makes sense to me. The more metal you've got planted in you, and the more castor oil runs through your veins, the more distance you have from warm, emotional humanity.
The FIRST thing that comes to mind when thinking about a disembodied spine and brain is distance from humanity, growing cold and amoral because you're now something much less, but much much more. How would you represent the degree of this madness, besides essence loss? And Lilt brings up a good point. All those life support systems need to be jacked in and have connections, despite the VCR rig and smartlink.
|
Ok, does this strike anyone else as a great run idea? Along the lines of others done before - but still amusing.
The team is hired to retrieve a prototype of this. They get the guy in they get money, but if they can help it adjust they get more karma plus it hands them some access codes to a wharehouse full of 'valuable goods' (setting up the next game, which would be vastly simpler). The goods can be anything from miscellaneous trade goods (easy to sell on the street but hard to transport) to nice gear (not necessarily what they want but tradable for that) to something REALLY funny. GM's choice.
Eyeless Blond
May 10 2004, 04:38 AM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
If you want to complain about it, at least complain about stuff like Dermal Sheathes and Bone Lacing. |
Well, the cannon explaination for this, found in, of course, the developer's notes rather than in the flavor text area (LOVE the organization here...) is that of component of Essence loss is from the power sources that the different systems use. In particular, they actually draw electrical energy away vrom the body's nerves, which saves you from having to buy batteries and stuff like that, but kinda sucks otherwise. Even stuff like bone lacing has computers and sensors that build and maintain the lacing and grow with the subject.
BitBasher
May 10 2004, 04:47 AM
If that was the case, I'll take the less expensive version that takes far less essence but requires me to buy batteries, preferable the Uber ones the Redline uses. Have to change them once a decade or so.
Arethusa
May 10 2004, 04:49 AM
Or, hell, what remarkable power source is used in cranial bombs that was unadaptable to anything else?
kevyn668
May 10 2004, 04:53 AM
QUOTE (Arethusa) |
Or, hell, what remarkable power source is used in cranial bombs that was unadaptable to anything else? |
C-7
Crusher Bob
May 10 2004, 05:22 AM
I always though it was powered by the sales of RIFTS books, I know they would make my head explode.
Has anyone tried a full revision of the essence rules? I don't think we've had one of those threads in a while...
snowRaven
May 10 2004, 09:13 PM
QUOTE (A Clockwork Lime) |
If you want to complain about it, at least complain about stuff like Dermal Sheathes and Bone Lacing. |
Well, dermal sheathing practically replaces your skin, so...
But I find it hilarious that Titanium Bonelacing - Titanium being the only metal that the body happily accepts (bone even grows into the titanium, making a perfect fit) - takes the most essence. In fact, it is one of the most essence heavy pieces of cyber out there (discounting if you get multiple levels of something).
Why? Game balance - there is NO other reason.
gknoy
May 11 2004, 12:58 AM
QUOTE (I Eat Time) |
The FIRST thing that comes to mind when thinking about a disembodied spine and brain is distance from humanity, growing cold and amoral because you're now something much less, but much much more. How would you represent the degree of this madness, besides essence loss? |
This reminds me a GREAT deal ofthe B'omarr Monks, from the Star Wars universe.
http://www.starwarssource.net/sws_display....e=1&document=78(Overview of the order, and a great pic of a "brain jar".)
They tended to seek enlightenment, and distanced themselves from extraneous sensations by (eventually) having their bodies surgically removed, and their brains put in a spider-bot, basically.
They were very calculating and inhuman, as far as how other sentients percieved them, sometimes.
CircuitBoyBlue
May 11 2004, 01:33 AM
I think it was the power of pity. The SR developers just didn't have the heart to tell people "Hey, you've got a bomb in your head that can't really do anything useful other than kill you. But in the meantime, don't take any fun cyberware. Your essence is already used up."
theartthief
May 12 2004, 02:43 AM
QUOTE (Firewall) |
re: essence loss
A person gets their leg removed by a monosword-swinging adept. No loss of essence. You replace it with a cyberlimb, essence loss. Personally, I would rule the essence loss temporary (and non-lethal for the purposes of death by essence loss) at the point of losing the limb. The body still 'wants' a limb. By adding cyber, you tell the body to suck it up and get used to the missing parts. If you added real flesh, the essence returns.
Maybe those pantom limb pains are the essence swirling in the gap and waiting for flesh... |
&
QUOTE |
I think of Essence as a combination of the body's bioelectric and morphic fields, the astral form and the intangible elements relating to a being's sense of identity (call them a soul if it floats your boat). While removing a body part does not immediately affect the whole (have a look around for Kirlian photography), adding a cybernetic component that forcibly changes that sense of being (eg. a cyberlimb, reinforced skeletal components etc) will thus cause the being's sense of self to deteriorate. |
I've always seen it this way. (To me these ideas run close enough that you can count them together.)
My
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2
- theartthief
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