We are given to understand that implants paid for with Essence continue to have effect on the Astral Form. Things that affect the Body wouldn't carry through, but effects on Mental attributes do.

I'm curious to know what people think about an implanted simrig recording what the astral projecting character perceives in Astral space. I realize the actual machinery stays in the Physical plane, but effects on one or the other of the parts of the projecting character do often carry through the barrier to the other plane.

So, could a magician who had a simrig and memory implanted project into the Astral and record what she senses/feels there?

If there is some reason this setup would not work, would Edges/Qualities or Adept Powers such as Photographic Memory or Eidetic Sense Memory/Three Dimensional Memory allow one to return to the Physical Plane and 'walk through' the high quality memories and record those?

I bet there would be a lot of money in that.

My response is: The simrig would only be able to record his personal physical and emotional responses to the sensory input but not the actual input itself or any other non-physical / non-emotional reaction.

Reasoning:

1. Astral perception (whether it's during Astral Projection or while still being in their body) is an umbrella term for a magical sensory perception that is analogous to the classical five (and up to 13 depending which scientist you're asking) physical senses that a human being has. Due to its magical nature the basic assertion in SR seems to be that there's no ("currently") known or understood brain area linked to that magical sense with the exception of knowing that the sense itself obviously feeds into the overall system in a way that the human experiencing the sensations can (and will) react with emotional and physical responses (plus whatever non-physical, non-emotional responses there are on the Astral Plane). => The Simrig is wired to pretty much every known and understood part of the brain in order to record stuff there but it simply cannot record something for which it isn't correctly wired => the sensory input and its directly associated sensation cannot be recorded. At best you'd be able to record emotional and physical responses.
2. Even if we'd stipulate that the Simrig were somehow able to or already recorded astrally perceived sensory input and / or other non-physical / non-emotional reactions the next hurdle would be how anyone else is supposed to the experience such a recording: By definition any mundane character (and even some magically active entities like the majority of adepts) lacks Astral Perception and thus the necessary qualities to perceive / experience the associated sensory input while still being fully subjected to the emotional reactions within the recording (provided that those were recorded and not filtered) => For any person incapable of Astral Perception the recording would be a whole lot of nothing. So the only people capable of using any such recording would be the people already capable of experiencing the sensation themselves in a general sense and the question becomes of how much they'd be interested in such experiences and what they could take away from them given that - due to the "magic" nature - the experience would be heavily influenced by how their magic works on individual levels and - again due to the "magic" part - on the meta level you as player / GM can find a pleathora of reasons why this could or couldn't work.

And again I'd say: "No"

Reasoning:

1. While you could argue that Astral Perception is not explicitly excluded from the listed Edges / Qualities / Adept Powers their name and decription only explicitly refer to the physical memory aspects of equally physical sensory input => It can be argued that none of these Egdes / Qualities / Adept Powers would allow the person to re-live the memory and then simply record those memories.
2. Even if we'd stipulate that those Edges / Qualities / Adept Powers do in fact include the memory recall of the astrally perceived sensory input we'd be back to the original wiring problem of the Simrig itself: Recalling the memory would involve the (magical) sensory system which either isn't connected to the Simrig in the first place or simply cannot be properly perceived by any person not capable of Astral Perception even when recorded from "memory" instead of the original thing.

Given my answer so far my response to that is: Nope, the potential target audience is not big or interested enough. The majority of the potential target audience is not interested in having the necessary hardware to even experience the lowest levels of such recording.

The flip side however is that there certainly are more than enough corporations willing to experiment on (most likely unwilling) magicians in order to test out your thought experiment ... despite the results I just described.

I don’t believe the canon supports it (for SR3 and prior at least). Setting that aside, I also have a practical argument as to why this would be undesirable: it renders magical forensics far too potent to permit Awakened ‘Runners.

By canon, magical signatures once seen can forevermore be recognized, with disguise requiring Initiation. Every activity that leaves a Signature and gets investigated can be used to build a profile based on absolute knowledge of the awakened ’runner’s presence. The one counterbalance to this (well, aside from jurisdictional Balkanization and apathy) is that no means is provided to share this knowledge—the connections can only be made if the same investigator is present to Assense each scene.

Simrecordings of astral perception chuck this back out the window in favor of a fortnightly visit to the ‘trode rigs to brush up on everything seen anywhere friendly enough to share information. This is sufficiently powerful that not many DPI mages would need to get wired—convince a few, then pay them generously to record magical signatures full-time.

So regardless of whether or not the answer clearly is “no”, I argue that it should be no.

~J

Well, part of your concern with regards to magical signatures being shared / shareable and the effect on Awakened Runners was already made kind of moot in SotA'64 with the mana-sensitive film and the associated cameras.

I will say yes. Perceiving mana is a sixth sense, but the output of that sixth sense is your brain. If you can record information from your brain, then you can record that information. I've taken it for granted that pictures of what astral space looks like to a magician are commonplace by this point.

"The astral forms of your foci and fetishes go with you into astral space. Non-magical gear stays with your physical body. This includes cyberware and other implants." (SR3.173) "It is possible to enchant cyberware devices, but this must be done before the item is implanted." (M&M.47)

I think this is what establishes the precedent. Forensics experts can already capture astral impressions if they pack the right equipment. So it therefore makes sense that talented specialists in this field can do it even better.

That's what I suggested back here:
when we discussed Magical Signatures in forensics.

Mana-sensitive film creates the precedence that a very specific technology that requires special films, special cameras and more involved actions (commplex action for even taking the picture) can be used to create a picture where your assensing results are based on your artistic skill instead of direct assenings (plus Aura Reading) but your successes on the assensing table are halved. The result can be perceived / experienced by "anybody" regardless of whether or not they are magically active. So far so good. You don't even have to be a "forensics expert".

However, I still can't agree to the idea that this also creates a precedence for "anybody" being able to perceive / experience a recorded version of a strictly "magical" sensory experience (direct or recalled from memory) even under the also not necessarily lore established stipulation that a SimRig actually is able to record the sensory input aspect of astral perception or their recalled memory versions.




Therefore I would say that your conclusion is a bit of a non-sequitur.

• Can a magically "talented/trained specialist" make astral perceptions better than others? Certainly.
• Can certain "talents" help with remembering those perceptions better at a later time for the specialists themselves in the sense that the perception is not just stored in the equivalent of astral visual short term memory but also the equivalent of astral visual long term memory? That depends on how you see the mentioned Adept powers / Edges in the relation between astral vs. physical perceptions. That's a 50:50 for me.
• Could either the original perceptions or the memories be recalled and then recorded via SimRig? That's debatable because the SimRig would have to be properly "wired" to the associated memory regions (which requires that SR medicine / biology has figured that out).I tend to lean "No" there because there's no lore information that would suggest that SR science has reached that point.
• Could another magically active person who has the sensory capabilities for such perceptions relive such recordings under the stipulation that the sensory input itself or their memories can be recorded? Possibly, but with their individual outlook on magic possibly interfering and no clear indication as to why they would even want to make such an experience. So this begs the question if the overall process (implants on both side of valuable magical resources) truly is something that has the prospect of gaining material wealth for corporations.
• Could mundane persons relive such recordings for which they themselves lack the required "receptors" along with whatever brain structures are involved after "we" decided to answer the previous two questions with a "Yes"? And here I'd still say definitely "No".

The question is, are those parts of the brain where astral perception enters your material neural system parts which a simrig can record? A simrig obviously can't make a full brain backup, so I can see an argument for both options...

I can only say that the ruling for my table is yes.