Ok, I've been playing Deus Ex: Invisible War lately and for those who aren't familiar with the series its alot like Shadowrun only instead of tech being driven by cyberware its nanoware that is in the forefront. So strength and quickness and stealth boosts are all gained through nanotech, this doesn't mesh too well with Shadowrun, but the things that do are the smaller pieces.

Like the multitool, its basicly a one use bunch of nanites, point it at an electrical lock or an electrical device and they can open the lock or disable the device. Then there's the eye nanites that allow basicly lowlight vision, these don't seem too out of the realm of what nanotech does in Shadowrun, the only problem I can see with those is that they wouldn't have any way to really get removed from the eye and they'd probably wear down after awhile. The other big nanotech thing in DE:IW is that ammunition is standardized thanks to all of it really being just clips of metal and nanites, insert the clip into a gun and when you chamber a round the nanites form whatever type of bullet you need, no messing around with different calibers, though Shadowrun already kinda does this.

What's the question/topic for discussion?

And tech would have to be damn advanced for nanobullets to be anything but a waste of money.

~J

Hmmmm...there isn't really a question there, is there? This is what happens when you try to post while playing video games.

Do these uses of nanotech seem too much out of line with the current nanotech rules? Does anybody really use nanotech? If not would you if some of these options were available? Has anybody else come up with different nanotech uses?

Really to me they seem interesting but they don't seem too useful beyond being a style choice, and I'd really like them to have a little more use to them, but as they read whenever I'm planning a character I scim the nanotech rules and move right into the chemistry rules which seem more useful. But I really wish there were some new uses for nanotech.

On a side note, the original Deus Ex was MUCH better than Invisible War in my opinion.

Invisible War seemed very "dumbed down" for the console market.

I just got a brand new video card last night that let me play DX2. I tried it out... not as impressed as I hoped I'd be. Definitely liked the first one much better; definitely had more of a Shadowrun feel to it ("whaddya mean that I can't have 30 LAMs, 8 LAWs, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, AND my flamethrower, Mr. GM? I've got cyber-enhanced strength and everything!")

I'll still play it, of course.

I don't like the "nanobots make your bullets" idea, and it really starts to fall apart when the flamethrower comes in. It seemed in general like nanotech was being used (as is the style of the times) to explain otherwise impossible feats, and not with an eye towards what it's really capable of or effective at doing. Sort of like in Anarchy Online, where you don't have mages but you have "nano technicians" who use nanobots to do things that would, in any other game, seem amazingly like spell effects--it's just a convenient story to slap over features they wanted to have in the program.

I prefer Shadowrun's division of functions between cyber/bio/magic/nanotech. There are some ways to duplicate what one tech does with another technology, but in a lot of cases it just doesn't make sense. Why have nanobots in your eyes to give you low light vision (however that would work) when it would be cheaper and in all probability more efficient to just have amplification technology implanted?

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Nanotech is the current (and hopefully beginning to fade soon) buzzword. The actual capability of what they can do, and will be able to do, is simply not understood by the common man. Taking a slab of metal and sculpting a bullet everytime you need one would require a lot more power than a nanite could carry onboard. Unless fusion and matter transformation technologies are combined, it ain't going to happen that way.