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State of 6e today

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dezmont

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« Reply #225 on: <07-02-20/1742:43> »
Orks are universal across countries and the rural/urban divide, so they have to represent something universal.

No they don't, they can be context specific, and a setting not caring to extend a metaphor endlessly and universally isn't bad writing, it is a recognition that the metaphor may not be perfectly universal. SR COULD just have Ork culture be planet wide and the metaphor would still work fine as long as the game was primarily about the modern American Neo-Liberal political and economic system (it is). But it just as easily can say 'they represent different things in different places (which they do).'

For example, in the JIS, ALL metatypes are sorta lumped together to reflect how Japan often treats its migrant work force (maybe you could argue that some metatypes represent specific countries people from Japan may be more or less inclined to think of as 'the good ones' but this mostly works after the plot dropped the concentration camps on Yomi Island angle, a change I believe was likely made because someone realized demonizing the Japanese so much was probably not ideal in of itself). It would still be bad to depict... I dunno... Vietnamese and Chinese laborer migrants to the JIS as naturally less intelligent, just as its bad to say that Chavs are fundamentally incapable of reaching the heights as their blue blooded countrymen of the right breeding and a moneyed background. The fundamental argument that categorizing an entire group of people as naturally less intelligence is loaded as hell and upholds the views of unjust power structures in a setting primarily concerned with tearing them down and exposing hypocrisy. Your not saying anything clever about how we should value people who are less mentally focused, your validating real world arguments about how certain people are outright incapable of excelling in certain fields based on being born with a certain skin color.

In the most dominant, one might say overwhelmingly so because SR is mostly a critique of America's politics and culture, context for SR, Orks and Trolls are pretty clearly black no matter where you go (The rural poor argument doesn't work because, again, the KKK doesn't target rural poor whites for anything but recruitment. In fact the metaphor works BETTER outside of cities), and this is highly relevant because this dominant framing of orks used to have some pretty ugly accidental commentary on racial pseudo-science about intelligence.

That intelligence penalty is also still bad when you view the orks as stand ins for the poor because SR deliberately tries to make commentary that brilliant people from poor backgrounds, and especially brilliant orks and trolls, are unfairly denied access to institutions that would let them utilize their talent and develop skills. A lower logic max literally works against this commentary that the poor are artificially kept down based on racial divides rather than intrinsic qualities that denote the poor people are less capable of success, that is ALSO literally against the thesis of SR, which is that the rich are rich not because of merit but because they were a combination of lucky and exploitative and abused the rules of the system to shut down meritocracy.

So no matter how you slice it the lowered mental maxes weren't a good idea and didn't really fit well into anything SR was trying to say about anything, globally or in the 'prime setting.' It might make sense if say... SR was trying to comment on how different sorts of talents and predispositions all have equal value and we should judge people who try to perfect their bodies and pursue excellence that way as equally valid to those who try to perfect their minds, but SR... often literally takes the opposite tact with that anyway. It places a LOT of focus on spiritual and mental purity and the writing is very judge-y about what people do with their own bodies at perceived ephemeral costs most of the characters in the setting aren't even affected by. We don't see many people gush about how Street Samuai's, movements are almost transcendental and spiritual (Think "World Record" from The Animatrix for a cool exploration of this and maybe an inspiration for an adept or street samurai. It isn't a bad idea, it is just one that SR doesn't explore that much). Even Adepts, who's unnatural abilities are 'acceptable' because they come from a spiritual place, don't recieve a lot of writing focus on the transcendent like other archetypes do, and instead are more valued for spiritual insight than the fact they attempt to master reality.

Instead, SR focuses heavily on a spiritual reverence of access to other mentally focused realities, like the Matrix and the Astral. Street Sams are portrayed often as self mutilators perverting their body only held together through a strong moral code, rather than people turning themselves into the version of themselves they most want to be or chasing physical mastery in order to understand the world much like a hacker might chase a form of mental mastery.  You really can't mix that metaphor with race for obvious reasons (again, it implies that POC are 'natural laborers' or 'physically oriented' which was literally an argument used to deny them voting rights, access to schools, union memberships, and jobs outside of grunt labor). It would be NICE if SR had more writing on how nerds of all stripes over-essentialize their own focuses and passions, but it certainly shouldn't be done through a lens that, again, biases so hard towards racial coding that a literal lynching was depicted in the game.

So it is good that they stopped. If you view things through this lens, it also was sorta... bleh that SR places such reverence on the shoulders of hackers and mages and then the meta-type that very closely resembled minorities who are heavily discriminated against for periceved lack of moral and mental value are sorta pushed towards the role that receives the most moral hand wringing about the ethics of them even existing.

then that's just bad worldbuilding brought on by Americentricism.

To be clear, it is OK for stories to be about specific places, even if they don't take place entirely in those places. SR, however, does have a lot of commentary on other cultures that can sometimes get bleh itself (It REALLY demonizes the Japanese and Latin America a lot for being prejudicial and chauvinistic to the point that we could call these 'villain cultures' which is less than ideal, even if those cultures do have aspects that deserve to be torn down). SR could due with having its international writing 'tuned up' to an extent, because the game is so big at this point there are recurring motifs, but its ok to also just... recognize its mostly about the US and Neo-Liberalism as a band aid solution to a problem that is the equivalent of an amputation.
« Last Edit: <07-02-20/1803:07> by dezmont »

Xenon

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« Reply #226 on: <07-02-20/1802:28> »
(there are reasons why many forums don't allow discussions that have anything to do with politics, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic belonging or race etc - there are often people that will feel 'personally targeted' and debates might often quickly turn 'heated').

You guys are overthinking this. I bet you none of the authors spend this much time debating what orks actually represent as you have done in this thread alone :-)


That being said; None of us (nor any of the freelancers) like or support racism. Or human trafficking. Or that people get addicted to drugs. Or that there are poor people. Or that there are people without proper papers that are not allowed to vote. Or that police brutality exist. Or that people harvest organs or kidnap babies. Or that people offer their body for sex against payment. Or that life is just generally unjust most of the time.

But at the same time, just because it is not politically correct doesn't mean it doesn't exists today and it also does not mean it should not exist in the dystopian fictional world of Shadowrun (or cyberpunk as a genre in general).

High tech, low life. And in the end the corporations will always win.
In all that misery there are a lot of plot hooks that can be utilized.

Shadowrun have been quite open with the fact that there are still people of different color, but why -as a 'human'- start a hate-club against other humans that might have a darker skin tone when the world started to get filled with intimidating abominations with husks. Would you like your teenage daughter to date one of 'them'? At least a human is human, right?

The human kind have always had individuals that act with suspicion and even open hostility against things that are different, that they don't understand and that they feel is threatening them and their current way of life. It was true 1000 years ago, it was true 100 years ago and it is true today.

To be honest (at least for me) it would not even feel 'realistic' or 'true' to the dystopian setting if there would be no misery, that all sentient beings on the planet were accepted and got citizens pay and that all humans & orks respected each other, lived side by side in harmony and sang Kumbaya all days.... (while this might be a possible future it is not the future we expect to find when playing Shadowrun)

Also, racist people (and drug dealers, and rich people, and corrupt cops, and organ harvesters, and large corporations, etc) makes for perfect antagonists.



Edit:
...but also, the authors of 6th edition seem to be more aware. For example
- Trolls and Orks now have the same maximum Logic limit as all other metatypes.
- Essence is now a measure of Tech vs Magic rather than Tech vs Humanity.
« Last Edit: <07-02-20/1805:27> by Xenon »

dezmont

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« Reply #227 on: <07-02-20/1815:28> »
You guys are overthinking this. I bet you none of the authors spend this much time debating what orks actually represent as you have done in this thread alone :-)

Again, the game literally depicts an Ork Lynching when talking about Humanis. I think the writers were pretty deliberate.

That being said; None of us (nor any of the freelancers) like or support racism. Or human trafficking. Or that people get addicted to drugs. Or that there are poor people. Or that there are people without proper papers that are not allowed to vote. Or that police brutality exist. Or that people harvest organs or kidnap babies. Or that people offer their body for sex against payment. Or that life is just generally unjust most of the time.

But at the same time, just because it is not politically correct doesn't mean it doesn't exists today and it also does not mean it should not exist in the dystopian fictional world of Shadowrun (or cyberpunk as a genre in general).

I agree. NO ONE is debating that SR shouldn't include these plot elements. The question is 'Should SR depict the primary victims of these policies as being naturally less intelligent and prone to violence/rage that justifies their exclusion from leadership and power, and the mistrust and fear they receive?

The main people who target Orks and Trolls are The Police, People with bed-sheets and burning crosses, and people who openly wear swastikas and blow them up with bombs. It is an unavoidable and deliberate line to draw between the people targeted by those groups in real life and in the game, and linking racial pseudo-science used to justify real world atrocities and injustices, to make the bigots 'right' in this world by tying it to to mechanics, is a bad idea. You can argue we shouldn't be judging less intelligent people as lesser anyway, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter because failing to get a coding job because you have a black name is a real thing IRL and maybe we shouldn't state Orks are 'naturally worse deckers' as a result.

That is the actual thing being argued about here, not if SR should include racist elements, because the game is calling out how toxic America's culture and economy is, and racism is very deeply baked into both of those things, and thus it literally has to be present.

Also, to be clear, the debate isn't that CGL is being racist, especially because the main point of contention (the lower logic limit) was a legacy mechanic that just stayed because of innertia and that already is gone in the current edition. We aren't talking about if SR should contain racism going forward, the conversation is specifically about if it was good for SR to include prejudicial mechanics based on real life stereotypes that limited in game opportunities.

Also, racist people (and drug dealers, and rich people, and corrupt cops, and organ harvesters, and large corporations, etc) makes for perfect antagonists.

That they do. Again, one of the strengths of SR in my opinion is that despite being in a genre of flawed people who you still empathize with, it successfully convinces you that these people (well, the racists, police, and cops mostly) do not deserve empathy or dimensional. You are encouraged to empathize with what would be traditionally the 'bad guys' to view the people who created the status quo as so monstrous as to not deserve empathy outside of maybe exploring how to stop more people from falling into those patterns.


« Last Edit: <07-02-20/1825:17> by dezmont »

FastJack

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« Reply #228 on: <07-02-20/1951:37> »
Time to take a break everyone. I'm not going to lock the thread, but let's table the discussion on what the metatypes represent before real-world biases make it in.

penllawen

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« Reply #229 on: <07-03-20/1152:07> »
My interpretation for essence diverges from canon. My own theory is that the mana flow is shaped by people's subconscious, both on an individual level and a mass, collective level. For the latter, it's why conjured spirits and the metaplanes conform to historical myths that metahumanity has. The weight of the collective beliefs of all metahuman kind creates these things in the shape we expect them to take. (This also loosely ties into the idea of Namegivers in Earthdawn, and is somewhat influenced by Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It is the belief that forms the raw power into conscious, living forms, not the other way around.)

On the individual level, you get essence. I do not think of essence as being "humanity" or anything like it. I don't encourage my players to roleplay it that way, and as I type this, I realise I need to houserule it out of the Social Limit. Instead, I think of essence as being a measure of how far your body's template has moved away from what the collective subconscious thinks of as "normal." Cyberware or bioware gives you literal superpowers and makes you into something else, not something better or worse but just different, means your essence decreases as you move further way from the collective subconscious opinion about what a metahuman is.

Edit to add - This is intended to be on a deep, psychological/philisophical level, not on a cosmetic level. Wired reflexes cost more essence than a hulking great big cyberarm, even though they are much less visible, because they move you further away from the metahuman template of "normal."
Well, now I'm thinking, ain't I? No good will come of that.

POSTHUMANS

Just as metahumankind's understanding of magic has altered in the decades since it returned to the world - with the emergence of UMT providing a framework for understanding all magical traditions - so too does its understanding of the effect of cybernetic augmentations on the manaflow through an individual. The old theories - that cyberware was fundamentally antithetical to the flow of life force and that as cyberware increased so the subject's essential humanity decreased - no longer hold true. Instead, a new, deeper understanding is emerging from theoretical thaumaturgists in leading research labs.

It is true that cyberware seems to disrupt the flow of mana being channelled for magic, and it continues to be the case that even small amounts of augmentation is devastating for an individual's ability to wield magic. But it now seems that the harmful side-effects of disrupted mana flow are not inevitable, and come not from some immutable law of nature but rather the individual's own self-image.

For many of metahumankind, it remains harmful to take too much cyberware. On some deep level, their psyche rejects it. But there is an emerging trend of people who choose to see the world, and their place in it, differently. For these people, their relationship with the mana flow is altered in such a way as they can choose greater amounts of augmentation. Their self-image is that as they alter themselves, they are not straying away from what they were meant to be; rather, they move closer to it.

They do not become less than human. They become... something else. Posthuman.

IN GAME TERMS

Posthuman is a quality that can only be taken post-chargen and only by characters who's current Essence value is 2 or less. It costs 20 points of karma, plus 10 points per level (so 30 points for level 1, 40 for level 2, 50 for level 3...) Each level gives the user a 1-point essence hole they can choose to install cyberware, bioware, or other body modifications into without changing their current essence score. All numbers I just made up, probably need balancing, for illustrative purposes only, no warranty is implied, do not taunt super happy fun ball.

Posthumanism does not mix well with awakened abilities. The total penalty to a character's magic score is always equal to the sum total of the essence cost of all 'ware installed, regardless of the Posthuman quality.

Posthumans pride themselves on the perfection of their altered bodies and should always seek to install the highest quality 'ware they can. They shun cyberzombies, their twisted cousins, as unnatural creations.
« Last Edit: <07-03-20/1154:17> by penllawen »

FastJack

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« Reply #230 on: <07-03-20/1211:43> »
Way back in the heady days of early d20/3E D&D, I had converted Shadowrun to the d20 rules. "What about Essence?" you ask. Well, I didn't create a new stat, I simply applied the rules to Charisma. Your Charisma was the amount of "essence" you had that regulated how much 'ware you could put in (all 'ware costs were multiplied by 3, since the default "max" Charisma was 18). Now, the addition of `ware didn't lower your Charisma score, but when you figured out any social skill/check modifiers, you did penalize the score by the amount of 'ware installed (social `ware bonuses either doubled their bonus or the "essence" loss didn't alter the check, I can't remember). This made it so the `ware made you seem a bit "off" to those you were socializing with. It also made it tougher to use Charisma as a dump stat.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #231 on: <07-03-20/1224:35> »
Back before Bioware was unified with Cyberware to both cost Essence... Bioware used a separate mechanic called Body Index which IIRC was pegged to your Body stat in the way FJ replaced Essence with Charisma in his d20 adaptation.

I suppose the two types of augmentation could instead both use Body Index instead of Essence, but it'd just end up nerfing mundanes by lowering their pool of augmentation resources.  Well, for most characters anyway... admittedly going all-in on Body is rewarded in 6e and the potential to go beyond 6 raises interesting possibilities.  A problem would be in keeping awakened characters from getting the best of both worlds, but the "MAG drops every time your ESS drops" rule could probably just be changed to a "MAG drops every time your Body Index drops" rule.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

penllawen

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« Reply #232 on: <07-03-20/1243:34> »
In the context of houseruling 5e, eliminating essence entirely has a lot of knock-on effects; infected no longer work, essence plays into some spell calculations, etc. But the idea has merit IMO, it just needs consideration in extra contexts.

A problem would be in keeping awakened characters from getting the best of both worlds, but the "MAG drops every time your ESS drops" rule could probably just be changed to a "MAG drops every time your Body Index drops" rule.
Bioware did this back in the 2e days. If you were awakened, it cost essence as well as body index.

Xenon

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« Reply #233 on: <07-03-20/1622:29> »
Again, the game literally depicts an Ork Lynching when talking about Humanis. I think the writers were pretty deliberate.
They for sure wanted to capture the tension between Humans and Orks same as there is tension between white people and colored people in America today, yes. I agree with you here.

But at the same time they also played on the fantasy of Orks as a race of its own with its own merits that were typically being portrayed as much stronger and bigger savage humanoid outcasts in every fantasy novel and fantasy oriented role playing game and even scifi oriented role playing games such as Warhammer's green-skins etc.

But that does not mean that authors of Shadowrun automatically think colored humans are much stronger and bigger and less intelligent than white people. Making this correlation is entirely on you and I disagree with your conclusion here.

The original authors of Shadowrun actually made Orks a lot more intelligent and social and less aggressive compared to the 'norm'. They made orks as an integral part of society. The authors of Shadowrun made Orks into an actual playable metatype (while Orks in other role playing games at the time were typically portrayed as 'monsters' that was not even viable as a PC).

When designing games it is natural that you balance an advantage (for example strong physical attributes) with a disadvantage (for example weak mental attributes). Having mechanical difference between different fantasy metatypes in a fantasy game does not automatically mean you are a racist that believe that colored people are less intelligent than white people......... ;-)



The question is 'Should SR depict the primary victims of these policies as being naturally less intelligent and prone to violence/rage that justifies their exclusion from leadership and power, and the mistrust and fear they receive?
In a game where wealthy corporations rule then, yes, it make sense that the metatype that is portrayed as strong (even if it is not portrayed as less intelligent) is excluded from leadership and power. Physical strength is often not needed during conference meetings (with their physical strength they are perhaps better suited as guards?)

That doesn't automatically mean that I think Orks are colored people or that colored people are Orks.

In a game where warlords, marauders and anarchy rule the rural landscape (think Mad Max) then I'd imagine that you would often find huge tribes having the metatype that is portrayed as strong as leaders (survival of the fittest / the strongest alpha is the natural leader etc).

That doesn't automatically mean that I think Orks are colored people or that colored people are Orks.

In a game where you can play a charismatic negotiator I'd imagine it make sense that metatypes that have mechanically higher charisma than others are better fitted for the role. Where you can play an intelligent magician or hacker it make sense that metatypes that have mechanically higher intelligence than the others are better fitted for the role. Where you can play a strong melee adept it make sense that the metatypes that have mechanically higher strength than the others are better fitted for the role.

That doesn't automatically mean that I think Orks are colored people or that colored people are Orks.



We aren't talking about if SR should contain racism going forward, the conversation is specifically about if it was good for SR to include prejudicial mechanics based on real life stereotypes that limited in game opportunities.
It seem as if a big part of the player-base actually enjoy mechanical differences ;-)

But of course, if you have a stance where Orks actually represent colored people (which I don't think is a stance that everyone share with you) then it for sure make sense that orks should not be mechanically punished for being orks. Agreed.

(and no matter if people share your stance or not there are also people that simply enjoy being able to play whatever they want without being punished for it mechanically)

Having said that, if even just a small number of people start to bring up the correlation between Orks and colored people (for example in social media) the authors don't really have any other choice than to make sure orks are not mechanically punished for being orks (unless they want to be portrayed as racists that think colored people are less intelligent than white people).

So here we are. Right or wrong, Orks are no longer mechanically less intelligent than any other metatypes.

From a game mechanical point of view I think this is going in the wrong direction actually, but from a "politically correct" point of view I think it is the only viable direction (which probably mean that we will see a lot more of this as we move forward, whether we like it or not).

Xenon

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« Reply #234 on: <07-03-20/1629:41> »
...let's table the discussion on what the metatypes represent before real-world biases make it in.
Sorry. Saw this after I already posted...

dezmont

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« Reply #235 on: <07-03-20/1813:24> »
Sorry. Saw this after I already posted...

I can't speak for Fastjack or anyone else, but I personally take no offense, and am totally fine with you getting the last word! I think everyone's stances are pretty clear and we managed to not light anything on fire.

I suppose the two types of augmentation could instead both use Body Index instead of Essence, but it'd just end up nerfing mundanes by lowering their pool of augmentation resources.  Well, for most characters anyway... admittedly going all-in on Body is rewarded in 6e and the potential to go beyond 6 raises interesting possibilities.  A problem would be in keeping awakened characters from getting the best of both worlds, but the "MAG drops every time your ESS drops" rule could probably just be changed to a "MAG drops every time your Body Index drops" rule.

I think SR6 took a good 'Gordian Knot' approach. While you could totally re-invent the mechanics of a limited pool, the ultimate 'problem' with essence is that it presupposed some sort of essential baseline humanity that altering 'perverted.' So it was ultimately a form of 'purity language' common to prejudicial thinking, regardless of if that was intentional.

Most mechanical aspects of essence were fine (reduced social limit wasn't, but that is such a non-mechanic anyway you can remove it and change nothing of the game balance). Even the fact that augmentations allowed some mental drawbacks as an option was fine, because it being optional moved their existence away from being a an inevitable ramification of messing with the 'pure human' baseline, and was more about how someone who already was maybe succeptable to negative psychological states may be worsened greatly by suddenly being able to crush others with their bare hands or read emotions or affect emotions.

So if you just say that essence merely is a mechanistic bodily function as morally charged on a biological level (ignoring the sociological ones) of getting a blood transfusion, which 6e sorta did, you can more evenhandedly explore all of the more mixed ramifications of 'ware (You have things like body freedom, and the ability to define your physical form free from what Biology limited you too to explore your identity, vs things like pressure to become a tool instead of a person, and the unequal access to 'ware which now is moral neutral being a much larger condemnation of society) while still keeping the ability to talk about people who lose themselves in it. It also helps move magic away from the 'golden boy' space it is by painting a MUCH darker picture of people like Man of Many Names (Who pretty much is openly a biggot, saying things like mages deserve more pay and screaming at people about 'ware, but the framing is very kind to his point of view), and avoids playing into pro-neurotypical tropes equating people who struggle to read others or be read as 'less human' if you REALLY gotta keep the social penalties in, because now the coding of 'ware being MUCH less negative makes the (unintentional) parallels to autism less grody.

Posthuman stuff

I am always personally skeptical of any mechanic that tries to break the essence limit at the expense of another budgeted bit of power. The interesting thing about essence isn't even a power balance thing so much about forcing you to make choices about what you value (With some builds being incompatiable with some very useful tools). This specifically favors limb builds a LOT, and is very unkind to non-physicals in mundane roles.

That said its not really a terrible ruleset, it just doesn't fit my own personal 'vision.' If the idea of 'limb builds not being able to fit synaptic feels like a bad thing for the game rather than a good thing (and I can see it) and you want to increase parity with adepts (This would require adept buffs of some sort, obviously, but they need it anyway), it is a good system.

D20 'ware

This seems interesting, but extremely overtuned. In SR, you lose 1 social limit (a far more mild penalty) per 3 essence of 'ware, while here you lose 1 social MODIFIER per full essence AND the essence costs are trippled, meaning for every 1 ess in SR's cost system you spend, you take 9 times as many penalties. A single cyberlimb goes from being 1 essence and thus -.33 social limit to 3 essence and thus minus 3 to social rolls, or a total effective charisma penalty of -6. Two cyberlimbs goes to giving you an effective negative charisma modifier of -6, which would be the equivalent of a hypothetical -2 charisma if you started at 10. Getting past that would require you to spend 3 whole levels dumping skill points into all your social skills to merely hit 0, which kinda just means you can't use social skills. Furthermore, while the MAX base charisma is 18, 18's are extremely expensive in point buy, and even not dumping charisma you just removed around 44% of the average 'ware budget. A baseline human in this system literally can't equip 'wired 3, you would need at least 16 charisma to get it.

 This is an extreme nerf, and it makes social 'ware users effectively impossible because a -1 in D20 is way bigger than a -1 in SR (If you lost a full charisma dice per-ware point in SR, for example, you still could make a .01 ess face, the same is not true in D20). I think you need to tone it way down, and reconsider if it shouldn't be con that affects your max (As SR goes out of its way to make social rolls easy even if you dumped cha for a reason, its interesting to have every PC able to talk in a story).

That said, I think toned down it would be a great add for a system where the augmentations were 'mental hacks.' EP2e has a concept where characters give themselves mental hacks that are essentially a form of autism, literally optimizing in universe towards certain things that matter to them. While it mostly exists as a clever form of justifying some optimization choices (without demonizing them, EP is even in more repressive areas generally pro-neurodiversity and thus wouldn't judge someone who is anti-social but loves numbers or is super empathetic but also spatially challenged), it may be a neat system to represent doing that mid game (with a greatly reduced penalty).
« Last Edit: <07-03-20/1853:37> by dezmont »

Xenon

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« Reply #236 on: <07-03-20/1916:15> »
I personally take no offense
:)

...the ultimate 'problem' with essence is that it presupposed some sort of essential baseline humanity that altering 'perverted.' So it was ultimately a form of 'purity language' common to prejudicial thinking, regardless of if that was intentional.
The original intent seem to be that essence represented Tech vs Metahumanity.
The more implants you get the less 'metahuman' you seem to be.
You started acting more 'robot' like. Less emotional. Impact on social tests.

But then you had the whole argument if it was fair if a handicapped person that perhaps lost a foot in a tragic accident would suddenly be considered less 'human' or less social because he or she got a mechanical foot replacement. Not very PC if you put it that way (similar to the other discussion we had above).

So, Right or Wrong, now Essence instead seem to reflect Tech vs Magic.
The more implants you get the less aligned with magic you seem to be.
You become harder to heal or magically receive increased reflexes or magically resist pain etc.
No longer any social impact at all.

dezmont

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« Reply #237 on: <07-03-20/2253:52> »
I personally take no offense
:)

...the ultimate 'problem' with essence is that it presupposed some sort of essential baseline humanity that altering 'perverted.' So it was ultimately a form of 'purity language' common to prejudicial thinking, regardless of if that was intentional.
The original intent seem to be that essence represented Tech vs Metahumanity.
The more implants you get the less 'metahuman' you seem to be.
You started acting more 'robot' like. Less emotional. Impact on social tests.

But then you had the whole argument if it was fair if a handicapped person that perhaps lost a foot in a tragic accident would suddenly be considered less 'human' or less social because he or she got a mechanical foot replacement. Not very PC if you put it that way (similar to the other discussion we had above).

So, Right or Wrong, now Essence instead seem to reflect Tech vs Magic.
The more implants you get the less aligned with magic you seem to be.
You become harder to heal or magically receive increased reflexes or magically resist pain etc.
No longer any social impact at all.

Well there is more to it than that. A lot of people don't experience the world in a 'normal' way in the first place. Most of the tropes for example used to denote that someone is 'less human' (such as being reserved, non-communicative, poor at reading social queues, making inappropriate expressions or comments, ect) are traits associated with Autism. Furthermore, there is just the reality that even if you try to make it only reflect the negatives of augmenting past 'normal humanity' the term 'normal humanity' is loaded. We already are at the point in real life augmentative implants exist (For example, amputee sprinters with engineered prosthetic limbs are MUCH faster than natural legs), and exploring the humanity of someone who augments with too much tech instantly isn't a 'fun' metaphor when its that real.

I also think its just not very interesting? It doesn't fit in with the canon of old cyberpunk that try to tell more nuanced stories about the interaction of technology and humanity. For example, Gibson was actually explicitly pro-technology and pro-augmentation, and a huge theme of Neuromancer was the synergistic link between technology and body. Most of the anti-tech themes actually are based around Case, who was a loser who hated his body and resented it, despite the matrix only existing because people physically existed, and ended up being a nobody in the grand scheme, failing to show up in future books despite how he could have continued to affect history, while Molly was very happy with her body and intergrated it with technology that was important to her, and ended up being one of the more emotionally connected and important characters in the trilogy due to being more grounded in the real world due to her choices, and connecting to people not just in spite of her pretty obvious PTSD but by connecting to others who she feels can relate to her pain (which is SUPER PLOT CRITICAL in Mona Lisa Overdrive).

Obviously there are intersting stories to tell about the negatives of cybernetics too, that become MORE interesting if the morality of cybernetics isn't focused on essence but the ramifications of the technology. I made a big old reddit post about it today I can link, but to sumarize there is a tension in life between the fact that we, as material beings, define ourselves by connections to physical things that exist, and how that can be used to both empower ourselves, such as the fact we are all having this really awesome discussion about the philosophy of an RPG through the gosh darn internet, and hopefully making positive social connections that make us happy, because there is a lot of research that shows online friendships are actually like pretty legit and that aspect of the internet has done a lot for people who can't find support in real life for whatever reaso,) and to turn us into literal tools, be it for rampant online data collection from our phones and algorithmic content curation trying to turn us into just eyes to watch hyper-targeted advertisements, to us taking our work home with us (which would be even more apt if the tools for our labor were inside our booooodiiiiies. If 'ware is neutral, suddenly unequal access to it becomes an injustice, and can be used to explore injustices of inequality in other ways. Like the effects of mental augmentation on jump-starting and accelerating success in education (Because not only are you smarter, but being smart lets you collect more information faster in a feedback loop) could be set up as a mirror to how unequal access to technology in schools is kinda screwed up and ties into how capitalism pretends its a meritocracy where in reality certain advantages are so locked behind wealth that it doesn't matter how smart you are if you never had a computer class to discover your love and talent for coding in the first place.

There are still a lot of cool speculative problems with 'ware without essence loss being 'bad.' In fact, there may be more, and they may be more relevant.

Shinobi Killfist

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« Reply #238 on: <07-04-20/1132:09> »
I personally take no offense
:)

...the ultimate 'problem' with essence is that it presupposed some sort of essential baseline humanity that altering 'perverted.' So it was ultimately a form of 'purity language' common to prejudicial thinking, regardless of if that was intentional.
The original intent seem to be that essence represented Tech vs Metahumanity.
The more implants you get the less 'metahuman' you seem to be.
You started acting more 'robot' like. Less emotional. Impact on social tests.

But then you had the whole argument if it was fair if a handicapped person that perhaps lost a foot in a tragic accident would suddenly be considered less 'human' or less social because he or she got a mechanical foot replacement. Not very PC if you put it that way (similar to the other discussion we had above).

So, Right or Wrong, now Essence instead seem to reflect Tech vs Magic.
The more implants you get the less aligned with magic you seem to be.
You become harder to heal or magically receive increased reflexes or magically resist pain etc.
No longer any social impact at all.

I never felt the social aspect was a good gain as it wasn't something people were really going to role play out.  They'd play their street sam how they wanted to. But, I never minded the essence loss and I wish they had played into the mysticism of it more. With your amputee example, I'd have used the example of phantom limbs explained as the astral form and that when they were astrally perceived people would still see the limb, if they could project they would still have it. But when it was replaced with cyber that part of the astral form was suppressed.

I always wish they'd enhance even further the tech vs magic aspect of the setting and the rules, or more accurately have the rules act like the original setting implied. while there is a penalty to heal with magic for weakened essence I'd of given a penalty to first aid equal to a characters magic rating similar to editions 1-3?. Make sure the costs are heavy enough the bio/adept isn't just the better choice. I'm not talking nuyen but mechanical costs. On the magic vs tech side I really wish all spells were labeled as either indirect or direct, indirect spells avoiding object resistance tests, direct spells going against them. Too much confusion without it. As a quick example the spell levitate sets up its own test system, some people apply object resistance on top of that, some don't. Labeling the spell either indirect or direct would answer that.

Now personally since magic has unlimited advancement and mundanes don't I'd of built into the rules for mundanes something like what penllawen suggests above in his transhumanism post. And explain it as they are adapting to the tech and it is becoming part of their living astral form,  Mechanically I'd have it track cost wise similar to initiation/magic gain.

Xenon

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« Reply #239 on: <07-04-20/1534:09> »
Now personally since magic has unlimited advancement and mundanes don't...
Perhaps a better solution would be to limit magic advancement ;-)