First, I'd like to thank Bradd for starting that very interesting discussion on
emotitoys.
I really sorta missed this little tidbit in Arsenal about Empathy Software, and if it wasn't for that thread, I would have never seen it.
On page 60 of arsenal, it says, "Empathy Software can be discreetly used in real time during negotiations or social interactions, adding its rating as a dice pool bonus to the character's Social skill tests."
Okay, so this is new eyes shining on an old topic here, but why do we need toys to do this? This description makes it pretty clear that the intention of the authors was to create a way for the software to add its rating to a character's social skills... The only problem is that it does not clearly state what you load the software into...
I've seen someone use it in their cybereye. I am not sure every GM would allow their players to do that, but I think it sounds plausible, since every cybereye comes with a "Eye Recording Unit" already installed. That sounds a lot like a camera to me, but I could be wrong. I guess you'd have to use a house rule to figure out what the maximum rating of the software that can be loaded on the cybereye recording unit... Or maybe not. Maybe you can just load the software into your comlink, since your cybereye is part of your PAN, and just get the bonuses up to whatever rating your comlink can handle running, which is usually 5 at char gen.
Like I said, I'm a lot newer than most of you when it comes to this stuff, so my thoughts are probably a little broken. Anyone feel like fixing them?