Shadowrun Play > Gamemasters' Lounge

The Essence effect scale?

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Glyph:
Personally, I think mundanes get screwed around enough.  And the sammie doesn't really need to either be locked out of the face role, or have his pitifully few social skill dice reduced even further.  There are social penalties for obvious 'ware in certain situations, and a plethora of negative qualities that players can choose to take if they want to play characters who have been adversely affected by their augmentations.

Critias:

--- Quote from: Glyph on ---Personally, I think mundanes get screwed around enough.  And the sammie doesn't really need to either be locked out of the face role, or have his pitifully few social skill dice reduced even further.  There are social penalties for obvious 'ware in certain situations, and a plethora of negative qualities that players can choose to take if they want to play characters who have been adversely affected by their augmentations.

--- End quote ---
Glyph's pretty much shared my opinion, word for word.

Pure Mongrel:
I see what you guys are saying, but the nature of the Cyberpunk genre is to question "What makes us human", "How do we define Humanity" and "What are the ramifications of losing ones humanity"?

I am not looking for any hard and fast rules here, nor am I trying to "NURF" cyber users, but everything I read suggests that a metahuman is trading more than some Nuyen for the benefits of of Cyberware and as a GM I want to explore and reflect that in my games.

From a role playing perspective, paying for increased abilities with part of ones "soul", has side effects that go beyond forgetting to turn on the light, etc. The very institutions and norms a society holds to be true and dear directly reflects the spirit of that society. It is no accident that a world dominated by technology is much darker, crueler an colder than a society based on community and human endeavor.

Take the movie Bladerunner for instance. The main idea of that movie was "What does it really mean to be human?" The hero is a human, but has been forced to do things he considers inhuman just to keep his job. He falls in love with, what his reasoning mind tells him is, a machine but he sees humanity in her. The replicates are desperately seeking the "answer" to humanity in a vain attempt to understand their own existence / reason for being and a hope that this will lead them to a way to live beyond a technology based limit of a four year life span.

So if every point of essence is giving up one sixth of a characters metahumanity ... what in role playing terms do you guys think each point / stage of loss represents?

Assuming 6 is a spiritually centered  being ...

Does an essence at level 3 mean that  an NPC or PC  understands the norms of society on an intellectual level, but they personally do not feel anything in regards to them. Does strong emotional responses regarding love, happiness, anger, hate, etc. confuse them? (A mothers need to go back and save one child while she still has two others by her side would seem like an illogical choice for instance.)

Does an essence level of 1 mean that  an NPC or PC  feels... nothing? No remorse, no sorrow, no anger, no joy ... nothing? Do they have no emotional response to violence, beauty, sexuality, faith, justice, etc. Do they only act in "logical" ways? How does that make them respond in any given situation? It might be a good thing if they walk into a scene of dismembered bodies as they are not distracted and don't get attacked by surprise, but a bad thing if their team is negotiating a deal with a big client to rescuer his daughter and they stand up, state that in all probability she is already dead, their team would do better to go find a job that has a better chance of success and walks out.

voydangel:

--- Quote from: Critias on ---
--- Quote from: Glyph on ---Personally, I think mundanes get screwed around enough.  And the sammie doesn't really need to either be locked out of the face role, or have his pitifully few social skill dice reduced even further.  There are social penalties for obvious 'ware in certain situations, and a plethora of negative qualities that players can choose to take if they want to play characters who have been adversely affected by their augmentations.

--- End quote ---
Glyph's pretty much shared my opinion, word for word.

--- End quote ---

Personally, I agree with Glyph (and Critias) here.

If you want to add more to the game mechanics wise, then I've already stated my suggestion, other than that, I'm not sure what to say other than good luck. ;)

Nomad Zophiel:

--- Quote from: Pure Mongrel on ---
Take the movie Bladerunner for instance. The main idea of that movie was "What does it really mean to be human?" The hero is a human, but has been forced to do things he considers inhuman just to keep his job. He falls in love with, what his reasoning mind tells him is, a machine but he sees humanity in her. The replicates are desperately seeking the "answer" to humanity in a vain attempt to understand their own existence / reason for being and a hope that this will lead them to a way to live beyond a technology based limit of a four year life span.

--- End quote ---

OK, ignoring the question of Deckard's humanity or replica. . .nity for a second, you raise an interesting example. Your average SINner probably perceives someone with large amounts of optional prosthetics to be less than human. A veteran who lost an arm or their sight in the war probably doesn't share that stigma. Someone who's crazy enough to have perfectly good eyes dug out of their head in order to have an artificial upgrade, though, may seem a little unstable to a normal person. Are they still as human as they were before? Are they as human as a Troll? That's a very personal answer for every character, in the same way that the humanity of a Troll, Ghoul or AI is.

See the game Eclipse Phase for an example of humanity completely redefined in a hypertech society. There, most everyone is in a manufactured body, either robotic or biological, and has no qualms about sending their personality hurtling across the solar system as software to inhabit another body. Are they still human (or transhuman)? They think so but a minority population who avoids such things sees them as copies of dead people inhabiting machines. From that viewpoint the replicants have taken over the solar system and left the real humans with the scraps. So the question is, do you have an ultimate answer in mind? Is there a particular "what it means to be human" in your game or is it about letting the characters come up with their own answer?

I don't want to argue a point too much (or we can discuss by PM, because I think it would be fun) but keep in mind than non-technological collective endeavor societies also had their share of wars, cruelty and pointless suffering, too. Whether technology or a particular form of resource distribution is better than some other way largely depends on which metrics you choose to measure by.

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