Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[OSIAdept]

There already is, its called post-cyberpunk
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[77IM]

It's because the question, "What exactly IS a human?" is pretty essential to many works of cyberpunk, and much of science fiction.

My favorite work of science fiction is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex in which the main characters are all moody and philosophical because they're not sure they are human any more. And not just due to the cyber shell either -- external memories, ghost diving, cyberbrain hacking, etc. all seem to indicate that the "self" here is something less than a special snowflake. How do you know YOU'RE not just an AI? Maybe you're not even a particularly lifelike AI. Is it something you can sense? Is it something about how you feel, or how you think? Maybe you're human because you get the joke, or because you are afraid of public speaking, or because you saw a shape in a cloud that reminded you of summers at the lake when you were a kid. But maybe you don't have that. Maybe all you have is these nano-reflexes and retractable monofilament blades and this dull emptiness inside. Maybe the only time you feel alive is when you are engaged in a little of the ol' ultra-violence. In game terms, cyber-psychosis.

-- 77IM, this post brought to you by late-night stream-of-consciousness, or possibly by a not-very-lifelike AI
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[Snate56]

It's like you need a Humanity trait just like Sanity.



SteveN
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[shinryu]

Mechanically, I think the Sanity system isn't a bad way to handle things. For Shadowrun, which I'm running, the effects are on the ability of the body to process magic and heal. To get at that I'm using the super powers Power point system for implant costs, and every 5 points of implants is an cumulative -1 to healing rolls for the character. However, you could easily adapt that as a -1 to Sanity checks for the character. Possibly only people with sufficient augmentation require a Sanity roll at all, if it's not a horror based game, and perhaps these are only periodically (every month, new adventure, after a new implant has been in for a while, whatever gives the most pleasing slope down into the abyss for you).

I think this would let you get at the sense of a slow slide down without sometimes the Cyberpunk 2020 "lolz u got a new implant now u go shooting at everyone cuz ur insane" humanity loss system. it also allows for a character to have a lot of augmentation, potentially, without immediately going off the deep end of things. It's probably not appropriate for setting a hard limit on a one shot. For an extended campaign, or for one where everyone is part of something like Section 9, though, it's got possibilities:

Thematically, I actually think the problem with cyberpsychosis is it tends to be very binary in most systems; maybe some Charisma penalties to mark the way down, but then you're up in a clock tower with a gatling gun and they're calling the AD Police airstrikes in. Sanity isn't just about serial killing. Conceptualizing and describing the effect is very dependent on how good the cyber is and what exactly it does, and I think that can give you a lot of room (in combination with the Sanity table) to have interesting character things happen in a less homicidal context.

1) Big shiny cyberlimbs, especially ones of the more primitive types, probably make someone feel freakish around other people, lead to social isolation; maybe the touch sensors aren't right, and everything feels like it's wrapped in plastic, even your girlfriend's face, and you start biting your tongue just to feel. Maybe that phantom limb syndrome never, ever goes away, and you know your arm is stretched out to your side but you still feel your old one dangling to your waist and the itch is driving you up the wall.

2) Maybe the implants just HURT, as the body constantly tries to reject them, and the chronic pain is depressing and slowly pulling the character towards ever more exotic painkillers (or surgical elimination of the pain center?).

3) Something subtler or more trans/superhuman, like nano-implants, boosted reflexes or a constant linkup to the internet is possibly more like the ghost in the shell paranoia (am i real or digital anymore?), but also maybe a drive towards increasing superiority complexes, associating with cliques of other augmented people, and eventual sociopathy. What do you have in common with someone who doesn't heal from anything in an hour, who still has to worry about diseases and air purity and maybe the availability of oxygen in general? Why are all the normals so slooooooowwww? What's the point in talking to those poor slumdwelling creatures if they're going to just tell you something you already knew three seconds ago from your knowsoft uplink systems, and how easy is it to manipulate them since they don't know all the things that simply pop into your consciousness as soon as you ask? Lots of fun there.

Also, consider the background of people with augments. A jacked-up solider probably associates his implants with the love/hate feeling of the thing keeping him alive and his constant PTSD trigger. Could he just loves them too much if they make the killing fun, easy, addictive; all this weak, remaining human flesh needs to go. If the augments are a rich person's toy, the defining feature of the upper class, then a combination of arrogance and expensive drugs and therapy might keep them well adjusted but just as horrible in their own way. If they're company-provided to the proles, requirements to work, then perhaps they have the feeling of the manacles that hook the character to the invisible chains that keep him in bondage to those upper-class creatures. And no therapy available for him.

With a bit of creativity, you could have some very interesting and realistic consequences to being more/less than human.

[OSIAdept]

Its all dependent on flavoring. For example lets look at two different games

In the mass effect series small scale cybernetics is fairly common as such they have no impact on the characters mental health, though shepard at one point after his resurection by cerberus questions weather it really is himself or just a sophisticated VI.

And Deus EX: Human Revolution is one of the best examples of this trope of cyber disassociation the main hero ponders that with his upgrades make him less of a man

I personally prefer the mass effect method though i enjoy the later if done right.

Mechanically i simply stat that an individual can have 1/2 thier vigor in implants
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[Virgobrown72]

I like the sanity approach. Perhaps adapt something like Sundered Sky's glowmadness rule?

Or, perhaps, when the cybernetics get to a certain level, havr the character take a Hindrance. This could simulate the issue the character is having due to too much cybernetics...
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[OSIAdept]

Thats the thing i dont require them if any thing i will just have them roll a spirit check if they fail that start the session with -1 benny. Like i said in my setting i am working one cybernetics are refined to a point where mental problems are essentially a non issue
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