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Ghouls eat people, and they are contagious. The only civil rights parallel is the ones made by the ghouls before they eat the people stupid enough to get talked out of rounding them all up and exterminating them... because they eat people and are contagious.
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Feb 25, 2014 09:29
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Cyclomatic posted:Ghouls eat people, and they are contagious. Seriously, Shadowrun hasn't ever even been particularly subtle about the magical disease that results in people becoming ghouls being an AIDS parallel. "Lets go ahead and round up people afflicted with a horrible disease through no fault of their own and exterminate them" is the sort of thing I would expect to see being posted as flavor text by some especially stupid person in-setting on future-Facebook. Is that what this is? Brilliant meta-commentary? Did the joke fly over my head?
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Feb 25, 2014 09:53
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Boogaleeboo posted:People give so much less of a gently caress, the new minorities are orks and ghouls and to a lesser extent trolls [With things like vampires pretty much considered monsters even by a lot of ghouls]. Hence "orksploitation" and the entire thing thing with the Underground and the Japanese, and giving ghouls explicit MLK Jr and Malcolm X parallel figures, and the UN votes, and basically a whole ton of stuff over all the years and all the editions. It's not like this is some new thing in the setting. The less pretty metahumans and ghouls have always been the new minority stand in. Can we all agree that you're not allowed to intentionally leave off part of my post and then say it back to me as if you were lecturing me on it? quote:And? Give them dead flesh, and that's that. It's not their fault. Nobody goes out looking to become a ghoul. If the process [The quite literally insanely painful process] doesn't destroy their mind they are basically totally rational beings just like any other human. You don't call someone poor and starving non-human for stealing food, why call someone that deals with organleggers non-human for feeding themselves? Or for the other part of the process, do we call someone with syphilitic madness non-human? They have an infection that can destroy their mind too. The infected are still human, they still have human parts. Even something like a vampire can get someone pregnant. The fetus won't develop because of the virus, and it'll lead to a miscarriage, but it can happen. They aren't some entirely new thing just because they have a virus. They are literal flesh eating monsters. They are literal flesh eating monsters. They're flesh eating monsters. I cannot get past this. You are pointing at insane flesh eating monsters and going "Ok, but I think this is meant to cover a real world minority group" and then blaming the game. They are tragic figures, certainly - that's where the actual "horror" aspect of ghouls come from, after all, the whole "it could've been you" part, the sort of emotional uncanny valley, if you will - but they are still magically infected flesh eating monsters. I never even began to consider ghouls to be any sort of metaphor for real world minorities. I considered that whole thing a joke, same as I do Reg Shoe from Discworld. You should start teaching people how to work out in YLLS, because you are amazing at carrying tremendous weights of personal baggage with you into this conversation. Kai: Maybe when Shadowrun first came out in the 80's it was some sorta AIDS metacommentary, but I really don't think it is any more. I mean, it's not the 80's. Some stuff really just doesn't carry over. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 11:32
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ProfessorCirno posted:Kai: I'm not really sure how to respond to this. "Back when the game first came out this is what it was but these days it's not that thing anymore." So what the hell is it then? The fact that Catalyst has a lot of lovely writers on staff doesn't magically undo the fact that ghouls were for a fairly long while an obvious allegory for AIDS and the way people in America responded with AIDS first blew up big over here (where people with HIV were all super-infectious disease elementals who could liquify your internal organs with a stern glance) and that reducing them to "just a bunch of mindless monsters" that you can go around killing for XP and it's totally morally justifiable is like, I dunno, giving Eberron over to someone who then decides that all that stuff about the "monstrous races" having actual cultures is dumb and they should just be barbaric savages you can kill for their treasure. Obviously people with HIV don't literally need to consume human flesh, but nobody ever accused Shadowrun of being particularly subtle with its allegories ("orxploitation"). The fact is that some ghouls do turn into rage zombies and there's not a lot you can do for them. But some ghouls don't and retain their memories, personality, are basically the same person just with a terrible dietary restriction they have to cope with and a bunch of secondary changes that cause them to look ugly and smell bad. They aren't consumed with a savage lust for murder or a desire to infect as many people as possible, they're just folks who got dealt a bad hand and want to go on living their lives. I don't see how the game is really improved by taking the whole thing with non-feral ghouls being actual people and campaigning to have their plight recognized as a thing that maybe deserved a better response than "round them all up and shoot them in the street" and ditching it in favor of "yeah yeah, Ghouls are monsters you can go and shoot and feel A-OK about it, even if they say they're people they'll probably just be going feral soon anyway, it's fine."
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Feb 25, 2014 12:00
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Um, I'm mostly disappointed because I imagined having a ghoul fixer contact would be pretty great. Like when you need to have dead bodies disappear. The ghoul could be running a front as a cheap cleaning company specialized in crime scenes. Who would care enough to cause problems about a truck grabbing bodies in the slums too if it looked professional enough? Heck they could even run a small street doc clinic with used wared, disposes of your old limbs free of charge. They could even have a few non infected meta humans as employees (who doesn't necessarily know the nature of who they're working for). Just some quick ideas to justify it. It'd be a lot more reliable and safer for them and they could make some money of it by the side. I don't see why just because they eat human flesh they will mindlessly attack anyone that comes near them. It'd be like a human who likes chicken and can't walk past a chicken coop without rushing in and start chewing.
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Feb 25, 2014 12:29
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That sort of thing is, in fact, what a lot of "normal" ghouls wind up doing if they can manage it. They don't have to eat living human flesh, if they can get their food from someone who's already dead then that works just as well, so a lot of ghoul "dens" will happily provide "cleaning services" for criminals in exchange for money, favors, protection, etc. Like, I have no problem with players and GMs deciding that they just want to have a feral ghoul nest in their game so they can have a cool running gun-battle in the Barrens like it's cyber-Fallout, but the game itself deciding to roll all the stuff built up around ghouls over the editions back to "they're mindless, flesh-eating monsters, rarr" is like them deciding to say "orks are no longer an allegory for [INSERT ETHNIC MINORITY HERE], they're just big strong people now and are an allegory for people who are big and strong and maybe have bad teeth." All it does is strip away some of the game's actual good ideas and setting detail.
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Feb 25, 2014 12:39
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Kai Tave posted:I'm not really sure how to respond to this. "Back when the game first came out this is what it was but these days it's not that thing anymore." So what the hell is it then? The fact that Catalyst has a lot of lovely writers on staff doesn't magically undo the fact that ghouls were for a fairly long while an obvious allegory for AIDS and the way people in America responded with AIDS first blew up big over here (where people with HIV were all super-infectious disease elementals who could liquify your internal organs with a stern glance) and that reducing them to "just a bunch of mindless monsters" that you can go around killing for XP and it's totally morally justifiable is like, I dunno, giving Eberron over to someone who then decides that all that stuff about the "monstrous races" having actual cultures is dumb and they should just be barbaric savages you can kill for their treasure. But there are still non-feral ghouls. I. I quoted the text just like a page ago. The point is that there are most definately feral ghouls, and even non-feral ghouls aren't the same as they were pre-ghoulification. 4e made it too much like ghouls just being any other metahuman. I think that's an important point you're missing: they retain most of their intellect and personality and are heavily traumatized and changed from the whole thing. Infection should be terrifying. That's what was removed; it became just another character option. I'm a human mage, you're an ork decker, she's an elf gunbunny, and Fred is an Infected flesh eating monster filled with magical contagion. No biggie. As for the AIDs thing, simply enough what the Infected stuff originally pointed at isn't the cultural icon it used to be. The AIDS panic of the late 80's/early 90's is, well, of that time period. You keep saying it's obvious and blatant and not subtle and etc, but to be blunt, I didn't connect those dots. I was born in the late 80's, I wasn't old enough to really experience that scare. It's a cultural tag that is completely meaningless to me. So maybe ghouls were a big unsubtle horrible tag on to the AIDs panic, but if that cultural tag isn't really around so much, then neither is the connection. Yeah, there was widespread belief about a lot of crazy poo poo but it's 2014. Those beliefs are now the sort of thing news channels use to make fun of developing nations. To use your own comparison, what should I be drawing from the Lycanthropy thing in Eberron? A misunderstood disease spread entirely by blood that's explosively contagious etc, etc, etc - frankly it's pretty much identical. Baker has stated that the Lycanthrope Madness was meant to be a horror movie; you didn't know who was or wasn't infected until they turned on you, the were-creatures kept enough of their old personality and intelligence, you get the idea. But it wasn't a metaphor for the AIDs scare, it was a horror film. Likewise, ghouls are more Horror Movie then Cultural Touchstone. Also, for what it's worth, I don't recall the ghoul nation being mentioned as dying or splitting apart or whatever. What is known is that ghouls are reacting stronger to sunlight then previous, and that the hunger is getting stronger in non-ferals.
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Feb 25, 2014 13:23
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I thought ghouls were supposed to be like vampires, in that they had to drain Essence to survive, and that artificial substitutes didn't work, which is why they had such hige problems? Makes me wonder about the logistics of ghouls; population of ghouls and their dietary requirements vs number of deaths and overall local population. Do funeral homes and morgues come with high security these days? How much does it cost to get cloned replacement parts? It's always mentioned in the fluff and then never actually explained in the mechanics. What are the prospects of someone, maybe with a type O-system, lining up a bunch of clone parts and taking a cleaver to themselves? Heh, Man with the Golden Arm. "Okay, cloned replacement attached and functioning, three, two, on-argh, poo poo that hurts!" Sounds expensive. Probably only a solution for wealthy ghouls...which puts a really weird spin on "eat the rich". Also, given how infectious ghouls are, you probably don't want one as a cybersurgeon.
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Feb 25, 2014 13:35
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^^^Dunkelzahn's last will and testament contains a provision for a substantial financial payout to the first company to develop an effective human flesh substitute for ghouls to eat. I vaguely recall seeing some flavor text on this in a late SR4 book somewhere that several companies were getting close but weren't there yet. But this whole thing with ghouls apparently needing to be reined back from becoming "too normal" is one of those things that drives me most crazy about Shadowrun, which is that for a game with a living timeline actual forward progress in almost any regard is practically anathema, everything has to remain the same as it was in 1988/2050, so I wouldn't expect to see that project completed any time soon.ProfessorCirno posted:But there are still non-feral ghouls. I. Yeah I know, and you also pointed out that now they're all starting to go feral faster and harder more frequently for Reasons. I don't think it's reaching to suggest that's probably to give groups an encouraging "no really, it's okay to kill'em" nudge, which is completely and utterly unnecessary because feral ghouls have always been a thing if that's what you wanted. The whole lycanthrope/Silver Flame purge thing in Eberron was way more complicated than "it's a horror movie" too. I mean, it had people being rounded up and stuck in internment camps, it created an entire messy situation that led to Shifters being persecuted and unjustly reviled across the main setting, and led to some internal schisms within the Church itself. It wasn't an AIDS allegory because it was an allegory for a bunch of other stuff, but boiling it down to "it's a horror movie" still does it something of a disservice. You talk about how Shadowrun 4E "normalized" ghouls too much but at the same time how the AIDS scare of the 80s isn't how things are today...maybe there's a relation there? Perhaps unintentionally but still? I mean, it's not like the treatment of orks, the generic ethnic minority stand-in, has remained static over the 25+ years of Shadowrun's history, so if those ghouls who didn't succumb to madness gradually wound up feeling more "normal" within the setting then...I'm okay with that, actually? Sort of like how I'm okay that people with HIV aren't treated as radioactive super-lepers, at least not as much as they used to be? It's not like you still aren't an ugly, smelly, half-blind person with an incurable need to consume human flesh, you've still got problems. I just don't see the need to crank the dial on this particular setting aspect. It strikes me as a pointless fix to something that wasn't in need of fixing. Sort of like the whole "nanites everywhere are breaking down!" business. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 13:41
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Rockopolis posted:I thought ghouls were supposed to be like vampires, in that they had to drain Essence to survive, and that artificial substitutes didn't work, which is why they had such hige problems? quote:This quality may only be taken by characters of any metatype. If the cloned parts doesn't actually need to be suitable to be attached to a person it probably wouldn't be as expensive and difficult to grow them. But I suspect it's still a kinda unrealistic option for ghouls not swimming in cash. You'd be perfectly fine with a ghoul surgeon as long as he doesn't drool over you or the instruments. Which should be about as often as a vet would drool into a cow when performing surgery. And anyway, if you are a streetsam being infected by a ghoul would mostly be beneficial. +4 body, +2 strength and +3 reaction to your natural race stats? Yes, please. Just make sure you have at least 1.1 essence left before you do. Man, now I really want to run some shadows. I need to push my gm (or is it rm, Run Master?) to get his thumbs out.
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Feb 25, 2014 15:35
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In SR4 you could make some retardedly broken Ghoul characters especially if you started with a Troll or Ork base. The cost of the infected quality was so light and it was basically lots of enormous free attribute points, though the negative of being infected was a pretty huge setback in most circumstances. Once the Companion book is out we'll see how they've adjusted infected rules (i.e. probably not at all).
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Feb 25, 2014 15:39
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I wouldn't let my daughter date a ghoul or anyone who likes rpgs with living timelines. still full of 14yo nerdrage over the Forgotten Realms "Time of Troubles" crap.
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Feb 25, 2014 16:26
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Unrelated to all this, dorking around with riggers, it looks like human, dwarf, or ork is the way to go, in that order, depending on how hard you want to dump stats. The way I'm seeing it: Resources A Skills B Race C/D Attributes D/C Magic E Ork C Attributes D vs Human D Attributes C: -1 Logic and Charisma cap, +3 Body, +2 Strength, -2 spare attribute points, -4 Edge Dwarf C Attributes D vs Human D Attribute C: -1 Reaction cap, +2 Body, +2 Strength, +1 Wil, -2 spare attribute points, -3 Edge So humans largely gain +3/4 Edge but have -3 attributes - which, granted, are not all attributes they care about. Ork and Dwarf both take -1 to the cap of one of their important attributes for rigging, too (logic/reaction)
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Feb 25, 2014 16:41
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I am going to be building an ork semi-rigger in the next few weeks so this is useful, thanks. If I mainly want to use him as a drone master, do I really need an awesome RCC?
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Feb 25, 2014 17:37
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bunnielab posted:I am going to be building an ork semi-rigger in the next few weeks so this is useful, thanks. If they're all gonna be the same drones, you can just buy the autosofts once, plus set aside some room for Noise Reduction. So that wouldn't be a bad idea. EDIT: This is pretty much the guy I was playing in the short-lived Italian Job game.
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Feb 25, 2014 17:48
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Mystic Mongol posted:14. And she's big into heavy BTLs and doing body augmentation so she could seduce men. What the hell? I just remember in 4e where she was Piston's naive but enthusiastic hacker protege. I must have missed the later the supplemental books. 
PunkBoy fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 17:53
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bunnielab posted:I am going to be building an ork semi-rigger in the next few weeks so this is useful, thanks. Yes, absolutely; RCC is for drone dudes, not vehicle dudes. You want the best RCC you can get; at chargen it's the Poseidon. The better the RCC, the more programs and autosofts you can run, and the better your firewall. Remember, a Decker is your natural predator; a strong firewall stops Deckers from bricking your RCC and severing your connection to your drones. It also lets you slave your drones to your RCC and keeps THEM safe from being bricked. Depending on how you do the rigger, you're either going to be in VR, hopped inside something, or you'll be using one simple action to shoot a gun and one to command your drones. If you do the former, a good RCC becomes even more important as now it not only protects your line to your drones, it protects you. It's also your VR initiative. Consider, program wise: you're going to want Encryption, Signal Scrub, Armor, Clearsight for each drone model, Evasion for each drone model, Weapon targetting for each drone model, PROBABLY Stealth for each drone model. That's 7. Poseidon gives you 5 (though Virtual Machine makes it 6...at some risk!). You're already choosing which one to drop; do you want to drop even more? And that's for ONE drone model!
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Feb 25, 2014 18:42
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ProfessorCirno posted:Consider, program wise: you're going to want Encryption, Signal Scrub, Armor, Clearsight for each drone model, Evasion for each drone model, Weapon targetting for each drone model, PROBABLY Stealth for each drone model. That's 7. Poseidon gives you 5 (though Virtual Machine makes it 6...at some risk!). You're already choosing which one to drop; do you want to drop even more? And that's for ONE drone model! Clearsight isn't model specific. Also Wrapper can be awfully useful but it's sort of up to the GM.
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Feb 25, 2014 19:44
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ProfessorCirno posted:Awesome Info Damm, you really know this stuff. The character is a demoman ork I made for a very short lived game last fall. The PC has the Combat Paralyses flaw and a bunch of 'ware from getting blown the gently caress up from a bad demo roll. I think giving him some drones fits conceptually as both EOD bots and as something a guy who is scared of getting shot/blown up again would want. It might be prime runner game which would help with kitting him out. I am pretty interested in having a ton of tiny spybots and a few IED bots.
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Feb 25, 2014 20:16
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Has there been an official update to the difference between the Posiedon and Liegelord RCCs? I picked the Liegelord because it had the same stats for 2000 kongbucks less.
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Feb 25, 2014 20:22
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Stymie posted:Has there been an official update to the difference between the Posiedon and Liegelord RCCs? I picked the Liegelord because it had the same stats for 2000 kongbucks less. ...God, not only am I now noticing that, but a lot of these stats are just bizarre. Why are those two identical? Why is the mauser so loving awful?
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Feb 25, 2014 20:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:...God, not only am I now noticing that, but a lot of these stats are just bizarre. Why are those two identical? Why is the mauser so loving awful? Because Catalyst.
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Feb 25, 2014 23:33
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Other than a very brief stint with AD&D and one or two sessions of White Wolf games 20 years ago I've never really played any other games. Is Shadowrun an anomaly in the sense that the character generation point unit system is not the same as the in game XP progression system, or is that a pretty common deal?
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Feb 26, 2014 19:33
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Bigass Moth posted:Other than a very brief stint with AD&D and one or two sessions of White Wolf games 20 years ago I've never really played any other games. Is Shadowrun an anomaly in the sense that the character generation point unit system is not the same as the in game XP progression system, or is that a pretty common deal? It's pretty rare for an RPG to have any degree of internal consistency, let alone something as major as, "Characters are created and advanced the same way."
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Feb 26, 2014 19:36
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ProfessorCirno posted:...God, not only am I now noticing that, but a lot of these stats are just bizarre. Why are those two identical? Why is the mauser so loving awful? I get the feeling that the RCC table was a table that they wrote brand new and as such couldn't leverage existing numbers to make them slightly wonky instead of totally off the wall.
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Feb 26, 2014 19:45
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Bigass Moth posted:Other than a very brief stint with AD&D and one or two sessions of White Wolf games 20 years ago I've never really played any other games. Is Shadowrun an anomaly in the sense that the character generation point unit system is not the same as the in game XP progression system, or is that a pretty common deal? Off the top of my head, the only system I can think of that uses the same character generation points and points earned in play is GURPS. GURPS is also my go-to tabletop game for any game that that needs to be smart about guns, is good for post-apocalypse or mercenaries stuff, or just as the best possible replacement for D&D
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Feb 26, 2014 20:27
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Bigass Moth posted:Other than a very brief stint with AD&D and one or two sessions of White Wolf games 20 years ago I've never really played any other games. Is Shadowrun an anomaly in the sense that the character generation point unit system is not the same as the in game XP progression system, or is that a pretty common deal? It isn't even remotely anomalous. It's actually fairly common for RPGs to have XP systems that work differently from chargen. Hell, it's been a common complaint about/exploit within the Storyteller system for years and years now...it's better to buy things up to a high level at chargen and then use XP to flesh out the smaller stuff than it is to spread things around at chargen and have to spend significantly larger amounts of XP to raise any of it to the 4-5 dot level.
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Feb 26, 2014 22:59
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MohawkSatan posted:Off the top of my head, the only system I can think of that uses the same character generation points and points earned in play is GURPS. GURPS is also my go-to tabletop game for any game that that needs to be smart about guns, is good for post-apocalypse or mercenaries stuff, or just as the best possible replacement for D&D HERO System? Talk about a pain in the rear end. When I was little and with my dads at cons, I'd always remember the goons playing HERO had separate dice bags for each character.  Shadowrun Content: If/when the ShadowrunWorld homebrew comes out, I'd be more than willing to run a one-shot for ya'll hardcore runnners. I'm interested in seeing if the "feel" of SR can transfer, or if the charm is mostly in looking up prices on tables. \/\/\/ - Yeah, I've seen the pdf for the other hack, seemed kinda  I'm excited: Let us go then, you and I,
tokenbrownguy fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 00:28
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Verr posted:Shadowrun Content: If/when the ShadowrunWorld homebrew comes out, I'd be more than willing to run a one-shot for ya'll hardcore runnners. I'm interested in seeing if the "feel" of SR can transfer, or if the charm is mostly in looking up prices on tables. There's already one out, it's called Sixth World IIRC, but I can't say much for the quality. It's a good effort but doesn't really do it for me, so I've been working on one of my own that doesn't have so many off-putting mechanics. J. Alfred Prufrock fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 00:55
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Are gun types in this fairly balanced, or are Assault Rifles or Shotguns just better than everything else beyond how concealable they are?
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Feb 27, 2014 22:44
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Zerilan posted:Are gun types in this fairly balanced, or are Assault Rifles or Shotguns just better than everything else beyond how concealable they are? The gun types are not balanced period, unless concealabiility plays heavily into your game, and MGs are totally hosed.
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Feb 27, 2014 22:54
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MohawkSatan posted:The gun types are not balanced period, unless concealabiility plays heavily into your game, and MGs are totally hosed. Is it just of the "assault rifles > everything" sort of imblance?
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Feb 27, 2014 22:56
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Zerilan posted:Is it just of the "assault rifles > everything" sort of imblance? In general yes, with the exception of a sniper that just acts as a higher damage assault rifle with no FA, only burst and semi.
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Feb 27, 2014 23:42
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Zerilan posted:Is it just of the "assault rifles > everything" sort of imblance? Pretty much. Some would argue it's even “one AR > everything”. Some other weapons have niche uses, but they are… well… niche.
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Feb 27, 2014 23:44
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There is another preview for Run & Gun out. I'd link to it, but that's a bitch on a phone.
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Feb 28, 2014 00:49
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It's just fluff, nothing worth going out of your way for.Zerilan posted:Are gun types in this fairly balanced, or are Assault Rifles or Shotguns just better than everything else beyond how concealable they are? The Automatics skill is the only one with short and long range options. Longarms sort of has that with the short barreled T-250 but it still has the conceal rating of IIRC an SMG so it's not super useful. Pistols have no long range options. Assault Rifle primary with Machine Pistol secondary is the way to go in my opinion since it only takes one skill and you've got your bases covered. You can even use an SMG if you want but there isn't a whole lot of reason to do so. Bigass Moth fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 00:54
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Thanks. One other thing I'm not seeing hardly anything about in the book, is how does essence work when removing/replacing/upgrading Cyberware, and can stuff like (cultured)bioware be upgraded later?
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Feb 28, 2014 01:31
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Zerilan posted:Thanks. One other thing I'm not seeing hardly anything about in the book, is how does essence work when removing/replacing/upgrading Cyberware, and can stuff like (cultured)bioware be upgraded later? Hmm… yes, I can't find any specific either, so I'd just go with how it has worked for the last decade. Your actual essence can only ever go down. An “upgrade” just means you take out the old stuff, put in some new, and recalculate your total loss based on the cyber/bioware combo. If your loss is lower than before, you end up with an “essence hole” that can be filled with more 'ware later. …or, once the implant 'ware book comes out, they might once again include rules for therapeutic treatment that lets you recover unused essence at a (hideous) cost.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:53
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J. Alfred Prufrock posted:There's already one out, it's called Sixth World IIRC, but I can't say much for the quality. It's a good effort but doesn't really do it for me, so I've been working on one of my own that doesn't have so many off-putting mechanics. Honestly Sixth World just isn't very good in my opinion. It's like an attempt to merge some of the crunchy complexity of Shadowrun with the lighter fiction-first *World approach and it doesn't work very well, plus the playbooks are kind of oddly designed. A much better approach for running Shadowrun in *World is to look for a game called The Sprawl which is still in progress but complete enough to play, it's a cyberpunk *World hack that does it much better in my opinion. It's straight cyberpunk, no magic, so if that's a stumbling block for you then you may need to do some hacking of your own, and it does have some rough edges but the creator is still soliciting feedback. Zerilan posted:Thanks. One other thing I'm not seeing hardly anything about in the book, is how does essence work when removing/replacing/upgrading Cyberware, and can stuff like (cultured)bioware be upgraded later? Once you've spent essence, that essence is spent. If you remove a piece of cyberware then the lost essence remains as a "hole" that you can "refill" with more cyberware without costing you additional essence up to that amount. For instance if I remove a piece of cyberware that costs 1 point of essence, I can fill the essence hole it leaves behind with up to 1 point's worth of other implants without affecting my current essence total. Technically by the way it's worked before you can't directly upgrade implants, if you want to do so you have to remove the old version and implant a newer, upgraded version in its place. In the particular case of cultured bioware, that's already been made with your own personal body in mind so without checking the book I don't think you can upgrade it any further off the top of my head. Regular bioware can come in upgraded versions, though.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:56
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Character generation would be a lot less silly if cyberware was directly upgradable. The benefit to buying big is so blatantly obvious and provides such a large long term benefit that it doesn't make any sense to do it another way. Which I think is a big part of the reason people lost their poo poo at change in the amount of cyberware you can buy at char gen. Not because people needed to start with the top of the line, but because the system punishes the ever living poo poo out of you for not buying big. Of course, magic doesn't follow this rule at all. Want to play an adept? Buy however much or however little of whatever powers you think fits your character at char gen. No need to worry about paying a "system mastery" tax to advance later.
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Feb 28, 2014 02:46
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