Cyberpsychosis

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Cyberpsychosis

I'm sure there was a thread about this before, but I can't find it and the search isn't bringing it up, so I'm making this thread.


For those that don't know; Cyberpsychosis is the effect of installing too much cyberwear. In the Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing game this is noted as Humanity Cost, or Humanity Index in the original rules. It is a system that limits the amount of cyberwear one can get, with the penalty of causing madness and a loss of emotional empathy. Too much would result in a character becoming an unplayable psychopath.

- taken from Cyberpunk Wikia

Now it is clearly still present in 2077, that much we do know, as the whole trailer is dedicated to it's effects. (Does that make it a confirmed feature?)

So, I have a few questions I would like to see explored:

1 - In 2020 it was a fairly 'new' phenomenon. While it had been around it wasn't fully understood, it was dealt with poorly and very little is done to prevent it. - So how much do we think this will change by 2077? How much more will it be understood and what changes in law/standard practice will we expect to see?

2 - How would it be best to represent players suffering from lowered humanity levels due to cyberware? (Imagine losing control of your character every now and again, you're walking along a street and you suddenly pull a gun and aim at people so you have to quickly hoslter it again before you are noticed?)

3 - How would we like to see it treated? The Scandinavians had the best treatments available in 2020, so would it be likely that these treatments would be copied across the world by 2077 or do we think that a new location should make a breakthough and become the 'Chiba City' of 2077?
 

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"Cyberpsychosis" is a hateful word created by the cybernormatives to shame those who don't fall into their narrow box of what constitutes cybernormalcy. I can't believe you would be so hurtful, Chris. You can't prove that the woman in the trailer killed any of those people, much less that she's "mad" or lacking in empathy. In fact, the only thing she's guilty of is falling victim to the unwarranted aggression of the Max-Tac, who, like the bigots they are, don't even make an effort to learn her side of the story. For all we know, she ran out to stop them from gunning down all of those civilians, herself falling prey to their violence.

Check your privilege.
 
Actually 227 is right, those Max-Tac guys looked way to trigger happy. In fact the guy behind her looked like he was almost relishing the kill.They probably killed everyone for kicks and blamed it on her.

But in all seriousness, we do not know how cyberphyschosis will be handled, all we know is that it will be in there. It could be like a frenzy in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. If you are low in blood and/or have low humanity you lose control of your character and they run around wild or in some cases attack someone. My bet is that this is how it will be handled.

But we have no official say one way or another at the moment.
 
1 - In 2020 it was a fairly 'new' phenomenon. While it had been around it wasn't fully understood, it was dealt with poorly and very little is done to prevent it. - So how much do we think this will change by 2077? How much more will it be understood and what changes in law/standard practice will we expect to see?

2 - How would it be best to represent players suffering from lowered humanity levels due to cyberware? (Imagine losing control of your character every now and again, you're walking along a street and you suddenly pull a gun and aim at people so you have to quickly hoslter it again before you are noticed?)

3 - How would we like to see it treated? The Scandinavians had the best treatments available in 2020, so would it be likely that these treatments would be copied across the world by 2077 or do we think that a new location should make a breakthough and become the 'Chiba City' of 2077?

Keep in mind that as with anything dealing with human psychology it's all relative and dependent on the individual.
Some sociopaths become mass murderers, others become millionaire yuppies, because in both cases they don't give a damn about anyone but themselves.
Cybercsychosis will be much the same. No two individuals will react the same and any competent psychoanalyst will tell you any treatment has to be tailored to the individual and takes time ... often lots of time. Determining which ones that will slice people up vice become a human vegetable harmless to others won't be easy.

I like the idea of loss of control, I've done similar in other games where I took control of a players character when for whatever reason that character lost it, then left the player to deal with the consequences. Not near as easy with a PC/console game however. Plus of course there will be the inevitable player backlash of "How dare you tell me I can't or must do X".
 
I agree with @otis0310, the way the uncontrolled character behavior works in bloodlines, something similar could apply in cp2077 , something like cyberfrenzy
and for example, the playable character uses his/her augmentatios to do harm or funny things, depending on what kind of cyberware this character has, there could be different uncontrolled behaviors, like slicing people with blades, like the trailer, or shooting with a gun-arm or hacking people's minds or computers, cell phones, etc, the possibilites are limitless
 
The easiest way would be to just fuck with your (and your character) mind.
Like walking around and seeing a bunch of enemies shooting at you, you kill them and then.... damn they were unarmed citizen.
After all a cyberpsycho just turn into a psychopath who hates human being, it could be a way to "force the player's hand" to do it, without taking the control away from him.
Like, in the trailer, we saw a girl who made a rampage, maybe she saw a bunch of rapist after her.

You're forced to "take away the toy from your player" in the pnp if your follow the rules, but here it could be more "interactive", you'd "be" the cyberpsycho, loosing control.

That's how I play it when I run CP2020, usualy your players quickly understand the cyberpsychosis mecanics, trying to deal with their humanity, just like if it was some statistic or whatever... I think that crazy people just don't know they are crazy, otherwise they'd seek help at first, instead of being monsters (because, they just act like if it's "normal" for them)

So I did just like in Call of Cthulhu with their mental health.
I hide their humanity level from them.
Then, I take a sweet pleasure to screw everythings up, giving false advice to the cyberpsycho, like he says something "I try to help the poor old lady", I'll be "Ok, you shoot at the punk and try to guts the old lady, roll your dice".

The game should really "play" with your nerves, you're all crazy, you don't really know what's real from what isn't.
At least, this is how I'd make it if I had to make my players "be" the cyberpsycho.

If you stick to the rules, once you're a psycho, you can't play anymore, you'll just look at your character doing a rampage and other nasty things, not very exciting.
 
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If you stick to the rules, once you're a psycho, you can't play anymore, you'll just look at your character doing a rampage and other nasty things, not very exciting.

you don't need to necessarily loose all control of the character, for sitting back and watching the game as a movie is pointless, but that cyberpsychosis or frenzy could modify, improve the skills or the behaviour of the character, maybe add new skills, and from time to time loose all control but for a few seconds just to see what happens, then control again,


this is a great topic to discuss, for the game's motto is, if i remember correctly not about saving the world, nor the city, but yourself,
and a little detail that could be added to this cyberpsychosis thingy is the consciousness, where are the limits between the human consciousness you think you are/have and the cybernetic consciousness that enhances your human side,

mayb a "cyberpsychosis or cyberfrenzy bar" can be added below the health bar to see, lik in vampire masquerade bloodlines ho much of the character is taken over by the cyberware/enhacements/a.i. and when he/she wants to break free and do anything
 
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Ye-ahh...you already get those elements as your Humanity drops lower towards 1 or less.

Once it hits 0, you have lost control and are fully in the grip of your psychosis. Until and if an outside force interferes, you are no longer in any kind of control. Ever again.

It's pretty serious and why C-Swat is authorized to use pretty much any means necessary.

It's much worse and more permanent than a vampire's Frenzy - cyberpsychosis is more like when your Humanity in Vampire drops to zero and you fully succumb to the Beast.
 
The easiest way would be to just fuck with your (and your character) mind.
Like walking around and seeing a bunch of enemies shooting at you, you kill them and then.... damn they were unarmed citizen.
After all a cyberpsycho just turn into a psychopath who hates human being, it could be a way to "force the player's hand" to do it, without taking the control away from him.
Like, in the trailer, we saw a girl who made a rampage, maybe she saw a bunch of rapist after her.

You're forced to "take away the toy from your player" in the pnp if your follow the rules, but here it could be more "interactive", you'd "be" the cyberpsycho, loosing control.

That's how I play it when I run CP2020, usualy your players quickly understand the cyberpsychosis mecanics, trying to deal with their humanity, just like if it was some statistic or whatever... I think that crazy people just don't know they are crazy, otherwise they'd seek help at first, instead of being monsters (because, they just act like if it's "normal" for them)

So I did just like in Call of Cthulhu with their mental health.
I hide their humanity level from them.
Then, I take a sweet pleasure to screw everythings up, giving false advice to the cyberpsycho, like he says something "I try to help the poor old lady", I'll be "Ok, you shoot at the punk and try to guts the old lady, roll your dice".

The game should really "play" with your nerves, you're all crazy, you don't really know what's real from what isn't.
At least, this is how I'd make it if I had to make my players "be" the cyberpsycho.

If you stick to the rules, once you're a psycho, you can't play anymore, you'll just look at your character doing a rampage and other nasty things, not very exciting.

Imagine if you see a cybered up solo attacking you and you hsoot back, killing him. Then you go over to take a look at the body and see a tennage girl holding a cell phone. Then the people start panicking and the sirens start blairing and you have to run for it before the cops find you.

Great way to do cybersphyschosis, but, even though I doubt CDPR is interested in the COD crowd, I don't think many CRPG fans would like it. Sure it would be a great way toput the player in the character's shoes, but then there would be the WTF moment afterwords where people are trying to figure out what happened. We RPG fans might love it, putting us into the shoes of the character so well, but casual gamers not so much.

Granted I have not played much of the Witcher series yet so I do not know how much CDPR cares about the casual market, but I think even a hardcore RPG company might have problems going that far. As a result I see the Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines idea of seeing your character running around attacking innocents as being far more likely. Even if it is not close to as interesting.
 
This brings to mind the other effects of modifying your body in CP2020.

For example, certain "fashionable" modifications for looks carried the risk of straight up getting skin cancer or going blind, didn't they? That sort of thing I worry about, because I feel some augmentations and changes the player makes to their character for simple looks and nothing else shouldn't carry a chance to be punished for wanting a cool looking character. If it's something that affects one's ability to move, sense or think then yes, there should be risks for overdoing it. But honestly, for the sake of not being annoying, there shouldn't be any risk of getting freaking cancer for things like a simple unnatural eye color modification made to your character.

I... think that was relevant. Uh, that was relevant to this discussion, right?
 
Certainly was, if my character wanted to get elf ears, which I think is possilbe in this game, I wouldn't want to run the risk of getting cyberpsychosis as a result. Now if Iwas going to have guns implanted in my arms that would be different, but not for something as simple as that.
 
Yeah, by the rules any body modification ran the risk. In theory even casual cosmetic surgery. But the humanity loss from that was so minor that to the average person it was irrelevant.
It when you have lots of mods, or extreme ones and you humanity starts to approach zero you really need to worry.
 
Certainly was, if my character wanted to get elf ears, which I think is possilbe in this game, I wouldn't want to run the risk of getting cyberpsychosis as a result. Now if Iwas going to have guns implanted in my arms that would be different, but not for something as simple as that.

Yeah, by the rules any body modification ran the risk. In theory even casual cosmetic surgery. But the humanity loss from that was so minor that to the average person it was irrelevant.
It when you have lots of mods, or extreme ones and you humanity starts to approach zero you really need to worry.
I was talking about the other risks you run in general, outside of cyberpsychosis. I realize that going and getting your skin changed to hot pink certainly isn't without risk in both the procedure and afterwards but getting cancer and f***ing your character all up because of a cosmetic body modification is one of those things where you're like "dude. not cool."
 
Also, interestingly, how people like the Inquisitors, a rabidly anti-cyberware street "gang" deal with you.

Sure, hot pink skin and twenty piercings and a biomonitor isn't going to do more than a tiny amount of humanity damage, if any at all...but it -looks- dramatic enough to get you paintbombed, tasered and beat to death.
 
Even more then in modern times there's a radical hate group for all tastes in Cyberpunk.
No matter what you do, or don't do, someone in the world of Cyberpunk hates you enough to hurt you.
 
I was talking about the other risks you run in general, outside of cyberpsychosis. I realize that going and getting your skin changed to hot pink certainly isn't without risk in both the procedure and afterwards but getting cancer and f***ing your character all up because of a cosmetic body modification is one of those things where you're like "dude. not cool."

People smoke and take drugs and whatever, regardless of the physical and mental consequences. It would be the same for cybernetic implants and other body modifications. Of course, the risks would differ depending on the level of work being done and also the quality of the surgery and materials, as well as the environment the work gets done in. After care would also affect this. The same could be said for the mental effects of these modifications, especially the after care.

Going to a cheap backstreet ripper doc imlpanting secondhand cyberware which has subpar battery housing or whatever, (who knows, maybe it's actually a bit radioactive?) is to land you with a lot more side effects and risk than going to a pristine high grade clinic that don't advertise prices, because if you have to ask how much it costs you can't afford it.

...but if you have to get an implant because it will give you the edge you need to take down someone who is on your tail, and without it you'll be dog meat, maybe getting cancer is the least of your worries.

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I like where this conversation is going. I didn't get to play Vampire on the PC very much, and I bought a copy on steam but I cannot get it to work at all, so i'm a bit gutted. However, the description of what happens when you're humanity levels decrease to dangerous levels are fascinating.

The inevitable result of you're humanity reaching zero in 2020 is blind rage against humanity, because "Metal is better than Meat, purge the MEAT!!!" However, documented in Solo of Fortune is a potential list of 'personality flaws' which may begin to show as your humanity passes 2.

One of the obvious ways that Psychosis can affect our characters in game is in dialogue options. We would no longer be able to be polite and treat 'humans' as equals, we would probably be openly aggressive to most people and rude at best.

I am in favour of a combination of the approaches mentioned already, depending on how bad we lose the plot. Hallucinations would probably be a standard side effect once our humanity hit 1? Once we hit zero, I would expect the AI to take control of our charcter at a random time and we should just go on a killing spree for a minute or two, awaiting the inevitable intervention by C-SWAT, (which we may survive, who knows?)
Of course, if we are in the heart of the combat zone, or even the wasteland, C-SWAT isn't going to be there, so we would need to fend for ourselves when we get control back and we should try to get help, but we should run the risk of going over the edge at any time from that point on until we get help.
 
I was talking about the other risks you run in general, outside of cyberpsychosis. I realize that going and getting your skin changed to hot pink certainly isn't without risk in both the procedure and afterwards but getting cancer and f***ing your character all up because of a cosmetic body modification is one of those things where you're like "dude. not cool."

I think we can all safely assume that any repercussions to cybernetic implants will be limited to cyberpsychosis, or possibly character dialogues. But things like cancer will be out for certain.
 
I like where this conversation is going. I didn't get to play Vampire on the PC very much, and I bought a copy on steam but I cannot get it to work at all, so i'm a bit gutted. However, the description of what happens when you're humanity levels decrease to dangerous levels are fascinating.

The inevitable result of you're humanity reaching zero in 2020 is blind rage against humanity, because "Metal is better than Meat, purge the MEAT!!!" However, documented in Solo of Fortune is a potential list of 'personality flaws' which may begin to show as your humanity passes 2.

One of the obvious ways that Psychosis can affect our characters in game is in dialogue options. We would no longer be able to be polite and treat 'humans' as equals, we would probably be openly aggressive to most people and rude at best.

Vampire:Bloodlines is well worth getting to work IMHO. The haunted house in particular is worth more then many entire games.

While I totally agree that at humanity zero your control over your character should be spotty at best. Assuming C-SWAT doesn't take you down (which it likely) how would you implement your time in the psycho ward recovering humanity? Should some of your augmentations be forceably removed (as is indicated in the PnP rules)?
 
Assuming C-SWAT doesn't take you down (which it likely) how would you implement your time in the psycho ward recovering humanity? Should some of your augmentations be forceably removed (as is indicated in the PnP rules)?

Reading this made me think of The Six Million Dollar Man movie. He and later another one had gone through a therapy so they don't go crazy with their new powers.

Maybe have different treatment options to your craziness depending on the location you end up.
Like therapy and exercises if you end up in a top notch clinic, or at a friend place that can take care of you. Or maybe you end up in a bad clinic, lab, place and get treated with not so good chemicals, and might get some stuff removed from you.

I would love to have the possibility to go therapy or something after installing a new piece inside you, like people suffering from a transplant do.
But in this game you treat yourself to prevent the effects of going nuts.

Now, you don't have access do these options from the start, or maybe have access to some not so good ones.
When you end up having Cyberpsychosis symptoms there should be some player control to try to calm him/herself down. If it's possible an indicator to your crazy would be nice.

Like you do your things, and sudden the indicator shows up on your UI that tells you: Cyberpsychosis effects happening in X time. And you crap your pants to try and find someplace to hide, or maybe go outside and let loose on some bad dudes, but pray that after effects go someone finds you and treats and patch your ass.
 
I rather doubt anyone can predict when a cyberspychosis incident is going to happen or what will trigger it.
Think of it more like the reasons some people kill. Some idiot will kill someone over a pair of scuffed shoes.
 
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