What Cybernetics do you want to see in the game?

[chriswebb2020.736]

They really have to modify very little. Combine PDAs into the phones.

The base game has cellphones that fit into a cigarette pack and work as well as the larger ones. They just aren't pictured in the book, so everyone forgets about them.

Given that CDPR have already indicated that implants will be reduced to the size of a pinhead, I hope we get some miniaturization across the board for electronic devices and cyberware. More options slots ahoy!

Pity all that means is that it will be easier to go psycho...

...unless of course they come up with a 'treatment', like an expensive drug that must be taken daily or something...

 

[Mister_Lizard]

Given that CDPR have already indicated that implants will be reduced to the size of a pinhead, I hope we get some miniaturization across the board for electronic devices and cyberware. More options slots ahoy!

Pity all that means is that it will be easier to go psycho...

...unless of course they come up with a 'treatment', like an expensive drug that must be taken daily or something...

Sorry, I really don't want either of those things. I don't want the state of the art to be that you can inject a self replicating nano colony that chelates into a cyber limb in a few days. I want the shock and down time of surgery and the alieness of that thing that is now attached to you. Granted that this is how a few of the cybernetics in the PnP work, but I don't want to see it extended to all the tech. I mean if you do that then the clunky Russian cybernetics will lose all of their charm.

And as for cyberpsycho, I can't be more opposed to taking a pill, no matter how expensive, to get rid of or even manage it.

 

[wisdom000]

Exactly... I don't know where he is getting this pinhead nonsense, as I have never seen it expressed anywhere, but it's utter shit if its true. One of those things that would actually go a long way to ruining the game for me. Nanotch has its uses, skinweave, muscle bone lace, etc... but cyberlimbs, organs, weapons... that shit is hard tech, it does not, and should not come from magic goo. The idea is fucking anathema to cyberpunk, and goes past even star trek in its absurdity.


And fuck the idea of a pill to get rid of cyberpsychosis... thats every bit as lame.

 

[Decatonkeil]

I don't think we have to worry about any of that:
"implants will be reduced to the size of a pinhead" can have been taken out of context. I say can, but maybe I should say obviously has. Have we forgotten about the mantis girl? What exactly is the size of a pinhead in her implants?

And the pill, the drug, to get rid of cyberpsychosis... I think Wisdom is taking it too lightly. It isn't necessarily a "magic pill". We already talked about CP2020 having rules for reducing humanity loss to a max of 50% through therapy. People with mental illnesses, dangerous and peaceful, take pills and they wish they were magic ones! If done tactfully something very mature, dark and human could come out of it... and it could streamline the humanity recover process, not make it easier, just not as tedious. It would at least beat to having our cyborg lying on a psychologist's divan talking about mommy and daddy issues. And pills could come with side effects... or not work at all, be a placebo, or a way to treat (more profitable) instead of curing. Maybe by the moment we can't afford them we have already developed dependance... or maybe we develop tolerance... use some of the rules for drugs.

But again, you have to be very tactful. With RPGs and "madness/sanity" effects there have been offensive things aplenty, like have mental illnesses occur only to "bad people".

 

[wisdom000]

Meh, I just want to see a guy running around with a mister studd on his forehead...

 

[Decatonkeil]

Meh, I just want to see a guy running around with a mister studd on his forehead...

Imagine the implications! No more having blood rush down there leaving one with bad brain irrigation...

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

And fuck the idea of a pill to get rid of cyberpsychosis... thats every bit as lame.

I said 'Treat', not cure. Massive difference. Ask anyone with a terminal illness.

Exactly... I don't know where he is getting this pinhead nonsense, as I have never seen it expressed anywhere, but it's utter shit if its true. One of those things that would actually go a long way to ruining the game for me. Nanotch has its uses, skinweave, muscle bone lace, etc... but cyberlimbs, organs, weapons... that shit is hard tech, it does not, and should not come from magic goo. The idea is fucking anathema to cyberpunk, and goes past even star trek in its absurdity.

I am sure I either read it on a blog post or interview or saw it in a youtube video.
I can't find the reference at the moment, so I guess for now I am going to have to recind that aprt of my statement.

I do expect technological progression though. It isn't unreasonable to expect it. And it will be coming.

(tried to link from 2:40s in. Just view from there.)

And the idea is not absurd. Cyberpunk isn't about the tech. It's about the abuse of tech for personal gain. It's "Screw you, I'm ok." It's "Not my problem..."

And when I was refering to implants being the size of pinheads, assuming I was refering to limbs, organs and weapons is ridiculous. I meant things like Wearman's, Wetdrives, Digital recorders and Adrenal boosters. these things can potentially be the size of a microchip so they would basically take next no space.
That isn't star trek, thats over 50 years of progress.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

oh, Wisdom. Can you give me a reference point for where the 'You can only get 50% of your humanity back by therapy' bit you cited earlier in the thread. I have been looking through every book I have and I can't find it anywhere.
All the core rules say is that therapy will recoveres 2 ponts of EMP per week, while all cyberware is either offline or removed.

 

[Sardukhar]

I couldn't find this either, but it might have been me that mentioned it. I..think..it was a never used house rule? Because all our Psychos went down hard.

There is a way to reduce HM loss by 50% when getting cyberware. There is another, much rarer to reduce it by potentially more. Both are in the books.

 

[Mister_Lizard]

I said 'Treat', not cure. Massive difference. Ask anyone with a terminal illness.

But Cyberpshychosis is not a 'terminal illness' it is not a degenerative disease. The terminal nature comes from what is done to you when you become fully 'psycho'. If you 'treat' the symptoms of cyberpshchosis with a drug, say like lithium, then you remove the effects that it causes to some real degree for as long as the drug is taken. In game mechanics this would equate to something like "take this pill and as long as you can afford to you have 3 more humanity to spend towards cybernetics." While there are a lot of cool story hooks about getting more of the drug or you go psycho, I just don't want it in the game. It seems too munchkin to me. Humanity and humanity loss were put into cyberpunk as limiting factors on the munchkinality of the game, i.e. cybernetics. If you give us a pill, that just equates to monthly expenses, it is too easy of an exploit.

 

[Sardukhar]

There...is no pill for cyberpsychosis in 2020, the game. It's a complicated, lengthy process of recovery and with good game balance and thematic reasons. The daily treatment, as Chris probably knows, does hand you your Humanity back, yes, but it's not a pill.

There is treatment to reduce HUM cost as you put cyber in - chemical, gene, etc.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

Treatment - alleviates symptoms and may, over time, contribute to full recovery from a condition.

Cure - gets rid of the condition.

You treat termainal illnesses, that's why I gave the reference. Another reason was side effects. The most common treatments for incurable illnesses will be almost as bad as the illness they treat. Take Cancer. Chemotherapy and the medications that are used to treat it leave the patient with a whole new set of problems. Pain, sickness, hair loss, fatigue. these barely touch the surface of the treatments effects...

Now, I am not saying that Cancer, (or any other terminal illness,) is like Cyberpsychosis. Nor am I implying vice-versa. I am saying that using this model for Phsycho treatment could be possible. Just about every drug, both medicinal and recreational, listed in the 2020 books has a nasty side effect, so why not have side effects for this?

Cyberpsychosis is a mental condition. Almost all treatments for mental conditions in current medical practice is medication. Often exclusively, (and excessively,) so. Though they are also used in conjuction with psychotherapy and counselling. Drugs are listed as being used as part of the therapy process for Cyberpsychosis in the 2020 book.

To surmise; I am not suggesting the complete and miracle cure for cyberpsychosis in pill form. I am suggesting that treatment and therapy should have advanced somewhat from 2020 to 2077, especially after more than 80 years of cybernetic implants being publicly available. I suggest that we should take these pills as part of our treatment. I also suggest that they should take their own toll upon us.

Is that any clearer?


(Come on guys, this is Cyberpunk. There is no black and white. It's all different shades of grey.)

 

[Sardukhar]

What? There is black and white. Cyberpsychosis is bad. Black. Corporates are scum. Black. I am amazing. Utterly white.


Cyberpsychosis treatment probably already involves heavy medication - the book isn't too specific on the fun times you experience while undergoing Heavy Metal Therapy.
It says, "combinations of braindance simulation, drugs,hypnotics, psychosurgery and aversion therapy to reconstruct damaged personalities."

So, yeah, obviously drugs. That's in the base book. And the toll they take on you is you have -all- your cyber removed. Pretty high.

Also, the advancement of tech is very limited, given the reconstruction post-CorpWar4. Probably juuust enough to let CDPR put in cool tech they want.

 

[blank_redge]

What? There is black and white. Cyberpsychosis is bad. Black. Corporates are scum. Black. I am Canadian. Utterly white.

fixt. =D

 

[Sardukhar]

Canada is a multicultural haven. HAVEN.

 

[blank_redge]

Obviously.

Yep; Canadian.

 

[Mister_Lizard]

Makes much more sense when you put it this way.

 

[wisdom000]

oh, Wisdom. Can you give me a reference point for where the 'You can only get 50% of your humanity back by therapy' bit you cited earlier in the thread. I have been looking through every book I have and I can't find it anywhere.
All the core rules say is that therapy will recoveres 2 ponts of EMP per week, while all cyberware is either offline or removed.

On page 101 and 102 of Chrome 2 there are the therapy options:
Therapy Outpatient (-25% HL) .................. 1000eb/week
Inpatient (-33% HL) ..................... 5000eb/week
ICT (-50% HL) ......................... 10,000eb/week

(It's in the exotic section for some reason, though it applies to all cyber)

There is also the Scandinavian method, which is extremely OP and kind of wonky, but ridiculously expensive, that CAN bring back HL beyond 50%. This is Found in Eurosource on page 36, and redone in Eurosource Plus (a much better book) on page 138. Scandinavian treatment only works on cyber you have implanted there. It has no effect on humanity loss from cyber that was previously implanted.

Because Eurosource Plus completely replaces the original, I am going to be paraphrasing from that:

You need to book six months in advance, the therapy costs 1000eb per day plus normal operation costs, For an extra 10,000 eb they can get you in 1d6 months sooner. Therapy takes a day per Max Humanity Cost of the selected procedure.

To work out the Cost for humanity loss while having it implanted at a scandiavian treatment center, You roll the humanity loss as normal. Then you roll it a second time, subtracting the second result from the first. While its possible you may end up with Zero humanity loss, you will never end up with more humanity than when you went in. You can go for cheaper clinics, but you subtract 1 from each die on your second roll for every 100eb (round up) saved.

I took a more in-depth look at therapy with my own Electric Dreams Cybernetic Sourcebook, you can read the relevant information here....
http://datafortress2020.oliwy.net/ab/therapy.html

Although it may not be 100 percent canon, and I added my own method of therapy, the SWIERENGEN method.... by which you treat HL as having rolled minimum on all die rolls.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

Just read those pages. They refer to 'Transitional' therapy, helping you deal with turning into something else. It reduces humanity loss at the time of implantation, not recovery of humanity at a later date.

The Thereapy described in the core rules specifies that it included the removal or shutdown of all cyberware from the patiet, though it will replace all your lost humanity.

I think I do prefer the combination method that works in a similar way to full borg options installation.

Also, having now read your 'Electric Dreams' PDF, I think you're in denial about the furries...

 

[prosociety]

Gaming addiction needs more research put into it to really understand what's going on for people, especially at this early stage of gaming. I offer counselling to people who use games to help deal with social anxiety which is often coinciding with depression. The way to look at it isn't that the games themselves are addictive (there's not really severe withdrawal, although it may disrupt sleep and result in feeling low for a few days) but that some people have a predisposition to use games as a form of self soothing. For many people that's totally harmless, but there may be some people who grow dependant on the plugged in feeling, and stimulation of the reward circuits.

By 2077 they will be a lot more known about this, and undoubtedly much more effective treatments than are available at this point in time for people who from their own perspective experience harmful effects from their behaviour.

But hey, we're looking to make this an entertaining game, and I think it could have a massive impact in the debate about gaming addiction. So here's a few ideas to work braindance addiction into the game.

1. Addiction to BD is possible, but it will depend on your characters predisposition (as in stats).
2. Excessive use of neural implants (i'm thinking the chips like "learn Rifle, or grooming etc" can also have side effects.
3. When your empathy drops to low, you'll go psycho depending on just how low it is and will run this risk of temporarily losing control of your character.
4. Treatments are available to bring people's empathy back up, but this is gradual effect and takes time. (at least 12-20 weeks of therapy and meds).
5. The prevailing technique of the day could be emotion-focused therapy (EFT, it's a real thing now, early days though)- using a process called systematic evocative unfolding to guide people to reconnect with their own emotions (which due to low empathy, they may have a great distance from). This treatment itself could be offered at a clinic, or could be simulated in a BD (but with risks).
6. Characters can relive/re-experience key life events as part of the fight against cyberpsychosis. (<--------opportunity of clever writers to hike up some trauma and drama).

Thoughts to start, will add more once I've checked through previous posts.

Okay, I just quoted myself. Apologies as that is akin to sniffing one's own farts, but I think this can contribute to the debate.

In addition......any character who wants to retain playable control of a character who empathy drops too low would have to seek treatment, or be switched off....As I cybernetics and the threat of cyberpsychosis as key plot drivers I think it would be awesome to have it featured in the game, and a playable part. If you want to keep sane, you should put the work in or risk the consequences. I do think a focusing or systematic evocative unfolding system in game would add real depth to the experience of getting into your character.