Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

[CatharzGodfoot]

This is 2009 tech.

That's fukkin amazing.

TMS is a thing right now. There are multiple competing companies building the equipment, and you can seriously just get it done by prescription.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcrani ... timulation

The TED talk is just taking advantage of good sensors and your brain's unfathomably awesome plasticity. It's really cool (really, really cool), but it's still just training your brain to use a new pathway, not actually 'reading' it.

I had a friend in college who had serious depression, that finally got fixed by an intracranial neurostim. That literally means he had wires in his head to make him happy (he was not exactly less human afterwards, by the way).

Now, actual science doesn't need to have anything to do with this. But the gross brain hacking effects are something you can do today, and it's not at all unreasonable to assume that with user-specific data and fine control, we could eventually do just about anything. (Though, saying you can 'gain root access to the brain' by flashing lights in someone's eyes is about as ridiculous as saying you can reprogram an FPGA by hitting the escape key a lot. )

Edit: apologies for the double post

The TED talk had nothing to do with TCNS. But, yeah, TCNS and ICNS are both neat technologies.

[fectin]

Sorry, I thought that was a point about brain interactions via projectors, not just the inherent coolness of dynamic interfaces. My bad.
Long story short, the future is sweet.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Sorry, I thought that was a point about brain interactions via projectors, not just the inherent coolness of dynamic interfaces. My bad.
Long story short, the future is sweet.

If nothing else, it really does add more credibility to the idea that decks will include holographic projection for AR.

[DSMatticus]

Wanna know how the brain works? When I tell you the sky is purple, for a split second your brain believes me. Then it passes that belief through a sort of "bullshit detector" and verifies that it's false and throws the idea away.

I don't think you understood what I was actually getting at. Here's my response: if I walk up to you and tell you, "gleep glorp goop glop," will you, for a split second, believe the sky is purple? No, because gleep glorp goop glop means nothing to you. I may have intended to convey the message, "the sky is purple," but we were not talking the same language.

You described how people respond to auditory stimuli expressing concepts they understand (receive, then verify); I am talking about a completely bullshit and fictional process of wirelessly transmitting information into a brain in a medium it can understand.

So, I proposed two problems, and we can discuss each problem with both verbal and wireless transmission.

Problem #1: Establishing a Connection
Verbal communication: Connections are implicit; simply hearing speech means a connection between the two parties is made (you can't reject it if you're hearing it).

Wireless neural communication: There's pretty much no scientific precedence for what your brain does with information that's 'hanging in the air,' except that it mostly ignores it. This means we are in bullshit fantasy land, and we can just 'make' something up. Fluff #1: Every brain has a specific 'magic password' that will make the brain think that wireless information is internal, and it will pay attention to it. Fluff #2: You have to find the right place in the brain to send the specific message you want to send, and it varies brain by brain. Fluff #3: There's some unique rhythm/pattern blah blah blah whatever messages have to be in. The general idea here is that there's something unique about each brain that you have to do before it will 'pick' wireless information of the air, or before you can 'target' the right part of the brain with the information you have.

Problem #2: Personalizing the Payload
Verbal communication: If you're speaking the same language, the payload is personalized. You will understand eachother. If you're not, you will need to translate it before it means anything to them. This is the gleep glorp goop glop problem.

Wireless neural communication: The same problem. You have to find some way to make sure the brain understands the message; and there is scientific precedence for this. We can teach machines to recognize brain wave patterns of specific individuals, and can correlate them to specific commands (people can move little icons around on screens with their mind, thinking up, down, left, and right, and even more complex than that, really). The problem is the patterns are personalized, and you have to retrain the device for each person. In the same style, our brainhacker has to customize his payloads for each person.

---

Now you bring up a very interesting point (though it's not really related to what I was talking about); brainwashing someone into worshipping you as a super awesome god may just be a matter of establishing the wireless neural communication, delivering a payload that "turns off the bullshit detector," and then verbally saying, "I am a super awesome deity and you should listen to everything I say." And this would make the entire 'payload customization is time-consuming for complex brainwashing' superfluous, because if you can speak their language it becomes fast. Get into brain, turn off bullshit detector, speak verbally.

And this could be a really cool effect, but it has some very, very reasonable limits. Leaving their bullshit detector off all the time means they become an unpredictable, neurological mess who believes everything everyone says. They will slowly go crazy and lose grip of reality. They are not a reliable 'minion,' or even a reliable anything. If you turn their bullshit detector back on, they have every reason to start doubting you; espcially if they live in a world where it's almost common knowledge that people will occasionally jump in your brain and turn off your ability to identify bullshit. They will reanalyze such things and start wondering, "how the hell did this happen?"

So, really, it becomes a short-term technomancer "charm virus", or a long-term technomancer "crazy virus". Which is cool and probably balanced and represents the science, and can't be used to create long-term religious nutjob slaves in a matter of minutes. And it still leaves plenty of room for the role of a "slave virus" that's more complex and harder to hit people with, but it has the benefits of not driving people insane/wearing off a few minutes later when they start wondering, "why did I give him the password to the armory?" For making more permanent minions.

[TheFlatline]

Wanna know how the brain works? When I tell you the sky is purple, for a split second your brain believes me. Then it passes that belief through a sort of "bullshit detector" and verifies that it's false and throws the idea away.

I don't think you understood what I was actually getting at. Here's my response: if I walk up to you and tell you, "gleep glorp goop glop," will you, for a split second, believe the sky is purple? No, because gleep glorp goop glop means nothing to you. I may have intended to convey the message, "the sky is purple," but we were not talking the same language.

In Snowcrash however, that's exactly how it works. It's called neurolinguistic hacking. You're hacking someone at effectively the machine code levels of the brain. You're saying syllables that when heard (or bitmaps that when seen) trigger specific neurons that you know ahead of time will fire and you get the desired effect. It's like dumping a whole bunch of 1's and 0's into a CPU's process flow. The CPU will process the data you dumped in and "do stuff" with it and not even realize it's just been hacked because you're hacking *below* any of the software that could realize an attack was being made.

As I said, strong magnetic fields actually turn parts of your brain on and off, or at least inhibit and fuck with neurotransmitters. So having to "negotiate" a connection is a null point. Once I have a broadcast that works on one person, it's almost certainly going to work on every person. Our brain accepts any and all electrical activity, especially if it's weak enough to not fry any brain cells. We don't *have* anything like wireless SSIDs or encryption riding in our brain, and our brains are really *very* similar in structure.

Here's the bitch at the end of it. When you think of it, VR and hot sim *is* brain hacking. It's simply inputting sensory stimulation into your brain, and your brain is fooled into thinking that's reality. And that shit can happen even in Shadowrun using electrodes (and in fact is precisely how it's done in Gibson) which means that you don't have to have wires in your skull to induce sensory illusions. Which means that the brain is pretty mapped out. So either brain hacking exists, or sensory feedback VR doesn't without the gloves and shit.

[DSMatticus]

In Snowcrash however, that's exactly how it works. It's called neurolinguistic hacking.

Yes, that is one completely fictional and bullshit type of brainhacking. We can propose completely other fictional and bullshit types of brainhacking. And there's certainly no scientific precedence for either, so we can roll with whatever.

As I said, strong magnetic fields actually turn parts of your brain on and off, or at least inhibit and fuck with neurotransmitters. So having to "negotiate" a connection is a null point.

No, that's not a null point. In this case, the connection is 'finding the right part of the brain.' To make this clear, let's say I want to erase somebody's childhood memories. There is no general specific brain location that is identical from person to person you can point out and fry for this task. That location is target specific. You can take this specific possible fluff explanation, and run with it; things like shutting down certain autonomic functions is a matter of targeting the universal brain regions responsible and using your projected magnetic field. There's very little effort involved. But introducing the thought, "I want to shoot the brainhacker's enemies," is a little more complex, because you have to know where in the target's brain they're keeping track of who's the good guys, who's the bad guys, and their desire to shoot things, or blah blah blah.

Furthermore, let's use the neurolinguistic idea here; what if the neurolinguistic hacks aren't universal, and if you have to monitor the target brain and personalize the neurolinguistic hack for each individual? There's no reason to think the word 'orange' is going to trigger the same neurons in everyone's brain. As a matter of fact, we pretty much know it doesn't. Again, this facilitates the idea that dumping garbage 1's and 0's is easy (and a combat usage), but dumping specific instructions involves learning the target's neural behavior (via monitoring) and customizing a virus for the target.

Our brain accepts any and all electrical activity, especially if it's weak enough to not fry any brain cells. We don't *have* anything like wireless SSIDs or encryption riding in our brain, and our brains are really *very* similar in structure.

The brainhackers job is to adjust the fields precise enough to create fine-tuned modifications (or just produce a burst field that fries it; combat use), and there is absolutely no scientific precedence for how you wirelessly induce the thought "I am going to eat this orange," into someone's head. We are fully in make-believe land, so we can just say, 'the neurons involved for that process are going to vary person to person, because not everybody has the task-relevant information in exactly the same place. But good brainhackers can take sample neural activity and build useful instructions for the target's brain quickly.'

[Username17]

The question of "how much can you swap out of this human and still call it human" is one that I, personally, answer with "a whole freakin' ton of parts."

In the real world, getting a hip replacement is an entirely temporary affair that leaves you vulnerable to infections and ultimately dooms you to further bone loss. A hip replacement needs to be replaced with a bigger hip replacement every ten years or so. Cochlear implants are amazing, but they are not without risks. People who have them get bone infections in the skull sometimes (that is bad). Modern ethics may have no trouble considering a human with a prosthesis to be completely human, but that same person's immune system sure as hell does.

The other limiting factor on cyberware that AD Police had, was replace a certain percentage of your body, you were classified by law to be no longer human, but a boomer, with a corresponding loss of rights. Not to mention the ability to be 'deactivated' without the normal paperwork involved in killing a person. It's something I don't think has been explored much as a possible deterrent.

That is a really good point. You're allowed to deactivate robots and banish spirits without that being a murder charge for anyone. And robots and spirits can and do get human bits grafted onto them (or possessed) all the time. If you get magical or mechanical enough, you fall under the legal envelope of a spirit or robot in most jurisdictions. You'd have some places where spirits or robots were allowed to vote, but those would be rare exceptions.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Modern ethics may have no trouble considering a human with a prosthesis to be completely human, but that same person's immune system sure as hell does.

1) What exactly does that have to do with the other cyberpunk trope of 'too much transhumanism causes you to flip out'? You might argue that becoming more vulnerable to infection increases the chance of you contracting some sort of illness that makes you go crazy (and even invent some cyborg-specific illnesses like titanium poisoning or whatever), but that's still the infection, not the part.

2) Why is this necessarily true in the future? Again, I suppose you could invent some reason why cyberlimbs are barely above the level of what we have now XX-ty years in the future even though we have fucken AI, but then that goes into 1984-styled plot contrivances.

[Username17]

Modern ethics may have no trouble considering a human with a prosthesis to be completely human, but that same person's immune system sure as hell does.

1) What exactly does that have to do with the other cyberpunk trope of 'too much transhumanism causes you to flip out'? You might argue that becoming more vulnerable to infection increases the chance of you contracting some sort of illness that makes you go crazy (and even invent some cyborg-specific illnesses like titanium poisoning or whatever), but that's still the infection, not the part.

It has to do with the claim that the person had "no difficulties" proclaiming a brain in a jar to be a human. Biologically, there are lots of difficulties in doing that. I'm not a fan of the naturalistic fallacy, but people are seriously saying that there is no difference between a person made entirely out of human parts and a person made partially out of titanium. And that's not true, like not even close to true. There are health problems with implants that are real and severe.

There are Psychological ones, too. Face transplants carry the most severe psychological trauma, and organ donations from recently deceased relatives com in a close second. But to say that there isn't psychological impact from replacing body parts is simply factually wrong.

2) Why is this necessarily true in the future? Again, I suppose you could invent some reason why cyberlimbs are barely above the level of what we have now XX-ty years in the future even though we have fucken AI, but then that goes into 1984-styled plot contrivances.

I am perfectly willing to invoke "Magic exists, putting electronics into your body damages your soul, fucking deal with it" if it makes playable game mechanics. The thing where people are arguing counterfactual psychology to argue against game balance limits is just fucking bizarre.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

I am perfectly willing to invoke "Magic exists, putting electronics into your body damages your soul, fucking deal with it" if it makes playable game mechanics. The thing where people are arguing counterfactual psychology to argue against game balance limits is just fucking bizarre.

I know it's an important and practical game balance limit, I was just wondering if there was a way to prevent people from becoming magicked-up cyberzombies without the implication of nature woo and the nasty undertone of anti-transhumanism, anti-robotics, and human wanking that this trope implies. If you did something like having exposure to radiation or magic or lightning fucking you up in exchange for superpowers that would be fine, since there's no harm in demonizing fake things. But I'm getting a 'women have -2 STR, +2 WIS' vibe from the whole thing since people improving their lives from cyberparts or cognitive enhancer chips could be a very real thing 70-80 years from and the resistance to it created from this trope could be an impediment.

[Username17]

I know it's an important and practical and creativity game balance limit, I was just wondering if there was a way to prevent people from becoming magicked-up cyberzombies without the implication of nature woo and the nasty undertone of anti-transhumanism, anti-robotics, and human wanking that this trope implies.

No. It's not.

The game balance goal is to allow people to play characters with no, some, or lots of augmentations from cyber and/or magic. In order to make that game balanced, there has to be a reason why you would want to be less or un- augmented. Which means at some level you must wank off to unmodified humans because they are getting some kind of game mechanical concession that cyborgs who are specifically stronger and faster do not get.

The goal of creating a playable game is wholly incompatible with not wanking over unmodified humanity.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

The game balance goal is to allow people to play characters with no, some, or lots of augmentations from cyber and/or magic.

Why's that now?

[Username17]

The game balance goal is to allow people to play characters with no, some, or lots of augmentations from cyber and/or magic.

Why's that now?

-Username17

[Username17]

What about metatypes? Are they magickey enough, in your mind, to be considered non-human ?

That is a great question. And the answer I think is and should be "it depends". First of all, it depends on the quasi-human type. Risen (spirits who take over corpses and go on rampages) are considered non-human everywhere. Vampires (humans who have been killed and taken over by magic viruses) are considered non-human everywhere but a few countries like Romania that have been taken over by Vampires (where they are considered "better" than human). Deep Ones are borderline, being considered non-human in many places, but being still human in a majority of places. Elves and Ogres are human almost everywhere, and the few places that consider Dwarves to be non-human are considered backwards hellscapes of human rights abuse.

Different jurisdictions would consider the line to be an important ethical point, with countries that draw a more conservative line than your area being considered a crime against humanity by doing so. While countries that draw the line more liberally than your area would be considered to be mad houses where they allow space demons to vote.

Fundamentally, the assumption of the game is that defining the non-playable types as non-human is morally justifiable and defining the playable types as non-human as being wicked. But the people in-world would have opinions all over the map on that. No one wants Hevezda Industries to manufacture a hundred million pro-coal voters over night, and no one wants the walking dead to pass a motion for more brain eating, but how to do that without disenfranchising humans who happen to be born with webbed feet or turned to modern medical science to walk again after a horrific accident is not particularly clear.

-Username17

[Parthenon]

How about this: more implants makes you more prone to things like this?

Then at some point you have someone with metalosis maligna taking vast amounts of drugs and doing runs to buy medicine and treatment for it, while trying to find evidence that a megacorporation is behind it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Rather than doing that, why not just ditch all of that cybernetics makes you evil crap but make it cost at a premium such that humans can be competitive with mages/cyborgs/whatever at a low power level?

For example, rather than trying to make the fatass Cheetoh-eating mundane geek with genius-level hacking skills on par with the mega-mage and cyberzombie, you make it such that if you do want to be an unaugmented mundane you have to select a combo platter of Badass Normal crap such that as long as you don't advance you'll be competitive with your phlebtoniumed-up buddies? While meatspace Neo or Spike Spiegel can't really hang with Jonathan Joestar, Angel Summoner, Static Shock, and T-800 the JLU version of Batman could.

[Orion]

Not everyone from the GitS team is a viable PC though. I mean, the robots probably aren't, and the data/hacker guys who sit in the base probably aren't either. Looking at the three characters in your pick, Major > Batou > Togusa in general power level and usefulness to the team. Not coindientally, Major > Batou > Togusa in extent of cybermods. The only thing Togusa contributed to the team on the show was face/investigation stuff, and even then it wasn't that he had any abilities that the others didn't, it was just that he was willing to waste his time following leads the others ignored because they were too busy using their superpowers to go on adventures. In an RPG, what leads you follow up on is usually a player choice rather than a PC ability, so I'm pretty sure Togusa is an NPC sidekick.

[Juton]

Not everyone from the GitS team is a viable PC though. I mean, the robots probably aren't, and the data/hacker guys who sit in the base probably aren't either. Looking at the three characters in your pick, Major > Batou > Togusa in general power level and usefulness to the team. Not coindientally, Major > Batou > Togusa in extent of cybermods. The only thing Togusa contributed to the team on the show was face/investigation stuff, and even then it wasn't that he had any abilities that the others didn't, it was just that he was willing to waste his time following leads the others ignored because they were too busy using their superpowers to go on adventures. In an RPG, what leads you follow up on is usually a player choice rather than a PC ability, so I'm pretty sure Togusa is an NPC sidekick.

I'd actually go Major > Togusa > Batou. Sure in a fight Batou can do more than Togusa, but I seem to recall that Togusa got more time in the spot light than Batou. It depends on if you consider following leads or negotiating a viable use of PC time.

The Hackers like Ishikawa can also be viable characters if you have a a reasonable part of your adventure happen in cyberspace. If you where playing in a wholly cyberpunk setting that could be a viable design choice, some characters are strong in certain environments so the team has to work together to cover their weaknesses to accomplish their goals. In Shadowrun an adventure that takes place largely in Cyberspace is probably going to be pretty lame, because it sidelines 80% of the other character archetypes.

[Orion]

Togusa got a ton of screen time and was critical to the plot, but only because he got to go and have entirely separate low-level adventures that the rest of the team didn't participate in. There was really nothing he brought to the team that they couldn't do without him. Now, that's partly because Major is so overpowered, and clearly built with way more points than the others. She's a Gunner/Hacker/Face, while Togusa is just a Face. He's an active liability in any combat situation. Batou was more limited than Togusa and weaker than Major, but at least he could tag along with major on her adventures without being an embarrassment and a liability.

So if we assume that in the game, Major doesn't have enough points for social skills, then Togusa has a unique role on the team. So let's assume that our default "un-cybered" character is a Face. What does that tell us about how cyber needs to work?

There can't be any cyberware that boosts social skills, or even Faces will cyber up. Combat cyberware is irrelevant to being a face so we probably don't even need a special mechanic to discourage Togusa's player from loading him up with it--he has no incentive to do so. The more character points it costs to be a specialized Face, the less of a problem there is.

If we want to protect a role for uncybered Face characters, you have several options other than "ware makes you crazy." Either ware and magic make you obviously dangerous in a way which limits your freedom of movement and your social effectiveness, or they make you distracted and inhuman in a way which specifically penalizes social skills, or you just accept that Togusa is a low-tier archetype.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Is there any serious problem with enforcing role protection through limited resources? Sure, with infinite playtime all the characters will converge into ultra-skilled magical cyberzombies, but in the shorter term you really can have runners who invest almost everything in cybernetics, runners who invest almost everything in magic, and runners who invest almost everything in being charismatic, smart, and lucky, and everything in between.

With even a little playtime you'll see runners expanding into previously unexplored areas, but I think that's actually a good thing. Nothing wrong with picking up some magic sword, personality, cyber eyes, or ritual knowledge along the way.

The downside is that you lose the strange balance of SR that allows you to throw money at a party if the cyborgs seem weak and karma at them if the mages seem weak. But even that attempt to allow for GM rebalancing was eminently gameable and vulnerable to inexperienced or 'realist' GMs.

[edit] Shit, just realized that I'm a bit late to the party... [/edit]

[fectin]

I was going to make the same point that Lago did, but he makes it so much better.

So try it flipped around:
Cyberware is purer and cleaner than the original hardware. It does not interfere with magic. In fact, you can get your cyberware specifically designed to help your magic. Brain-jars have trouble with this because they don't get good kinaesthetic feedback. Plug them into a high enough quality body though, and they will magic the shit out of you.
That means you actually want to advance all three trees. Specializing is still normal, but super-specializing is generally non-optimal. You probably need some sort of anti-magic skill in the fantasy tree.

[K]

The game balance goal is to allow people to play characters with no, some, or lots of augmentations from cyber and/or magic.

Why's that now?

-Username17

All I see is one PC and two NPCs. The Major has all the adventures and good battles, and sometimes Batou gets to come along fights and sometimes Togusa gets to be the one to make the Investigation rolls.

Batou and Tokusa are cohorts. There is no expectation that either have a chance to beat her in a fight or out-investigate or out-hack her. The same goes for the bearded hacker guy and the one-eyed sniper. They are all there so that someone else can do the boring bits while the Major has the adventures.

[K]

Togusa got a ton of screen time and was critical to the plot, but only because he got to go and have entirely separate low-level adventures that the rest of the team didn't participate in.

Also remember that when there was a fight, they would tell Togusa to leave.

[Blasted]

In Stand alone complex, Tokusa had the advantage that he was immune to hacking because of his lack of cyberization. Both the Major and Batou were hacked by the Laughing Man. If you wanted to go along that route, the risk of cyberization is the increased vulnerability to having someone takeover your body parts.

Also, each of the characters got their own episodes and were very much PCs. You could even argue that Tokusa was the main protagonist of the Laughing Man plotline.

[K]

In Stand alone complex, Tokusa had the advantage that he was immune to hacking because of his lack of cyberization. Both the Major and Batou were hacked by the Laughing Man. If you wanted to go along that route, the risk of cyberization is the increased vulnerability to having someone takeover your body parts.

Also, each of the characters got their own episodes and were very much PCs. You could even argue that Tokusa was the main protagonist of the Laughing Man plotline.

Except the Laughing Man was actually caught by.... wait for it.... the Major.

Minor characters get their own adventures and episodes in a series, but that's just because you can take out the major characters for an episode. You can't do that in an RPG.

I mean, the sniper guy's episode is where he recounts a story about how the Major totally schooled him and then recruited him. Togusa episodes involve him soloing some investigation puzzles.

Heck, even Batou only uses his considerable amount of screen time to back up the Major, losing fights against more cybered enemies and helping investigations by "being the guy the major character talks to while they figure things out."