Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 7:51 am
For better or worse, I don't think many people are at the table to experiment with existential crises. They're there to experiment with being a cyborg badass, and they will interact with your existential crises subsystem to the extent that it lets them be a cyborg badass. That's not to say that you shouldn't have such a system, but I'm pretty sure that "you put too many of the things you wanted on your character sheet so now I have to take it away" probably shouldn't be a part of it.
So how about this: every cybernetic augmentation or magical ability (or category of cybernetic augmentations/magical abilities, more likely) has a bunch of quirky roleplaying prompts (occasionally with minor fluff penalties, usually social) written next to it. The more 'inhuman' your character is, the more of these 'inhumanities' you are expected to write on your character sheet. As you jack yourself up on cybernetics, you get to go through the entries for all your cybernetic shit and choose quirks that make you think about the way to play a character who is jacked up on cybernetics.
This way, someone with cybereyes is reading about how maybe their eyes handle stimuli tracking and focusing computationally instead of mechanically, and as such their character has lost the habit of physically tracking whatever they're looking at with their eyes and they only turn their heads when they need to change their field of view, and it's become so ingrained to their nature that they're having difficulty recognizing the behavior in other people. They've got a perpetual thousand-yard stare, and they're never really sure when someone's talking to them unless they're addressed by name. All the little social queues people give and get from eye and head movements just don't apply anymore.
For people who want to explore transhumanism, you're giving them a system to play around in. For people who want to make a cyborg badass, you've written a bunch of interesting shit that might inspire them to make their cyborg badass a little more interesting. For people who absolutely just want to make a cyborg badass and nothing else, they'll just pick quirks they don't care about and be a cyborg badass. Everyone's happy!
So how about this: every cybernetic augmentation or magical ability (or category of cybernetic augmentations/magical abilities, more likely) has a bunch of quirky roleplaying prompts (occasionally with minor fluff penalties, usually social) written next to it. The more 'inhuman' your character is, the more of these 'inhumanities' you are expected to write on your character sheet. As you jack yourself up on cybernetics, you get to go through the entries for all your cybernetic shit and choose quirks that make you think about the way to play a character who is jacked up on cybernetics.
This way, someone with cybereyes is reading about how maybe their eyes handle stimuli tracking and focusing computationally instead of mechanically, and as such their character has lost the habit of physically tracking whatever they're looking at with their eyes and they only turn their heads when they need to change their field of view, and it's become so ingrained to their nature that they're having difficulty recognizing the behavior in other people. They've got a perpetual thousand-yard stare, and they're never really sure when someone's talking to them unless they're addressed by name. All the little social queues people give and get from eye and head movements just don't apply anymore.
For people who want to explore transhumanism, you're giving them a system to play around in. For people who want to make a cyborg badass, you've written a bunch of interesting shit that might inspire them to make their cyborg badass a little more interesting. For people who absolutely just want to make a cyborg badass and nothing else, they'll just pick quirks they don't care about and be a cyborg badass. Everyone's happy!