Expanding the senses

[BackworldTraveller]

Cyber technology could allow the Traveller to expand their senses:

• Neural Comms developments could give you the ability to "Listen" to Radio Waves generally not just those that match the comms filter (I recall hearing of a person who picked up radio transmissions using nothing more than a tooth-filling that had contact with a nerve! That may be an urban myth but isn't totally implausible given what we know of the brains ability to learn and pattern match)
• Geiger Counters could allow you to "Smell" radiation before it killed you (Some of the Chernobyl firefighters reckoned they could "Taste" it - but it was a bit late by then)
• EM probes could allow you to "Feel" magnetic and electric fields
• Cyber Eyes allow moves to IR or night-vision - but adding light-polarisation (a la bees) might give a new perspective on stuff...You could see stress patterns in some plastics (for instance).
• High Tech bugs have bioscan abilities. Could these enhance "Smell"?
• Would implanting a chronometer give a character a better time sense?
• Would implanting an inertial tracker benefit their Navigation Skill?

What do you use and how do you assign appropriate DMs

 

[Reban]

TNE has WSV goggles or "Wide Spectrum Vision" which translates the parts of the spectrum beyond human sight into a visual medium.

It's often hard to imagine what this looks like. What does a transmitter look like when it's pumping out radio waves? Is a high powered radar blindingly bright or deafeningly loud?

Is moving around your house confusing because of a thick fog of EM radiation given off from the WiFi router or the power cables in the walls?

One recent example I've seen about how it would look for someone using such extended senses is Episode 3 of Season 3 of Love Death & Robots called The Very Pulse of the Machine. The main character switches on an EM sensor that allows her to "see" or perceive the electrical activity of Io.

I think whatever sense you use there will have to be a lot of machine interpretation and translation of the perceived radiation into something that the character can understand as a picture or smell etc.

Unless you do some major genetic alterations to give us something like a shark's electrical sensitivity.....

One other example for players who ask "what does it look like to my character" is the new generation of Night Vision Goggles that have computer enhancement like this:

Imagine seeing like this but instead of light the computer is picking out the radio transmitters and making them glow.

 

[BackworldTraveller]

Unless you do some major genetic alterations to give us something like a shark's electrical sensitivity.....

...or hook up electronic EM sensors to the nervous system
...or use bio-tech to do the same (Now there's another area that Traveller underplays)

One other example for players who ask "what does it look like to my character" is the new generation of Night Vision Goggles that have computer enhancement like this:

Imagine seeing like this but instead of light the computer is picking out the radio transmitters and making them glow.

That would work for various spatial awareness styles where you can project onto the mind's visual wall - Radar/Radio intercept; Sonar; Ionising Radiation (yep those guys would be in real trouble in that case).