I notice a distinct lack of Bots and Droids
- Thread starter ScotHarvest
- Start date
I once did do a cyborg who's body was permanently installed in a portion of the ship a la 'The Ship Who Sang' series by Anne McCaffery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ship_Who_Sang making her body effectively the ship. She had a remote body that she used to interact with people off of the ship.
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
IIRC, there's a mention in MT: Imperial Encyclopedia about it.
Obvious cyborgs are looked down on in the Imperium, and some places run a rule that if you replace X% of your body with tech, you're considered a robot (aka property). Margarets' domain had about 25% tech to fall over the line.
I think there were some other mentions in DGPs stuff, but not sure.
Yep.
I recall that it's 25% cybernetics is the point where, in Margaret's domain, one is no longer considered a citizen, but property.
I find it interesting to find this in canon. Because I got quite contradictory answers to a much milder suggestion HERE...
But Margaret's domain is not the Imperium. Margaret also allowed thinly disguised slavery.
Hans
Lycanorukke
SOC-13
Though to be fair, in an adventure nugget in MT: Knightfall (set in Margarets domain Masilla) you also had a noble with with cybernetics potenitally ranging from an arm to full body replacement and with attiudes ranging from "Cyborg is a rude word, please dont use it" to "Hey look at me punch through a bulkhead".
I put it down to how much Vilani influence is on the region. The Vilani are technophobes who are absolutley petrified of smart robots and machine men (a holdover when warbots battled on Vland). So attitudes vary, but the more conservative/Vilani a region the bigger the frown on cybernetics. And Vilani influence is very strong imperium wide since the Solis lost influence after the Rim war. And Margarets domain is very much an 'Old ways are the best ways' area.
From Rats/Cats you also have groups in the Soli region like SSMoM (society for Soverenity of Man over Machine) who rip cybernetics out and destroy robots as 'blasphemies against humanity', to ACL (Apostles of Clarkes Law) who are a techno-cult who use tech to try and reach the divine.
Some of this was covered in this thread and also here.
If effective cloning and forced growth are available in the 3I by a certain point (T5 p121 & p505) then cybernetics become unnecessary for normal people. Given the nasty things that could be done with cybernetic parts, it doesn't seem unreasonable for society to see those who prefer to be cyborgs as aberrant and either shun them or keep a close eye on them. There'd be a tech window where cloning new body parts for medical replacement wasn't widespread, but even at TL12 (the high point on the bell curve for technology in the 3I?) Early (T5 p500) replacement could be available and carried out in hospitals.
It doesn't seem logical in 3I society to turn an individual into chattel because they've lost their legs and an arm in a shark attack while on holiday, then had them replaced with prosthetics. But a person who choses cyberlimbs or weapons and bug eyes a-la Neuromancer could be assessed as a crime or public safety risk by security authorities.
On the original topic: maybe it's not noticed because they become further and further seamlessly embedded in society the higher the TL goes? People don't notice them as much because they're used to them and the things are designed to be unobtrusive?
If effective cloning and forced growth are available in the 3I by a certain point (T5 p121 & p505) then cybernetics become unnecessary for normal people. Given the nasty things that could be done with cybernetic parts, it doesn't seem unreasonable for society to see those who prefer to be cyborgs as aberrant and either shun them or keep a close eye on them. There'd be a tech window where cloning new body parts for medical replacement wasn't widespread, but even at TL12 (the high point on the bell curve for technology in the 3I?) Early (T5 p500) replacement could be available and carried out in hospitals.
It doesn't seem logical in 3I society to turn an individual into chattel because they've lost their legs and an arm in a shark attack while on holiday, then had them replaced with prosthetics. But a person who choses cyberlimbs or weapons and bug eyes a-la Neuromancer could be assessed as a crime or public safety risk by security authorities.
On the original topic: maybe it's not noticed because they become further and further seamlessly embedded in society the higher the TL goes? People don't notice them as much because they're used to them and the things are designed to be unobtrusive?
Imperial culture is not a monoculture. There may be a great deal of difference between the many local cultures and the spacefaring culture, not to mention each other. On well-populated worlds, there may be several distinct local cultures. For the most part on any given world, the local culture will be the culture that decides what is acceptable and what is not. The culture of nobles, merchants, Imperial military and so forth who travel between the stars is mainly going to be represented between the stars, at starports, and at gatherings of such people.
On higher tech worlds and in spacefaring culture the people availing themselves of cybernetic implants, despite the availability of more natural alternatives, are likely doing so to achieve some advantage or edge. That pursuit of a transhuman edge may lead others to view them with hostility and mistrust. On the other hand, what a spacefaring Imperial or a local of a planet with TL 12 or better biotech views with distaste may be the best thing available on a TL10 world. You've therefore got a class of lower-tech cyborgs who may face little discrimination within their own cultures but who encounter discrimination upon coming into contact with other cultures because there is a class of people in those other cultures who are perceived to be using cybernetics to gain an advantage over their peers.
Unless I'm misremembering, the article that mentions prejudice against cybernectic limbs and organs (in one of the TDs, I think?) says that many ex-military people have them because they're cheaper than the more natural alternatives and the military tends to pay only for the cheapest solution. So people with cybernectics may be looked down upon for being too poor to be able to afford natural replacements.
I've no idea if this fits with the prices the rules give, but that's how I remember it.
Hans
Last edited:
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Then there is the encounter with the cyborg noble in Knightfall. In the sixth possibility the noble comes from a planet where nobles replace their entire body with bionics (only the head is left) and reproduce by cloning.
The point is made that sometimes you have to remind players they are not in Kansas anymore, many of the cultures encountered in the shattered Imperium are very different to today...
The point is made that sometimes you have to remind players they are not in Kansas anymore, many of the cultures encountered in the shattered Imperium are very different to today...
Another consideration for the military would be speed. It is likely faster to use a cybernetic and allow the person to recover from the surgery than to maintain the person on medical while an organ or limb regrows. Returns your wounded to duty more quickly.
The what? Strephon lives!
T5 p121 mentions being able to force-grow clones, or in this case cloned bits, at a rate of 1 week per year of life. That's not too bad. It also uses an example of an option where a body part could be grown and attached in place of the cybernetic limb used as a stopgap in the interim.
Interesting options.
Jason M Durkish
SOC-10
For robots I would use any Star Wars RPGs .
They can be a good source for robots of all kinds .
They can be a good source for robots of all kinds .
This is another thing that is done HORRIBLY in the 3I. Sweeping generalities about attitudes that are supposed to held by a sizable % of people living on countless worlds scattered over hundreds of light years. The worlds involved span the spectrum of wealth, cultures & TL's. I'd ignore anything as improbable as that.
YKMM
Absolutely. But there would be prevailing cultural memes for the 3I itself, otherwise what is there to tie them all together? 3I would be, a thousand years on, similar to the culture of Sylea at the time of the founding.
Agreed. Sort of looked at here, but part of it will come down to the 3I's attitude to robots. That's what'd drive their ownership and use at starports and Imperial facilities (the services), which will in turn exert some influence on the worlds themselves. Or is it quite different in YTU?
It would no more drive consumer trends in home appliances than the US Army drives trends. Looking at interstellar passage costs, the vast, VAST majority of 3I citizens don't interact directly with Imperial forces or even facilities. Not to mention the fact that if the #I Gov did NOT take advantage of that type of hi-tech, they'd get over taken by more efficient empire that DID. ANOTHER huge oversight of insane proportions.