cybernetics

Reagarding cybernetics, Scott posted:

> Well, if I remember right, there was an old medical technology TL
> chart in The old DGP Grand Census.

The old Travellers' Digests issues 12, 13, and 14 have a three part
article called "Body Parts" I cannot remember seeing any other rules
on the subject (though if someone knows of some, please point me to
them).  I've used these rules, and can say honestly, they were
difficult to decipher; but once my GM and I had figured out how to use
them, we came to the conclusion that these rules are workable though
they contain what we consider to be many unreasonable constraints,
principally in cost and in functionality.

> Now, the cyborgs would then be cyborgs by CHOICE.

No, not necessarily (my opinion...).  Using the Digest article
mentioned above, you have to take a roll to suceed at getting your
regrown or cloned body part.  Sucess is not guarenteed, even at TL15.

We decided that there are probably good circumstances under which a
character will fail at regrowing or cloning new body parts.  Radiation
damage is one such circumstance, a degenerative neurological condition
would be another.  Uncooperative dice and a hard-nosed GM are
another...

Then there are the price considerations: prosthetics are cheap,
regrowns are next in price, bionics are more expensive, and cloned
parts are most expensive.  Not every portside bum is going to be able
to foot the bill for regrowns or bionics.  Only the very rich can
afford cloned parts.  You also have to find a doctor with the right
skills to carry out the appropriate procedure, and you must have the
time to go through the surgery and therapy.

I have a character currently in play who got shot up too many times
during character generation.  We used the info in Digest 13 to see
what sorts of parts my character got as replacements.  I've been
running this character for a half a year now, and there are
improvements I would make to the rules presented in Digests 12, 13,
and 14.

First, the psychological impact of improved mechanical body parts is
not addressed well in the Digest article.  I would add a variety of
responses available to a character upon receiving artificial parts,
though I don't think I would include the "cyberpsycosis" from the
Cyberpunk games.  That sort of "bad attitude" is what makes the
cyberpunk games cyberpunk, and including it into Traveller is counter
to the flavor of the game as I've always played it.  If I wanted to
cyber-out, I'd go play cyberpunk, ok?  For adjustment problems, I
would include the self-esteem degradation mentioned in the article,
plus various stress related conditions from mild anxeity through
catatonia (as an extreme reaction to not being able to cope).  I'd
also include some required furtive behavior, since there are parts of
space where people with artificial parts aren't welcome.  Remember, if
you look at the MT literature, cyborgs are property, not people in
Margret's corner of the universe...  And remember the SSMM?  I
wouldn't want to be standed on old Terra with too many prostetics
attached...

I would include an explaination for why there is a gap between
prostetics and bionics.  To my mind, there should be no gap, or an
obvious technological reason for the difference.  Working within the
rules, I have justified the difference by there being two different
technologies for replicating motion, and the bionic one must be more
compact and more efficient - how else to you account for the improved
strength and agility in the same volume?  But using that philosophy
has led me to the question of why aren't all pseudobio limbs of the
bionic variety.  If I were writting the rules, that's what I'd do:
pseudobios must be of the bionic variety since the whole concept of
pseudobio presupposes customization.

I would also allow more than one gadget per limb, but I don't think
I'd allow a person to become a walking weapons platform...buying
battledress makes much more sense to me.  Myself, I'd much rather have
a date with a cyborg that looked like a person instead walking missile
rack, 'ya know...

I confess I have swiped some of the gadgets from Cyberpunk for my
character.  I thought the cyberpunk pop-up flashlight hidden under a
fingernail was fun, so my character has one...  She is a rather
practical kinda gal after all.  I rejected the entire concept of
jacking in and out of a vast net-space - there are some old classic
traveller rules regarding human/computer interfacing and they always
seemed reasonable to me.  The interface is absurdly expensive
(probably articificially so), and also the withdrawal symptoms after
being disconnected were logical to me.  Traveller, after all, is about
good 'ol fashioned nuts'n'bolts space-hopping...if I wanted to go do
netrunning, I'd go play cyberpunk, ok?

I never thought that I'd ever consider writing Traveller oriented
cyborg rules, since I too was waiting around for the DGP volume on
Robots and Cyborgs...  Now I keep hearing that DGP has dropped MT
altogether.  Is this really true?  All of us in my traveller group
would like to know more about the details (we've been lurking on this
list only since the beginning of March).

Catie

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Catherine Helm
Finder Graphics, Inc. - A Schlumberger Company
Corte Madera, California, USA
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