 December 9, 2014 - 11:49am | there was a recent thread on Starting Gear: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/8351 There is now a question on G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/100477460519433187114 about cybernetics in a SF game and it got me thinking- Could not a starting character begin play with a cybernetic implant? back in 2010 I wrote an implant article (sfman 15) that was more of a AD approach to implants and ignored Zebs mostly. I kept things limited and many of the implants are small potatoes that you could give to a starting PC without unbalancing the game: chrono tattoo- a holographic tattoo implant that causes the time to appear in the skin over the implant location and tattoo implants which are basically the same as the chrono-tattoo but simply more artistic. And who wouldn't mind an implanted chronocom? that is unless you are already hearing voices in your head. The main character in "I, Robot" effectively begins play with a bionic arm due to an accident when he was young. This sort of starting implant would be on the more exotic side but could be possible. Though I would prefer to give out an occular implant with IR vision over the arm. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 December 9, 2014 - 12:05pm | Bionics should simply be a credit expenditure. It's likely to be more expensive than the 251–350 credits a standard starting character gets, so characters probably won't start with any but will have to get implants when they get funds. I see no reason why any character should deserve a bionic implant right off the bat. That said, the game plays fast and loose with the rules for starting characters, such that the referee who wants to run a Spacefleet campaign is encouraged to let starting characters emerge from Gollwin Academy as Junior Lieutenants with huge amounts of skill—say, Technician 6, Computer 2, Pilot 1 for a piloting specialist. So long as everyone gets the same advantage, there's no reason you can't do that, and this applies to cybernetics too: give everyone cybernetics, or their cash equivalent, at the start. Be ready for a team of very well equipped characters, however. Personally, I think anything but the simplest of cybernetics goes beyond the sorts of technologies seen in the Frontier, which have a much more classic space-opera kind of feel. Machines are tools, not people, and not body parts. |
 December 9, 2014 - 1:41pm | Yould could also include it with a new AD character as a PERK... or what do we call them... an EDGE in the optional Edge/Flaw system. ----------------------------------------------- |
 December 14, 2014 - 1:51am | Balance is always important. One of the most famous cybernitic implant characters was Geordi LaForge from STTNG (Levar Burton). His special glasses did give him some advantages but at a cost of constant pain and the old "Velma you lost your glasses again" hijinks. Starting the characters with "low cost" implants and having them work to get the better models is cruel and fairly realistic. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
December 22, 2014 - 5:04am | The Geordi LaForge example is interesting in that its an appliance or prosthetic that can be removed when most higher power implants are usually characterized as implanted and permanent. Perhaps visors for eye preplacements should be treated as far cheaper and the permanent solution of an implanted cybernetic eye should be far more expensive. A visor/monocle would be prone to being broken, lost or taken away be opposition. The neural connection that the device connects to, while not that simple of an opperation I'm sure, has to be far simpler than implanting the permanent ocular device. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 22, 2014 - 8:18am | Maybe his system is to allow for frequent upgrades? Or maybe there are are other specialized visor types? Although it seems like his visor did basically everything you could think of. Maybe if they did a perminant ocular implant it couldn't be as feature rich? I'm thinking that something that looked more natural would be prefered to the visor. Wasn't there something special about Geordi that enabled that visor system / neural implant? ----------------------------------------------- |
December 22, 2014 - 6:25pm | Geordi could take the "hair piece visor" off to sleep and such but he did have embedded connections very similiar to toady's cochlear implants for the hearing impaired. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
December 23, 2014 - 9:11am | There was nothing special about Geordi that enabled his VISOR, aside from his implants. In one episode, Data asks rhetorically whether Geordi's superior vision would empower Starfleet to install VISORs on all officers. The only downside to the VISOR was the pain it caused Geordi in the form of headaches. He needed regular medical treatment to handle that. |
