Nanomachines

what is the best use of nanomachines in any game?

as PCs

Kind of meme-y, but I really like when they come about as a surprise in a sci-fi setting. Something that's super uncommon, so that when the players encounter someone they think is totally non-upgraded it catches then off guard.

Nanomachines?

Nanomachines, son

To be fair, I'd say thats a bad example of it, since that setting is fucking littered with nanomachines. Hell, rank and file mooks have nanomachines.

>when the players encounter someone they think is totally non-upgraded it catches then off guard
except someone that low key, for all intent and purposes, would be baseline until the nanomachines did there work
which is going to take a while
if not, where are the machines getting the energy and material to make their drastic changes so quickly? then where is the heat resulting from their feverish construction going?

i'm all for small miracles, but lets not ignore thermodynamics

Ignoring thermodynamics is my middle name.

Anything you do with nanomachines will involve a healthy suspension of disbelief.

As a result, just about anything you make the nanomachines do will be more believable than the nanomachines.
So if nanomachines will fly with your group, then nanomachines doing just about anything will fly with your group.

So use them for just about anything.

As nightmare fuel.

Seriously, as a small kid I've read a short story in a SF/fantasy magazine in which a nanite outbreak devoured Earth. The author went into quite a bit of gruesome details. Ever since then, nanites were scary shit in my book.

>use them for anything
Hi there, Kojima, how's that new Armored Core game coming along?

they're not that scary when you know most will be damaged or destroyed by simple em radiation

nanomachines are the next vampires

>what is the best use of nanomachines in any game?
Making America great again.

Being set up as the big bad only to reveal that nanomachines cannot do what they're depicted as doing in movies, and are thus pretty much just an esoteric research project to help kids get through grad school.

Now that'd be a twist.

...

nanotechnology is just magic in science fiction, like dark matter.

Real nanotechnology is mostly useless, like real dark matter.

>Real nanotechnology is mostly useless, like real dark matter.
they said the same thing about: steam engines, electricity, radio, computers, etc.

>They
Whom? The same people that said the earth was flat?

>someone said something was impossible once so by the power of words that means someone will do it someday.
So the earth is at the center of the solar system and we just lack the tools to prove it?

Obviously.

Grey Goo

They are actually pretty scary if you think about it. Nanobots in the right numbers, can be used to completly dismantle a planet into basic elements in a few days, so they are right for some kind of means of refueling your generation-ship, or in some settings as an extreme kind of dread.

Yeah we've seen fantasia. Doesn't make it real.

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Oh great, its Mr. NoImagination McBuzzkill. Seriously buddy, just get off Veeky Forums and go jerk off to extremely conservative estimates of battery efficiency increases in the next 4 to 5 years.

The rest of us will have fun playing pretend or imagining a future beyond the next 10 years of advancement

Controling mooks.

Making efficient and targetable diseases.

On site resource processing into materiel.

Ultimate body modification. People have enough room for two more vaginas in the cheeks.

Psychological warfare.

>waaah my faith!

You must not get called by it much.

Schlock Mercenary uses them pretty well. They can definitely be scary, but so can a power drill, or a rock grinder, or a car. They're just pretty advanced tools.

I really liked the idea from numenera of nanotech and field generators etc allowing more primitive people to do what they think is casting spells but is actually the nanotech forming fireballs and lightning bolts for them, which they know involves using their thoughts and maybe some brain interface they may know nothing about or even know is inside of them etc. which might not be original to numenera

That could be kind of cool done literally. Nanomachine vampires. Like, instead of a curse or disease, it's a malfunctioning, parasitic augment.

some kind of power up for your character in a futuristic setting. Nanomachines syringe that gives you strength, awareness, intelligence for example.

You can be so much more creative than just grey goo though. Imagine a cosmic horror setting where nanotech is explained by being powered by rifts in reality. No one knows where those rifts actually lead to, but strange events seem to happen when too many of these power sources are withing close vicinity with one-another.

I remember reading that, it started in some scientist's bathroom I think.

>liked

But then you realized how stupid it was?

Grey goo eldritch horrors

Sounds kinda like M3 the dark metal

>Ridiculous power levels game
>Intro game
Give players OP AI powered archeotech frigate. (Not heresey, not actually 40k)
Autopilot sends frigate to DMPC on a death world. I don't intend for him to really be a PC. I just say that because he was cringey.
DMPC is terraforming the deathworld. Gives a spiel about an ancient evil mankind loosed on the galaxy. Gives clues to players about how they could train it. Offers to train them in whatever they desire. (I wanted to give the players their XP for the game in this way, we were going to wrap up the session)

I don't know how I phrased it badly, but two of the players decided they didn't want to just 'train' with him but wanted to try to kill him. This is like trying to kill Elminster or Lady of Blades tier. The DMPC is a super-AI powered by blackholes and technobabble, like he's not even really 'here' on this planet, this is just a meat puppet he's controlling for the uniqueness of the human experience.

>So they decide to kill Robo-Elminster while he's doing his nature/terraforming/teacher thing.
First I think, well, he holds back for awhile, but if the fight goes 5 rounds...

They actually do better than I thought and break his meat puppet pretty good in two rounds, but they literally scream for more, so I have him just stand back up with a shattered arm and torso, because why not, he's Robo-god.

Round 5 comes, and all the nanites that have been working to terraform the planet have formed into a wall screaming across the surface of the planet and DBZ speeds and smacks the whole party and sends them flying back to their ship and unconscious.

Nanomachines would act as bacteria if ever released into the wild, and would have to compete for resources against all microscopic life forms. Some would probably even specialize as predators against them.

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have you read Prey? do so if you haven't
Small Miracles is another good one

RULES OF NATURE

Its kind of less stupid than regular magic though, i mean there's a sorta logical reason for it happening whereas i doubt you shit on everyone who plays dnd or reads magical shit, so i guess you're just a cunt

Nanomachines act too slowly for them to achieve grey goo scenarios, surface vs volume.

Not to mention mobility of the nanomachines themselves.

Also extreme vulnerability to basically everything at all. Colliding too fast with a hydrogen ion can cause them to overheat to death.

magic doesn't need an explanation. making one up with stupid technology is just pretentious.

>Magic doesn't need an explanation
>Unless it's magic calling itself technology

I don't know, i think that the explanations for it in fantasy are more enjoyable than "a scientist whipped this up in a lab somewhere and it's gone amok"

It feels tacky.

>I can finally have vampires in my cyberpunk settings again

FUCK why did I never think of this before

Source for this image? Pretty sure my old DM ran a game like that....

GURPS, I'm guessing Biotech. I love the nanite swarms in GURPS; each is fielded for a specific purpose, i.e. medical swarm, "devour" swarm, repair swarm, that kind of thing. Can be carried in small canisters if I remember correctly and deployed at leisure, although I believe once activated they have a shelf life and they're limited by what they have to work with (except for the "eat and destroy everything to continue fueling ourselves" kind which is more akin to a natural disaster than a sound tactical decision)

Nano is bad, m'kay?