Is it justified to get insanity points after you have been transformed into a cyborg?

youtube.com/watch?v=NJIjNs_s2NI

>Overwatch
Sounds more like Stalkers to me. The skinnies with stump arms and legs.

It mostly depends on how your setting views transhumanism. If it's seen as dangerous and irresponsible, like a lot of cyberpunk settings, then absolutely, but if it's looked at more hopefully or neutrally, than probably not, though it depends on the circumstances, like others have said.

How do you know you are the real you and not some back up copy from a floppy drive?

In general, no. It always annoys me when RPGs have cyberpsychosis mechanics without any real justification. I get that it's a balance thing, but it still strikes me as really arbitrary.

Shadowrun is one of the few systems where it actually makes sense, because with the whole magic side of things it kinda explains why it would have a negative effect.

At the same time, they can never fully agree on the why of it.

Because apparently getting a prosthetic if you're a cripple won't give you any essence loss, so long as it's not better than what you had to begin with. But if you just chop your arm off and replace it, you get essence loss. You also don't get any essence loss for getting a sex change.

I tend to treat it with the litmus test I posted in . There would need to be one or more factors in play to negatively affect the character in question.

>sex change has no essence loss
Because the magic knows you were meant to be a pretty girl, omae :^D

If you were born a cripple then presumably you never had any essence associated with that limb to begin with.

>Shadowrun is one of the few systems where it actually makes sense, because with the whole magic side of things it kinda explains why it would have a negative effect.
eh I've always found the Essence excuse to be pretty retarded too

Would depend really on the type of augmentation, the level, the sophistication, your character's personality and if it was consensual or not.

I mean, if your character has a phobia of cybernetics and was forced to have limbs replaced without his consent then yeah they're not gonna take it well.

Plus there's the whole chopping off your body parts and frankenstining metal bits onto the ends, unless they're really sophisticated then the difference between it and a real limb is noticeable and could affect a character's psyche.

I figure that in most settings, there are plenty of perfectly mundane downsides to having chunks of metal inserted into your body.

I'm suprised no one's posted avas demon. That shit was horrific.

Please clarify.

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There's a Web comic called avas demon, and in the most recent chapter you get to see someone completed, phyrexian style.

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Thanks, going to check that out

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I just saw the two most recent chapters, there is no such thing.

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avasdemon.com/pages.php#1259

Yeah its a good comic with GREAT art.

also I'm apparently behind because this happened a few chapters back.

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Oh nice, thank you.

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You'd need a robo-benis for it to be E-Lossy. Surgery that changes you is neutral iirc, but I mostly play/d the HBS games.

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I think the justification for this is just as flimsy as for the "robots can't feel empathy so they couldn't possibly understand why humans might consider having their homes destroyed and their families murdered to be a suboptimal outcome" trope. Mostly it just shows how lazy/technophobic the author is.

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Huh, a Ellis book I've never read. I should hunt this shit down. Also, I'm thinking Global Frequency will be the basis of my next RPG campaign. Maybe using Nights Black Agents?

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I hadn't considered it, but the idea is very campaignable. Each edition is a contained story, and all work very well as adventures.

That depends on how good a job they did.

Should be fine as long as they can find a way to come to terms with it.

I mean, it's basically what Eclipse Phase tried to do with Firewall. Though I never personally cared much for eclipse phase.

I think the degree of cyborgization plays an important role. A simple data-tattoo lifelog wouldn't warrant any mental issues.

Our senses, our body chemistry, the brain needs to respond to that to be you. It is relatively fragile. Lack of sense and disturbed chemistry create mental disorders.

How advanced are the implants? Do they reproduce a good facsimile of the lost skin, the hormones whose glands aren't there? All those missing thousands of electric signals every instant.

On the other hand, the neural system is very plastic. That monkey which was brain-linked to a mechanic arm actually became capable of moving it as a third limb instead of as his right arm.

I would say that in a specific setting where the technology is mature enough to do it, the quality of the profissionals, implants and procedure will determine if you get insanity points or not.

A extensive procedure could include some recorded data signals (biodaemon?) to make the brain think certain tissues are still there, and perhaps (battle?) damage and hacking could break down or jam this signal, disturbing the cyborg's mental health temporarily.

And even to a well-adjusted cyborg, I would think might need some therapy to prevent that he develops some disorder based on dissociated identity. Perhaps the data signals I mentioned above are this therapy, because normal psychiatric drugs don't have the same effect on someone whose body chemistry is so altered and probably fragile. A full cyborg might require a perpetual link to a non-enhanced human's subconscient, and that might be another PC. Interesting when related to siddhi.

I can also imagine a transhumanist ideology which believes free will is only possible once a conscience is free from its carnal limits.

The individual might suffer from sarcophobia and the implants may actually make him mentally healthier.

TL;DR - think in terms of cost-benefit, a physical enhancement will create mental disadvantages.

Nice read, thanks. People often overlook the notion of the embodied mind/brain when talking about these themes.

That was great. Thanks man.

Are there more of these? And are they on the same level of dark? Cause that was a good read. was also nice to finally see where that famous panel came from

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to have sanity points after becoming a cyborg.

A cyborg seeing cthulhu would also lose a number of SAN points and risk becoming insane just like an unaugmented individual.

Even assuming a perfect harmony of cybernetics and biology I think it would be important to look at bias towards parts of your own body.

I think I could pretty easily adjust, on the mental level here, to cyber legs. Cyber arms wouldnt be much more of an issue but, personally, I think cyber hands would be strange and require an adjustment period because of how often I, or anyone really, uses their hands and the fine motor functions in them.

But what I dont think I could do would be eyes. Things fucking with eyes is a phobia of mine and I also consider sight to be my most important sense. Because of that, even in a situation where I got blinded and cyber eyes was my only hope of seeing again, I think I would have trouble coping with it. Just knowing that what I was seeing was through the filter of a camera and that metal, regardless of how smooth and perfect, rolling around in my eye sockets would freak me out.

But some people are like that about their hands or legs or ears or whathaveyou. Its an important thing to consider when thinking about mental issues with augs.

At least in early editions you could get essence loss from any serious mutilation or invasive surgery.

If you end up like your pic then yes, definitely. Turning into a faceless metal person is always going to alienate you from normal humans somewhat, and that's not good for anyone's mental well-being.

>It always annoys me when RPGs have cyberpsychosis mechanics without any real justification.
The genre assumption is that you do this for short-sighted reasons, have it done in some back alley chop shop, get no pre-op or post-op screening or counseling aside from making sure your money is good, and that the ability to use your new gadgets was implanted the same time they were.
It is a personal form of Future Shock, phantom limb/pain syndrome, and, as one scenario above notes, bad cybernetic design leading to isolation psychoses.

We won't see much cyberpsychosis among our new and very real population of test subjects because they already dealt with the amputation issues while recovering in the military hospital, and are constantly being evaluated and counseled.
By comparison the ganger who watches while some chop doc takes off his perfectly good skin and bone masterbating arm and puts a whirly blade thing with a nice chrome finish on the still sensitive stump, pumps him full of pain andanti-rejection meds and boots him out the door, then moves shop so the ganger will never find him again? He's already halfway to cyberpsychosis and societal detachment when he walks in the clinic door. And let's be honest here, most PCs in a CPunkgame are just like him.

You're welcome.

Global Frequency had 12 issues, not all of them as dark, some weirder. I recomend reading the series.

Warren Ellis' stuff is usually like this, and with dark themes, I would recomend: Scars, Ministry of Space, No Hero, Black Summer, Atmospherics, Supergod and Fell - Feral City.

But the ultimate dark-but-not-edgy comic is Uber. Man, the writer grasps the thinking of Stalin in scary ways. The premise is: in 1945, Nazi Germany acquires three superman-level soldiers.

Which panel was famous?

You're welcome. It's a pleasure to know you apreciated it.

For a lack of a better term, personal idiosyncrasies are always a factor when it comes to mental health. Unique feelings like yours are reasons for the necessity of post-op counseling.

I just realized I neglected to say it before, but I think sessions with a psychologist would be required as part of the therapy. Perhaps it would be even more important if digital and chemical means are incompatible with augmented biology.

Extrapolating from the feelings some people develop towards transplanted organs, even personality changes because 'I have a piece of another person so I end up behaving more like this other person', I personally wouldn't be surprised if the DSM-VIII included 'Level-K augmentics as contributing factors to identity disorders' or something similar.

and now i know where that last panel comes from now. thanks.

>But the ultimate dark-but-not-edgy comic is Uber.

Ehhhhh. I know somebody dumped a bunch of stuff in here a few months ago. I'm not sure how I'd categorize 'closet full of dead hitler clones' as anything by being edgey.

Some of the stuff is just too stupid. I'm willing to believe the 'America's first super-soldier candidates are black guys, so they're too afraid to make them full battleships', but then 'oh, and we already know how to make a super soldier, so let's take this one chick and just pump her full of the other chemical instead for no good reason' was fucking stupid.

>you would't download a neural net, would you?

You don't. You have to trust your ghost.

>Read through whole thing
>this pic only happened about a chapter or two ago
>get to latest page
>no RSS feed
WHY DO ALL THESE WEBCOMICS NEVER HAVE RSS FEEDS
FUCKING TUMBLR INCOMPETENTS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Real nightmare fuel.

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Forceably changed into cyborg? Probably warrants a handful of SAN Loss.

If you volunteered, eh, maybe some temporary ones.

Those weren't clones, they were previous attempts to make his face. He died and they needed to make a doppelganger.

And in the second, I'm simply don't know what other chemical do you mean. There is none.

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When did Riddick get a spider mech suit??

Wait. If pre-op transsexuals are born with the wrong body, and having the wrong body lowers your essence, does it mean going through actually restores essence?

Sure, but there's also no penalty for someone who doesn't actually identify as a woman to transition into one. Then back again, then back to woman. No penalty at all.

I think it would depend how good the augmetics are. If the subject can feel with it's new body parts, then it would go rather well, I think.

He means HMH Churchill, where the brits went full retard despite it obviously being a bad idea.

I don't get on how it was obviously a bad idea.

>Which panel was famous?
There's a wire in my brain that stimulates sexual pleasure when I kill.

In fairness it's shooped to say troll instead of kill.