Quote from: Warthur;681622Given that one of the basic ideas behind the whole cyberwear thing is the distinction between "human" and "tool" dissolving, wouldn't it be more thematically appropriate - not to mention opening the door to a groaning great heap of cool ideas for adventures and scenarios and setting features - for there to be an entire category of cyberwear dedicated to enhancing magic? I just think it's kind of weird that Shadowrun almost embraces this utterly false and bullshitty "magic is all rural and natural, science is all urban and sterile" dichotomy when you could have magical cyberarms with trapped demons inside, cybernetic third eyes that see into the occult parts of the Matrix, and so on and so forth.

Quote from: Warthur;681551In all honesty, the essence thing bugs me more in Shadowrun than most other things. I can maybe see it for implants in the brain, but come on, more or less nobody seriously believes that if you lose your arm you lose part of your soul.

Quote from: Silverlion;681774Yeah, I think it would be cool, to add some magic into the cyber--but they want their non-RP balances.

Quote from: RPGPundit;682272Yeah, more's the pity, because there's all kinds of concepts around combining technology and emerging scientific ideas with magick going on in present-day real-life occultism.

Sure, you have some of the hippie-occultists being all "everything technological is evil, we worship the earth goddess by buying all-organic carob!", but you also have people working with ideas about cyberspace as the new frontier of the Astral Plane and Collective Unconscious, or using marketing techniques as modern venues for sigil magick.  I can only imagine what future occultists will do with transhumanism.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CRKrueger;681468Why would they have a wireless system to begin with?  The whole concept of a wireless implant is for communication through flesh.  The entire Shadowrun cyberware paradigm rests on ASIST, basically a neural interface.  When I can transmit information through the client's own nervous system or have actually added wires to the client's nervous system, then an interface port would be the logical way to access diagnostic info rather than hackable wireless.

It's a transhumanist trope that every new technology that affects the human body is going to be automatically embraced no matter how radical, illogical or impractical.  Get your pie-in-the-sky TH wankfest out of my dystopian cyberpunk you farging bastages.

Quote from: James Gillen;681930Frankly I see it as more "Single-classed Wizards can't wear armor cause they'd be too powerful" or "[strike]Jedi[/strike] Paladins have to be of a certain alignment or they'd get away with murder", etc.  Game balance, basically.

This is screamingly obvious when you consider that Technomancers have Essence loss penalty for their abilities, and you'd think they'd be MORE connected to the Matrix with cyberware.

JG