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From:	ROBERSON@***.EDU
Subject:	replicants
Date:	Mon, 8 Feb 93 07:21:56 CET

Message no. 1 Regarding Replicants:
I've already done some consideration for this in my GURPS Cyberpunk
game. Growing the body shouldn't be a problem; the difficulty arises in
matching intelligence levels and instilling a "soul" into such a body. In
that particular campaign and ruled out extreme force-grown elements and
decided that the socialization process and interaction with other human
beings is too important to allow people to simply be grown and progrmmed
via the Matrix. However, in the interest of discussion, here are some
questions to start you off:
1) What creates the soul or spirit? In Shadorun, it could be argued
that if a body is provided, a spirit will inhabit it (not the same as
possesion, mind you). This spirit now inhabits a brand new body with an
unprogrammed brain.
2) Said brain could be run through several Filtered simulations to
stimulate neural activity and get the mind in motion. But this would require
access to the matrix. Datajacks are out of the question until the body is at
least puberty-level; Induction rigs may be too unreliable or just plain
impractical, especially for the younger years. Where does the replicant
gain his knowledge.
3) What's he like? Assuming a rep can be programmed with all required
knowledge in, say five years, via the Matrix, how would he react if all of a
sudden, the simulated world that has been his only reality is "unplugged"
and he gets told to use his knowledge and skills for whatever he was "built"
for? Sounds like the born & bred Existentialist to me.
4) Being a five (or whatever)-year old with the force-grown body and
smarts of a Street Sam (or Mage) would have a profound effect on interpersonal
relations. You've read stories of child geniuses grow up to become eccentric
recluses; The movie "Big" could also serve as an example of someone out of
their element, mistaken by others for an "adult" when all they know is what
they've been programmed with. Imagine Rambo with the social and emotional
maturity of Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes).
Hope this stimulates something somewhere.
J Roberson
Oy! The soup is burning!

From:	ArkAngel <DUNN@******.BITNET>
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Mon, 8 Feb 93 09:40:00 EST

Message no. 2 Hmmm... Cloning people, huh? Sounds like Paranoia, not Shadowrun...
but anyways. I'd run it like I remember an article for cloning Autoduelists in
Car Wars suggested it be run... (Don't ask me what mag it was in, it was
several years ago that I read it...) Basically, a back up clone was kept
available, and when the person died, and his body was pretty much trashed, they
took it and popped his memories and personalities from the old body into the
new body with some sort of a personality swapper type thingy... Sorta
reminiscent of FreeJack I'd guess... just IMHO

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Dunn@******.jcu.edu-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
First law of RPG adventure writing:"In any given scenario, there are 4
possible player actions, the three reasonable ones the GM expects, and the one
the players ultimately divise and use."
>>>>>[ArkAngel.Logout]>>>>>

From:	Todd Montgomery <tmont@****.WVU.WVNET.EDU>
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Mon, 8 Feb 93 18:46:38 CET

Message no. 3 Replicants, ummmm
Clones, hummmmmm,

I don't know if anyone read _Streets of Blood_.
The Shadowrun Novel about England and Jack the Ripper.

What am I saying? Of course everyone has, on here.
They deal with clones of ... Don't want to spoil the plot for
everyone who didn't read it. If you haven't read it yet, READ IT!!!!!
AND DON'T LOOK BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR!!!

OK, in the book, which I assume is a pretty good estimate of the
Shadowrun world and tech level, Jack the Ripper is cloned. Actually a
person from the time period who is royalty and seemed to fit the
profile somewhat. The clone was brainwashed to want to be devient
(sp?) and bad. The clone had some help from the fact that certain
parts of the brain would be wrong because the clone grew too fast and
did mature normally. This created imbalances in its learning and the
clones mind became "abnormal" and "devient". There is a great
explanation of the cloning done in the book. If you have the book,
read or reread the last 14 pages. This is were I would start with
thinking about cloning and replicants. Of course it would most likely
be out of the hands of the players, but what a great GM RECURING
villian toy!

-- Quiktek
tmont@****.wvu.wvnet.edu

"I'm just another fool dancing to the Symphony of Destruction."

From:	"Dark Thought Publications." <JEK5313@*****.TAMU.EDU>
Subject:	Replicants.
Date:	Mon, 8 Feb 93 18:48:15 CET

Message no. 4 I think that Leon said it best: "Wake up- it's time to die."

]Now, to get an argument of a different vein flowing, would it be possible
]in the world of Shadowrun, to produce REPLICANTS?

Yes.

]No arguments about game balance, that isn't the point. The question is,
]can it be done, and if so, how? Lets talk theoretical for a bit and
]mentally masterbate on the subject and see what we come up with. :-)

Add one corp with the money, a legal suite to handle the problems, and there
you have it, and I Johnson who really wants it done for a reason. I think you
just put spoilers on the semester for my group though. Thanks Hayden. ;)

For those of you who are as highly edimicated as I (please note my proper
spelling of edimicated), it might work something like this:

1 Corp + Desire of Johnson + Legal problems ==> Replicants.

OK. Guys. I know you're watching (most of you anyway). Sleep well. . .

--Flare

From:	ROBERSON@***.EDU
Subject:	replicants
Date:	Tue, 9 Feb 93 04:57:38 CET

Message no. 5 Regarding using Skillwires or "feedback" loops to instill knowledge
in a clone:
Don't forget that you can provide the skills but you still need a
mind to guide it. Theological questions aside (I must apologize for my previous
wording of the concept) I don't see how science can provide a mind without
any kind of world experience. There's too much information learned only
by interacting with the world at large. My question was whether or not a
similar level of experience could be provided virtually and if so, what would
it be like to all of a sudden have your world unplugged so you can interact
with the "real" world (this must occur if you are to perform your mission.
As a tangent to this topic, how about Disembodied Brains? What if
either an old, experienced Decker acquired some incurable disease (akin
to Lou Gehrig's Disease) and elected to be permanently jacked in to the
Matrix. Or if science can keep the brain alive, maintaining it after the body's
death (natural or otherwise). Or, if a controlling consciousness can indeed
be instilled in a brain, imagine cloning just a brain and creating the the
closest thing to an AI in Shadowrun.
This is leading somewhere-Robots, AIs, Organic Molecule computers,
Matrix beings. . .I think these topics and their applications are why we
all enjoy Cyberpunk in general and Shadowrun specifically.

J Roberson
"You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
-The President in Dr. Strangelove

From:	"Jason Carter, Nightstalker" <CARTER@***.EDU>
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Tue, 9 Feb 93 05:24:13 CET

Message no. 6 Here's an attempt to catch up with the Replicant discussion:
First of all nobodies mentioned the possible reprocussion of fast grow upon
the subject in question. When you fast grow a body part for replacement the
compatibility drops because DNA warping occurs (at least that why I think it
drops). It's easy to minimize damage when there is only one part you are
concerned with but in a full body any number of diabilities could be caused.
This would be a major problem with Replicant production.
Roberson and others claim there will be some problems training the replicant.
Hog wash. Anyone who's read the story in Virtual Realities knows how you train
your replicant. Hook him into a high-speed virtual training field and teach him
only what you want him to know. As for datajacks, if that little kid could
handle one so can our replicants.
On the question of the Magus Factor the DNA warping caused by fast growth
could either remove any Magus Factor the orginal DNA had or create one in DNA
that didn't have it before. Basically its pure chance, just like a normal
produced person.
People (the Reverend) have mentioned implanting replicants with DNA patterns
that self-destruct after a period of time. All I say is the Corpers better make
these thing infertile or were looking at babies that will spontanously die. That
would be lawsuit hell.
On the subject of Replicants having higher than normal characteristic maxima
I would say their's no need. First of all when designing your replicant you
give it the highest possible attribute and if that's not enough you engineer the
bioware straight into the body. This allow you to aviod little problems like
body indexes since those just reflect the strain put on the body from having
bioware replace the naturally occuring stuff. For the replicant this is
natural.
Lastly their talk about whether or not the cloned body would gain a mind.
Since neither medical science or the Supreme Court can figure out exactly when
the mind first comes about, I'll obstain.

See Ya in Shadows,
Jason J Carter
The Nightstalker

From:	Todd Montgomery <tmont@****.WVU.WVNET.EDU>
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Tue, 9 Feb 93 22:46:13 CET

Message no. 7 Here is an interesting tidbit of brain trivia for the replicant
enthusiasts out there.

I read an article a year ago in a medical journal about some brain
research. I was writting a paper on the brains electrical properties.
The research specifically dealt with how the brain "maps" memories and
experiences. According to the article, the brains memory areas, yes
they know where they are, ...roughly, seem to have the same properties
of storage as do holograms. By this I mean the parts contain the
whole. Every "part" of the memory area contains the whole. By
destroying a part the whole is less, well .. whole. Patients who have
had MAJOR damage to this area still have there memories but these
memories are less clear. The article went on to state some ideas about
learning being a process involving the memories AND the cognitive
abilities of the person. Cognitive in the sense of being able to be
trained.

Taking the article, I feel that the ability exists in SR tech to clone
the body, but not to implant abilities into a clone. The brain must be
fast trained, like in Virtual Realities. Nothing can replace the
combination of memories and cognitive training (as is done in neural
networks) in imparting skills into a being.

Comments welcome.

-- Quiktek
tmont@****.wvu.wvnet.edu

"I think the truth of it is that this is a cultural change most of us
- while we have a live-and-let-live attitude - don't want anyone in
our faces with claims of how special they are because they're
different. I'd submit that most Americans don't want to see that."
- William Raspberry
- Washington Post Syndicated Columnist
- 2/8/93 Daily Athenaeum

From:	ROBERSON@***.EDU
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Fri, 12 Feb 93 01:58:42 CET

Message no. 8 1: A cow may be more complex than a frog, but not as complex as a human
being. As far as only needing the knowledge to perform a task of any
sort, don't forget that you also need tools. Sure, you know that a nail
through two boards will hold them together. Now go build yourself a hammer.

2: I am not getting in the way of using replicants of any kind in any
game whatsoever. I am merely trying to bring up certain points that any
GM ought to lok over before introducing them: Social status, motivation,
limitations, orgin. The process by which a clone is developed can play a
significant role in how they fit into the campaign; a GM should decide
beforehand if the replicants are simple, highly efficient drones or if
memories can be programmed. It wouldn't do much good to bring back MR
Hotshot villain if you can't restore his memory.

J Roberson

From:	ROBERSON@***.EDU
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Fri, 12 Feb 93 07:27:18 CET

Message no. 9 The information I provided about modern cloning attempts was not
meant to prove feasiblity. It was just background info that I hoped would
provide more food for thought.

From:	cfrye@****.MITRE.ORG
Subject:	Replicants
Date:	Mon, 15 Feb 93 15:25:07 EST

Message no. 10 I just happened to come across a reference in the SR2 rulebook - p. 205
near the stuff on first aid kits. I don't have it with me, but the gist
was "replicating neural tissue is beyond the technology of 2053 - there can
be no viable clones."

Sorry if this is a repeat.

Best regards,

Curtis D. Frye
The MITRE Corporation, ATTN MS Z267, 7525 Colshire Dr., McLean, VA 22102
USA
(703) 883-7843
cfrye@****.mitre.org (preferred) or cdfrye@******.mitre.org or
cfrye@*****.mitre.org or (last resort) cfrye%mdf@*****.org

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