Revelation Space: Conjoiners

[Marchand]

Hi all - first time poster, and new to GURPS.

Not sure if there are any other Revelation Space fans on this board but if there are, then you almost certainly have more GURPS experience than I do, and I'd be grateful for your thoughts on this effort at a template for Conjoiners.

I found a decade-old thread on the same subject but I thought the template proposed there seemed a bit underpowered.

Even if you don't know the books, perhaps all you need to know is the Conjoiners are a transhuman faction with cybernetic enhancements that link them in a group mind - a bit like the Borg but with more free will left to individuals.

So here we go:

Conjoiner (150 points)
Absolute Direction 10
Absolute Timing 2
Enhanced Time Sense 45
Filter Lungs 5
High TL 5
Less Sleep 8
Lightning Calculator 5
Mindlink (millions, racially limited) 48
Mind Reading (Cybernetic limitation) 15
Photographic Memory 10
Racial Memory (Active) 40

Disads:
Clueless -10
Fanaticism (Conjoiners) -15
Social Stigma (Monster) -15 (might be a bit too strong?)
Unnatural Features -3

I wasn't sure how to treat the Conjoiners' hive-mind nature. The Mindlink advantage arguably doesn't carry its weight because a Conjoiner PC would probably never get the benefit simply because adventures are likely to happen outside the hive.

Grateful for your thoughts!

[Shostak]

Revelation Space is one of my favorites! For Conjoiners, you might add High Pain Threshold and Compartmentalized Mind. I'd have to re-read some sections, but am pretty sure that they can control their metabolism, too.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Marchand

Grateful for your thoughts!

I don't think all of them have all of these advantages. They'll be more varied and interesting if you pare down the compulsory advantages and disadvantages quite a bit, and provide a list of options for the rest.

[Celjabba]

Some of them (especially late in the series) are literally a brain floating in a container among others brains (or (spoiler!!) inside a conjoiner engine .
Others (especially the early ones) just have a few nano neural implants for the mind share.
So, you may want to do a basic package and various custom template.

Don't forget that the most advanced will have the thermal regulator crest or similar distinctive features (or dependency to external machinery).
Clueless is a common disadvantage outside of the hive, but not for all and not inside the hive.

I am not sure mindlink is appropriate.

Basic package:

Racial Memory (passive)
Racial Memory(active, accessibility:if in contact with the hive, reliable (lvl depend of hive size))
Telecommunication (Radio, Reduced range , Secure , Sensie)
Compartimented Mind (no mental separation, only for telecommunications) several levels
high TL +1,
IQ+2 (but see gregarious below)
Enhanced Time Sense
Photographic Memory
Hard to kill +4

Chummy (gregarious ?,Conjoiners)
Fanaticism (extreme,Conjoiners)
Social Stigma (Conjoiner)

[Marchand]

Thanks for the responses folks. One of the things I'm fishing for is a sense of am I "doing it right" as I am fairly new to GURPS.

Racial memory seemed necessary because Weather was able to summon up a voice message for the captain from a long-dead conjoiner in that short story. I admit it seems unlikely to have the entire Conjoiner racial memory available to each individual even when separated from the hive, but in the story it's pretty clearly established that that is the case. (Helps when you're writing fiction rather than statting up templates!)

Early, middle and late-model conjoiner templates seems a good route to go down.

Demarchists are harder because there isn't much to get your teeth into. They are plugged into the demarchy's decision-making system, and, um, that's about it. If anything a mild disad as it must be mildly distracting. Maybe they are typically a bit healthier and stronger than baseline humans although I'm not sure even that is clearly established anywhere.

[dfinlay]

Just a minor comment on format: You should put the point costs in []. As it is, it looks like they are levels of traits, which is particularly confusing in cases where the traits have levels. I figured it out because you were doing it for everything and so it was the only thing that made sense, but, otherwise I would assume you meant "They have 5 levels higher TL for [25]" and not "They have 1 level higher TL for [5]" when you put "High TL 5".

Sorry for nitpicking the format. It was just something that bugged me. As for the template, I've never read the books, so have no useful comments.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Marchand

Racial memory seemed necessary because Weather was able to summon up a voice message for the captain from a long-dead conjoiner in that short story. I admit it seems unlikely to have the entire Conjoiner racial memory available to each individual even when separated from the hive, but in the story it's pretty clearly established that that is the case.

I am not completely convinced that story is canon for the setting. I have a suspicion that it might be metafictional (fiction that exists within the setting as fiction) but there's no obvious way to establish the truth of the matter, except to ask Reynolds.