a simple cyberpunk question.

[FireDrakeK]

now. i know i'm a little rusty. and i know that all in all thigns like this can always (and often should be) hand waved as perks and whatnot.

i'm running infinite worlds again, after a long hiatus, and one of the players is playing a cyberpunk-esque character.

most of this is pretty straight forward, either compartmentalized mind or alley with appropriate enhancements and limitations cover the AI, hyper-spectral vision, various enhancement,s perks and so-forth.

what i'm having difficulty with is the players constant and creative use of AR (augmented reality) he uses it for note-taking, tracking enemies, shutting off his vision, highlighting targets. he's very good and as it's linked into a computer he keeps writing programs for it with his programming skill. now i've managed to make him gizmo for a lot of these things, but after a point, where he's duplicating advantages, i am making him buy them.

the problem is i'm unsure what the basic AR advantage is. the ability to put your own HUD up on your vision. it's too versatile and useful t just be a simple perk. Enhanced tracking covers some of it... but does it cover all of it?

i'm really unsure how to stat this particular ability up.

thank-you for your time.

[Anaraxes]

If your setting treats cyber abilities as advantages bought with points, rather than equipment bought with money, then there is no "basic AR advantage". It's nothing more than a special effect, and excuse to buy abilities and explain them as having filtered your sensory input through some software and/or extra sensors. Want Enhanced Tracking thanks to your HUD? Buy it. Want hyper-spectral vision? Buy it. Want Perk: Clock? Buy it. You don't get any particular game-mechanical effect for free.

You might consider most of these advantages as having Gadget limitations. (That implies he's going to lose his computer from time to time, and be relatively helpless -- or completely helpless if he relies too much on it.)

If cyber is equipment, then there's no limit other than cash, availability of the equipment, cyber-surgeons, and so on. Hyperspectral vision means you need to buy some hyperspectral sensors; they don't come on every laptop, after all. Enhanced Tracking is going to need some ranging devices. At some point he's going to his the limits of his computer power, so there's only so many tricks he can do at once. Real software development takes significant time; he can't get abilities by wishing for them, but has to take a few months out adventuring to write some new code. (And on the next adventure, it's buggy...) And so on. Some abilities may simply not be available; you can't write the iMindReader app because no one can build a psionic scanner, no matter which dock connector you have.

[tfaal]

You said that he made "constant and creative use" of his AR. That's the most troubling thing about this, from a GURPS perspective. GURPS doesn't like players to play fast and loose with their character's capabilities, *especially* their superhuman ones. That said, Modular Abilities is a good way to give players regulated wiggle room with their points, and Modular Abilities (Computer Brain) is tailor made for cyberpunk characters with mix-and match "advantage programs" downloaded from afar. Of course, you'll have to fiddle with it a bit to match the details of your situation.

[FireDrakeK]

it's a very simple concept, the ability to super impose images over your visual senses. it's not just "perk clock" because it's more flexible than that.
it's not a gadget limitation, because he can't loose it. and even if it were what is it a limitation on?

is it a modular perk? no because he can legitimately have all of these thigns up and running at once if he's willing to give up his ability to see, or take penalties to actions by using a semi-tranparent HUD.

modular ablities work really well when you know what advantages you're pulling from. and perks work really when when it's single simple devices. but he's pluging his giger counter into his optic nerves s that he can operate it and veiw it hand's free. he's keeping running tallies of the number of people he's seen, without having to carry pad and paper. he's really smart about it, and i have no idea what to charge him. modular or not.

[tfaal]

There is no fair price for "Whatever a superscience AR device could reasonably do, subject to GM discretion." Modular Abilities (Cosmic Power) will let you have a standing pool of points that you can allocate to whatever you want. Throw on Limited, Senses Only (-30%), and you have a fair price for "Any combination of sense related abilities that I want, so long as it adds up to X points or less." [7*X points]. You might also consider Limited, "Available computer programs" (-5% to -15%, depending on your judgement).

It's a very simple concept, the ability to super impose images over your visual senses.

It's a deceptively simple concept. In practice, it is a versatile piece of cybernetic multimedia equipment, and that's very hard to nail down, point wise.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by FireDrakeK

it's a very simple concept, the ability to super impose images over your visual senses. it's not just "perk clock" because it's more flexible than that.
it's not a gadget limitation, because he can't loose it. and even if it were what is it a limitation on?

is it a modular perk? no because he can legitimately have all of these thigns up and running at once if he's willing to give up his ability to see, or take penalties to actions by using a semi-tranparent HUD.

modular ablities work really well when you know what advantages you're pulling from. and perks work really when when it's single simple devices. but he's pluging his giger counter into his optic nerves s that he can operate it and veiw it hand's free. he's keeping running tallies of the number of people he's seen, without having to carry pad and paper. he's really smart about it, and i have no idea what to charge him. modular or not.

Assuming that you want to treat this as point-buy Advantages rather than clever use of generally-available gear (which costs no points), the effects you describe seem to be neatly covered by Telecommunications (some mechanism) and Photographic Memory.

[FireDrakeK]

telecomunication! thankyou. that's what i've been missing.

in general gear is things that can be lost, stripped by your captors, or broken. anything that is difficult to remove, or leave you without i charge points for. were it a full on cyberpunk game then i'd make it money, because it's something people know about, and it's something that can be targeted, countered and that most people have. but as it's infinite worlds he's teh only person with it... points are more appropriate in this case, for it is something the other players cannot purchase, and something which cannot be easily countered, removed or broken.

[Ptaloth]

I have different idea to stat up his ability.
The stuff your cyberpunk is doing look a little bit like spells to me.
If i understood right he buffs himself on the fly with advantages by using his programming skills to write new software.
If you read Augmented reality like magery and software like spells you have a mage.

How about:

Magery = Augmented Realit)
Spells = Software)
Fatigue = CPU cycles or CPU heat.
Wild Talent to get spells (software) on the fly.
Digital Mind

Perhaps you want to use Ritual Magic with the default on a M/VH computer skill.

In place of mana levels and counterspells you need some cyberstuff to controll his ability in play.
He can only use software (cast spells) that affect his own cyber implants or they must be explained by creative use of computing power and head up displays.
He can be attacked by other AI's with maleware or EMP and cyber stuff.
Hot climate causes issues with CPU heat and works like low mana etc.

I use something like this for a fantasy campaing where my pixies are little cyborgs and it works well for me.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If your setting treats cyber abilities as advantages bought with points, rather than equipment bought with money, then there is no "basic AR advantage". It's nothing more than a special effect, and excuse to buy abilities and explain them as having filtered your sensory input through some software and/or extra sensors. Want Enhanced Tracking thanks to your HUD? Buy it. Want hyper-spectral vision? Buy it. Want Perk: Clock? Buy it. You don't get any particular game-mechanical effect for free.

This.

Advantages are priced by what they DO, not what they ARE. It doesn't matter if he has cyberpunk AR, psychic powers, the favor of a cyclopean god... whatever. He still needs to buy the advantages if he wants to have them.

[Hai-Etlik]

A few things to keep in mind:

Programming takes time. If he wants to write his own programs, make sure he spends time on it and use the Invention rules to introduce bugs. I recently spent an entire day figuring out where to put one line of code to fix one fairly minor bug.

Programming requires domain knowledge. Just knowing how to program doesn't give you an understanding of the problem you want to solve unless it is a abstract problem of pure programming. For instance, that target tracking program would require a good understanding of image processing and computer vision, which is not something a typical programmer is familiar with. Use plenty of familiarity penalties and require rolls against other skills where appropriate. Mathematics (Pure) and Mathematics (Computer Science) are particularly important particularly for any sort of really deep modelling or analysis.

AR is also limited by the sensory hardware it has access to, and to the users ability to interpret the data. There's only so much you can do with just a HUD. If it is using his own eyes for input, then it can't have Independent Targeting outside of a fairly narrow cone, and even if it has the ability to track multiple targets, the human user still can't, the HUD can only make it easier to switch targets by highlighting them.

Remember to assign a complexity to those programs and the embedded computer and to enforce the limits that produces.

If he can put these programs together easily, then so can any other programmer, meaning these augmentations should be readily available to opponents as well.