Best Near Future game background - what is it?

[hal]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

To answer about my immune system: it's fiddly and flawed, prone to letting colds through a lot (though not as much lately) and with a bunch of strongly-held misconceptions about certain plant-produced chemicals (likewise not as badly nowadays as past years). At a minimum, it's one that is recognizable if placed in a lineup with the immune systems of most of my acquaintances.

Would you purchase a pill or treatment, that would basically enhance your ability to avoid infectious diseases, if it cost say, 10% of your income per year? It wouldn't even be a cybernetic enhancement right? GURPS CLASSIC ULTRATECH called it Panimmunity available at TL 9 (old tech tree) while GURPS ULTRATECH (for 4e) calls it "Tailored Immune Machines" at TL 10. There is already discussions about tailoring a bodychemistry to recognize cancer cells and use the body's immune system to hunt and destroy that specific cancer. That they don't do it for other cancers seems to have to do with how the body's white blood cells attack infections in the form of fevers etc that might be dangerous (a simplification I'm sure, as I'm no doctor!).

As a whole, the final cost for various things might be expensive, but for each "itemized" thing that improves life, they may be relatively inexpensive. What would be interesting is to identify those things that improve the lives of people in an Ultratech campaign, and figure out what the final cost per year might be and tack it on to the cost of living.

To my never ending frustration with the new "cost of living" issues that crop up in GURPS discussions - having the ability (like CP2020 did) to itemize expenses like where you live, what clothes you wear, what food you eat etc, was a GOOD thing for those who want to track it. Some just don't like tracking it. On the other hand, the simple thing to do is track it once, and never revisit it again - a TAILOR made cost of living if you will.

Ah well, your point about your own immune system is well taken. How much will an improvement to any given lifestyle be seen as a trade off between what is natural, and what is artificial?