Notes on Using GURPS Bio-Tech (4e) in TS (part 1: TL Overview)

[Rhino]

Phil,

I just want you to know that your dedication to and support of the THS line in the 4e is outstanding. I have all the 3e books and a couple copies of Changing Times as well as color copies of the stuff you posted on your website. Brilliant. Well done. Thank you.

Very truly yours,

Ryan

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by I Myself

* Februus (p.73): Basically a loose conversion of the Busr bioroid from Broken Dreams, I think. I doubt that there are any parahumans on these lines in the TS world, but one could certainly use this template as the starting-point for a 4e treatment of the Busr or anything similar.

(On another look, I realise that it may owe at least as much to the Salud Upgrade, also in Broken Dreams - though it's a long way from a direct conversion of either. However, the Salud may be as close as has ever existed to the Februus in the TS setting.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

re: the Februus template:
On another look, I realise that it may owe at least as much to the Salud Upgrade, also in Broken Dreams - though it's a long way from a direct conversion of either. However, the Salud may be as close as has ever existed to the Februus in the TS setting.

Or, of course, there's the Hecate in Fifth Wave. Which is far closer to the Februus - close enough for the Februus to count as a direct conversion.

Smites self vigorously. Brain like a sieve.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Read the description on p.TS76. Their DNA may be based on human material, but it's substantially messed about with.

TS biotech can't build the genome for an organism of human-level complexity from scratch, but it can make heavy modifications to existing DNA, and build genes for specific, single, fairly straightforward purposes.

Although, of course, there are rumors of the Alraune... ;)

[Nelson Cunnington]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

* Electroreceptors (p.166): ...whereas these are. In fact, the TS version doesn't have Vague, but maybe it should. Humans aren't built to acquire extra senses at whim.

I think the human brain is more plastic than you give it credit for. See here, for example.

Originally Posted by Wired

For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.

"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Chapter 7

* Polykeratin Grafts (p.177-8): I don't think that TS has polykeratin, either.

It does. See TS p. 117: the Incubus bioroid has polykeratin implants to affect full or partial sex changes.

Furthermore, the vignettes in Bio-Tech presenting polykeratin feature Dr. Mara Omokage, a well-known villain in TS.

Max

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Max Schreck

It does. See TS p. 117: the Incubus bioroid has polykeratin implants to affect full or partial sex changes.

True. It doesn't get much use elsewhere, though, curiously enough. It's possible that bit of vocabulary drifted in just once through the wonders of cut and paste...

Originally Posted by Max Schreck

Furthermore, the vignettes in Bio-Tech presenting polykeratin feature Dr. Mara Omokage, a well-known villain in TS.

Those vigenettes aren't given a date, far as I recall; they could be post-2100 - if they are canonical Transhuman Space at all. Which really isn't guaranteed.

David wrote some cool vignettes for the 3e version of Bio-Tech, which evidently made reference to a setting he was already thinking about. That setting became Transhuman Space, which was developed over multiple books, each of which was revised, playtested, hacked about, and tweaked for coherence, logic, and consistency. Then the 4e version of Bio-Tech came along, which could and did use some stuff from the 3e edition and add some more, but which wasn't, so far as I know, contracted to be consistent with Transhuman Space. It probably is, mostly - but apart from anything else, even where it borrows, it may correct some material in TS that the authors now consider to be dubious.

So it's a handy reference, but not a guide to TS canon.

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

True. It doesn't get much use elsewhere, though, curiously enough. It's possible that bit of vocabulary drifted in just once through the wonders of cut and paste...


Those vigenettes aren't given a date, far as I recall; they could be post-2100 - if they are canonical Transhuman Space at all. Which really isn't guaranteed.

No, that isn't guaranteed. One of the vignettes involves the war angel Tisiphone Logos, which definitely isn't in present-era (2100), canonical TS. She seems to live in David's hypothetical "post-Nanoclysm" future for TS. And as Dr. Omokage is a ghost, xox'ed to the nth degree, she is effectively immortal, and could turn up a thousand years after "normal" TS.

Still, the Incubus uses polykeratin implants, so I'll take it and run.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

David wrote some cool vignettes for the 3e version of Bio-Tech, which evidently made reference to a setting he was already thinking about. That setting became Transhuman Space, which was developed over multiple books, each of which was revised, playtested, hacked about, and tweaked for coherence, logic, and consistency. Then the 4e version of Bio-Tech came along, which could and did use some stuff from the 3e edition and add some more, but which wasn't, so far as I know, contracted to be consistent with Transhuman Space. It probably is, mostly - but apart from anything else, even where it borrows, it may correct some material in TS that the authors now consider to be dubious.

So it's a handy reference, but not a guide to TS canon.

Yes, I was very much interested in the hypothetical meta-setting behind some of the vignettes in the old 3e Bio-Tech, which then read as a very high-tech cyberpunk world. I even tried to recreate it myself with what little clues there were. Then TS came out, and I was overjoyed. Some things had changed, though. The TSA no longer seemed like a giant, socialist dystopia dominating all of East Asia (it is interesting to note that all the TSA characters in 3e Bio-Tech have Chinese names; maybe David envisioned the TSA as the successor power to China, assimilating the rest of East Asia).

So, you're right that many things have changed from Bio-Tech to TS, and that the vignettes cannot be considered a guide to TS canon. They're still a good read, though, and I actually preferred the TSA as a totalitarian, socialist ultra-tech super-power rather than the poor, hodge-podge alliance of Third World countries described in TS. Just look at the vignette describing the Birth Control Virus: "... if the Third World can't be bothered to control their population growth, I guess we'll have to it for them" (Dr. Tse Chang addressing the Genetic Planning Council). Genetic Planning Council? The TSA having the know-how and the clout to spread a Birth Control Virus to control world-wide population growth? Not very canonical, I grant you, but in my view much more interesting than a weak alliance of socialist intellectual property thieves, and could make for an interesting "alternate-reality" TS campaign.

Thanks for your input, and thank you for starting this thread to begin with. It's nice to have "normal" GURPS and TS as compatible as possible.

Take care.

Max

[jSarek]

Originally Posted by Max Schreck

Yes, I was very much interested in the hypothetical meta-setting behind some of the vignettes in the old 3e Bio-Tech, which then read as a very high-tech cyberpunk world. I even tried to recreate it myself with what little clues there were. Then TS came out, and I was overjoyed. Some things had changed, though. The TSA no longer seemed like a giant, socialist dystopia dominating all of East Asia (it is interesting to note that all the TSA characters in 3e Bio-Tech have Chinese names; maybe David envisioned the TSA as the successor power to China, assimilating the rest of East Asia).

Jon F. Zeigler has this to say about the TSA's origins, from here:

Originally Posted by Jon F. Zeigler

In any case, with the identity and ideology of the Transpacific Socialist Alliance established, we needed to decide what nations were going to be its members. At first, we were thinking in terms of an alliance led by Taiwan and Australia -- Taiwan because several of the vignettes in GURPS Biotech suggested a Chinese component to the TSA leadership, Australia because of some of the details in David Pulver's unpublished notes. Both of those ideas became less plausible to us as time passed. David decided that he wanted Taiwan to be unified with China early on, giving that nation the political unity it would need to pursue an aggressive space program. Australia also struck us as a very unlikely place for any kind of socialist ideology to take hold.

Unfortunately, taking Taiwan out of the TSA raised other difficulties. Since we had already established that the People's Republic of China was the major combatant in the Pacific War, opposing the TSA, this made it hard to justify the TSA's ethnic-Chinese leadership. Eventually I suggested Southeast Asia as the TSA's heartland. Many of the nations of that region have substantial ethnic-Chinese minorities, allowing us to rescue the Chinese names for TSA leaders. Several of those nations are already old-style Communist states, and none of them have ever been overly fond of China itself. This suggested a Pacific War involving heavy fighting in Southeast Asia.

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by jSarek

Jon F. Zeigler has this to say about the TSA's origins, from here:

Okay, that explains a lot of things for me. Thanks.

Max