In Android lore, is it illegal to clone an actual person, like a 5th day violation? Or is it just technically not possible? I partly ask because in some of the lore about clones and the brain tape method they use, sometimes memories of the original taped person remain. It leads me to believe they tape a real person, then clear out everything that is a personal memory (or try), leaving a template to be used.

From what I've read, it's not currently possible, though it could still be illegal (or illegal to even try).

From Worlds of Android, page 69: "The affluent, those who work particularly high risk jobs... often choose to maintain a clone created from their own DNA... and legends persist that the richest risties may simply choose to transplant their brain into the healthy clone's body."

In the world of Android, functionally nothing is illegal so long as you got fat stacks.

A noteworthy gray area being that clones are legally considered property. So even if you could clone yourself, your cloned incarnation doesn't have any of your civic rights. Arguably, the risties must have found some loophole (most likely involving some kind of certification that their brain is still "original").

However, access to reincarnation or functional immortality would wreak havok on any world's inheritance laws. So the legal-system of the near-future should have already dealt with it, otherwise it should be a current issue in the setting. With the risties lobbying for the right to own clone/bioriod armies as property, yet still be considered legal personages themselves (despite functionally being clones themselves).

@Cantriped

An interesting exploration of those themes can be found in the NetFlix series Altered Carbon (I have not read the Novels). This debate about what defines a person, (legally, ethically, spiritually, etc.), will definitely be part of my home game(s) twist on SotB. Heavily influenced by the Blade Runner universe of course.

There is also the Dexter Anderson novel series by Darusha Wehm, which, while not addressing cloning, does look at what constitutes "Human Rights" within the context of a person's creations when the creator identifies more with their creation than with their own biology.

Lots to explore.

As to the OP, I feel that one of the beautiful things about the GeneSys toolkit, is the flexibility to pick and choose from the source material in order to fine tune the game world that the GM and Players wish to create.

1 hour ago, QorDaq said:

An  interesting exploration of those themes can be found in the NetFlix series Altered Carbo  n ...

You're the second, or maybe third person to suggest it, I'll have to chack it out when I get a chance.

Blade Runner is such a classic that I'm always suprised to find there are people who haven't seen it. Ghost In The Shell (and a few other anime) were equally definitive of the genre for me, though admitedly not as well known as Blade Runner.

Another philosophical route for PC exploration in this setting is, "Everything we design is designing us back". "We are part inventor and part the invented"

Thanks for all the input. I like the idea of going from Citizen to clone. Keep your life, but loose everything in the process.

Arguably nothing prevents a ristie from paying Jinteki to grow them a clone based on their own DNA (or any DNA they pay enough to customize). However, there's probably pages of EULA that effectively give Jinteki permanent rights to destroy the clone should they deem it necessary, which is why you've not heard of using it to cheat death, as it would effectively will your estate over to Jinteki while you continue to live and breathe in a new body - and the neural channeling is part of the growth process so unless your death was planned, there'd be a period of time between your original death and when the clone is fully matured and conditioned.

And the obvious that neural channeling isn't a perfect copy, as the game's underlying mystique shows. There are always flaws, and it's likely a less-exacting technology than programming a bioroid's optical brain - but in terms of who's closer to having rights, clones are likely in the lead.

I read a scifi novel with similar concepts recently. It was called six wakes.

Highly recommend it.

Worlds of Android describes therapeutic cloning as common -- you can get a fresh liver cloned up, and there's even a mass-produced Universal Donor line of limbs and organs which are cheaper, but don't fit as well.

Remember that a body takes at least a month to grow, and that probably requires some g-mods. A fully natural body would probably take years, but could be used to fake one's death. (Or a few limbs and an explosion.)