Most people I know would not chop an arm off to get stronger, most people would not take anabolic steroids either, there are some who would though. I've still to play with anyone who wanted a cybernetic implant, however after reading beyond the rim where you even have a description of a custom skill for cybernetics, who is to stop other players getting involved especially when some NPCs are similarly modified. The whole module is based round a shadow tech firm that uses cybernetics as part of product range they offer.

I think a lot of peoples thoughts that cybernetics are prejudiced against stems from the old West End Games system. They put out cybernetics later in the run, I believe in Crackens Field Guide. WEG stated they were prejudiced against, and people tended to think of it as losing their humanity.

in WEG as you took on more and more cybernetics it became harder to access the force. Anything more then one cybernetic point and you had to make a roll any time you wanted to use a force power or force point, and if you rolled below the number of cyber points you had (on a d6), you couldn't do it. I don't have the book right in front of me, so this is memory.

One thing WEG did do that I liked. Rather then having all cybernetics up an attribute by one, it could just up a skill. An eye module that gave you a targeting reticule and raise your shooting 1, or the like. It's a little less overpowering then raising a whole attribute.

As far as Canon goes, I'm not sure where SWTOR fits in, but they have cyborgs as a playable class in the game.

It's a question of how you look at it. My way of limiting cybernetics was to consider it a possible complication for organic beeings. On the one hand it boosts your stats, but on the other hand it must be maintained, like all technology, and you may encounter prejudices, etc. So I simply added 5 or more points of complication for the player, that when triggered result in malfunctioning or buggy cybernetics, etc. If the cyberware is well maintained, it may just be worth 5 points, but that brain-implant you bought from that Jawa? Droids need maintainance per se, so this shouldn't affect them in this way.

Droids don't seem to require maintenance - they have passive self-repair capability that is on par with the healing of biological beings.

Well, speaking in game mechanics - I certainly wouldn't suggest using maintanence as a regular complication for droid players, even though it might fit the bill for some. However, Droids DO need repair, if they are damaged, at least ruleswise. I'd say they require maintenance just like regular being require food and sleep. So I would consider droid PCs properly maintained, like I would consider organic PCs not starving by default. Therfore I'd consider cybernetic upgrades in droids properly maintained by default (except maybe if it was this thing you got from that Jawa, you know), whereas including cybernetic implants as complication for organics forces them to weigh the benefit of the implant versus the possible complications. I'd do this only for the real improvements and not the replacements, as this is simply intended to make cybernetic improvements something that impacts the character as a whole and not simply bestows a +1 attribute bonus or something.

This is Star Wars however, and technology tends to function very ***** in this universe, so this interpretation might not suit everybodies interpretation of the setting. I think it adds to the feeling of a quite gritty underworld setting, if technology needs to be constantly maintained.

We have no doctor in my game, so if a player wanted a cybernetic implant they will have to find an NPC doctor. Unless the PC is trying to replace a lost body part, no respectable doctor would be willing to remove a perfectly healthy part of the character's body to replace it with a cybernetically enhanced replacement. That sort of practice is probably done either by seedy disgraced docs or physician contracted by the imperial military. In that case, I would make an adventure out of it, and probably have the Player take on some obligation (which translates to more story). Of course, that's how I'll probably make it work in my game. If the PC lost a limb from a bad crit roll, that would change things drastically.

Very good points.

I don't feel it's very Star Wars-y to have PCs cybering up like Shadowrun characters.

"We are supposed to be shadowrunners, not armoured soldiers, so I don't allow armour. That keeps most characters pretty honest about the idea of being shot with blasters.

If it was good enough for Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia, etc it's good enough for us too."

That was your comment from the too much soak thread. So EotE is just enough Shadowrun for you to nix armor but not enough Shadowrun for cybernetics? LOL What?

Also...yeah. Cybernetics in Star Wars is not very Star Wars-y at all. Well unless you count Darth Malak , Shahan Alama , Rianna Saren , Grievous , Anakin Skywalker , Cad Bane , Darth Maul , Wolffe , Valin Draco , A'Sharad Hett , Trachta , Slak Sagar , Rosh Penin , Luke Skywalker , Qorl , Lumiya , Lauli Wahlo , Gavar Khai , Darth Plagueis , Lobot , Aurra Sing ...

And of course those species whose ENTIRE RACE either accepted or were all cyborgs like:

Abominor , Aruzan , Gank , Gorm , Iskalloni , Maccabree , Marasan , Silentium , Yaka ...

Yeah cybernetics in Star Wars is not Star Wars-y at all...

Also I'm seeing alot of posts where people are erroniously assuming a clunky tech universe based on a predated 1977 view of science fiction, and this simply isnt the case. People see R2 jacking into everything and think all computer access was terminal based. Wrong. Lobots implant allowed him to communicate remotely with the Cloud City computer. Lobot was almost like the Borg queen from Star Trek. If he thought it, Cloud City did it. Also, this proves Star Wars had WiFi or something better.

Also the seperatists developed a nano-virus to kill all Clone Troopers, which the Kaminoans later developed a nano based vaccine to cure. Star Wars had nanotechnology. Sorry guys but this universe is way more advanced then you are giving it credit for.

One last thing. A GM's primary goal in any campaign is to create a entertaining and memorable game in which his players are the stars. If your player wants Edward Scissorhand vibro axes to pop out of his arms then for gods sake give them to him if that makes him happy!

As far as cybernetics and game balance goes it is so very simple. If you get hit with Ion, your metal parts are disabled until repaired. As long as your player is aware and OK with this let him turn himself into ED-209 if he wants. Sure he can wrestle a Rancor but any rival Bounty Hunter worth his salt is going to bring a Ion pistol to the party and crowd control him for that entire encounter. There is no such thing as game inbalance if the GM knows what he is doing!

You used your first post as thread necromancy to pick a fight with me?

Wow, dude.

I think this is a case of different styles for different GMs/tables. clearly Maelora's players do not mind how she runs her game since they keep coming back and from the stories she has shared on these boards, they are having loads of fun.

Virtuoso82, you obviously feel different. The great thing about this hobby is that neither of you are wrong.

To approach your misgivings in a more general way. It's all about managing expectations. If you wanted to run a game that offers the experience of the original trilogy (which only 3 of those names cover*), you should discuss this with your player before pencil ever touches character sheet. When the GM pitches their house rules, game tone (which is was Maelora was going for), and tweaks to the world, the players can accept it and work within it, offer compromises, or simply walk away from the game. It's unfair and outright adversarial to tell another GM they are doing it wrong simply because she chose to ignore the massive load of garbage** Star Wars legends has become.

Finally, this community is pretty helpful and is willing to discuss opposing views, but it seems like you created an account just to necro a thread all because you wanted to show off your skillz by throwing a list of wookieepedia references at someone and claiming another poster (and one that's veteran on these boards) is losing at Star Wars. To that end, I recommend you examine your decision and consider what value it brought to the metaphorical table.

*one of which was just replacing a limb that offered no physical enhancement, another was more crippling to him (save for the original hand which was only a replacement) since he could not live without it, and the third had nearly all of its backstory/benefit outlined in Legends).

**There are gems within Star Wars Legends, but you have to sift through the refuse.

Rather than editing my original post I'll just do the much-hated double post.

It's true that it's a GMs job to make sure everyone is having fun. That also include herself as well. If a GM is not having fun because a game about smugglers and space wizards fighting an evil space wizard and his hoard of faceless minions has turned into something more in line with Warhammer 40K space marines. then she will have to address that. Her fun is just as important and legitimate as her players'.

Thanks kaosoe, eloquently argued.

I guess I could have explained why I have gone for a heavy anti-droid game with my players, but it didn't strike me as if he actually wanted to engage and debate the various genre concepts.

A subsequent panel shows a closeup of the Borg (Borg!) through the clear glass of his coffin. He's literally bilaterally divided between human flesh and droid body.

This was the January, 1978 issue of the comic.

Well, if you want an example of cybernetics and being a social pariah, you need look no further than Valance the Hunter:

The guy had a pretty healthy dose of self loathing because he had been left an abomination thanks to a rebel proton torpedo and had a mad on for destroying droids because of it. Rock solid story arc too - one of Archie Goodwin's best!

That's the reason (well, one of them) that I was never a big fan of Cyberpunk 2020. The only way to get ahead in that game was replacing all kinds of body parts for fun - and that's just not me. Mind you, the depressing game world and kludgy engine were also big strikes against it, too.

However, how many people on that list were voluntary? I don't have time to go through them all, but Lobot, Luke, Maul, Malak, Grievous, Lumiay, and Vader were all a matter of necessity and not necessarily a "Hey! This sounds like good idea!"

Also - 2013? Really?

Thanks Desslok.

Believe it or not, Valance the Hunter (always thought he was called 'Vance' and was kinda cute without all the cyberware) was one of the few things I remember from the comics as a girl. I recall he had a really badass death fighting Vader, and his whole emo thing about considering himself a monster was what prompted me to go this route in the first place.

I felt the whole AI thing never seemed to be really addressed in Star Wars, so thought it would be an interesting angle to accentuate, especially with a droid in the core party who has 'droid rights' as a motivation. (And no, I don't even use any penalties for cybernetics, beyond a huge social stigma. Droids are perfectly sentient and aware in my games - but they are treated as second-class citizens at best and unfeeling slaves at worst...)

(And yeah, in canon, Luke and Lobot didn't have a choice, and the likes of Grevious, Maul, Malak and Vader were clearly messed-up individuals. I'd always assumed this was a deliberate motif for Vader, telling the audience that there wasn't much of the original man left any longer...)

Talk about coincidence. A write-up was just released previewing cybernetics in Lords of Nal Hutta.

Hahaha, yeah, I just noticed!

The Gank are going to be considered completely monstrous in my game! It will make them very creepy foes.

Also I'm seeing alot of posts where people are erroniously assuming a clunky tech universe based on a predated 1977 view of science fiction, and this simply isnt the case. People see R2 jacking into everything and think all computer access was terminal based. Wrong. Lobots implant allowed him to communicate remotely with the Cloud City computer. Lobot was almost like the Borg queen from Star Trek. If he thought it, Cloud City did it. Also, this proves Star Wars had WiFi or something better.

Also the seperatists developed a nano-virus to kill all Clone Troopers, which the Kaminoans later developed a nano based vaccine to cure. Star Wars had nanotechnology. Sorry guys but this universe is way more advanced then you are giving it credit for.

One last thing. A GM's primary goal in any campaign is to create a entertaining and memorable game in which his players are the stars. If your player wants Edward Scissorhand vibro axes to pop out of his arms then for gods sake give them to him if that makes him happy!

As far as cybernetics and game balance goes it is so very simple. If you get hit with Ion, your metal parts are disabled until repaired. As long as your player is aware and OK with this let him turn himself into ED-209 if he wants. Sure he can wrestle a Rancor but any rival Bounty Hunter worth his salt is going to bring a Ion pistol to the party and crowd control him for that entire encounter. There is no such thing as game inbalance if the GM knows what he is doing!

There are rules already for Cybernetic Enhancements and Replacements that cover what and how many a PC can have (# = to Brawn rating). This number was likely decided on by the designers both for balance and setting and allows a Player to create a PC with a Brawn of five to be almost completely cybernetic.

However, each GM is going to have a different take of their story and can choose to limit or hand wave different things to support that story. In my games a PC can get whatever Cybernetic Enhancements are available or make sense within the setting, but I discourage Droid PCs. I do this for two reasons; first because I use NPC Droids to fill out the party if they are lacking a skill set they will need, or if a Player can't make it. Second is because Players who want to play a Droid generally want some version of a one dimensional weapon platform which invariably sees all challenges as a nail to be hammered down. I not into that kind of gaming.

I work in the creative industry and what I have found is that the clearer and more rigid the rules are (the Box) the more creative people have to be to solve the challenges presented. They can push on the Box and even bend it a bit but the enjoyment and satisfaction comes from overcoming the challenges with the tools at hand. A weak Box that bends and breaks too easily ("The Rule of Cool") diminishes the challenge and waters down the victory, easy = boring.

As far as running a game to just make people happy, well I'm not a camp counsellor or babysitter and overcoming challenges is fun for me, not coddling every whim. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a generation of helicopter parents that rounded every corner, padded every surface, gave in to whining, and discouraged hard work by rewarding failure. But I digress.

Well said, Greg.

I admit I feel the 'saying yes' thing is overdone in RPGs today. Maybe I'm old-school, but I really like it when players work within the setting rather than try to bring in concepts from outside it.

I'm lucky in that my players are used to my idiosyncrasies and we can usually work towards solutions. I laid the 'ground rules' early on so they knew what to expect and what not to expect. Sure, I changed a lot of fluff, but I explained my reasons and got agreement on it.

One of my 'design briefs' was that players had to stay within the parameters I had initially set. "You are not a Special Snowflake. You are not a Chosen One. You are not a Hobbit Wizard. You are not an elf made of cheese. You will be awesome, you are the stars of this movie, but you'll do it within the agreed rules."

Want to play a droid? Fine, as long as I feel you're trying to play 'humanity within the machine' as with Artoo or Threepio (or 'inhumanity' in the case of HK47...) Want to build a personality-free weapon-platform? Um, no, but they know I wouldn't permit that anyway, and I'm lucky that I play with people I know well.

As far as running a game to just make people happy, well I'm not a camp counsellor or babysitter and overcoming challenges is fun for me, not coddling every whim. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a generation of helicopter parents that rounded every corner, padded every surface, gave in to whining, and discouraged hard work by rewarding failure. But I digress.

Well, yes and no. No, you shouldn't coddle your players and make things easy. However you should make sure that they occasionally have the spotlight and are awesome. If someone had Freddy Kruger Cyberclaws and invested a great deal of time and resources into acquiring them and installing them, if it's central to the character and his concept, it's my duty as a GM to occasionally let that awesomeness shine.

THAT is what he means, I think, by making the players happy. Not give them the stars and the moon whenever they ask.

Desslok, I'm lucky in that regard that we have a completely insane campaign running alongside our usual game (which has been EoE/AOR for the last two years).

I inherited it in 2002 and I still run it today, and it has sort of become a repository for all the outrageous Rule-of-Cool stuff. About eight years ago, one of the players gave birth to a talking animal that granted unlimited wishes, somehow without upsetting the game balance (such as it was). And it's all played completely straight, not as a parody.

The plus side is that all the genuinely bananas creativity goes there , leaving our regular game relatively sensible and internally-consistent...

As far as running a game to just make people happy, well I'm not a camp counsellor or babysitter and overcoming challenges is fun for me, not coddling every whim. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a generation of helicopter parents that rounded every corner, padded every surface, gave in to whining, and discouraged hard work by rewarding failure. But I digress.

Well, yes and no. No, you shouldn't coddle your players and make things easy. However you should make sure that they occasionally have the spotlight and are awesome. If someone had Freddy Kruger Cyberclaws and invested a great deal of time and resources into acquiring them and installing them, if it's central to the character and his concept, it's my duty as a GM to occasionally let that awesomeness shine.

THAT is what he means, I think, by making the players happy. Not give them the stars and the moon whenever they ask.

Maybe, I did say I digressed a bit, but my duty to give a Player's PCs the opportunity to shine is not greater then the Player's duty to respect and play within the setting.

Additionally, if my setting precludes what a particular Player wants then maybe they have chosen the wrong game to be a part of.

Extensive cybernetic replacement could be represented by Obligation or Conflict, as the character struggles with their identity. Minor medical replacements (i.e. Luke's hand) would be a modest amount (5 Obligation or +1 Conflict per session until he narratively resolves that struggle by discovering that Vader is also cybernetic at Endor). Full-body rebuilds like Vader's or intentionally replacing an organic limb for enhancement would be much more.

Alternately, you could permanently lower their Strain threshhold by 1 for each enhancing replacement to represent the same thing without as much bookkeeping.

As far as running a game to just make people happy, well I'm not a camp counsellor or babysitter and overcoming challenges is fun for me, not coddling every whim. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up in a generation of helicopter parents that rounded every corner, padded every surface, gave in to whining, and discouraged hard work by rewarding failure. But I digress.

Well, yes and no. No, you shouldn't coddle your players and make things easy. However you should make sure that they occasionally have the spotlight and are awesome. If someone had Freddy Kruger Cyberclaws and invested a great deal of time and resources into acquiring them and installing them, if it's central to the character and his concept, it's my duty as a GM to occasionally let that awesomeness shine.

THAT is what he means, I think, by making the players happy. Not give them the stars and the moon whenever they ask.

That is exactly what I meant.

For the most part I agree with Maelora's ruling for her game, but I don't think it's reasonable to give obligation in Luke's case. The issue he had with his hand was that it was a constant reminder of his failure when confronting Darth Vader and a fear that he too is becoming his father. However, obligation would be an excellent way to handle cybernetics that may be viewed as outrageous.

Maybe, I did say I digressed a bit, but my duty to give a Player's PCs the opportunity to shine is not greater then the Player's duty to respect and play within the setting.

Additionally, if my setting precludes what a particular Player wants then maybe they have chosen the wrong game to be a part of.

Well, of course there has to be a balance between both. Both sides, GM and Players need to have a consensus on what the game is going to be from the start - are we all fighter jocks? Diplomats? Padawan in the Old Republic? - and then some coordination on the character archetypes. The players respect the "what are we playing", the GM promises to deliver a kick ass story with moments of awesome character moments - and everyone is cool.

Mind you, Freddy Kruger Cyberclaws guy probably would have never gotten off the drawing board in any of my games. But that's just me. . . .

the Administrator Of Cloud City Has An Enhancement, But That's A Rare Example.

I Remember Reading In One Of The Jedi counseling That It Is A Hard Choice To Willingly Chop Off One Of Your Working Limbs And Replace It With A Piece Of Metal. I Would Make A Discipline Check For My Players, Prob A Hard One.

lastly, Is The Matter Of Cost. on Page, 149, You Can See The Cost Of It For Rarity. And That's Just The Item. The Surgery Could And Should Cost Money A Good Amount. Then There's The Health Risks. As Was Mentioned Earlier, It Will Be Hard To Find A Dr Willing To Do It. So A Backroom Surgery.Infections, Risks Of Surgical Errors. What Could Have Given Them A Bonus Could Cost A Point instead

Thanks kaosoe, eloquently argued.

I guess I could have explained why I have gone for a heavy anti-droid game with my players, but it didn't strike me as if he actually wanted to engage and debate the various genre concepts.

I pointed out you contradicted yourself in multiple posts. I brought up facts about the numerous examples of cybernetics in the Star Wars universe to try to explain to you that it isn't as rare as stated. Its out there, everywhere you just have to look. I never mentioned anti droid sentiment anywhere, so I have no idea what this response is intended to convey.

Anyway I'm not trying to attack anyone and I know it was a 2 year old post, I just was confused about the individual viewpoints being expressed and decided to make an account to voice my own thoughts on the matter. At the end of the day if it works for your table and your players are happy, that's all that really matters.