Like Rats In A Maze

I've been a fan of the Cube movies and the Portal games for a time and now I'm wondering how I would go about recreating the puzzle mechanic in a tabletop role playing game environment.

It's one thing to have visual cues to go off of while stuck in a seemingly impossible puzzle room, but when the majority a tRPG is verbal, it's not that easy to make a trapped puzzle room that a player, or their character will be able to solve without giving away the solution in the description or continuously repeating the descriptions to your players.

I suppose I could take the route of the old text based adventure games like Zork where I give a general description of the room and then give the clues as the character(s) examine various portions of the room.

d20 games takes this to task with the Spot, Search, and Listen skills. Skills that do not have a relative parallel in Palladium games. The closest that you could come is that in some games characters may have heightened senses, or super vision powers; but nothing to roll them against for successfully spotting the clue to solving a portion of a puzzle or circumventing a trap. The GM can always have the player(s) make an arbitrary roll against a target with a modifier taking into effect their special abilities.

My ultimate goal in this is to create a testing facility run by Doctor Feral, and used to test different mutants (human and animal), and run it at the next a future Palladium Open House.

[IN THE NEWS] Uplift

So this happened... Scientists were able to make some monkeys smarter by implanting a neuroprosthesis (an array of electrodes) in their cerebral cortex.  This was part of a study to find a way to "facilitate and/or recover the cognitive function when such circumstances impair appropriate decision making."  In other words, this brain implant could fix your brain after a stroke or dementia.

The interesting side effect that they found was that it was also able to IMPROVE the cognition of the test subjects.  Outside of testing scales, that probably didn't mean all that much of an improvement - the monkeys probably didn't start reading Hamlet or playing chess.  However, the implication is still there that we stand at the doorway of Uplifting animal intelligence from that of the common domestic and feral beast to that of the common and bestial human.

The question is should we?  From the point of being able to improve primate cognition through medical brain implants, you find yourself looking at a "Flowers for Algernon" situation with a non-permanent improvement, and not a "Planet of the Apes" situation where the change was genetic and permanent.  Since we would be able to deactivate this implant, we would remain in control.  So the danger of revolution is minimal.

I don't question the ethics of changing the cognition of a primate from the stand point of "do we have the right?" either, isn't it the responsibility of one being to help his brother.  However, this could lead one to ask, is this cognitive enhancement an improvement?  Would we be "helping" them?  Are they better off as they are? Are they happier?

No, I would ask should we from the standpoint of, are we ready?  Ready to take on the responsibility.  We have a hard enough time with just one sapient species on the planet, and becoming the parent to a new species is a great responsibility - not to be taken lightly.

Once you uplift a species, you can't just kick them out of the garden and say, "good luck out there", expect them to get a 9-to-5 job, and become a productive member of society.  Nor do we want to "improve" a species just to make them smarter pets or slave labor.  We've been down that road before and should have learned better by now.

No, I don't think we are ready to "improve" another species until we can improve ourselves.

[source]
Journal of Neural Engineering
io9: Scientists make monkeys smarter using brain implants
io9: Should we upgrade the intelligence of animals

Pre-AtB Adventure: Ashes to Ashes

Here is a pitch I am making for a group for a Heroes Unlimited/pre-After the Bomb campaign.  I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Campaign Title: Ashes to Ashes

Game System: Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition

Setting & Synopsis: The year is 2082 and the world is once again seeing the light following nearly half a century of a dark economic turmoil.  Technology and the Bio-Sciences are seen as the catalysts that helped raise society from the ashes and usher in a new golden age of prosperity.  With these advanced tools life spans have increased, the human condition has improved, diseases are nearly a thing of the past, we have created footholds in orbit, on the moon and on Mars, and we have finally been able to bring new forms of life into the world.

But all is not peaceful in the world: there are warlords, corporations, PMCs and rouge states in the world that did not fair as well or rejected the assistance of others during the rough road to recovery, and now strike out at the rest of the world.

You would take on the role as members of a small unaligned PMC that you have built for yourselves.  Who's side you take is up to you.