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.

Life In Space

Back in 1988, the Mutants In Orbit supplement opened up the "Final Frontier" to the After the Bomb setting, and while the thought of living on a space station can, and has been romanticized with visions of Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, Stanford Torus Rings, and other shaped habitats where we recreate Terran eco-systems to give the illusion that we are still living on Earth.

The problem with this is where do you get all that dirt and rock for the infrastructure, not to mentions all the materials and alloys needed to build the superstructure? You can't take it from Earth, since it's most likely still needed there. Water can be harvested from comets and other areas in the solar system, but fertile arable soil is not a common resource in our solar system.

Still, by the time we need to seriously consider constructing these types of space habitats, we might have the ability to create large quantities of arable soil.

Carousel Space Habitat


Ringworld


Stanford Torus Ring


Stanford Torus Ring (Space Habitat by Uzi Berko)


Eric Bruneton Space Station


Island One Space Station

Are Cyborgs the Future of Humanity?

Is the next step in human evolution cyborgs? Very doubtful, economically speaking it's just a really big stretch. I'd place my money on genetic enhancements trumping cybernetics, though I don't doubt cybernetic enhancements may find a short lived niche, somewhere.

The main drawback of cybernetics would be upkeep and upgrades. At the pace technological evolution is at currently, you have to change your computers and cell phones every few months to keep up with the latest advances. Would you be willing to go in and have your cybernetics upgraded as often?

Imagine the cost.

Also, cybernetic augmentations would not carry over through reproduction. So you'll have to budget each child's cybernetics.

Nanotechnology might simplify the installation and upkeep processes, but it would still be unpleasant and costly.

Biological and genetic engineering is most likely the road humanity will decide to follow if they decide to take control of their evolutionary path. The biggest benefit would be if the changes were such that they could be passed from parent to child. However, there's no saying if the parents upgrades would be compatible or cause some unforeseen mutations in the offspring.

In the end, you have to ask yourself, would it be worth it?

[UPDATE]
This article was originally written in 2009, and since then we haven't seen much public motion in the area of human cybernetic implants - though there are quite a few more wearable computers (smart phones) on the market today; but there are still those who are continuing to play with and develop the technology.

One of the pioneers in this area, Steve Mann (the father of wearable computing), was recently accosted by a group of men in a Parisian McDonalds [link] who took issue with his cybernetically attached "Digital Eye Glass" and tried to physically remove it from his head:

He angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools.

I tried to calm him down and I showed him the letter from my doctor and the documentation I had brought with me.

Read More at HuffPost.com

Below is a video from 2010 where Steve Mann talks about his EyeTap technology :