Re: [HOE] Cyborg question

[<dl@Fomalhaut.mmcc.monash.edu.au>]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Hank Woolsey wrote:

> matt@severian.chi.il.us wrote:
> 
> Okay - I have a question for all you Marshals out there (and I don't 
> want this to look like I'm picking on Matt - I've seen this 
> frequently and finally had to ask).
> 
> How many of you let a players _choose_ to be a cyborg?  Why?
> 

I don't think I'd let my players choose to start out as heavy 'borgs.
An infiltrator maybe, but not until they know a little more about cyborgs 
in general.

What I _am_ doing on the other hand is being terribly cruel to one of my
players by attempting get her to want to be a cyborg*.

The character in question is a young English woman who came to America
with her brother(NPC) when he decided to flee the family debt. The brother
went out west to mine ghostrock and she became a teacher/nanny for young
children on a ranch. Hellstromme industries purchased the company that the
family owed money to and caught up with the brother. 
<Enter the other PCs and give her reason to participate in the Road to
Hell trilogy.>
A few adventures down the track she becomes harrowed (after attempting to
remove a prarie tick with a kitchen knife, luckily the other players
intervened in time and she didn't realise she'd actually killed herself).
She slowly comes to realise she's undead. (finally comes to accept it when
Jackie Wells keeps killing her to prove the point)  
She slowly comes to realise that the reason that the Automaton that
Hellstromme has assigned to assist them acts differently towards her is
because it is her brother. (Actually the character goes into denial, the
player just hits me a lot and tells me that I'm evil :)
She then chooses to escape into the future with her brother, to get him
away from Hellstromme.
Now I've upped the ante on the Manitou by having it take over more often,
and do far more annoying things while it's in charge.
I'm hoping, as they find out more about Cyborgs, that she'll begin to look
at it as a way to free herself from the influence of the manitou, and only
realise after she has chosen to become a borg that she is now trapped in a
three way struggle for control. <evil laugh to fade>

-- Tim

 
*(Yes, yes, I know they don't do that any more, but given the engineering
skills of one of the PCs, the spare parts from a cyborg that they killed,
and the help of an NPC, it should be possible...)