Quote from: Christopher Brady;849263"Transhumanism is about how technology will change us for the better.  Cyberpunk is how it won't."

Oh! So I guess that's why there was a bit of an uproar when GURPS Transhuman Space used dark and moody art for some its books... people were assuming it was an optimistic setting... like the tech-faithful I see on Youtube talking about how they're going to live forever.
Bah!
My attraction to such settings has been how weird and creepy they can be... lots of opportunities for body-horror and culture shock. Eclipse Phase seems to appreciate that angle somewhat. If anything I see it as potentially darker than cyberpunk.

I haven't found a need for a whole specialized rules set.

The "settings" packaged along with that are no bigger draw for me. Turning to further watered-down imitation of already diluted imitation of great SF seems pointless when the originals are readily available (indeed more so).

I don't want The Rapture of the Nerds or Simak's City reduced to several hundred pages of numbers and algorithms.

I hold that transhumanism is what happens after cyberpunk.  Almost all the best cyberpunk stories have transhuman elements, but the characters are fundamentally human, and at the end of those best cp stories, the world is transformed.  That transformation is the demarkation line when all the proto-transhuman elements mature.

[As a post script to that thought: I am starting to ponder the idea that Posthumanism may be a sort of cyclical turn back to the themes of Cyberpunk in a Transhuman setting. Of course, that would mean a true Posthuman story would potentially end with a world changing evolution to something very like evolved Transhumanism... which we currently have no word for and possibly no means of directly imagining what it would look like!]

Of course, I seem to hold an unpopular or at the very least unique take on that subject.

So if you include proto-transhuman games, than Cyberpunk 2020 is boss, though I've found a few good competitors out there. Oddly, though I think it personally inferior, Shadowrun may be quite a bit closer to Transhuman themes than CP2020.


For pure Transhuman games, I really only have Eclipse Phase, and I think it misfired on a lot of the cultural stuff, possibly due to real-world political baggage and 'message fiction' ideas.  GURPS Transhuman Space had a great rep in its day, but I was left cold by it.

Now: While I dislike the mechanics, and they weren't really designed for it, I think Numenera and The Strange are doing yeoman's work on transhuman thought.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;849079What's your favorite transhuman (or posthuman) scifi rpg? And why?

Cyberpunk 2020 and Cybergeneration because they dealt with the technology in a way that makes sense to me.

Every time I see the word transhuman, I tune out. From one too many encounters with transhumanism True Believers, I think that the word actually refers to a religion of technology which has the Singularity as a Rapture in which all of the faithful will have their minds downloaded into a machine so that they don't have to be human anymore.

I tend to play transhuman SF games as slightly more advanced cyberpunk.

My favorite is definitely Eclipse Phase. The system is weird in places (how hard would it be to split ego/mental and morph/physical attributes?) but, whatever the author's politics, the setting combines political upheaval, apocalyptic urgency and alien horror in very gameable ways. It rather reminds me of a White Wolf game.

I also love how it gives transhuman SF lit the same treatment D&D gave classic fantasy, i.e. steals ideas from all over, from Altered Carbon's body-swapping to Revelation Space's unfathomable cosmic threat.

Quote from: Brand55;849092Definitely Nova Praxis for me. I don't care too much for FATE, but the Savage Worlds version is very good.

I'm not really familiar with Nova Praxis, but the existence of a Savage World version piques my interest. What's the setting like?

Quote from: jeff37923;849308Every time I see the word transhuman, I tune out. From one too many encounters with transhumanism True Believers, I think that the word actually refers to a religion of technology which has the Singularity as a Rapture in which all of the faithful will have their minds downloaded into a machine so that they don't have to be human anymore.

Yeah, ditto. On TBP in particular it's basically a Cult.

Eclipse Phase is the easy winner here.

It's a great kitchen sink for transhuman SF and the system is great at handling all of the diverse requirements of the transhuman genre in a streamlined fashion.

My only quibble would be that I wish it was a little easier to swap morphs seamlessly. But I don't think there's any system that actually handles that well: You either pretend that a person's body is mechanically irrelevant or you have to make a lot of niggling changes to your character sheet.

The setting (which you can use or not use at your leisure) is also great: It finds ways to mix the kitchen sink together that allow you to either isolate the transhuman bits you like or clash them together in interesting ways.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;849263"Transhumanism is about how technology will change us for the better.  Cyberpunk is how it won't."

That doesn't seem like an accurate description of transhuman fiction. Most of it is pretty drenched in the dystopic.

Quote from: The Butcher;849346I'm not really familiar with Nova Praxis, but the existence of a Savage World version piques my interest. What's the setting like?

I'll start by quoting the official description:

QuoteNova Praxis is...

...a tabletop role-playing game featuring the Savage Worlds Role-Playing Game System, tailored specifically for Nova Praxis.

...compatible with, but does not require, the Savage Worlds Science Fiction Companion.

...a relatively "hard sci-fi" setting that takes place during the aftermath of a short-lived technological singularity.

...an exploration of the tropes of transhuman sci-fi: mind uploading, resleeving, artificial intelligence, and augmentation.

...an exploration of the societal impacts of a reputation-based post-scarcity economy.

...a game in which players play characters who slip between the cracks of civilization and perform jobs their patrons would rather keep off the books.

...a setting full of conflict. The Houses wage a secret Shadow War against each other, purist and transhuman ideologies clash violently, and apostates rebel against the oppression of the Coalition government.

...home to railguns, powered armor, starships, security drones, bipedal combat frames, swarms of nanomachines, kill-sats, and the horrors of accelerated evolution gone wrong.

There was a singularity event followed by a world war that caused humanity to abandon Earth, which is now in the hands of a self-replicating technophage swarm. Basically, the machines control the Earth, though mostly they stay deep under the ocean because of all the kill-sats and warships that have quarantined the planet and blast anything they can.

Humanity had already spread beyond Earth before the planet had to be abandoned, and in the current setting there are colonies throughout the solar system as well as on several planets many light years away. More planets are likely to be discovered, so one of the possible alternate campaign ideas I tossed around involves the party as explorers trying to find or explore a new planet for one of the Houses that run everything. Speaking of Houses...

When humanity fled, governments collapsed and corporations started joining together to fill the role. Six Houses were formed and they run most everything in the new Coalition government that was organized. Living as a member of one of those Houses is great in some respects. Most common things can be had for practically nothing thanks to compilers that turn raw material into finished goods, so people can sit at home and 'default' if they want. They live a life of relative luxury and never have to work. Most people don't do that, though, since the economy is based on reputation. Certain items can't be compiled if your rep is too low, and lots of places won't let you in if you don't have the rep, either. So most people still work.

Not everyone likes this, though. A not-insignificant percentage of the remaining population consists of apostates, people who don't belong to the Houses. Some are still loyal to the old governments, while others aren't okay with the 24/7 monitoring and lack of privacy that comes with living in the Coalition. Apostates get by with a more traditional economy based on gold since they don't have compilers to give them all their needs on command. Their lives are certainly harder, but many think the freedom is worth it.

The Houses use apostates as well as Coalition citizens in something called the Shadow War. Few know of it, but it's basically Shadowrun in space. Scientists are kidnapped, important personnel bribed or killed, and installations are broken into and developing technologies stolen or sabotaged. Taking part in the Shadow War is sort of the default campaign style, but it's hardly the only one.

Technology has taken leaps forward, of course. Virtualities exist where people can live in VR, and some people even exist as sims and spend their entire lives in such places. Most people use augmented reality in their day-to-day lives just to function. Drones do much of the fighting when the military needs to kill something, though it's not uncommon to see marines in their frames (mechs) when drones won't get the job done.

Sleeves are a big part of the setting, with (IIRC) about 30% of the human population having undergone apotheosis (the process that allows humans to transfer their consciousness into different sleeves). That's another of the big ongoing conflicts in the setting since plenty of people don't agree with the idea of people changing bodies on a whim. Most of the old religions are still around, and new ones have shown up as well. I was happy to see one in particular that many believed since it put forth the idea that the soul wasn't tied to one body and would migrate to the new sleeve.

Hacking is not a thing. At least, not as it exists in most games. You can use a computer called a CIST to try hacking, but it's far more efficient to let a savant do it. Savants are basically techno wizards, able to hack computers and control nanite swarms, among other things. They are the only "magical" character type in the setting. This also means the hacking mini-game present in games like Shadowrun isn't an issue.

And I could go on. There's lot more to talk about like AIs, the various conspiracy things going on behind the scenes, sensies, and the Scholae Palatinae, but this post is already way too long.

Schismatrix was my favorite cyberpunk book back in the Wayback. Mid '80s and as its story progresses it introduces lots of transhumanist elements... so I can definitely see TH as a progression of cyberpunk.

The thought of SLA Industries with added transhumanist bits kinda makes me dizzy.

I am currently running a really great Blue Planet campaign, and due to this campaign, my current favorite SF setting, is logically Blue Planet. That love for this setting might change again with a next, even better campaign, but for now, BP is pretty much excatly what I want for the genre-
There is a strong transhuman element to the setting (at least as far as my understanding of transhumanism reaches, which is admittedly quite superficial), but the technology in this field focuses more on genetic manipulation and biological transformations than on classic cybertechnology (which exists, but is just not as relevant). Also, uplifted, sapient dolphins, orcas and other small whales. That always seem appropriate for this kind of setting.

What I like about Blue Planet is that the technology is not advanced to the level that makes it difficult to relate to the presented society and that the whole technology has just made a massive jump forward, including the discovery of an immortality treatment, while the consequences of the technology are not yet completely understood.

It is also one of the few science fiction games that understands how huge a planet is and that adds planetary exploration, colonisation and growing economic and political rivalries to the mix. This allows to combine the City (there is only one) with the Frontier and the Wilderness as equally legitimate playgrounds.

(also, the rules are simple enough to be accessible for pretty much anyone without being condescending and the character creation offers enough guidance to support the creation of appropriate and competent characters.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;849356That doesn't seem like an accurate description of transhuman fiction. Most of it is pretty drenched in the dystopic.

Then I would argue than most of it isn't truly Transhuman, but rather still tied to it's cyberpunk roots.  (Not making a definite claim here, just my perceptions.)  Because to me, Transhumanism is mostly about tone, I don't see how the tech assumption make it either/or.

What do you makes a transhuman setting different, then?  (Honest question, not looking for a right or wrong here, just want to know.)

Quote from: Spike;849287I hold that transhumanism is what happens after cyberpunk.  

I think this is true. I also read on reddit that Nova Praxis is about playing a transhuman character in a human society and Eclipse Phase is about playing a posthuman character in a transhuman society. So one step further. So you can say cyberpunk leads to transhumanism leads to posthumanism.

i quite like Mindjammer.  Curiously  I like the first Mindjammer book, which was way less complete, than the latter one. Just because the latter one made some definite moral statements about how the setting's transhumanist space empire worked that the first book left more ambiguous.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;849383I think this is true. I also read on reddit that Nova Praxis is about playing a transhuman character in a human society and Eclipse Phase is about playing a posthuman character in a transhuman society. So one step further. So you can say cyberpunk leads to transhumanism leads to posthumanism.

Posthuman sounds way cooler than transhuman.

Quote from: The Ent;850977Posthuman sounds way cooler than transhuman.

I mean posthuman as in playing a talking octopus or a swarm of nanobots. Transhuman are upgraded humans but still recognizable as humans. In Nova Praxis this is odd, because most humans are norms. In Eclipse Phase upgraded humans are the norm and the really weird ones are controversial. So the timeline moved on a little bit further in Eclipse Phase.

Anyway I think I should seperate cyberpunk from transhumanism. Cyberpunk seems to focus on external conflict. The megacorps are bad. Steal that vault, hack that databank, kill that NPC etc. Transhumanism is a bit more navelgazingly. Conflict is more internal. Do the benefits of genetics outweigh the drawbacks? It feels a bit White Wolfie to me. Very introspective. Interesting to make a book or movie about that subject, but not really RPG material for me.