Technological Terror

[glitterboy2098]

one thing you'd have to keep in mind is the tech level of BTS. a modern campaign (which seems to be the defualt), probably wouldn't see all that much in the way of sentient robots or killer AI's. those are still a bit out of our grasp and really fit better in a HU game.

some things that might fir the "technological terror" concept would be like:
genetic engineering: not ATB style, but things like super hounds or Jurassic park like cloning of ancient creatures. heck. cloning a human would count too.
ancient artifacts: we're used to the idea that ancient artifacts and ruins are magical, but what if their actually ancient machines that can do things our tech hasn't reached? (this is where i'd put sentient AI's and killer robots..)
test tube life: sort of a take on the frankenstein's monster theme, but where a scientist has managed to create some harmful life form from base chemicals. a good place for a "grey goo" scenario...
Organlegging: people are discovered with organs missing. players suspect some supernatural predator. turns out to be a bunch of crooks killing people to harvest organs and sell them on the black market. (sadly a real world problem)
HotB/evil 'scoobydoo' players are convinced some series of events is supernatural, but it turns out to be a mundane crime/hoax with nefarious goals.


"technological terror" should be the monkey wrench thrown at the players, the unexpected plot twist. BTS2 focuses so much on the supernatural, psionics, and magic, that throwing something with no or little connection to those would be a big challenge to players.

[glitterboy2098]

i wanted to include Steampunk, but i had trouble figuring out how one could make that a "technological terror" without going all cartoony. though i'd love to see a psitech who is a member of the steampunk subculture.

as for Ai's and robots, it's not that they can't exist, just that they need to be very rare. we could build portable energy weapons today (they'd just be so pointless compared to the more compact and efficent bullets...), and one could justify wierd electronics.

but it would be hard to justify a terminator, cylon, or Skynet. even if you allow for "secret histories" that enable the tech, the ramifications of the stuff throws the whole setting out of wack. a skynet smart AI would be hard to keep "in the shadows", as BTS adventures are. something that smart would be manipulating entire societies or governments. which edges into comic book heroism more than the dark and gritty investigative stuff of BTS.

[mrloucifer]

The most recent thing I can up with something between a mix of Stephen King's "Christina" and the theory of "The ghost in the machine".

I had it where a posessing entity had a unique ability never seen before where it could attach itself to electrical, mechanical objects and posess them. It loved causing accidents and mischief to the townsfolks, and when the PC's came to put an end ot it, it tried to run them over with an armored car. After the car was destroyed by the PC's, the entity was not one to be outdone... it found the only cellular phone tower in the small town and used its function against the players and the entire town where ANYTHING in the towers radius could be possessed and commanded.

So the PC's dealt with cars racing at them, electonic goods trying to electrocute them, their own technical devices failed to operate properly (and were in fact acting as tracking beacons to the PC's till they figured it out and disposed of them).

Eventually the Diviner in the group tracked it to its hideout (the cellular tower) and the gang busted it. The Medium in the group was able to vanquish the entity once it left the tower.

Now THAT was some techno fun to be had.

[mrloucifer]

i wanted to include Steampunk, but i had trouble figuring out how one could make that a "technological terror" without going all cartoony. though i'd love to see a psitech who is a member of the steampunk subculture.

as for Ai's and robots, it's not that they can't exist, just that they need to be very rare. we could build portable energy weapons today (they'd just be so pointless compared to the more compact and efficent bullets...), and one could justify wierd electronics.

First off, I do have an Psi- Mechanic NPC who's a plumber for his day job and ALWAYS includes pipes and steam valves and such into his designs. I dig the Steampunk theme as well.

Second as far as the AI/ Robots and automated machinery goes and such goes... using the term "Prototype" or alpha and beta models go a long way in coming up with odd stuff that not technically achievable with current technology.

[Lord Z]

The trick is finding ways of doing it which don't involve dumping a lot of new rules into the system.

I could see how the renegade artificial intelligence could work with minimal conversions. If the A.I. had access to nanite technologically, that would justify using the possession and witch pact rules. A.R.C.H.I.E. From Rifts Sourcebook 1 is already given stats, but he's about a sneaky as a fire alarm. The HALO novels have much more interesting A.I.s.

Much of the “Cyberjacking Across the Megaverse” article by Wayne Breaux in Rifter #2 could be incorporated into BtS. The Traditional Hacker O.C.C. is already built for BtS, and the Cybermancer O.C.C. seems like a good fit even though it was intended for Nightbane; if you don't mind player characters trading spells in chat groups. Energy life forms and demons based on the astral creatures could live inside networks and virtual worlds as viruses or bugs. I would give gremlins the power to project themselves into electrical systems and computers like a Systems Failure Bug. Gremlins are way underused.

How about chemical terrors? Designer drugs which warp the bodies and minds of users should fit into the BtS setting well. First, there are the Juicer-Wannabe drugs in Juicer Uprising. Even better, the “Brain Fry” article by David Haendler in Rifter #15 also fits well. It's about a street gang which has developed drugs that grant or boost psychic powers.

Not as many ideas are coming to me because I don't find technology particularly horrific. Even Frankenstein was as sci-fantasy. If you combine horror elements with sci-fi, you usually get a pulp adventure along the lines of Disney's Atlantis. The alien ship at the bottom of the swamp could work if it were run like Tommyknockers with emphasis on the radiation-like effects instead of the ship itself. An even better example would be the manga comic series, Spriggan in which a teenage superspy traveled the world to keep religious relics like crystal skulls and Noah's ark (which were actually alien artifacts) from the fourth reich; that series hit every expected trope & stereotype but did it very well.

Mutant animals escaping a lab and flourishing in wild? It already happened – that is how killer bees were developed, and it wasn't really so bad. Jurassic Park or Ancestor would work as a template, but the downside is that the more SN oriented characters like Ghost Hunters would find their effectiveness cut drastically which can be frustrating to players.

I'm definitely not one of the objectors to human augmentation. Find one of those guys – one of the skeptics who calls Professor Warwick of Reading U. a crackpot or pseudo-scientist – one of those guys could paint technological nightmare scenarios much better than me.

P.S. GB, I love your organlegging hook. It could make for a particularly grissly street-level gritty game of cops & robbers with a slight BtS twist. Could you write that up as a short newspaper story for the new After Midnight project?

P.S.S. Human cloning doesn't rub me as being automatically horrific the way that it does some people. See two paragraphs above. However, the audio novel series, Seventh Son, played up this theme is a horrific way. The main characters were clones but didn't know it because they had been raised separately -- until they were all kidnapped by a secret government agency to track down the original gene-doner after he went terrorist. There is a lot of good near-current tech in that series.

[glitterboy2098]

it seems to me that "technological horror" shouldn't be "technology that is horrorfying" but "technology used in a horrorfying manner"

human cloning, for example, isn't all that scary in itself. but a person cloning humans for a purpose that causes horror? very much scary.

P.S. GB, I love your organlegging hook. It could make for a particularly grissly street-level gritty game of cops & robbers with a slight BtS twist. Could you write that up as a short newspaper story for the new After Midnight project?

i'll see what i can do, no promises. the term 'organlegging' i borrowed from Larry Niven's Knownspace, where "organ banks" exist. organ banks were a government funded transplant source where convicts were broken down for spare parts. this eventually resulting in every crime getting the death penalty. (even shoplifting and jaywalking...) unfortunately this wasn't enough, since transplants could be used to extend the human lifespan, which meant the demand was always higher than supply. thus fueling a underground market in illegally obtained organs...

oohh...that might be a neat gimmick for the BTS plot. the group has connections to "immortals", people who have learned old medical secrets that allow them to replace their bodies piece by peice to stay young and live unnatural lifepspans...thus explaining why the organlegging is going on...

[Lord Z]

That would be one heck of an adventure hook: Link-a-billy!

[Beatmeclever]

So, I just found this on the AtB forum. I think it could lead to plenty of Technological Horrors if you try.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090309104434.htm

[Lord Z]

I can see the ribosome story being related to a Parasite Eve-inspired adventure. Ultimately, however, artificial ribosomes aren't needed in that type of a game. Ribosomes, as I understand them, create proteins using instructions from RNA. Along the PE line, maybe a mutant strain of RNA evolved alongside humans but remained dormant because it could not produce its own proteins. Only when this mutant strain encountered the artificial ribosomes could it create proteins and seize control of a host's body. If the possessed host can rob a few different research labs and steal enough equipment, it can create a body for itself in the form of a plague-germ and eventually a multi-celled organism.

Similarly, there might be some applications in a Dead Reign game as a cause of the zombification. It would, however, be part of the backstory.

Here's the rub. Mutant RNA or mutant proteins are all of the special effects you need to run that type of a game, and the players are easily willing to suspend that much disbelief without artificial ribosomes. Either way, you still don't actually need the ribosomes from a storytelling perspective.

[ronekiln]

Imagine the playing groups shock when they finally hunt down the mutant monster they think is a supernatural creature, kill it, and it doesn't break down. They're finally left standing with proof of the supernatural. They'll finally be believed and respected. They can finally go public without being thought insane. They have a body! Then they are informed they're responsible for killing an extremely expensive lab experiment and are being sued millions for it's destruction. The media portrays them as gullible fools for believing the "hybrid military guard dog" was some sort of hell hound from myth (or whatever other mutant creature you come up with), and they're left a laughing stock and in court.

Or to cover up the thing escaping, the group is accused of stealing it in the first place and are believed by authorities to be at fault for it getting loose and killing people in the first place.

Even after the judge throws the case out, they'll still be horrified at what their characters went through.

[Lord Z]

If the players were to achieve something incredible and get really jaded about it, I would consider doing this. Otherwise, it seems like too much of a no win situation. It's a darn sneaky suggestion, ronekiln.