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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tuft" data-source="post: 4620188" data-attributes="member: 60045">There are two major reasons for me not to play techie PCs while being someone with a tech-oriented background and work myself.1) My work is one of the things I want escape from while engaging in this kind of escapist activity. Deadlines, indeterminate bug hunts, frustrations, stress... you dont want to bring those with you, and they are firmy tied to the very notion of computer work in my mind. 2) Many worlds, rule sets and splat books simply don't survive applying the tech mindset. E.g. playing Shadowrun, I noted that:  (A) There are cameras small enough to put into cybereyes.   (B) My character has a data jack that can recieve live video.So I went to my Game Master and told him that I wanted to put such a camera on the barrel of my gun and hook it up to my data jack, so that I could snipe around corners with impunity. The GM turned almost white, and told me that if I ever mentioned that at the gaming table I would immediately be thrown out of the campaign, as my little (to me obvious) invention would absolutely ruin each and every firefight of the campaign. A second such Shadowrun incident was wanting to correct the obvious design flaws of the Safe House with the controlling electronics for the MagLocks on the outside of the doors - I wanted to move them to the inside, where they would be safe from tampering... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The one example that I did not bring to the GM's attention was questioning the validity of the CyberZombies that the opposition employed. Shadowrun CyberZombies were people so cybered that their bodies almost literally fell apart - after being  cybered and magicked above the medical limits of the game at a ridiculous expense (think jet fighter prices), they developed rapid cancers, mental disorders, fugue states, went into comas, lasting for a very short period before dying and rendering all that expense worthless. At the same time, there existed "rigging sets" in the game that allowed you to remote-control a vehicle with full sensory feedback, making it feel as if it was your body. So, why not leave out the problem-ridden, certain-to-die meat part of the CyberZombie, and just bolt the cyber parts together, and run the result through such a rigging set at a fraction of the price, as (1) you did not need to special-adapt the cyber to the meat at a x7 or more cost multiple, and (2) no expensive magic rituals were needed?Much simpler to play a character where you can pretend to know nothing of such stuff.</blockquote>

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