Transhumanism in your games


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Sovereign Court

How do you approach it?


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*bangs head against the wall*

Once! Just once I wanna click on the page and see a thread on making Train people!

Just once!

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?

About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't.

Sovereign Court

LazarX wrote:
Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?
About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't.

I'm sorry what?


erm ... are we talking "transgender" or "transformed" humans? Very different topics.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Hama wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?
About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't.
I'm sorry what?

I generally consider Transhumanism a fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point.

It's also kind of ironic that science has killed the concept of a mind separate from the brain as mainly a religious artifact, that transhumanists have revived it without any real scientific basis for doing so, only the same primitive fear of dying.


Like most things, it can be a great plotline and plothook - the potential for a more techy character to achieve a form of immortality, of an alternative way for a bad guy to end up being 'eternal' beyond the usual 'I'm a Lich now!' trick.

It takes a little finesse and technobabble to make it work out, though.

And you need to think of a different term if you're playing in a typical fantasy setting or something close, 'cos Dwarfs aren't going to be transhuman for any amount of shaving.

Sovereign Court

Turin the Mad wrote:
erm ... are we talking "transgender" or "transformed" humans? Very different topics.

As in transformed humans. Becoming more than human.

LazarX wrote:

I generally consider Transhumanism a fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point.

It's also kind of ironic that science has killed the concept of a mind separate from the brain as mainly a religious artifact, that transhumanists have revived it without any real scientific basis for doing so, only the same primitive fear of dying.

I think you're going a little overboard with that. After all there are levels of transhumanism. From technological augmentation of physical selves to uploading to a computer to a singluarity.

When I say transhumanism I usually mean technological enhancements to the human body and how humanity treats them.

JohnGarrett wrote:

Like most things, it can be a great plotline and plothook - the potential for a more techy character to achieve a form of immortality, of an alternative way for a bad guy to end up being 'eternal' beyond the usual 'I'm a Lich now!' trick.

It takes a little finesse and technobabble to make it work out, though.

And you need to think of a different term if you're playing in a typical fantasy setting or something close, 'cos Dwarfs aren't going to be transhuman for any amount of shaving.

It's a catchall term. Transhumanoidism if it makes you feel better about it. But I'm not necessarily talking about achieving immortality. There is a ways to go before achieving it that is very interesting to explore.


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Man where's Mikaze and his Distant Worlds erotic fan fiction when you need it :-)


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LazarX wrote:
Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?
About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't.

Oh I got the joke! It's funny and thought provoking because...no.

Anyway, it depends on the game. Transhumanism plays more roles in media than most people realize, since at its core its all about fundamentally altering the human condition. Not necessarily into something unrecognizably human---that's posthuman---but providing augmentations, whether they be physical or mental, technological or magical, to improve humans or human-esque races.

Any sci-fi game I run is bound to have some elements of transhumanism in it but I don't really tend to bring them up unless they become crucial to the plot or one of the players wants to explore those themes.

High or heroic fantasy games, particularly Pathfinder, tend to have a lot more of those themes than they let on, such as sorcerers and a few others, so I don't really bring up that term because it's pretty much already there.


All machines must break down - "A Song of Lubrication and Regularly Scheduled Maintenance" volume IX, "The Game of Bearing replacements"


Just wanted to be clear, Hama. :)

For me I cannot avoid saying "it depends", whichever side of the screen I'm on.

Some BBEGs/PCs are all about transforming themselves. Genre largely dictates the methods and 'side effects'. RotRL features extensive examples of this throughout the campaign in a medium-high fantasy setting.

Other times, it's not a thought, or transformation is bypassed directly into 'posthumanism'.


Would...

Spoilers for Rise of the Runelords:
...Nualia trying to turn into a demon count as transhumanism?

Dark Archive

I steal a term that Faux, a super mutant from the Fallout 3 vidogame prefers to use over super mutant, meta human. I like to play alchemists with discoveries: vestigial arm(x2), tentacle, forgot the name of the discovery that let's you self heal, even when unconscious, can be taken twice.

So.wine told me Marvel has a copyright or trademark or something about mutant so DC.uses meta human.


...seriously? They have a copyright on the word mutant? How?!

Dark Archive

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D&D's been soaking in it for decades. I think I first noticed it in the Rogue's Gallery, where a character named Erac's Cousin (because he didn't give out his own name) had made a deal that after he died his soul would skip the normal infernal queue and progress straight to Horned Devil.

Some people use the clone spell. Some skip being dead by becoming undead (voluntarily or otherwise). Others magic jar into new bodies. Some reincarnate into new bodies (sometimes of completely new species). Others die, but their immortal spirits go off into the planes and become something different, that may or may not retain memories of their mortal lives.

In many of these cases, the transhumanish questions of 'is the clone that says it's me actually me?' remain muddled.

Becoming undead, for instance, often results in your HD, alignment and mental attributes completely changing. A 1 HD CG Cleric of Shelyn with an 8 Intelligence being killed by a Specter turns into an 8 HD LE hate filled monstrosity with a 14 Intelligence! It doesn't seem terribly intuitive to say that that Spectre *is* the former Cleric of Shelyn, even if it looks like her, because it's just ridiculously dissimilar in every way. Same with an 18 Intelligence, 8 Charisma NG 8th level Wizard becoming a Wight and gaining six points of charisma, losing 8 levels of wizard (and gaining 4 HD) and losing seven points of intelligence, as well as changing alignment and personality. Bob the Wizard has left the building, seems like.

Does a petitioner really count as 'you' if it's also lost all of your class levels, racial attributes and even *memories* of your mortal existence? That petitioner, whether it's a floppy bunny in Elysium or a person-headed maggot in Hell, might as well be a set of decorative windchimes carved from your finger bones, for all that it's 'you,' in any meaningful sense of the word. Yeah, it's made out of you, but it's not a continuation of your existence, and is actually significantly less 'you' than a recording of Marvin Minsky's brain in a computer would be Minsky.

Wonkier transhumanist stuff, like extreme body modification, is also a trope of the game, with gamers having explored altering their characters bodies with polymorph magic, to gain various benefits (form of... a war troll! shape of... a planetar!). That sort of transhumanism, where the person stretches the boundaries of what sort of physiology can be considered 'human,' has been going on since 1st edition.

Thanks to polymorph any object having a permanent duration option, it's eventually possible to do an Extreme Race Makeover and redefine your species entirely.


Yeah, but I believe it only applies to the word being used in movies not comic books or video games.


Icyshadow wrote:

Would...

** spoiler omitted **

Yes. :)


Though if a non-human was seeking a higher state of being via transformation, would it still be transhumanism?

Dark Archive

Icyshadow wrote:
Though if a non-human was seeking a higher state of being via transformation, would it still be transhumanism?

Just call it 'transcendence' I guess, so it applies even if the transcender is a dwarf or elf or dragon or gibbering mouther.


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LazarX wrote:
Hama wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?
About as much as I approach other forms of masturbation. In other words, I don't.
I'm sorry what?

I generally consider Transhumanism a fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point.

It's also kind of ironic that science has killed the concept of a mind separate from the brain as mainly a religious artifact, that transhumanists have revived it without any real scientific basis for doing so, only the same primitive fear of dying.

Given current developments in a range of areas such a nanotechnology, cloning and extreme life extension, I think it is more that a little unfair to call interest in functional immortality a "fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point." We have experimental gene therapy treatments which demonstrably double the lifespan of mice, and if we can find a way to take that and apply it to humans with similar effect, that is a game changer. While the prospect for seeing printed replacement clone organs within my life-time, let alone my childrens, is very good.

I don't think wanting to enjoy a long and happy life, free from suffering and imparement is "masturbation."


Hama wrote:
How do you approach it?

I have on and off, been working on developing some interesting fantasy societies which draw on various elements of transhumanism and connected ideas.

What does a post scarcity economy in a fantasy world look like for instance?

What does a community that has achieved functional immortality look like.

What does a magical society that takes privacy and individual liberty really seriously actually look like?

I haven't gotten very far with any of them, but it is very interesting.

Silver Crusade

I've never strictly applied it in a fantasy setting.

In sci-fi settings, I tend to portray the gradual lack of humanity that comes from those who tear and sunder their own bodies and minds hunting for the horizon of 'the new man.'

I always have Weston and Ransom in the back of my mind when transhumanism stuff comes up.

Weston's loyal not to man's form (which he views as utterly changeable) nor to man's mind (which he believes must be changed to 'evolve.') Folks like Dr. Weston have no true love of humanity, and this path leads inexorably to becoming monsters. They've thrown aside real things for false things.

Essentially, I tend to portray transhumanist and methuselahization specialists as guys who throw the baby out with the bath water, abandoning greater goods for smaller ones. Men stop mattering instead for "mankind," but "mankind" is a fungible thing to them, they care not for its art, nor its thoughts or loves, only that on some benighted hellscape of a world some mindless atrocity of a thing raises its appendages against the night and claims the moniker of "human."

I think there's a good quote for that..

G.K. Chesterton from Chapter 7 of Orthodoxy wrote:
Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor port. He said, 'beyond good and evil,' because he had not the courage to say, 'more good than good and evil,' or, 'more evil than good and evil.' Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, 'the purer man,' or 'the happier man,' or 'the sadder man,' for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says 'the upper man.' or 'over man,' a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce."


Chimerization I've seen as a strong characteristic of transcendance, acquiring traits from creatures/species deemed superior to one's own.

Just in Case:
Jurassic World's "BBHM" (Big Bad Hungry Monster) is a chimeric creature (hybrid of several species' DNA for desirable traits).


I do have a serious comment here, isn't transhumanism specifically about the idea of using technology to enhance human beings.

I'm not sure it's appropriate to use magic and still call it transhumanism, though there is probably a word that can be applied that has the same basic meaning without the technological specific connotations.


It is, but there is no reason you cannot explore the same themes as are explored in h+ SF, in a high magic setting.


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Also, never forget Clarke's old saw about any sufficiently advanced technology . . .


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

There's the transhumanism movement, which is all about that tech. However, the word itself can exist and be thought up without the influence of that movement - one of the problems with language and concept appropriation. Taking the OP's question as the general concept, not the movement, that's what every person who makes deals with angels and demons are to me. And Liches, intentional undeath (make me a vampire!111!!) or even unintentional undeath in general, clones, polymorphism, druids, worms who walk... I consider all of those valid. Sometimes it's a BBEG whose transcendence will spell trouble (Raistlin ascending to godhood), sometimes it's a PCs goal (Raistlin ascending to godhood), sometimes it's a reward, sometimes it's a curse. I handle it however makes a good story and interests the players.

Heck, in these terms the Starstone IS a post-technological singularity.


Even with transhumanism being more apt for an approach of transmortalism, I'm intrigued by the concept if only for the ways I've wanted to run some games...and with newer tools coming out from both Paizo and 3pp, I've wanted to revisit a game I did in DragonStar that I sorta want to revisit with material that is not OGL, but that I would want to unofficially convert for sake of keeping with the hybrid of concepts I wanted to mess about with.

TL;DR Tekkaman Blade as done by classic gem dragons using their transformed molt-hide gems to create Aegis armies, where the method of preparations determines if the implanted host gains simply the potential to grow in the class, or essentially converts their existing class levels directly to Aegis levels. the difference essentially comes down to the potential levels being tied to the hit dice of the dragon at that point in molt, the gem raw materials being preparable to allocate levels based on how much is used - a 15 HD amethyst dragon, for example, produces a molt-gem that is 15 levels of potential aegis levels, that could be broken down to 15 shards to give people 1 level each in aegis with the potential for growth, or a single person 15 levels in Aegis by converting existing levels in a class to Aegis levels, or possibly giving someone a 15 level lead-up, but all experience gained goes to paying off the front-loaded investiture, or something like that.

The idea was that for some dragons in the DragonStar setting, it would be a rather sneaky way of preventing aging; the normally associated growth in power after a molt would be channelled back into the resulting gem, and by the time they're ready to do so again, it's the same amount of time to reach that next step up in growth. It's also a great way to take one's own power and invest in an army of extremely loyal followers tied to you by a piece of your own essence.

And it makes for fun ways to add dragon bloodlines into other races with a side of potential for sorcery AND psionics down the line.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Zombieneighbours wrote:

Given current developments in a range of areas such a nanotechnology, cloning and extreme life extension, I think it is more that a little unfair to call interest in functional immortality a "fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point." We have experimental gene therapy treatments which demonstrably double the lifespan of mice, and if we can find a way to take that and apply it to humans with similar effect, that is a game changer. While the prospect for seeing printed replacement clone organs within my life-time, let alone my childrens, is very good.

I don't think wanting to enjoy a long and happy life, free from suffering and imparement is "masturbation."

Cloning isn't as far along as you think. While we have the physical success of Dolly and the like what we're finding out is that cloning introduces a ton of errors into the genetic sequence, which has the usual consequences. There's also the ethical issue when you realise that to get Dolly, they had to abort hundreds of non-viable failures.

But the more serious threat is life-extension and potential immortality. The only thing that made the rich tolerable was the fact that death made them equal to us. Immortality would give us eternal domination from ogliarchs that would only get more powerful over time. I can not imagine a greater long term threat to democracy.

Death is how we make room for those who come after us.


I think my concerns about the idea in real life fall along many of the same lines, though I wouldn’t characterize the impulse quite so … vividly, perhaps, or so harshly.

In game, though, I suppose de facto it’s kind of assumed, especially with some of the possibilities Pathfinder allows. In general, since all of my characters are spellcasters of one sort or another, most of them have some idea or other of arranging for a clone or reincarnate spell or the like eventually. I’ve also thought the old Brightness Seeker prestige class had interesting possibilities for elves, in particular. Less finally, I’ve always imagined that at a certain point most people would find a use for permanency spells, and some might be tempted by various grafts and the like; I think in 3.5 there were even rules for construct-style prostheses, and in Pathfinder transmuters can just swap out an enhancement to one of their physical ability scores every time they prepare spells, that otherwise lasts indefinitely.

I think part of the reason I don’t fret about it in game is that my games tend to be more casual, and it would bother me too much in general if I thought about what even mid-level PCs are doing with all the loot they’re carrying around when there are still commoners basically clawing vegetables out of the ground with their hands. Thinking about “last things” again, I tend to run the Outer Planes as infinite, so even if everyone ever retired to Elysium there would be room for everyone to have fun for the rest of all time. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that wizards and such couldn’t be nicer about it. Maybe I should have a character who deals in clone and plane shift scrolls at cost in her free time?


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What makes us people is not our biological flaws. The shackles we were born with are not holy nor sacred. "All things must end!" is a shout of surrender.

So there is no need for that detect evil spell, I am one of those good liches!

Dark Archive

Rhedyn wrote:

What makes us people is not our biological flaws. The shackles we were born with are not holy nor sacred. "All things must end!" is a shout of surrender.

So there is no need for that detect evil spell, I am one of those good liches!

Our flaws are fundamental part of what makes us what we are.

Good lich indeed! Anyone who falls for that, I've got a temple in Absalom to sell them.

Liberty's Edge

That's a cute cliche, but there is no difference in kind between life extension or cleaning or genetics up and glasses, replacement joints, coronary surgery or any other medical procedure.

Death is a disease like any other.


Death of the soul has already fallen to me. All souls must return to the Grand Cycle.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Krensky wrote:

That's a cute cliche, but there is no difference in kind between life extension or cleaning or genetics up and glasses, replacement joints, coronary surgery or any other medical procedure.

Death is a disease like any other.

At a certain point you get to a class of medical technology that's only obtainable by the uppermost economic tier. These are the people who buy themselves the top lines at the transplant lines. why people like Roger Zelazny died of a heart failure because he was bumped down by someone else who was of the one percenters.

These cutting edge advanced techniques aren't the kind that get cheap. Their availability however winds up differentiating the classes any more... instead of just Haves and Have-Nots, you have those who live and those who die.


Arkalion wrote:
Death of the soul has already fallen to me. All souls must return to the Grand Cycle.

Meh. This alias character will be miserably depowered when your OTHER alias comes around.


LazarX wrote:

{. . .}

These cutting edge advanced techniques aren't the kind that get cheap. Their availability however winds up differentiating the classes any more... instead of just Haves and Have-Nots, you have those who live and those who die.

Medial tehnology is just one of many tools that the elites have to keep themselves alive when others die -- the Haves and Have-Nots have been corresponding to Those Who Live and Those Who Die throughout history. Preventing the development of medical technology (whether or not it is adaned enough to be indistinguishable from magic) will not solve this problem.

Liberty's Edge

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LazarX wrote:
Krensky wrote:

That's a cute cliche, but there is no difference in kind between life extension or cleaning or genetics up and glasses, replacement joints, coronary surgery or any other medical procedure.

Death is a disease like any other.

At a certain point you get to a class of medical technology that's only obtainable by the uppermost economic tier. These are the people who buy themselves the top lines at the transplant lines. why people like Roger Zelazny died of a heart failure because he was bumped down by someone else who was of the one percenters.

These cutting edge advanced techniques aren't the kind that get cheap. Their availability however winds up differentiating the classes any more... instead of just Haves and Have-Nots, you have those who live and those who die.

Zelazny died of kidney failure due to colorectal cancer. Even ignoring that you got the organ wrong, he never would have been on a transplant list because, well, cancer.

All cutting edge medical care is only affordable by the rich (or those with rich social health care). It all gets cheaper over time. Some never gets very cheap, but 'only the wealthy will be able to afford it' is a pretty pathetic argument for luditism.


LazarX wrote:
Zombieneighbours wrote:

Given current developments in a range of areas such a nanotechnology, cloning and extreme life extension, I think it is more that a little unfair to call interest in functional immortality a "fantasy trip for immature technogeeks who aren't willing to accept the fact that everything dies at some point." We have experimental gene therapy treatments which demonstrably double the lifespan of mice, and if we can find a way to take that and apply it to humans with similar effect, that is a game changer. While the prospect for seeing printed replacement clone organs within my life-time, let alone my childrens, is very good.

I don't think wanting to enjoy a long and happy life, free from suffering and imparement is "masturbation."

Cloning isn't as far along as you think. While we have the physical success of Dolly and the like what we're finding out is that cloning introduces a ton of errors into the genetic sequence, which has the usual consequences. There's also the ethical issue when you realise that to get Dolly, they had to abort hundreds of non-viable failures.

But the more serious threat is life-extension and potential immortality. The only thing that made the rich tolerable was the fact that death made them equal to us. Immortality would give us eternal domination from ogliarchs that would only get more powerful over time. I can not imagine a greater long term threat to democracy.

Death is how we make room for those who come after us.

I am delighted to know that you know how far I think we have come with cloning, thought I am surprised because to this point I haven't really commented on it.

Dolly is the state of cloning from almost twenty years ago. I said nothing about whole animal cloning. I am talking about technologies such as the emergence of patient-specific ESCs, being combined with 3d printing, to generated organs, for which there has been some laboratory success. We are still at an early stage in development, but it is not unreasonable given accelorating rates of change to believe that these techniques will be common in twenty to thirty years.

Your argument against radical life extension, is in fact not an argument against life extension which is inevitable if it is possible(which it does seem to be), but rather an argument for social and political, on that is often made by many transhumanist.


Krensky wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Krensky wrote:

That's a cute cliche, but there is no difference in kind between life extension or cleaning or genetics up and glasses, replacement joints, coronary surgery or any other medical procedure.

Death is a disease like any other.

At a certain point you get to a class of medical technology that's only obtainable by the uppermost economic tier. These are the people who buy themselves the top lines at the transplant lines. why people like Roger Zelazny died of a heart failure because he was bumped down by someone else who was of the one percenters.

These cutting edge advanced techniques aren't the kind that get cheap. Their availability however winds up differentiating the classes any more... instead of just Haves and Have-Nots, you have those who live and those who die.

Zelazny died of kidney failure due to colorectal cancer. Even ignoring that you got the organ wrong, he never would have been on a transplant list because, well, cancer.

All cutting edge medical care is only affordable by the rich (or those with rich social health care). It all gets cheaper over time. Some never gets very cheap, but 'only the wealthy will be able to afford it' is a pretty pathetic argument for luditism.

Not to mention that the primary factor that makes it possible for a wealthy person able to do that is the scarcity of such organs, and many H+ technologies are moving along post-scarcity lines.

Liberty's Edge

Also, while I don't know where LazarX is, in the US and Canada you can't buy your way to the top of the transplant list. Arguably wealthy patients can sit higher due to better general care and the potential to be healthier for given length of time waiting and to wait longer, but that is a very different thing than buying an organ.


Krensky wrote:
Also, while I don't know where LazarX is, in the US and Canada you can't buy your way to the top of the transplant list. Arguably wealthy patients can sit higher due to better general care and the potential to be healthier for given length of time waiting and to wait longer, but that is a very different thing than buying an organ.

Excellent point.

Liberty's Edge

Also, I suppose a wealthy person can game the system a little because they have the resources fly all over the country to get on the waiting lists at multiple transplant centers. Don't know if that works in Canada. Still not buying your way to the top of the list.

Dark Archive

Real world political axe grinding and 'it's your duty to die on-schedule so we can re-distribute the food, money, land you were using to the next generation like communists, rather than reduce everybody to sustainable (and much smaller) levels of all of the above resources *also* like communists' is boring.

Also off-topic. Which is transhumanism *in games.*

Reincarnate, raise dead, resurrection, lichdom, other types of undead-ness, class capstone ageless traits, turning into a petitioner and then a fiend or celestial, etc., as well as simply polymorphing into something with a vastly greater lifespan (like an elf or dragon) are all more relevant, when talking about extending life.

Actually *transforming* life, via turning into other creatures, or redefining what it means to be 'alive' (via becoming undead, or some sort of sentient construct) or a person (becoming a sentient plant creature or ooze creature or just an awakened animal) adds all sorts of non-life-extension-related transhuman themes.

It could be interesting to see how 'self' is legally perceived in a world where a person can transition into another race, magically, or be unwillingly transitioned to another status (such as petitioner or undead or even vegepygmy). The churches obviously know that souls transition into petitioners.

In Golarion, there's even a nation that explicitly gives intelligent undead the same rights as living people, but it's not clear if all (or any) undead are automatically regarded as *the same person* for the purposes of things like rights of retaining property owned in life, etc. Some undead seem pretty clearly to be the same person (template undead, like liches). Others seem to be completely different spirits animating the bodies, or incorporeally aping the general appearance of, a previous living person, and seeming to be no more 'that person' than a patch of green slime that used to be a person is 'that person.'

The Exchange

And there I was thinking this was about transhumance.


No, the obvious touch stone for this conversation is Eclipse Phase, which is the main place I go to get some transhumanism in my gaming.


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I tended to think of 3.x dragonborn as prime examples of transmortalism. On many ways it struck me as being a still living version of the process by which souls became petitioners.

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