Been reading through the new book and I cant seem to find any actual game information on Muses.
Page 250 is where most of the information concerning them is but is not clear on anything specific.
there are some rules for ALIs, namely guidelines on what their aptitudes and skills range from but I assume you do not make them as normal characters; further more the paragraph introducing Muses on the same page indicates that they have more programing then normal ALIs.
On the next page on a subheading called "what your muse can do for you", it indicates that Muses can act as your PAN's system defender, but gives no statistics on that in this section, nor the section indicated (Page 260). it then explicitly states that the muse can assist in certain tasks (Im assuming at least Infosec going by the last sentence) but doesn't give any mechanical indication of what those tasks are.
Next is a list that indicates that Muses can make research tests to find information for you, but doesn't give any research skill rating.
There is a page reference for Sample ALIs (Page 326), this is a small paragraph which does give us their wound threshold, durability and death rating for mesh combat but only provides a brief sentence or 2 on each ALI and their Complexity/GP but no statistics or skill ratings.
Finally the other mention I have found is in Psycosurgery care where it states that muses possess the "Medicine:Psycosurgery" skill but doesn't give a rating.
Muses are in important asset for character and setting alike, in a softer system I would just assume that they are GM fiat for how they help, but my experience from 1e and what I've read of 2e it would seem that they should have more set mechanics.
If anyone has found anything else, or if I am just missing a page in the 400+ page book, let us know
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I am what I am, Everything More, Nothing Less
- Things they can't explain that might hurt them.
- Things that seem to indicate they are not performing well (being cast out of social groups, not getting along with friends, getting into fights).
- Seeing things that don't fit their preconceived notions of how reality is supposed to work and needing to change their minds about things.
... but why? Well, the easy answer is "because it's favorable from an evolutionary standpoint to make a human 'feel bad' when encountering potential danger so they try to avoid it" for some, and "because from a memetics standpoint, memes 'want' to continue existing so the ones that make people avoid stress from having the meme challenged survive better because humans are stress-avoidant" for others. That's a gross simplification but you probably get the idea. What I mean is, basically, humans get stressed for evolutionary and memetic reasons. But Muses are programmed and designed, and why they'd have stress at all is a mystery to me but let's just assume it's a requirement, either because they don't seem empathetic without it, or it's unavoidable in ALI development, or other reasons. The book definitely says they can receive stress, so they can. We know that much. But over what? Well, what's dangerous to a muse? What memetics do they have that are firmly rooted and a designer would want them to avoid changing their mind over? Well you wouldn't want a Muse to stop liking their 'owner' so they might get stressed at ideas that cause them to think that their 'owner' is not the best or that they will be unable to help them or that they maybe should act against them. Harm to their 'owner' could also stress them, because a Muse designer would want them to avoid harm to their owner, so like a human avoiding harmful situations themselves because it's stressful, a Muse might try to walk their owner out of harmful situations because it's stressful to them that their owner is in a harmful situation. Just *muse*-ing, anyway. Nyuk nyuk.