Zeros (people who don't have Mesh Inserts/AR stuff) are probably kind of similar to a disability for EP, but are pretty rare and tend to be indentured as well. There's also probably some weird ones, like Bright would have most people who aren't geniuses considered to be mentally defective. In general though, getting to the capabilities of a Flat should be easy for anyone in a Biomorph, though the clanking masses are another parallel. I think you also can have cognitive impairments, though they're a little different. Edited Memories, Subverted Mind, Curbed Intelligence, and Anomalous Mind would probably could as mental impairments.

Yea, curbed intelgence, amoulus mind, subverted mind ect, can be cognitive imparments. Though they only last as long as its forced upon you. And I dont think that is representing disability, at least not analog to real life disability. Most blind, and deaf can't volenteer to be regain sight and sound. Even though implants are coming along to make that an option for those that want it. And if you were say blind before the Fall, I dont see any reason why you couldnt elect to be blind in some preference file on the morph. Blind/deaf ect.

Lets highlight Botched Merge and Botched Uplift as well. You can also play any combo of the traits a disability. You can work it word with the gm.

No reason why you cant play a disabled character just bear in mind a cure is cheap so you would have to think of a way to write into your character a reason why they refuse a fix. As others have said, cost is one particular limiting factor but you could also be limited by location, perhaps you just dont have access to healing vats or psycho-surgery on your broken, run-down mining asteroid, scum barge or kupier belt station. Another thought is that it might be self inflicted and you refuse a fix in that manner. Many disabilities can be both mental and physical, perhaps a character was scarred in the fall and despite being physically able theyre mentally unable to use that hardware. TL;DR there isnt any problem with disabled characters in EP.

I've seen this done in a high tech environment and done very well with a character that couldn't speak and instead used a voice synthesizer. The player himself isn't disabled but wanted to explore the idea with his character and has been an absolute delight with it. IC this question has come up and the character's reaction has always been: "Why should I have to be the one to change? I like me. You change." I also think it's very very important to point out that we have - right now - nowadays - real world parallels for this question. For example, Deaf communities that have access to assistive technology that are not interested in taking advantage of them because it would destroy something unique and valuable about their community. It would be cultural assimilation and elimination. [b]To get meta about this, there are two conceptual frameworks for disability:[/b] * The idea that disability is damage to be healed, and should be removed with genetic or surgical solutions. VS. * The idea that disability is created by society that doesn't care to account for a variety of morphs. In the first framework, all is 'fixed' and healed and disability no longer exists. Which can be rather off putting for RL players with disability to put it bluntly. In the second, the setting uses technology to level the playing field so people have *more* options in their morphological choices not less, without fetishizing them because there is no disadvantage or social bullshittery associated with the choice. [b]Bringing this home, what it may look like in setting:[/b] I have what is technically considered a low-vision condition. I am not legally allowed to drive without my assistive technology: my glasses. So long as society is accepting of my glasses then my disability does me no harm. [b][i]To the point where most people don't even think of having glasses as a disability.[/i][/b] I could see some very strong arguments that you may see anarchist and autonomous habitats that have deliberately designed themselves to accommodate blind, low-vision or Deaf or low-hearing characters as their [i]default level of support[/i]. Sighted and hearing members of the community are welcome but materially and socially equal to other members. (Interesting parallels here to mobile-first web design, btw. Design your site for a mobile phone and anything for a computer display is 'extra' and you can be sure your entire audience gets to fully use the site.) This is what I would consider to be the goal for those habitats that take the second approach to handling disability. For example: Muses assisting those with low-hearing or low-visions with direct-to-neural AR displays. Hey, automatic immunity to visual basilisk hacks is kinda nice, ok? So long as your muse doesn't get chewed up and spit out. But not all disability is the same either. The disadvantages of some forms of disability cannot be removed by getting society to get its head out of its collective ass. For example: chronic pain conditions, scoliosis, compromised immune systems. Nothing society can change would lessen the impact these conditions have on an individual's quality of life. You could argue non-Solar adapted morphs are disabled in Solarian communities in the same ways that someone with extreme sensitivity to sunlight, environmental conditions, or immuno-compromised systems are today. So in your home games keep that split in mind and consider how you can support the one without crapping on the other ok? It makes for interesting stories and makes players at your table actually think about the subtleties of this topic.

That escalated quickly. Got dark in a hurry there, @puke - And yeah, that is exactly my point about how we can look at societies and in the game setting - habitats - that effectively create categories of disability based on morphic variation.

Eclipse Phase, seem to have perfect or near perfect brain machine interfaces. Eclipse PHase to have perfect or near perfect mapping of the brain and near perfect understanding of how it works. How the Muse talks to you, is probably depends how you want it to talk to you, vs how it can actually talk to you. In this scope of someone who is say, deaf, then they might just be text on their intropics. For the blind, it might be an orchestra. Muses can get very abstract, even with folks with plathora of maxiumal sensory inputs. I have a gender nuatral AGI, named 2600 Hertz (the sound wave itself), And their muse is a binary clock. It converses with 2600hertz through binary bytes. So a Muse can be something like Clippy, that sits at the corner of your intropic AR laid over world, or its a subconcious voice, that is precived like your internal monologe is precieved but with a distinct voice. So my stumbling with Disability in eclipse phase, as to the real world is that in the real world disability isn't a choice. I play a lot of textbased mushes/muds and quite a few players are deaf. And even some sightless play as well, as they tend to transition great on screen readers. I think the framing of being disable is not being able to operate well in a given context is good, and make a lot of sense in EP. Maybe its worthwhile to frame inside the book as such. But it seems to be just a lifestyle choice within EP, and that doesnt reconcile well with me. Disability in real life isnt often a life style choice. Its not being vegan, as an example. And for Jack Graham, making a better blind person, that seems to come close to the mostly bad cliche of a disability being a super power, in particular the super powered wheel chair. Warning tv tropes links: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperWheelChair

zkline wrote:

One thing I haven't seen much about is muse output, do they tend to converse via neural link? I'm not quite sure how far along brain-computer interfaces are in the setting, though would presume they're pretty much ubiquitus given what else we can do.

The muse communicates as a voice in your head. It can also put windows up in your AR. Tactical Network software is one option for getting around. You're on a minimap of the room, so you can move around that way. I don't remember whether we have an echolocation augmentation in the game, but it's certainly within the technological limits. I guess there's also a question of how purist a definition of blind works for you. With EP mind/machine interfaces, there's visual information, but it's in your brain; eyes and optic nerves are never involved. I suppose there would also be the possibility of creating mesh interfaces that use screen readers, sound, and haptics to eliminate visual information entirely. We don't describe anything like this, but it's well within the technological possibilities. There were people doing research on sound/echo-based VR spaces for the blind back in the nineties, so I imagine by EP times, full interfaces will have been worked out.

sysop wrote:

I think the phrasing there is bad at the very least: "A better blind person" implies being better at being blind?

What I meant was, working with the fact that you're blind rather than changing it in the course of augmenting yourself. You can build a character in EP who's extremely effective without being able to perceive visible light. Like, what if you just gave eyes a miss and had a t-ray emitter instead?

@jackgraham - I remember there was a thing for that! So I went looking and turns out it's gotten to the point of reality which is pretty freaking cool :) The abstract here also points out human echolocation, which some blind people whose ears are nice and sharp have worked out how to do to get around. The brain's plug'n'play ability for input is pretty fascinating: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536767/

Quote:

I'm going to presume that outside of the Jovian Republic, disability is rare to non-existent. A combination of gene cleaning and really rather amazing medical tech has probably rendered most congenital disabilities meaningless, if they're allowed to occur at all.

Should probably point out that the Jovians' medical care is on par with the rest of the solar system, since they have a vested interest in keeping their current morphs alive, since they don't plan on resleeving them.

sysop wrote:

@jackgraham - I remember there was a thing for that! So I went looking and turns out it's gotten to the point of reality which is pretty freaking cool :) The abstract here also points out human echolocation, which some blind people whose ears are nice and sharp have worked out how to do to get around. The brain's plug'n'play ability for input is pretty fascinating: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536767/

Neat. Looks like someone is also working on a VR game using echolocation instead of visuals: http://www.blindvrgame.com/ The only problem for EP is, echolocation doesn't work in a vacuum. So blind spacewalkers would need to use something else, like a radar implant.

The thread gives me new ideas for in game... the PC's arrive at a facility, it had zero live mesh and all the walls and doors, consoles... everything in the place are the same damned colour. Only folk with Enhanced vision can see the slight variation in the colours on stuff to understand things. Alternatively, you might need T-Rays to see through the surface of the buttons to the markings beneath, and no lights in the facility at all. Better still you might need a downloaded VR overlay, perfectly flat consoles and desks, so that nothing makes sense at all without it, and no lights. You don't know where to touch the door to open it without the VR overlay, can't see without T-Rays or something. Don't know where to touch the perfectly flat consoles to get the desired response from the machinery in the facility. Watching PC's struggle against facility staff perfectly familiar with the operations of the place and equipped to deal with it... all staff equipped with T-ray, Enhanced vision and VR overlay.

This is a fascinating thread. Kudos to zkline for starting it. I'm wishing I had found this back when the thread was more active and had jumped in sooner, but I also figure this will remain topical going forward, so may as well jump in here.

"jackgraham" wrote:

I started giving the issue of disabled characters in transhuman SF a lot of thought after a conversation with a really cool lady who's a disabled advocate in the RPG community. She wanted to know what happens to people who, for one reason or another, don't want to be "fixed" in a transhuman setting, and who furthermore want that choice not to be "fixed" to be respected.

More or less where a lot of disabled people I know are coming from. Speaking of...

"boomzilla" wrote:

Conditions like autism are *much* more complicated to screen pre-natally, but I am willing to bet that, if it could be screened for, and either selective abortions performed, or it be "fixed" pre-natally, then yes, there would be many less autistic people.

As an autistic person myself, I find myself in the kind of bizarre and awkward position where, if natal selection against autism is a thing, I would consider specifically requesting that they leave any genetic factors for autism in the mix for my hypothetical children, and then hoping they forgive me if society hasn't caught up enough to let them become self-actualized. This is half out of spite for any people who would rather I have not existed, and half because I would rather that autism not disappear from the gene pool entirely, because autistic people can make and have made particular contributions to society that are / would have been unlikely from neurotypical people. I can't help but wonder, especially given the somewhat [i]avant-garde[/i] approaches to parenting we see canonically in the books, if parents and prospective parents will start treating other disabilities much the same way even if they become "voluntary".

"zkline" wrote:

One interesting tangent about all this is that I don't have a lot of understanding of what a lot of habitats, morphs, etc look like. I was reading through a couple of adventures yesterday and the map was less than edifying for a variety of reasons.

I'm presently running a text-only game, and I'm kind of running into the issue of "how do I disambiguate what the spatial orientation situation is like?" myself. Not to mention that I'm even kind of a little fuzzy on what a lot of things look like, too. I've mostly mitigated that by sticking to Mars for now, which has at least superficial parallels with things I'd easily recognize, but it's still a bit difficult. I should try to come up with some things that might help people for whom the maps are inaccessible.

When you are training with enhanced senses and you want to use them to have a integrated full spectrum direct to mind sensorium at all times. You would first train with only the sense that you want to know. I can see people training to use echolocation, chosing blind morphs to do it. Or exhumans selecting themselves to best use random selection of senses. Like only thermal. T-ray and Smell. Or even only touch (there was a Philip Dick novella about blind-deaf mutants I think. They developed special touch only language and later superpowers). Some maybe would prefer to stay blind after mastering echolocation or decide that seeing people in dim auroras of scattering deep space radiation is much better.

zkline wrote:

One interesting tangent about all this is that I don't have a lot of understanding of what a lot of habitats, morphs, etc look like. I was reading through a couple of adventures yesterday and the map was less than edifying for a variety of reasons. This is only tangentially related to disability in the setting, but it's still something to consider :)

This might stimulate some of your imaginings then: one of the pictures in the books that showed New Mumbai depicted a corridor to be hexagonal. I like to think that in the EP universe, with most people experiencing microgravity, that the layout of most places looks a lot more vertical. Also, as far as character goes - if I were running a game, I would treat the permanent loss of a sense input (e.g. blindness, deafness) as a severe form of neural damage (maybe a 20cp negative trait? - 30cp traits tend to be reserved for stuff that has the potential to be lethal I've noticed). This gets around the 'oh, why don't you just resleeve' problem. Alternatively, because it can be hard to scrounge the money together for a new morph, a similar morph trait would appropriate, but I think it lacks the gravitas of the first option. There's an interesting story to be had with a character who, in the transhuman future, cannot reclaim their vision.

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

Autism and the like are probably going to be present but less apparent due to Tech helping to assuage any problems they could cause.

The more I learn about autism, the more I realise that it would be a driving force for muse adoption - a lot of what I've read (and a couple of anecdotes too from people close to me) point to education and mental stimulation as something that can help overcome many of its nastier expressions (I'm being deliberate with this phrasing, neither cause or cure is something we have an answer to and I'm not sure we ever will). Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if the first muses invented in real life were as a way to help autistic children. I've always taken the position that in the EP universe, people don't just think you're weird for not having a muse, people wonder about your mental health and might even assume your parents hated you.

Baribal wrote:

I'd agree with ThatWhichNeverWas that for the purpose of discussing disabilities in a transhuman settings, only those should be considered that aren't easily treatable; all others are just personal choices, and examples of playing with morphological freedom, even if the disability may be congenital. On the other hand, I do recognize that there are disability-related cultures; also, I do wonder, are there post-silent-film-era soundless movies, geared towards representing, or taking place in deaf people's cultures? And if so, do they have subtitles for the signing-illiterates? (I once saw a video by a signing storyteller on YouTube. It deliberately had no transcript. I kind of felt discriminated against.)

Simply? Yes. It's niche, happens more often outside the anglosphere, but it does exist. Search for deaf rapping sometime, it's a strong testament to the culture is. Also, Auslan - australian sign language - has some of the best swearing of all sign language groups. Also one of the bluntest languages. As someone who values brutal honesty and hates dicking around with niceties, it's amazing.

Baribal wrote:

To extend boomzilla's arguments about autism being something that parents may select against, and that there actually is a genocide of Down syndrome taking place, I'd like to point out that autism is overrepresented in scientific research, and probably some other aspects of society, meaning that selecting against it due to wanting only the best for one's child (whether that actually is good or bad doesn't really matter here) is negatively affecting humanity as a whole. Ajahn Brahm also likes to tell of his time volunteering in an institute for children with Down syndrome, which taught him a lot about empathy (No, not by him having to express it; by the children expressing it towards him), so that might already be impacting humankind negatively. And while we're at it, how about selecting against sociopathy, which apparently 10% of top-level managers express?

Autism is also a touchy one because its tendency for misdiagnoses. Growing up, pretty much everyone who wasn't immediate family thought I was autistic. I meet a significant proportion of what [i]is commonly cited as[/i] the diagnostic criteria. I remember we had these posters in the classroom with the symptoms, and teachers would always single me out as an example of it. A psychologist visit - and a second opinion - later and the conclusion was that I wasn't autistic, I just didn't care what people thought of me. I remember these words regarding it: [i]it's not a disorder if it has no meaningful impact on your quality of life[/i]. Maybe that just speaks to the attitudes of the psychologists in my area. Similar story with another family member and ADHD, it was bad enough that 'intensive medication' was called for. Turned out to be a dietary issue - his ADHD symptoms vanished when eggs were cut out of his diet. I'm not saying every diagnosis of these conditions are wrong, that would be irresponsible, but it's equally wrong to suggest there are no alternative explanations, especially if those possibilities remain unexplored. I raise these to back up a belief of mine: My opinion is that the parents who care that deeply - the ones who, if given the technology, would go out of their way to obsessively select for different genetic expression - are the ones already medicating the hell out of their kids at the first indication that something may be 'atypical'. I've seen it suggested that this is the 'typical' parent, but - and I honestly wish I had numbers to back up this as opposed to anecdotes but I wouldn't know where to look - I would argue that's likely not the case. I know quite a few parents who preferred being surprised, specifically asking that details such as sex not be revealed during ultrasounds - 'I don't care, just as long as you don't see spina bifida'. At least among the people I associate with, 'what's best for my children' basically amounts to 'I want them to do well in school, but I'll honestly just be glad if they get through the next few years knowing that they shouldn't eat rat poison'. I've met only one parent who completely fits this stereotype of 'I'll do [insert extreme thing here] because I want what's best for them' and she had... issues of her own. I don't want to say they had paranoid delusions, I'm not a psychologist, but assuming the default position of 'my kids are supervised at all times, even inside the family home, because I can't trust my neighbours to not be kidnapping rapists' is a worrisome statement. On the other hand there are parents like mine who take a 'don't fix what ain't broke' approach to things and would rather wait and see. If we're talking in the context of the EP universe, Psychosurgery would only be an option if we're talking about mental disorders that directly lead to violent and/or self destructive outbursts - most other disorders they're inherently skeptical about.

Baribal wrote:

One more thing: What format will "The Whispering Muse" be? Source book, or fiction stories? For both, I could imagine different versions of a professor's work describing both dying and blossoming disability-based cultures. Heck, he might be someone on Bright who noticed the number of cases of neurodiversity right around him.

I too am curious about this.

Fascinating points. I don't have a ton to say about this at the moment, except:

Laskeutua wrote:

Autism is also a touchy one because its tendency for misdiagnoses. Growing up, pretty much everyone who wasn't immediate family thought I was autistic. I meet a significant proportion of what [i]is commonly cited as[/i] the diagnostic criteria. I remember we had these posters in the classroom with the symptoms, and teachers would always single me out as an example of it. A psychologist visit - and a second opinion - later and the conclusion was that I wasn't autistic, I just didn't care what people thought of me. I remember these words regarding it: [i]it's not a disorder if it has no meaningful impact on your quality of life[/i]. Maybe that just speaks to the attitudes of the psychologists in my area.

Sensory sensitivity - i.e. being overwhelmed by noises, smells, bright light, etc. - is an often overlooked symptom, and although it does not have a 1:1 correlation and there are other conditions that can cause it, it's the first thing I'd probably look for, personally.