You're late, boy.

I see Robert Smith already took the opportunity...

>>7809299

It's what I've theorized for a long time now.

The richest people in the world will eventually look entirely like the poorest people.

Oh, and Brain Transplants are much more likely.

Word of warning, I don't think this is a good time to be posting original content. Shit's bad in /tg/, mang.

Hope you get something done.

[sound of chimes and singing]
You are not ready for immortality.

>>7809299
>what's society on planet Earth like a century from now
Exceptionally contrived and ridiculous?

wait what.

so, like... your adult brain goes into a fetus?

which then goes on to live the happy life of a kid untill 9, at which point your brain takes over? what? So its got two brains the whole time? Or it uses your brain to live its little kid life for 10 years and suddenly your consciousness kicks in and gets rid of the kid personality?

Immortality in any form would be bad. Society grinds to a halt as those in power (whether in clear sight or behind the scenes) refuse to die. Stagnation in all aspects of life is rampant as artists, trend setters, scientists and all those who matter don't die either. Those that don't reincarnate and are actually born get fed the same garbage by the same people who fed the same garbage to their parents.

The fact that it costs the life of a child won't stop anyone from doing it when they have enough money, which a lot of people have.

In sort it would be a dystopian hell where a small clique of powerful people rule the Earth with an iron fist, never allowing it to progress beyond their set plans in fear of losing that power.

>>7809315
This is just one of those open-ended brainstorms, that may or may not lead to something that'd work as a game.

For example: a cyberpunk future where some nation-states allow the procedure in various circumstances/through various methods, some allow it with no real restrictions beyond the mother's consent, and some completely ban it with reincarnated people being executed as soon as a CAT scan can verify their nature.

Where's the RPG in this? Simple. You're a part of a terrorist organization that assassinates reincarnated individuals, as well as abducting "eggs" and crippling their hormonal development so that that they never 'hatch'.

Alternately, you could reincarnate to find that your nation is now one of the ones that executes reincarnated individuals on sight. Have fun pretending to be a kid.

I can't even imagine. The process itself would never get legalized. At least not in certain parts of the world. Most of North America and Europe would never stand for it, but there are other places that wouldn't give two dicks about obliterating an innocent life to have their immortality. I suppose that plays into the setting though. Certain parts of the world legalize it. Some demonize it.

What kind of leg up does this give the places that do support it? I can see it not turning out dandy. The rich getting richer does not generally make a healthy nation in the long run. The richest folks could hold their wealth indefinitely and have a stranglehold on power.

Yes, but only when I'm old and near the point of death. I'd miss those ten years and if anything happened to the child in the intervening period you'd be fucked. The child isn't really a child it's merely me with an illness.

Immortality isn't possible... People still die, and are killed, even, in the process. If a copy appears ten years after, that's still another being.

Just use implanted kids for child porns.
That way they'll look forward to dying.

>>7809402

Someone missed the point.

Also would you keep the childs memories?

>>7809402
Every living cell in your body is constantly dying and being replaced. In fact, every cell in your body excluding brain cells are completely replaced within a couple of mouths, and your brains cells completely replaces itself at least one or two times in your lifetime.

Does this mean you are new person every couple of mouths?

>>7809380
Sorry, should clarify. The process extracts your mind from the organ known as your brain, and implants/grafts it to the nervous system of the child. I have no hard science to go with this concept, I'm just trying to make it vaguely plausible.
>>7809382
I can certainly see there being groups and governments that *try* to do that. But it's an impossible goal- no organized human effort can stop people/society from evolving and changing, especially in such turbulent times.

>>7809390
I'd assume most that can afford such a transfer will set up a foundation or trust to guard their interests while they're not there. With money compounding over multiple reincarnations on those foundations, the only hurdle is starting it when you haven't reincarnated yet or when someone in your organisation has it out for you. I can imagine small groups banding together with similar interests to prevent just that.

>>7809382
That's a silly preconceived idea that's based on nothing but assumptions.
A few have always ruled the earth, still do today. They have to protect their power, because that's the only thing meaningful in their short life. Now, why would an immortal want to rule ? He'll succeed, maybe, to hold on power for a few decades, then another will take over. Immortality won't bring anyone more power, just more to lose, and no way to avoid facing the personal and social consequences of their acts.

>>7809396
Oh how I lol'd at that "America would never stand for that!" hahahah good one man. You know about the supreme court case they setteled the other day? It gave corporations unlimited use of free speech "money" in advertising on behave of political canidates. So if a multi billion $ company wants it to be legal they can just buy enough senate seats to make it legal.

>>7809448
Note that getting rid of most dictators requires them to die of natural causes, if they can reincarnate, they'll just keep on going and going.

you are right about a huge upswing in violence. the "old guard" would be around forever. expect a lot more assassinations, riots, civil wars, and general unrest.

>>7809441
>Does this mean you are new person every couple of mouths?

I know I feel like a new person after being in a couple of mouths.

So how would one people go about raising these "eggs"?

so we get to be little girls all the time?

SIGN ME UP

>>7809456
The point of the groups who hold power behind the scenes is to ensure that their vision succeeds, they seek out like-minded individuals because they need to. Because they die, if they don't, this process will be far slower, change will not happen as far fewer new individuals are admitted into it and with the immortals generations of understanding of how the system works, utter and total control is easily achievable.

>>7809441
Maybe I am. But at least there's a continuity.
Take the problem differently, say you don't have to die to copy your mind into another brain. Does that mean the two independant, living beings that will result of this are one person ?

"If you wake up at a different time, and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person ?" I think you can. This idea of a person is an abstraction. I am definitely not the same person as I was ten years ago.

>>7809461
That has nothing to do with child killing. America is huge on the THINK OF THE CHILDREN angle. The entirety of the landmass of the US would jump out of the ground and flip over if that started to happen.

You do not touch the kids.

>>7809475
Oh lawdy, I can't brain today, I have the stupid...

>>7809502

>>7809299
I don't really think anyone would be allowed to use it except absolute dictators. It sounds insanely evil from pretty much every possible perspective.

So society wouldn't be changed much.

HAHAHA.

feel the power of SCIENCE!.

immortality is within our grasp.

>>7809452
Imagine a cyberpunk setting where half the all-powerful CEOs are in the bodies of early teens. (And one of them is actually just a child genius who's conned the shareholders into thinking he's the secret reincarnation of a prior CEO)
>>7809456
But immortality *is* power- the ultimate form of power, immunity to death (at least from old age, as opposed to being hit by a bus).

. . .Oh, that's interesting. The power players of the modern day would back the movement *against* the technology, so as to keep it out of the hands of the masses.

>>7809461
You're a fucking idiot. This is the rough equivalent of saying that Catholic Europe would have stood for shitting on effigies of Jesus and Mary at the height of the Pope's power. America is pedo for protecting children at ALL COSTS.

>>7809488
Understanding the system does not grant control. History is not made by sole individuals.

To prevent compatibility rejection, clone yourself, transfer brain when the body is ready. The younger you's brain can go to a jar or something.

>>7809535
It's not just understanding, it's almost pure continued and uninterrupted eternal rule over organisations that influence society in such large ways that they practically control them. The chance of something going wrong with their plans is virtually nihil, there is no gradual change of vision and the only thing they need to worry about is backstabbing.

>>7809535

Jesus says hi

The child is your clone. Like the ouroboros, you eternally consume yourself.

>>7809566
Christians say fuck jesus.

>>7809564
Why ?

>>7809485
Totally half-assed with regards to their mental and personal development, obsessively concerned with regards to their health and physical condition. If you were wealthy and made arrangements, the job is done by professional staff. If you were more middle-class, the child is probably raised by something like foster parents- ones who got a small advance and will receive payment in full upon your reincarnation. Said payment's gonna be larger in countries where reincarnation is illegal.
>>7809513
Say you find out tomorrow that you have a terminal illness. You have about a month.

Someone approaches you and discreetly offers you the reincarnation procedure. The price is simple: You will all your assets to a certain charity, i.e. to them.

They don't expect an immediate response. They'll wait. You can signal that you want to do it at any time; or you can die.

Will your convictions hold?

>>7809615
Because of immortality. These individuals want power, they want to control to shape the world to their vision. They are already in positions of power and without the much possibility of their life ending, little will come to change that fact and their positions only strengthen over time. These individuals become titanic in the power they wield and unless there is disagreement in the group or something unlikely and extremely radical happens, it never changes.

To everyone claiming that dictators will use the immortality to rule forever:

Yeah, enjoy coming back ten years later with a nonexistent power base. It's hard to rule forever when you're usurped in the ten year period between your death and your rebirth.

I think the only way this setting would work is if the reincarnation was secret. Only certain people would know what was really going on.

The PCs are part of a cell dedicated to destroying the immortal cabal that runs the world.

>>7809615

Half the world says fuck jesus. The other half gets butthurt and starts wars over it. History is decided by single peoples decisions at a daily basis.

>>7809673

Not like they won't set up a system to ensure their return or something, right? I mean, no dictator has a line of succession.

I would prefer immortality through becoming an abominable combination of machine and man.

Which should be more than feasable in a century's time. And would not require human sacrifice. Well, maybe just for dramatic effect.

>>7809752
If it doesn't include human sacrifice something isn't being done right, if you ask em.

>>7809650
Rulers don't usually want to shape the world, they want to rule it. But they can't, for no individual can control the whole of humanity, so they share it. The advantage the liberal system held against the soviet system in the second half of the 20th century was that the majority held a part of the power that built its own exploitation. Rulers can't match on their own that power, they can just profit, and that leaves not much place for visions.
Their positions are not threatened by death and old age only, but by everyone they work with. No personal authority can hold for longer than a few decades before the individuals just under it decide that they waited long enough, don't imagine that they can't take profit of an absence of ten years.

>>7809686
But you were just talking about halves of the world making decisions, not single peoples.

>>7809752
This.

>>7809763
Only a fool would set themselves up so that they'd be taken out. They'd work in groups with people who'd naturally have the same handicaps. And as I said they'd almost never be direct rulers. They'll simply control society through subterfuge and indirect power, like the banking sector and all the other organisations of power. Without death, this control becomes more absolute as there is continued rule along the same path, there is no gradual reform of opinion or vision.

>>7809673
Actually, I think it's doable.

Start with the cult of personality. Put references to yourself *everywhere*; etch your name and different slogans (i.e. "I will return") onto the manhole covers, in the margins of textbooks, on the side of every single section of rail your trains run along. Make it so that erasing and suppressing records of you is virtually impossible- citizens will inevitably encounter items mentioning you.

Next, arrange it so that people's lives after your death go from utopia to hell. Blow the whole national budget to give all citizens ice cream for a year.

Set up some loyal followers to assume various less-desirable-but-important positions in your rival's administration. They will zealously protect said administration- meaning they'll help it guard its power in a tyrannical and hamfisted manner. Have a couple backup sets of administrators with the contacts needed to join any further replacement government and ensure that is also does a crappy job; after all, there's no telling whether some first-world country might forcibly institute a democracy.

Lastly, make sure that various secrets are in place that'll let you prove your true identity and discredit any fake attempts to steal your thunder. Passwords to publically available files that would take centuries to decrypt. Transmission frequencies and activation codes for propaganda speakers you concealed in various buildings. Various monuments and statues that are ready to pop out of secret compartments on street corners/government buildings/the side of a freaking mountain.

Then put yourself in a child, no one knows who.

Voila. You've made yourself the messiah.

>>7809832
So you plan on solidarity between people with a limitless hunger for power ?
Anyway, society isn't controlled by indirect power. Say you control the banking sector, what can you do to society ? Start an economic crisis ? That'll just led it to chose a direct ruler more bothersome to you, nothing else. You'll lose money and gain the hostility of the other powers.
Also, gradual reform of opinion in one individual happens. You won't be the same when 100 years old than when 1000 years old.

>>7809572
. . .Oh, duh. Why didn't I think of that? I mean, I could handwave that not being an option (the overwrite process gets confused by an identical nervous system), but I like it. It provides a not-as-unethical option that people could still have moral objections to- after all, that kid isn't you, he's a separate human being that happens to share your DNA. Saying your actions are ethical is like saying it's fine to murder one's identical twin.
>>7809674
That works better if you just want a fun story for an action movie. I'd rather pursue this idea on a theoretical level without doing too much steering, see where it naturally goes.

>>7809962
Yes, there is honour among thieves, it's why such organisations exist and continue to exist. People form power structures to protect their own personal interests.

You simply refuse a lone or give one to the guy who wants to start a war with them, influence their stocks, borrowing behaviour of the citizens, you can do anything you want, including bankrupting those that don't cooperate. Economic powers have been doing it for centuries and only once in a while do people rebel against, which is not very often or very effective.

With the same individuals this sort of manipulation solidifies along absolute lines, those that choose to kick the system simply get removed from it by the others who do not wish to see their power infringed upon.

Quick age before class. Any thoughts on other campaigns you could run in a cyberpunk setting with this reincarnation tech?

>>7810613
I like the premise, although I haven't read the whole thread yet.

Wouldn't it be easier to just say: you can transplant/copy your memories and personality into another body and brain, but it can only be done to a brain that's at least 9-10 years old. You have the exact same social problems and the ethics of the body-selling industry that might(will) appear.

The whole reincarnation and decade of dormant consciousness thing feels out of place in science fiction or cyberpunk when there's a slightly more realistic solution that has the same result.

>the next thing you know it's a decade later and you're in the body of a nine-year-old. Amazing!
>you're in the body of a nine-year-old. Amazing!
>body of a nine-year-old. Amazing!
>body of a nine-year-old
Hmm
Male or female ?

Why bother with a biological body? We are Sovereign.

I sincerely doubt this is true. If it is, all research and anything about it should be destroyed and never spoken of ever again.

>>7810664
Unrealistic? It makes sense to me- a fully developed nervous system would be much more likely to reject the transplants, and a young child's brain wouldn't have room for an adult mind.

And you do lose alot of things by making reincarnation instant. You lose opportunities for life to throw a wrench in the plans of a reincarnated individual, making for stories that are much more interesting. You lose the horror of foster parents realizing that their child is no longer their child.

Most of all, you no longer have a world where children secretly worry that their minds are time bombs, that sometime around the age of 9 they'll go to sleep one night and never wake up.

You lose a reincarnated individual's first act being to read a letter under the pillow they were sleeping on- a letter addressed to "the new me", asking them to please take care of the child's dog and to be nice to his little sister.

A severe lack of traditional games.sa

>>7810989
Good points, I see how they give more plot opportunities than something a bit simpler.

looks like someone needs to double up on the aluminum foil on their heads.

Oooh, what a nasty "what if". Lets look at this: a morally black or dark grey method of immortality. So good people won't touch it. What do you get? Why, evil, selfish, uncaring bastards like me getting infinite respawn while all that is selfless lives one life and dies off. You would get a society of increasingly less morally controlled people. Probably a short term boost of high science progress before someone hits the critical mass for evil and goes all apocolyptically evil and starts WWIII so he can rule the world forever with monopolized immortality tech.

Probable effects of the discovery: Massive upswing in funding for research into artificial wombs.
Equally massive upswing in funding for research into genetic pre selection of characteristics.

The chidlren used for this would be designed in a petri-dish incubated in machines, and raised on farms, following a program focusing on health and happiness rather than long-term intellectual development. If possible they would be kept in batches that would switchover stimtaneously, to prevent stress in the final days as all of there friends begin to vanish.

>>7811360
assuming the world doesn't hop on the moral panic bandwagon

but that would be the best method for that

>>7811343
You assume that they'd let you do it.

>>7811383
You assume that they'd be able to stop us.

In a world where stem cell research gets banned in places like the US, and people who do abortions get killed....

is this tech going to ever get legalised? oh hell no.

To all those commenting about how the US would never allow this: I'm talking a century from now. Look at how american culture today compares to the culture of 1910. And the next hundred years will see society change at a much faster rate.

It's a nice idea for the creepy kid effect alone, but yeah immortality of any kind would seriously mess up social structure. We die for a reason and it's not because nature gets her jollies that way.

People would be jittery about taking the lives of kids. But even if it's banned, it would still take place, I'd imagine foster families taking on the children, who have a lethal accident at the age of ten and disappear out of picture. Sure, it will be investigated, but with the right bribes you can get anything on the black market.

Ideally they'd set up human farms, or something like House of the Scorpion where you raise a clone and keep them protected/let them live out a happy life and then without warning harvest them.

>>7809299

Wow, somebody just read Friends Come In Boxes.

>>7812362
Never heard of it before, and google turns up no real info. What's the plot?

This is why we teach kids to be the next generation of neckbeards. My little sister is well on her way to being a life long table top gamer.

>We die for a reason and it's not because nature gets her jollies that way.

Cuz the Intelligent Designer couldn't code good DNA to save His life?

>>7812459
We die to make way for the next set of slightly more perfect group. This is the way the creator made us.

>>7812459

There's no good DNA, only DNA that ensures it lives on and brings on a next generation.

>>7809382 In sort it would be a dystopian hell where a small clique of powerful people rule the Earth with an iron fist, never allowing it to progress beyond their set plans in fear of losing that power.

Soooooo same shit different century?