I've been following the game for some years now, and I'm a bit surprised that the two type of animals that humanity most often associate with apparently never got uplifted or never got morphs made for them.
Is there a reason for not having canine and feline uplifts and morphs in the official material?
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I think its because they are harder to uplift. Various primates, elephants, pigs, dolphins, octopuses, and other critters were already smart before transhumanity tried to uplift them. At least, that is the official explanation. Transhumanity has uplifted the low hanging fruit.
They did make cats into swarm cats. There is clearly no shortage of gene splicing for cats.
In Panopticon they covered the history of uplifting and they said that uplifting targeted all of the low hanging fruit of the species that exist.
That's why there was a surge of uplifted species and then a 30+ year period of no uplifts. Dog and cat brains are too simple to uplift to sentience.
But I'm sure that there are plenty of splicer/exalt morphs that look like you would expect a canine and feline uplift to look.
In Transhuman there is the Critter morph, which was written to be a quadruped uplift looking animal pod morph but the artist submitted an anthropomorphic image.
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Honestly, in games I've played in we usually rule that the Critter morph is modded enough that you can find all sorts that fit the profile. One recent game had a player whose Critter looked like a pokemon (after a running gag from a previous game that there was a "pokehab" populated by absolute fanatics of the ancient game). Also, nothing says the DM can't rule in more extreme uplifts, albeit likely rarer: Two that I've seen are rat morphs that generally keep to themselves and let the wider world of transhumanity pass them by, and a singular koala uplift that was created by a hypercorp for a TV show before things went horribly, horribly wrong.
The rules, as is the case for all pen & paper RPGs, are more like guidelines.
You can also go the other way around. While lorewise there are no uplifted Cats or Dogs, you will surely find folks who make "Anthropomorphic Animal" not just a look but also a culture to the point of bringing up their kids fit for it.
Basically Furries exist and you can draw all the conclusions from that in regards to colorful and interesting morphs as well as lots of queerness and genderfuckery going on. :D
I had forgotten that little tidbit in Panopticon.
Thanks all for your answers!
"Your little geometric toys are nothing in front of the power of the GM!" - Me