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!
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Uplifted dogs would be fine, but can you imagine what chaos an uplifted cat would cause? Transhuman sociopaths.
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There could also be a simple explanation; the authors doesn’t want their game to attract the Furry community. LOL
(Just a joke. Don’t overreact on my comment. I know they have nothing against that community.)
Yeah... they've got plenty of other morphs that appeal to that demographic pretty hard already anyway!
Just imagine all the cat fur floating in 0g..or octomorph/cat hybrids
No, but seriously, we're already here because the only other option would be HSD and at least the people i play with don't want to touch that game with a 10 foot pole.
We'd much rather have the option to also play something more human shaped and the rules system of EP is open enough that you can just design the look you want for your morph. Why accept anything less?
(What is HSD?)
The question for you, GB, is is it sufficient to have a 'human' morph modded to look kitty, or does it actually have to be primarily cat genestock? And is a modified cat morph without a cat ego sufficient, or do you actually need full uplift?
HSD means Hc Svnt Dracones (There Be Dragons in Latin).
It was made by a team of furries and targeted at furries, and is some sort of mash-up of many cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic/transhuman/post-humans/furry ideas and themes.
But it's a bad mash-up in my opinion.
If you're curious and have 3$ on hand, get the pdf on Drivethru via the link above and see by yourself.
"Your little geometric toys are nothing compared to the power of the GM!" - Me
If I'm remembering correctly, in the playtest docs for Transhuman there was a feline pod morph called the Predator (or something). A bit of fiction came with it as a report that it WAS initially an uplift but all the subjects were predatory sociopaths and just make the morph a pod to recoup some of the losses!
Unfortunately, those files aren't available anymore as they weren't CC licensed. That's all I can do as I don't have any copies to transcribe...which is a bummer since there were some other gems in that playtest as well!
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The background is in Transhuman and may be appropriate for the more predatory uplifts as concepts. That being said I am certainly tempted to make Feline Uplift and Canine Uplift backgrounds and morphs once I feel more confident with the system and perhaps even the fabled elephant uplifts if I can figure out how the hell their morph would work in most societies (that or they are made more humanoid like the pig uplifts... okay that actually sounds pretty awesome)
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Elephant uplifts aren't a big thing in EP for the same reason most people don't play whale uplifts. They are too damn big. Most hab corridors are too small to accommodate either one, and Pandora gate openings are only occasionally large enough to allow vehicles to translate threw, let alone a literal elephant sized morph. When they do come up, its always in a very niche way. Like spaceship morphs, or the dolphin morphs that don't function well outside of water.
That said, any decent GM can make it work as long as they are willing to fuzz over some of the facts. slightly larger corridors, create some more reasonably sized analogs, glaze over some of the facts about uplift science, and Boom! You have a funky new ego/morph uplift combo! All it takes is a GM willing to go the extra mile. And there are plenty of amazing Mercurial plot hooks you can grab onto.
"Better watch out, or Somatektm is commin to get ya! They are looking for their escaped, experimental, borderline sociopath, cat/dog/snake/hamster/etc... uplift and they aren't taking any chances!"
Your players relay RELAY want to play a Whale uplift? Put him in a Surya, ride the rest of your players in salamander morphs, there's lore in EP about an Exhuman group that thinks the TITANs are hiding in the sun... who is to say they are wrong?
A pure Mercurial campaign would be an intense experience, and there is an entire chapter in Panopticon just filled with uplift themed hooks and history. Let your PC's go wild (metaphorically and literally)!
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When I actually stopped to think about elephant uplifts for a few moments I first thought of how pig uplifts were made quite human and thought of humanoid elephantine creatures. Mind you I also recall hearing pig-flesh is quite similar to human flesh so there might be some extra justification used there for why that was able to work. Still I think humanoid elephants may be the way to go. They would likely still have their trunks too, as that is a big part of how an elephant interacts with the world and I have a hard time seeing them go without it without further messing with their psyche.
However I also don't see them being quite as huge as african or even asian elephants for the reasons you just gave. I see them being oppressively huge, like a good 3-3.5 meters tall on their hind legs, but I don't see the morphs getting bigger than that if only to better enable them to interact with terrestrial society as well as the complications of being a giant biped in a hard sci-fi setting. Whale uplifts enjoy the fact they are either underwater or in space so neither the physics or confinement issues come up much. Besides this would still make Neo Elephants the largest terrestrial biomorphs afaik which certainly cements their "huge" factor rather nicely imho
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